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DONALD TRUMP’S MICHAEL DUKAKIS MCDONALD’S MOMENT WAS MCREHEARSED

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Donald Trump got lots of news coverage again. But how effective it was is in the eye of the beholder.

If you’re in the center to center left, it was a political stuck that was as much of a bomb as Democratic Gov. Mike Dukakis’ riding in a tank with a helmet in 1988. It was a political bomb that made the nuclear bomb look like a firecracker. Plus, many said it made him look like Snoopy. It became an image used effectively by Republican George H. W. Bush’s campaign.

Fast-forward to 2024 when Donald Trump is seemingly obsessed with insisting Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris is a liar when she says she worked a summer job at McDonald’s years ago. McDonald’s and Harris can confirm she worked a summer job there 40 years ago. Trump has seized on this to portray her as a liar who really never worked there. He has no proof.

So, on Sunday, Donald Trump made a highly touted trip to a McDonald’s to work the french fry frier. But it later emerged that Tump’s campaign left several teenie-weenie things out:

  • The McDonald’s was closed when he went there.
  • Customers going through the drive thru to get their food were screened in advance and did not order food. They got what Trump handed them.
  • There was a rehearsal.

    • It was all make believe. And the impact? That’s in the eye of the political beholder.

    Many Trump supporters considered it absolutely brilliant imagery that crushed Harris. Piers Morgan, the failed CNN Larry King replacement who remains a major media figure in England and who writes for the conservative website The Daily Mail, declared: “As political stunts go, this might have been the best I’ve ever seen, because it served two very powerful purposes in the presidential race.”

    The Independent’s Sean O’Grady:

    Fascistic, babyish, menacing monster that he is, the Donald Trump we saw in the footage of him visiting a McDonald’s yesterday came across as… somewhat genuine and relatable. Even if he wore cufflinks while handing out Happy Meals.

    Donald “aced” the fries, as he might put it, and managed to hand over huge bags of fast food to stunned customers without swearing once. That’s a bigger feat for him than it might sound, now that he’s gotten a bit more uninhibited lately.

    He didn’t demean anyone or threaten them with vengeful vexatious prosecution as he did after the last election (“Would you like a lawsuit with that?”). Nor did he bring up that “a lot of people” tell him how intelligent he is. He didn’t even do those inane dances he does when he’s run out of things to say.

    Dare I say it: “McTrump” was almost… charming. Almost.

    But, of course, this scene was all a ruse.

    And:

    The proud Americans he served prefer Big Macs and Filet-O-Fish to eating pet dogs and cats or (as per the Trumpian fantasy) wild geese like those nasty illegal immigrants – and so found themselves worthy of Trump’s courtesy.

    But, nice as he was, he’s fooling no one. Those who choose to believe in Trump – and there are many who do – will also choose to believe that he’s just like they are; kinda relatable. And those who despise him, an equally large group, will dismiss the exercise as a stunt driven by Kamala Harris’ more substantial experience at the sharp end of the fast-food business.

    Many in social media in the center, center left, center right Republicans who don’t like Trump and in the media aren’t lauding Trump for his photo-op.

    This is how the Washington Post framed it:

    In any other presidential campaign, one of the candidates’ mention of a summer job she held 40 years ago would probably just slip into the background chatter, a little biographical detail of no real consequence and not much political utility.

    But what 2024 is experiencing is very much not a typical presidential campaign. And so Vice President Kamala Harris’s mention of having worked at a California McDonald’s in the summer of 1983 led directly to the unexpected sight of former president Donald Trump standing in the drive-through window of a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania, pretending to fill orders for pretend customers.

    The line connecting those two things was Trump’s decision that Harris’s McDonald’s story was a useful way to call her dishonest. Despite Trump’s long track record of making obviously false claims, there’s not much difference in how Americans perceive the honesty of the two candidates. By stating Harris had invented her service with the fast-food chain, Trump can play the same game he played with Barack Obama in 2011: Elevate a murky biographical detail in an effort to hopefully make people wary of a Black Democrat.

    Trump and his allies used that informational vacuum to suggest that she never worked there at all, that she was simply an elitist attempting to pose as someone with working-class roots. And to really hammer that argument home, the billionaire former president spent part of Sunday posing as a McDonald’s employee. (The restaurant was closed, and the cars that went through the drive-through were supporters who had been screened by the Secret Service.)

    On his social media platform, Trump claimed that his campaign had obtained proof that Harris’s assertions were false.

    Notice the rhetorical jump there: from “no record of working” to “never worked.” It’s like saying that, if America’s collective memory and documentation of its history suddenly evaporated, we could prove that Trump was never president, since no record of his having done so exists.

    Another Post article describes the scene:

    Wearing an apron, the Republican presidential nominee lifted fries out of the hot oil, shook them, salted them and placed them into containers for service. He praised the staff and the company, then popped his head out the drive-through window and waved at a crowd that had gathered across the street. He began to hand out paper bags to the cars that had been waiting in line before his arrival. One man said, “Trump 2024!” as he drove away.

    The restaurant was closed to the public during Trump’s visit, and the motorists whom Trump served were screened by the U.S. Secret Service and positioned before his arrival. No one ordered food. Instead, the attendees received whatever Trump gave them.

    The most likely impact? It’ll be a wash in Trump gaining any new votes but it shore up and impresse those already inclined to vote for him. It’s unlikely any voters who don’t already to support Trump to be influenced. To them, this will be yet another politician riding around in a tank looking like Snoopy.

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