# Did Kamala Harris work at McDonalds? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** kamala-harris\ **Created:** [September 2, 2024, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631 "2024-09-02T15:53:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/283 "2024-09-06T02:21:45Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > They’ve moved on to trying other avenues of attack. Yes, like the super important question of if Harris was affecting a southern accent at a campaign rally. Enquirers want to know! ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/284 "2024-09-06T12:50:18Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > For god’s sake, is every single poster on this board going to continue to chime in on whether or not they remember the names of people they used to work with? Maybe someone can shoot me a PM when we’re done? Well now that we’ve utterly beaten the OPs ridiculous contention into the ground, what shall we talk about next? Or is it time to un-track the thread and let it die of well-earned neglect? ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/285 "2024-09-06T13:32:24Z")
It looks like Trump’s team is going to keep pressing the issue: > **[Where’s the Beef? Trump Demands Harris Prove She had McJob](https://uk.news.yahoo.com/harris-reveals-truth-mcdonald-job-184212087.html)** > > Kamala Harris' campaign says the nominee worked at a McDonald's in California in 1983. But the Trump campaign asks for proof. If he brings it up in the debate, she should respond with something like “Unlike Trump who makes up accomplishments from his past, like Michigan’s Man of the Year and graduating at the top of his class, I don’t have to lie about my past. I have the records from my SS work history and will have them on my website later.” She shouldn’t have to show proof, but that’s not the world we live in. She should refute this so it dies, and in the process take Trump down a few notches. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/286 "2024-09-06T13:49:07Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > She should refute this so it dies, and in the process take Trump down a few notches. A great idea, but it won’t work that way. He won’t be taken down, and she’ll just have to follow the next silly “question” Donny asks unendingly. No benefit. Just refuse to engage. She doesn’t have time to chase these rabbits. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/287 "2024-09-06T13:51:16Z")
And when the SS records don’t have an employer’s name (the statement I can get from the website doesn’t) , then what? That’s the problem with showing proof - unless she can somehow dig up a 1983 W2 or paystub that say McDonald’s Corporation (which is unlikely) , it won’t be good enough. Even if she somehow does have that W2 and it says McDonald’s, it still won’t be good enough. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/288 "2024-09-06T13:54:53Z")
She could get Ronald McDonald himself to vouch for her story and it wouldn’t matter. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/289 "2024-09-06T13:58:02Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > I have the records from my SS work history and will have them on my website later. I remember when Obama finally showed his birth certificate and, thankfully, that was the end of that! ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/290 "2024-09-06T13:59:59Z")
Even if it doesn’t say McDonalds, publish the corporation and whatever records they can dig up for that corporation. That’s not that much work. If the Republicans want to interview the CEO of the corporation, that’s on them. If she produces records that show she worked for XYZ Corp in the summer of 1983 and that XYZ was a corporation registered in California with tax id 12-345-789, it will pretty much put the story to rest. If it’s a lie, then she she wouldn’t be able to produce that. And if she did make up documentation because it was a lie, it would expose the lie. The corporate registration will have the owners and board listed. Even if she can’t remember the names of anyone, the corporate docs would have people. Somewhere in the docs and by talking to people, it would be possible to verify if XYZ Corp owned a McDonalds. Even if it doesn’t completely end it, it takes much of the support out of the claim. If she can show the paper trail, then people have to come up with wild conspiracies, like she forged all the docs and blackmailed the people listed in the corporate docs to support her story and got into the IRS and SS computers to falsify records. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/291 "2024-09-06T14:08:07Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > Even if it doesn’t say McDonalds, publish the corporation and whatever records they can dig up for that corporation. That’s not that much work. That’s giving the story more attention than it needs or deserves. Better to do as she seems to be doing and ignore the whole thing. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/292 "2024-09-06T15:03:48Z")
Exactly. It’s a nothingberger to begin with. Why give it any attention at all? ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/293 "2024-09-06T15:24:07Z")
She needs to address it because it’s not going away. Trump will keep it in the news and on major sites like Yahoo where all the dough-brains will see and hear about it. The ideas are forming in their heads that Harris lied about her employment past. She should ignore it if ignoring it makes it go away. I thought her answer about her being Black was great “Same old playbook”. It made it go away. Ignoring this won’t make it go away. Trump is going to milk it for all it’s worth. She needs to win this from a political perspective. She needs to shut it down one way or another. She doesn’t necessarily need to produce her W-2s, but she needs to come up with a way to slap it down like she did with the race issue. One reason it has legs is that it seems like something that a lying politician would do. From the article, she mentions it with striking workers. So it seems like it could be a lie to gain support with those workers. A politician might lie and say, “I’m one of you, striking workers of COMPANY\_NAME. I also worked for COMPANY\_NAME decades ago.” Think about if Trump said he worked at COMPANY\_NAME as a kid when giving a speech at the company’s warehouse. None of us would be happy to let it slide. We would know it’s a lie and would press him on it to prove it. Working at McDonalds should be one of the easiest attacks for Harris to shut down because it’s a stupid attack that can be straightforwardly disproven. If she doesn’t shut it down one way or another, it’s an unforced error in a game which has no room for mistakes. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/294 "2024-09-06T15:27:33Z")
The only reason my dad remembers his first McDonald’s job is he lost it due to the location being a money laundering front for the Detroit mafia which right after the FBI questioned him for about 20 minutes then gave him a month’s paycheck he rode his bike to the other mcds and started working there the next day Supposedly until the late 90s, it was the only mcd’s that went out of business … he did say the franchise owners and management didn’t seem all that interested in actually running the place really ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/295 "2024-09-06T15:30:08Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > If he brings it up in the debate… If he brings it up during the debate, she should ignore it and answer the question that was asked instead of worrying about every tangent Trump’s brain took trying to do the same. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/296 "2024-09-06T15:41:28Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > She needs to address it because it’s not going away. So what? There are still people going on about Obama’s birth certificate. He addressed it, he’s not even President anymore, and it still didn’t go away. This one also will never go away, but it can be minimized by not giving it any more attention than it deserves, i.e. vanishingly close to zero > [@filmore](#): > > One reason it has legs Wait, what? It has legs? Note that the story you dug up was from friggin _ **UK** _ Yahoo News and doesn’t add anything new - just summarizes something that’s already left the news cycle on this side of the pond. Back in this country, this “story” doesn’t even show up in any substantive way on any of the major right wing news sites anymore. It’s dead except for among small groups of dedicated internet randos like us. If it comes up in the debate at all, it’s going to be one offhand statement in a glurge of incoherent babble from Trump. His blather has only gotten worse in recent months, so I am baffled at the idea she needs to pick this one tidbit out of what will almost certainly be a firehose of nonsense. > [@filmore](#): > > should be one of the easiest attacks for Harris to shut down No such thing. Obama’s birth certificate (a “fake” to a significant fraction of people even to this day) is still a bigger story to these folks than this McDonald’s nonsense. Giving any of them any credence by giving them any attention at all will not shut any of them down. I can’t believe that after all this time, people think that some magical Perry Mason moment will get any of these people to accept any evidence, even that of their own senses (c’mon - we’ve seen them believe Trump over their own lying eyes!). It’s mystifying to me that we still act like the average person is rational or even-minded in any substantive way. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/297 "2024-09-06T16:06:53Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > Even if she somehow does have that W2 and it says McDonald’s, it still won’t be good enough. Correct. They’ll claim it was 'shopped. Or demand the “long form W2”. Or just move on to the next asinine claim. You don’t win in a pig-wrestling contest, when there are 8 dozen more pigs waiting in line. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/298 "2024-09-06T16:10:12Z")
They’ll demand the “government issued W-2”, saying that the one her employer generated isn’t good enough since it could’ve been faked. And the rubes, who have no idea how these forms work, will eat it up, because they don’t know that the IRS doesn’t generate those forms. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/299 "2024-09-06T16:15:13Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > She needs to address it because it’s not going away. No she doesn’t. It’s fucking inconsequential and stupid, and any voter who gives this a moment’s thought will realize this. The more Trump’s team bleats on about this, the more they will turn off anyone not in the 30% of True Believers. All she will accomplish by talking about it in any way will simply give it more oxygen. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/300 "2024-09-06T16:30:32Z")
The fact that there are still undecided voters at this point in time should be an indication that these kinds of stories will have an effect on an election. Maybe the McDonalds story doesn’t matter to people with 2 brain cells, but it does affect those with just one. Those people still get to vote and the Dems need them to vote for Harris. Does saying it’s fucking inconsequential and stupid get more of those undecided voters to Harris? I don’t think so. I don’t disagree that it’s a stupid issue, but the fact is that Harris needs a lot of stupid people to vote for her in order to win. She can’t win with just the votes of the smart people. She needs to also get the votes of of the people who consider whether or not she worked at McDonalds as one of the reasons to vote for her or not. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/301 "2024-09-06T16:36:24Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > The fact that there are still undecided voters at this point in time should be an indication that these kinds of stories will have an effect on an election. Honestly, I strongly doubt that many undecided voters care about this; to the extent that “you worked at McDonald’s? Prove it!” is still on anyone’s radar, it’s MAGA trolls. As has been pointed out, repeatedly, if she _were_ to produce some documentation, it’d never be enough for the trolls. To the extent that the fact she worked at McDonald’s, and that part of her background establishes a credential of a middle-class upbringing, great. The people who are still obsessing about “prove it” aren’t the ones who can be swayed, and “providing proof” is unlikely to sway any additional voters. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2024, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631/302 "2024-09-06T16:42:56Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > I don’t disagree that it’s a stupid issue, It’s a stupid issue that won’t go away, no matter how Harris addresses it. If she does, it will just give more publicity to the stupid issue, and get more stupid people to see it. It would be a net loss to her to even discuss it at this point. Like most of the mud they are currently flinging, this does not have staying power. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-kamala-harris-work-at-mcdonalds/1006631.md?page=16)