“Cringe,” “Nonsense,” “Out of Touch”: Actual McDonald’s Workers Unimpressed With Trump’s Fry-Cook Cosplay

Over the weekend—in between discussing the size of a golf legend’s genitalia and putting out an APB for the geese of Springfield, Ohio—Donald Trump pretended to be a fast-food worker at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s that was closed to the public. And his performance has not gone over well with people who actually do the job in real life.

On the Reddit thread r/McDonaldsEmployees, workers at the company weighed in on the stunt, commenting, among other things:

• “‘Working’ is a weird way of saying, ‘Stood around playing dress up while projecting nonsense to the press.’”
• “Apparently the store was closed and it was all a stunt. Which, if so, makes it even worse. Like he’s fucking with us, saying, ‘anybody can do this job, I’m a man of the people.’ So out of touch.”
• “This is just a cringe political photo op. He should have just helped out the workers instead like giving them double pay for the day or something since they’re going to be artificially swamped and inconvenienced for their entire shift and prolly a few days after.”
• “Great, so he passed out bags of food for five minutes for a photo op…now let’s see him actually take on the responsibility of a full shift every day for a few years. This is cosplay and insulting to people who have actually worked any amount of time in their lives.”

The decision by the Trump campaign to have the ex-president pass out fries on Sunday appears to have been motivated by (1) Trump’s baseless claim—which he repeated over the weekend—that Kamala Harris is lying about having worked at a McDonald’s during college and (2) a sad attempt to convince voters Trump cares about the working class. Which he demonstrated during his shift that he absolutely does not when he dodged a question about raising the minimum wage.

In related news, McDonald’s said Monday that while it agreed to the Trump event, allowing the ex-president to cosplay at one of its franchises should not be viewed as a tacit endorsement of the GOP candidate. “McDonald’s does not endorse candidates for elected office and that remains true in this race for the next president,” the company said in a memo to employees. “We are not red or blue—we are golden.”