Monday Minute: October 21st
Good morning, friends. Here's your Monday Minute...
Drive-Thru Politics
Donald Trump stopped at a Pennsylvania McDonald's yesterday to work the fry station and drive-thru window in a photo-op/dig at Kamala Harris (who has made the disputed claim she worked at McDonald's in college). The photos from the event were incredible, drawing big responses from both sides.
I fired off a throwaway tweet, noting that Trump at the window looks like a Rockwell painting, and went about some work around the house. The next time I opened Twitter, my post had an Elon reply, and Trump Jr. had posted a screenshot of it. The post now has over 2 million views.
Something about Trump handing out fries and tendies at the drive-thru window touched a nerve with people.
The left, for their part, spent the afternoon impotently screeching that Trump wasn't actually a wage employee of the McDonald's corporation and "fact-checking" whether Donald could really say he was doing "work."
This is, of course, just your standard reminder that as much as you hate journalists, you don't hate them enough.
The Thing about Trump is that despite being a billionaire and politician, he seems to genuinely enjoy talking to everyday Americans. Trump somehow didn't come off as condescending by stopping to work the window. In fact, he seemed to enjoy seeing how the restaurant worked and looked right at home in his workstation.
Was the McDonald's bit a photo-op and political stunt? Yeah, of course; he's running for office. But in the American cultural lexicon, working at the McDonald's fry station is considered one of the lowest jobs someone can have. And Trump showed that he's willing to look the part and act the part—and do so with a smile—in a physical display that shows he's not above doing the job.
Noblesse oblige is a real thing. The symbolic gesture of Donald Trump—a man who entered politics by descending the escalator of his own personal Manhattan skyscraper—wearing a McDonald's apron and joyfully handing out bags of fast food to cars full of American families is undeniably powerful.
Trump's visit to McDonald's is also a stark contrast to the Harris campaign's failure to capture the interest of regular people. The Harris people have spent millions of dollars trying to understand why men aren't responding positively to a 60-year-old wine aunt, flanked by her pal the gay assistant gym coach, scolding them from an MSNBC panel show about why the future is both Female and Haitian, when in all reality, all anyone wants to see is a guy who's willing to sling a few McDoubles.
Is it possible that America's version of the Piazza Venezia balcony is a McDonald's drive-thru window? I'm cautiously optimistic. I think there's a very real chance the crown of America has been found, not lying in the gutter, but next to the deep fryer.
