
Vice president and presidential hopeful Democrat Kamala Harris has a trust problem: many people do not believe a word she says.
That is, if they can understand what her words are supposed to mean. The infamously awkward cackling nominee seems to have trouble saying anything of substance, even when she’s sharing a stage with a luminary like Oprah Winfrey. Harris relies on what observers call “word salad.” She strings together sentences that sound profound on the surface, but Harris avoids giving any detailed policy prescriptions, relying on emotive language such as “the dreams and aspirations of the American people.”
Indeed, Harris flips her position on important issues, but then fails to acknowledge that she changed her opinion. For example, she told a crowd in 2019 that the Biden administration (she was the VP running mate) would not ban fracking in Pennsylvania. But she herself is on record proposing a fracking ban, and when media challenge her on this, she gives the non-sequitur answer, “My values haven’t changed.”
A lot of people do not even believe her least controversial claim: that she once worked at McDonalds. Former president and competitor Donald Trump has claimed repeatedly that she is lying about this.
But recently MSNBC correspondent Stephanie Ruhle asked Harris about her time at McDonalds in a recent interview. Riffing on the classic McDonalds Big Mac jingle, Ruhle asked Harris if she had ever given customers “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese. . .” Harris then sang the rest of the jingle, and said she had indeed served such food. “I did the fires. I mean, you know, I did,” she said.
In a friendly softball interview, Harris said she brought up McDonalds a lot to connect with voters who are trying to raise a family on the wages paid at fast food restaurants. She did not say much more than that, instead restating that she worked at a McDonalds and therefore understood their economic point of view.
The trouble people are having with Harris’ claims is that, first of all, she has a record of dishonesty. In addition, no one has been able to locate pictures of Harris working at the restaurant or wearing its uniform, and no one has been able to get confirmation of her employment from McDonalds itself.
This may mean nothing, of course. Harris claims to have worked at an Alameda McDonalds in 1983, and it is perfectly normal for large corporations to purge employment records that old.