True or not, Kamala Harris’ McDonald’s story a distraction from the lie about Joe Biden | Opinion
Politicians lie. No two words are more reliably true. They don’t just lie about politics, policy and people. They lie about themselves most of all.
Take the politician who is allegedly at the helm of our nation right now. This spring back when every Democratic politician was telling us Joe Biden was spry enough to run again, Biden told crowds in Pennsylvania about how his uncle was eaten by cannibals after crashing on an island during World War II. Not true, says Biden’s own Department of Defense.
In the same speech, he claimed that he never made more than $400,000 a year, a fact that was sorta true before he left office as Barack Obama’s vice president, but now is wildly untrue since he made millions on speeches and book deals while he was out of office and Donald Trump was president.
So when current Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she worked at McDonald’s, it is not unreasonable to be skeptical. Her campaign has produced no evidence beyond one friend who remembers her working there in college.
It is more than a little suspicious that she never thought to mention her work under the Golden Arches when running for attorney general of California and never thought to mention it when running for the Senate, both races in which her job history and biography were extensively examined.
But just because a politician says something and can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it is a lie. Harris was in college four decades ago. It just so happens that Harris and I have a greasy kinship as burger competitors. She was in California working the fry station, the register and the ice cream machine at McDonald’s while I was a burger boy working the flame broiler at Burger King.
I can’t prove it either. I don’t even remember the names of the people I worked with let alone have any paper records of my time there. Some conservatives have demanded that Harris turn over Social Security records to prove her time as mistress of the deep fryer, but when I signed up online for mine, the records back to 1985 and 1986 include how much I earned that was Social Security taxable, but not from whom I earned it.
And when I was working there, it wasn’t something I wanted to spread around. It was embarrassing for middle class kids like Harris and me to be reduced to a job where you went home smelling like week-old french fries. Of course there are no witnesses other than my mom, who regularly had to hose me off after a shift.
Anyway, who cares? If the Harris McDonald’s tale is false, it tells us nothing other than the fact that the vice president, who is the first woman and first person of color to hold her title, is exactly the same as every white guy who held the job before her.
When it comes to lies, guilty or not, Harris is not even in the same league as the guy she is running against. He tells more and bigger lies before he gets out of bed in the morning than Harris has told in her whole career. The claim that he won the 2020 election comes to mind.
The problem with the debate over Harris’ familiarity with the Big Mac is that it covers up the far bigger lie she told over and over again and which her campaign is still spreading — all evidence to the contrary — and that is that Joe Biden was mentally fit to be a candidate for president and that he is on top of the job right now.
We’re fighting over who’s more in touch with minimum wage workers — billionaire Donald McDonald of the deep-fryer photo-op or Kamala of the questionable fast-food career — while the guy who is still in the White House is a few nuggets short of a Happy Meal.
This story was originally published October 23, 2024 at 12:34 PM with the headline "True or not, Kamala Harris’ McDonald’s story a distraction from the lie about Joe Biden | Opinion."
