I'm Lovin' It
A drive-thru in a fever dream.
I imagine it has been a lifelong dream for Donald Trump to have starred in a McDonald’s commercial with the 1985 Chicago Bears. It begins with them breaking into the Super Bowl shuffle for inexplicable reasons, then Trump walks into the welcoming light of looming golden arches and delivers his line to the camera. “I’m Donald Trump,” he honks, “and I’m giving my strongest personal endorsement to the Big Mac. There’s never been a burger like this, and believe me, I know burgers.” He eventually lived a version of that dream in an image that captured America’s attention and imagination. Because Trump shut down the federal government in a fit of pique and because Trump is Trump, he threw a big party for the Clemson Tigers at the White House, serving them All-American treats after leering fudgily and posing triumphantly and making various puckering faces behind stacks of rapidly cooling burgers. If the election doesn’t work out for him, Trump would be living his best life as a McDonald’s manager.
On Sunday, nominative determinism struck again. Trump pretended to be a McDonald’s employee for roughly 15 minutes, or as many credulous news outlets described it, he spent an afternoon “working” there. The Big Man was there for a photo-op designed to push the story that Kamala Harris has never worked at McDonald’s, which has been a topic of contention among the sort of people who would be emotionally invested in this kind of thing. Since America belongs on Tubi, this is an insane and pointless piece of political theater, and this stunt would be considered embarrassing were it done by anyone else on the planet but the planet’s most embarrassing man. But Trump is McDonald’s, down to his red tie and yellow apron strap, his ridiculous hair and the fake tan contrast between his face and his arms. Watching him wrangle the fries, the machines beeping in the background, the crumple of paper bags, this is the stuff of hyper-reality.
Imagine pulling up hungover to a McDonald’s drive-thru window and Donald Trump hands you a coffee and McGriddle. He wants to be Lana Del Rey at the Waffle House so badly.
The Washington Post’s writeup of the event opens with a sentence about Trump manning the fry station and ends with “but he dodged a question about increasing the minimum wage.” This is a strange thing to center in a story about a presidential candidate who, last week, opened a rally in Western Pennsylvania by praising the size of Arnold Palmer’s dick. That may be the most likable thing he has said all campaign, but it should’ve been noted that the Ozempic rumors are affirmatively false: He looked very disgusting, nipples protruding, in front of all the McDonald’s staff.
In lieu of offering any solution to any problem, let alone quality public schools or good childhood nutrition programs or affordable housing or passing regulations to ensure a clean environment or stopping businesses from exploiting workers or raising the minimum wage or providing public health care and adequate Social Security, presidential elections are now about vibes, and this man is made to be photographed. In 2015, it was unfathomable to consider that an obese octogenarian with a bad fake tan could be incredibly photogenic. Now, it’s aesthetically perfect for the American spirit.
“I made sure nobody spooged in this one, but ya know what? You’re beautiful! You’re so beautiful, I wish I’d spooged. I woulda spooged a real good one if I knew it was your McGriddle, sweetheart.”
I like to imagine his tie keeps going until it touches the floor.
He finally let the girls out. Not my proudest nut.
He looks like a franchise owner of two McDonald’s with a 3.4 and 3.7-star rating on Google—the type where they get your order wrong 26% of the time, but it’s close to work, so you say “fuck it” and keep going back.
Waving you goodbye with a smile on his face, knowing he hoed you on the fries.
Imagine if the failed assassination wasn’t at the rally, but rather this drive-thru. And in this version, the bullet misses his head because he turned to look at a Kitchen Display System monitor after somebody ordered 50 packs of McNuggets.
The ramshackle sum of Trump’s rancid being amounts to all the things that he started doing and never stopped doing, but all told, this was a cheesy and goofy photo-op to flatter the ripe, buffed meme-ified version of himself. So it was not just Trump’s signature recursive desire that brought him to stuff fries into a paper bag. It was that—in addition to his other desire, which is to get and stay on TV. There was probably no way to do this sort of thing that doesn't look shabby, insulting, and cheap. It’s reminiscent of those cheap PR stunts involving someone from management showing up at ground-level to do a minimum-wage job for a day to prove how sensitive they are to the concerns and conditions of their employees. It is one thing to do menial labor for a few hours before retreating to the comforts of an upper-class lifestyle; it is an entirely different context to deal with shit from customers or supervisors while your entire livelihood depends on this suboptimal, sub-sustenance type of employment. It’s cosplay. But if Trump scooping some fries can sway you, then you were probably going to vote for him anyway.
Tremulous and delirious media dorks performatively chastised Trump for a blatantly staged photo-op much in the same way that a credulous teenager would fume after learning the WWE is fake. There is a recognition of asymmetry between how luridly dishonest and fascistic a top-of-the-ticket national candidate can be and how direct the media will or won’t be about articulating what he truly represents. On their merits, there is no basis for defending Trump’s hamhanded coup attempt, or his gutter-racist rhetoric, or Project 2025. But Republicans have correctly identified that the people in charge of pointing out their bullshit will keep on bringing a what appears to be misleading remarks-style fustiness to an old-fashioned smarm fight. Our journalistic institutions can no longer discern the noise from the signal. Their ability to understand what level of outrage to demonstrate at appropriate or commensurate topics is hopelessly busted.
We are left with this surreal idea that somehow, Trump’s absurdity renders him benign, that we can dismiss his threats. There was a dystopian moment that encapsulated this potent tincture of clownish campaigning mixed with authoritarian foreboding. A news reporter who brazenly violated the no walking through a drive-thru rule asked Trump whether he would accept the 2024 election results, and he thoughtfully considered whether or not to future coup. “Yeah, sure, if it’s a fair election, always. I would always accept it if it’s—it’s gotta be a fair election.” His goofy-vile antics might convince enough people to support or downplay the only fully articulated policy position of the Trump platform, which is a bloody campaign of domestic warfare against “the enemy from within,” and more specifically, the wokeists they personally dislike. Trump is not a big believer in consequences, but he has a capricious and lazily brutal affinity for vengeance. One moment, he’s goofing around with McDonald’s employees; the other, he is fuming and dead fucking serious.
Just a manager? He would want to be a stockholder, so he could call shots on what they put on and took off the menus...
On a petty level thanks for sharing the picture of his jugs and belly roll, yes it’s fat shaming but if ever there was someone who goes out of his way to look like he is an attractive specimen it is Donny. The long tie and long line jackets are straight out of “Dress for Success” from the 80’s to hide the paunch, same with the always leaning forward in a chair.
To the more serious point that you are making the press and TV media have been failing the people of the country for a long time but the coverage of the Trump campaign has been abject. Tidying up his psycho-babble ranting into something approaching a coherent policy statement is the norm now, not calling out his racist sexist drivel for what it is has been abhorrent. The sadness is that it’s a political act when it is Sinclair or Fox but with the NYT, Washpo and the main national networks it is incompetent at best and more likely cowardly avoidance of his Orange Majesty’s ire. The same thinking gave us McCarthyism and Roy Cohn, the young Trump’s mentor.