True or False. Did Kamala Harris Really Work at McDonald’s in Her Youth?

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris claims to have worked at McDonald’s in the 1980s, but Donald Trump and his supporters say that is false. Behind this controversy, there are political strategies.

This is a campaign argument that may seem surprising when viewed from France. In a commercial, Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for the American presidency, talks about her student job at McDonald’s in the 1980s. A way of reminding us that she comes from the middle class and of saying that she had to work during her studies, like many Americans.

This way of telling his life story has the gift of annoying Donald Trump. On his social network, Truth Media, he exclaims: “Kamala said she worked at McDonald’s. That’s not true. Lie!” His supporters have repeated the accusation of lying on social media, citing an article from a conservative media outlet Washington Free Beacon who conducted a pseudo-investigation to verify the information and believes that it is false since Kamala Harris did not mention this professional experience on her CV. Pro-Trumpers also claim that McDonald’s denied having employed her, as reported by the Trump Fact news account in French on X, Saturday August 31.

Except that’s false, McDonald’s has never taken a position on the subject. Snopesan American media outlet specializing in fact-checking, contacted the brand and never heard back.

The Snopes journalists sincerely wonder if it is possible to find proof of this student job. It would require that the Democratic candidate took a photo of herself at the time, in the 1980s when people took less photos than they do today, or that the McDonald’s group has archives of all the employees of all its restaurants and franchises dating back several decades.

As for the lack of mention of this experience on Kamala Harris’ resume, that is not evidence. Not everyone puts all their past jobs on their resume, especially when they have nothing to do with the career they want to pursue – in this case, Kamala Harris studied law and later became a prosecutor.

This controversy raises another question: don’t we care a little about the student jobs of politicians? And the answer seems to be: no. Under its anecdotal airs, this controversy has become a massive argument of Donald Trump against Kamala Harris. The story interests millions and millions of Internet users. For example, the publication on the social network X of Peter J. Hasson, boss of the Washington Free Beaconhas been viewed more than 17 million times.

In the United States, McDonald’s is a very serious and above all very political subject. What is at stake behind it is to know who is closest to the working class and therefore who will win the votes of the most modest during the presidential election in the fall. Will it be Kamala Harris who says she comes from the working class and who worked at McDonald’s, or will it be Donald Trump, the billionaire who is addicted to fast food, who often shows himself eating Big Macs to be like the working classes, who even organized a banquet consisting only of fast food when he was in the White House?

This story also shows how disinformation has become a strategic and political tool. There have been dozens and dozens of false information, rumors, and accusations of lies targeting Kamala Harris since she announced her candidacy. Le Vrai ou Faux de franceinfo tackled one of them at the end of August, according to which the Democratic candidate had taken up a Nazi slogan during her campaign, which is false. Articles verifying fake news about Kamala Harris fill pages and pages of the Snopes website. Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz is also the target of a disinformation campaign, as franceinfo noted at the end of August.

The massive disinformation targeting Kamala Harris discredits everything the Democratic candidate may say and takes up a lot of space on the web, reducing the space left to talk about substance, programs, to debate important things.