Donald Trump hands out fries and holds drive-thru news conference at McDonald’s
Republican US presidential nominee Donald Trump handed out fries at a McDonald’s on Sunday before staging an impromptu news conference, answering questions through the drive-thru window.
As reporters and aides watched, an employee showed Mr Trump how to dunk baskets of fries in oil, salt the fries and put them into boxes using a scoop.
Mr Trump, a well-known fan of fast food and a notorious germophobe, expressed amazement that he did not have to touch the fries with his hands.
The visit came as he tried to counter Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ accounts on the campaign trail of working at the fast-food chain while in college, an experience that Trump has claimed, without offering evidence, never happened.
A large crowd lined the street outside the restaurant in Pennsylvania. Later he was attending an evening rally before catching the Pittsburgh Steelers home game against the New York Jets.
After serving bags of takeaway to people in the drive-thru lane, Mr Trump leaned out of the window, still wearing the apron, to take questions from the media outside.
He joked about getting one reporter ice cream and when another asked what message he had for Ms Harris on her 60th birthday on Sunday, Mr Trump said, “I would say happy birthday Kamala”, adding: “I think I’ll get her some flowers.”
Mr Trump did not directly answer a question about whether he might support increased minimum wages after seeing McDonald’s employees in action but said: “These people work hard. They’re great.”
He added that “I just saw something, a process that’s beautiful.”
Mr Trump has long questioned Ms Harris’ story of working at McDonald’s and has fixated in recent weeks on the summer job she said she held in college, working the cash register and making fries at McDonald’s.
Mr Trump said the vice president has “lied about working” there, but offered no evidence for claiming that.
In an interview last month on MSNBC, the vice president rejected Mr Trump’s claims, saying she did work at the fast-food chain four decades ago when she was in college.
“Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to raise a family,” she said. “I worked there as a student.”