Trump Finally Gets Real Job. For 20 Minutes.
And one that isn't too taxing on his giant brain.
Had you traveled to a McDonald’s in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, on Sunday afternoon, you would have been treated to the sight of a convicted felon working the French fry machine.
Now, there is nothing weird about this per se. McDonald’s has a “felon friendly” hiring policy in an admirable corporate effort to help rehabilitated criminals find even a tiny toehold as productive and working members of society once they have paid for their crimes.
But usually, the felon has served his prison sentence already. And also usually, your average ex-felon fry cook is not also a former President of the United States.
That’s Donald Trump. Always breaking down barriers.
So there Trump was on Sunday, wrapped up in an apron the size of a boat cover, standing for the first time in his miserable life on one of the lower rungs of American capitalism with the rest of the plebeians. For about five minutes, anyway.
No, really. According to a write-up of the stunt from The Washington Post, Trump spent about five minutes at the restaurant’s fry station, pulling the fry basket out of hot oil, salting the fries and putting them into those little containers. Then he spent 15 minutes at the drive-through window, where he mostly kibbitzed with the reporters lined up nearby.
We’ll be generous and say he was on the clock for 20 minutes. The average fast-food worker in Pennsylvania makes $13.20 an hour according to the Post, so 20 minutes of work comes out to — we’ll do the math for Trump, whose brain is basically an angry ferret trapped in a canvas sack — congrats, Donald, you earned yourself $4.40 before taxes.
E. Jean Carroll immediately filed a motion to garnish Trump’s wages, noting that he only has to repeat that 20 minutes approximately 19.5 million more times to pay the $86,000,000 he owes her.
A normal presidential candidate would in fact have used an appearance of this sort to send a message about increasing the minimum wage, or the importance of government-provided healthcare because someone making $13.20 an hour is not going to be able to afford insurance on their own. Doing so might have even served as an indirect rebuke to the owner of this particular McDonald’s franchise, who has a record of dragging his heels on raising his employees’ wages and lobbying against state rules making more people eligible for overtime.
In other words, this was a great chance to earn some credibility with the working-class voters that The New York Times said was the entire purpose of the whole spectacle.
Trump being Trump, however, this appearance was mostly about trolling Kamala Harris, who he is still convinced lied about working at a McDonald’s during summer vacation 40 years ago:
“Now I’ve worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” Trump said as he wrapped up his time at the fryer. When asked why Harris would lie about working at McDonald’s, Trump responded: “Because she’s Lyin’ Kamala.”
Ah, the magnificent dignitude of presidential politics in 2024.
The McDonald’s trip was the sort of retail campaigning that we very rarely see Trump do, since it’s much more fun to stage a rally where everyone is chanting your name and beating up protestors. And indeed, his campaign staff clearly did not want to risk any sorts of unscripted voter interaction that might set former President Brainworms on some rambling anecdote about the cock size of a particular professional athlete. So the restaurant was closed for his visit, depriving Trump of the experience of a McDonald’s in full and chaotic swing, when the shake machine is breaking down and the Big Macs can’t get wrapped fast enough and the seemingly nice blue-hair at the counter is yelling at you that she does not want a colored boy preparing her food, get someone else to do it or she’ll need to talk to your manager.
THIS ONE.
Also, the only patrons inside had been pre-screened by the Secret Service. Anyone who wanted to steer through the drive-through to be handed a container of over-salted fried potatoes from Trump was likewise pre-screened by the Secret Service. None of these customers actually got to order anything. You took whatever Trump decided in his beneficence to hand you. Which, when you think about it, is a metaphor for his entire presidency.
Also, he was sans hairnet, which we’re betting is a health code violation. Complete indifference to laws and to keeping other Americans from being struck down by illness? Also a great metaphor for his entire presidency.
In one final kick in the nuts, Newsweek calculated that the average McDonald’s franchise has more revenue in one year than the Trump Media and Technology Group, owner of his vanity social media site TruthSocial:
Franchise disclosure documents show that an average franchised McDonald's restaurant makes $3.5 million annually. When divided by four to estimate quarterly revenue, this comes to $876,250.
TMTG's Q2 earnings, published in August, show that it earned $837,000 in revenue that quarter─$39,250 less than the average McDonald's franchise. Q3 ended in September and TMTG is yet to report these earnings.
If his family had a sense of humor, they would have already gotten to work chiseling “Not even as successful as your average McDonald’s franchise” on his headstone.
Wonkette also serves French fries to make a living, if by French fries you mean laughter.
Stolen valor! Some of us actually put our time in at the fry stations, not like some rich silver spoon punk who never worked a real job his whole life. Put that apron down, bitch!
I've been harping on this but damn this is such a disservice to people who have to do these jobs. Making the fries or flipping the burgers is such a small part of what it means to work a job like that that this is just a caricature of a low wage worker. Being a low wage worker, of any worker, means being on someone else's time until your shift ends. Usually 8 hours. Some of these jobs are physically demanding. Some of them require skill. Some require social skills. But the thing that binds all of them together? They require your time and lots of it. Fuck anyone who dances in, does one or two tasks, bounces out and says they can do the job.