Inside a McDonald’s in Lower Manhattan, David Ye, who has worked at the fast-food outpost for three years, knew in just a few seconds that something was off.
As he watched a video of former President Donald Trump taking a turn at the fryer on Sunday at a McDonald’s in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Ye spotted a clear sign that Trump was out of his element.
“The box is, like, backwards,” Ye said with some bewilderment, as Trump shoveled a scoopful of fries the wrong way into the iconic red carton. “He doesn’t seem to know how to do it.”
The former president has far more experience as a customer at McDonald’s, which he says is one of his favorite restaurants. But as he visited Pennsylvania, one of the country’s tightest battleground states for the presidential election, Trump found himself donning a McDonald’s apron, its golden straps flanking his ketchup-red tie.
He served french fries to hand-chosen patrons, held court for the cameras and threw around enough salt that he seemed more a disciple of Salt Bae than Ronald McDonald.
But his performance behind the counter this weekend — a half-hour stop at a franchise that closed for the occasion in Feasterville, Pennsylvania — has earned mixed reviews from workers and patrons alike.
For a veteran of a reality TV show about business savvy, he committed what appeared to be a number of health code violations, several workers said. Trump did not opt for a hairnet or gloves.
As he filled a box of fries cautiously, he quipped that the food “never touched the human hand.”
“Supposing we want some extra salt, can I do it like that?” Trump asked a worker. Without waiting for an answer, he added several vigorous shakes over a fresh batch of fries. Then, he tossed a handful of salt over his left shoulder, because, he said, he’s superstitious.
That did not go over well with some of the half-dozen workers who watched the video.
“You don’t throw salt like that,” said Kishia, a McDonald’s manager in Flatbush, Brooklyn, who asked that her full name not be used because she was on the clock. “Somebody could have been behind him, you know?”
A cashier at a McDonald’s in Astoria, Queens, said the campaign stop minimized the hard work that she and her colleagues put into the job.
With the election just more than two weeks away, both major candidates are seeking to broaden their appeal among several groups, and McDonald’s represents a wide cross-section of the electorate.
The company says that 1 in 8 Americans have worked at one of its franchises, and it recently reported that about a fifth of its workers are Black and more than a third are Hispanic.
Trump is far from the first candidate to tap into the “just like us” trope, said Adam Galinsky, a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School. Hillary Clinton took a shot of whiskey at an Indiana restaurant during a campaign event in 2008, and her husband, Bill Clinton, also has a longtime affection for McDonald’s, for which he was lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.”
For Trump, “it was a very shrewd and smart political move,” Galinsky said, in part because the former president has used it to attack his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has invoked her own experience working at McDonald’s for one summer in college.
Trump has claimed, without evidence, that Harris lied about the job at McDonald’s, and repeated that claim while handing out food through a drive-thru window to his supporters on Sunday. Harris’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
McDonald’s also did not respond to requests for comment. Derek Giacomantonio, the owner of the franchise that Trump visited, said in a statement that he welcomed the former president as a way to showcase the jobs created by franchise businesses.
It is unclear whether any voters who had not already made up their minds were swayed by Trump’s demonstration, but it did get McDonald’s patrons talking on Monday.
“I think it was awesome,” said Destaja Wilson, 30, a home health aide and registered Republican who was picking up breakfast at McDonald’s in Astoria, Queens. “He did the job with gratitude, and he was proud about it,” she said.
But there are also risks in political theater.
When asked by an attendee how much he was getting paid, Trump joked, “Not enough,” but then demurred on questions about raising the minimum wage.
Fast food workers in Pennsylvania were paid about $13 an hour last year, according to federal labor data.
Venus Rodriguez, 55, the general manager of a McDonald’s in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said she could overlook Trump’s bad form, because of his willingness to learn and to walk in her shoes for a day.
But the appearance did raise an unwelcome specter that the Trump campaign has been trying to play down: his age.
For safety reasons, no 78-year-old should be working the fryer, she said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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