With two weeks to go until Election Day, Donald Trump spent the weekend campaigning in the battleground state of Pennsyvania, which included a stop at his favorite fast food chain to try his hand in the kitchen.
Trump spent some time cooking and French fries and serving people in the drive-thru line at a McDonald’s in Bucks County on Sunday, where he also joked about Kamala Harris’ claims she worked at the Golden Arches in college.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Emily Jashinsky, host of Undercurrents on UnHerd, and Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of The Washington Free Beacon, to discuss why Trump’s visit was so effective and the questions it raises about Harris.
Trump’s Happy Meal
Trump, who is known to love McDonald’s, traded his suit jacket for an apron on Sunday as he cooked up fries, prepared Happy Meals, and interacted with patrons through the drive-thru window at a McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose.
The media wasted no time calling the campaign stop “staged” and “bizarre,” but Megyn was lovin’ it. “I really thought this was quite genius because everyone knows Trump loves McDonald’s… he eats there all the time,” she said. “He is telegraphing that even though he has got all his money, he knows the menu forward and back.”
It was an explicitly political moment that Megyn said actually had an authenticity to it. “It is a great photo-op in the same way we see these politicians go to state fairs and eat the fried corn dog,” she added. “This is Trump’s State Fair, only it is real for him. He actually loves it.”
Jashinsky believes that is the why the media coverage has been so vitriolic. “I think this is an encapsulation of the political genius of Donald Trump, and I actually think some of the reaction on the left is proving it because I think they recognize the political genius is a threat to their own agenda,” she said. “He is not trying to pretend that he really loves McDonald’s… and he is having these conversations that are way more natural with constituents than any other politician put in that situation who is given a script.”
Cooking Up Controversy
During the visit, Trump was ready with a joke to juxtapose his experience on the fry line with his opponent. “I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” he quipped to reporters in reference to a Harris campaign talking point that she worked at a California McDonald’s in the 1980s.
“The purpose of his appearance was to drive the narrative that Kamala Harris never really worked this job that has been a centerpiece of the biography that she has put forward on the campaign trail,” Johnson noted. “And as a result, there was a ton of media coverage about this event in which the media said Trump is pushing this unproven claim that Kamala Harris never worked at McDonald’s.”
But Johnson argued the media has failed to do its due diligence on the story. “The whole McDonald’s narrative is downstream of a really carefully researched and reported Free Beacon report that came out in late August, and that is why Trump has been talking about it,” she said. “The Free Beacon report raised questions about Harris’ claim to have worked at McDonald’s, noting three things.”
The first, as Johnson explained, is that the Harris campaign actually had to change its tune as a result of the reporting. “They initially said she had worked there to pay her way through school. They had to walk back that claim, and they said that she actually just worked there for a summer for extra cash,” she noted. “They walked it back when the Free Beacon approached the campaign with questions.”
Secondly, Johnson said the anecdote about the vice president’s time working in fast food seemingly came out of nowhere. “It is not mentioned in any of the books that have been written about Harris, nor is the job mentioned in any of Harris’ own books,” Johnson shared. “The first time she ever mentioned it was on the campaign trail in 2019. That is odd for something that has become so significant on the campaign trail this time around.”
To that point, Johnson said the Free Beacon found Harris failed to disclose her alleged stint at Mickey D’s on government forms. “She was asked when she worked in a district attorney’s office for every position she had held in the past 10 years,” she noted. “That is not a resume, but rather [a list of] every position and she did not include this job.”
All of this is to say Johnson believes “there is certainly reason to question [Harris’] claim,” contrary to what The New York Times and others in the media want you to believe. “To call [the Times’ report] ‘North Korean,’ I think, is not an exaggeration,” she said. “They they leave out important facts that would inform from the reader’s ability to assess this, and then they cite the Harris campaign as evidence to affirm her account. It is a stunning display of tendentiousness and dishonesty.”
Mission Accomplished?
Regardless, Johnson said the obsessive coverage of Trump’s stop was a win for the GOP nominee. “The result was a full day of media coverage of his appearance and a discussion of Kamala Harris’ claim,” she concluded. “This is not what the Harris campaign wants to be talking about two weeks out from the election. But the entire day was dominated by Trump, and… he won the news cycle yesterday.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky and Johnson by tuning in to episode 922 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.