Trump will visit McDonald's as he offers no evidence for saying Harris didn't work there in college

FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, Pa. (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Sunday is expected to visit a McDonald's in Pennsylvania as he continues to criticize Democrat Kamala Harris and claim without evidence that she never worked at the fast-food chain while in college.

His plan is to visit a McDonald's and work the french fry cooker before heading to an evening town hall in Lancaster and then attending the Pittsburgh Steelers home game against the New York Jets.

The former president has fixated in recent weeks on the summer job Harris said she held in college, working the cash register and making fries at McDonald's while attending Howard University in Washington. Trump has claimed the vice president never worked there, the latest example of his longtime strategy to seize on conspiracy theories and question the credentials of his political opponents.

Trump repeated the claim Friday night at a campaign rally in Detroit, saying Harris "lied about working at McDonald's.”

“That’s like not a big thing, but can I be honest with you, it’s terrible,” Trump said.

Police closed the busy streets around a McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, and cordoned off the restaurant as a crowd a couple blocks long gathered, sometimes 10- to 15-deep across the street straining to catch a glimpse of Trump. Horns honked and music blared as Trump supporters waved flags, held signs and took pictures.

Harris, who was a California prosecutor before becoming a senator and vice president, raises her McDonald's experience as a way to show she understands working-class struggles.

“When Trump feels desperate, all he knows how to do is lie,” Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams said Sunday. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter, only to blow it."

In an interview last month on MSNBC, the vice president pushed back on 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.”

Harris also said: “I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility, then, is to meet those needs.”

Trump’s senior campaign adviser Jason Miller told reporters on Saturday that Trump would be making the stop “so that one candidate in this race can actually have worked at McDonald's.”

“Since Kamala Harris has not, President Trump by the end of tomorrow will have worked at McDonald's. He’ll have done fries more than Kamala Harris ever has,” Miller said. “I think it shows he connects with hard-working Americans.”

Harris' campaign did not immediately have a comment on Trump’s McDonald's plan.

Representatives for McDonald's did not respond to a message about whether the company had employment records for one of its restaurants 40 years ago.

It's far from the first time that Trump has promoted baseless claims. Most notably, he claims falsely that he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden due to voter fraud. Trump said during his presidential debate with Harris that immigrants who had settled in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents' pets.

Trump has long gone after opponents based on their personal history, particularly women and racial minorities.

Before he ran for president, Trump was a leading voice of the “birther” conspiracy that baselessly claimed President Barack Obama was from Africa, was not an American citizen and therefore was ineligible to be president. Trump used it to raise his own political profile, demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate and five years after Obama did so, Trump finally admitted that Obama was born in the United States.

During his first run for president, Trump repeated a tabloid's claims that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's father, who was born in Cuba, had links to President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Cruz and Trump competed for the party's 2016 nomination.

In January of this year, when Trump was facing Nikki Haley, his former U.N. ambassador, in the Republican primary, he shared on his social media network a post with false claims that Haley’s parents were not citizens when she was born, therefore making her ineligible to be president.

Haley is the South Carolina-born daughter of Indian immigrants, making her automatically a native-born citizen and meeting the constitutional requirement to run for president.

Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona, said using a campaign visit to focus on the claims about McDonald's four decades ago is a “puzzling detour,” but that Trump is “not above throwing anything on the wall to see if it sticks.”

“When Donald Trump isn’t talking about the economy and illegal immigration, he’s off topic about the things that people care about,” Marson said.

Marson suggested that Trump would be better off talking about the economy and immigration, not something he called “off topic.”

“I don’t think there’s an undecided voter out there that will respond or that will make their decision based on whether or not Kamala Harris actually worked at McDonald's in the 1980s,” Marson said.

Ken Lane, of Lancaster, Pa., is pictured outside the Lancaster Convention Center, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, where Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump will hold a town hall. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Donald Trump-themed stuffed toy ducks are pictured before the Republican presidential nominee former President arrives at the Lancaster Convention Center in Lancaster, Pa., Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, where Trump will hold a town hall. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Ken Lane, of Lancaster, Pa., is pictured outside the Lancaster Convention Center, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, where Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump will hold a town hall. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Supporters of Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gather outside the Lancaster Convention Center in Lancaster, Pa., Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, where Trump will hold a town hall. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Supporters of Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gather outside the Lancaster Convention Center in Lancaster, Pa., Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, where Trump will hold a town hall. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump watches as a video featuring Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris plays during a campaign event, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024 in Detroit. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, scion of one of the state's best-known Republican families, threw his support Sunday behind Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in his hotly contested reelection race against GOP nominee Bernie Moreno.

Taft, 82, made known his intention to vote for Brown over Moreno, a Donald Trump-backed Cleveland businessman, in a letter to the editor of the Dayton Daily News.

The grandson of “Mr. Republican” Robert A. Taft Sr. and great-grandson of William Howard Taft, the only person in American history to have been president and chief justice of the United States, praised Brown in the letter without mentioning Moreno.

Taft cited, among the reasons for his decision, Brown’s collaboration with U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, on behalf of the Dayton area, including Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; Brown's 25 years of experience in public office; and Brown's committee assignments as a result of his senior status in the Senate.

“Although not in agreement with Senator Brown on every policy issue, I believe Ohioans very much need a highly effective, experienced advocate in the U.S. Senate — someone who is squarely focused on both Ohio's and America's needs,” Taft wrote.

It remained unclear how Taft’s backing might play at the ballot box given Ohio’s hard shift to the right in recent elections. The endorsement comes as Brown works to attract independent and Republican crossover voters in the record-setting $400 million-plus contest.

Moreno’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Trump supporters now hold sway within the state GOP and the former president's endorsements have eclipsed those of mainstream Ohio Republicans in recent elections.

Trump's backing elevated Moreno to victory in a crowded primary field this spring, despite both GOP Gov. Mike DeWine and recently retired Republican Sen. Rob Portman endorsing a rival candidate, for example, and boosted first-time politician JD Vance to a Senate victory over the objections of a cadre of state Republican leaders.

The endorsement is particularly noteworthy, though, given that Bob Taft is the only politician in Brown's long political career to ever defeat him in an election. Taft beat Brown in his 1990 bid for reelection as secretary of state.

FILE - Cleveland businessman and Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno speaks at a rally, March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean, File)

FILE - Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, speaks with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, March 15, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - Former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft speaks during an interview on the campus of the University of Dayton on Dec. 21, 2011, in Dayton, Ohio. Taft urged state lawmakers on Monday, April 24, 2023, against advancing a measure that would make it harder to amend the state constitution or reviving August special elections to do it — calling the combination "especially bad public policy." (Tony Jones/The Cincinnati Enquirer via AP, File)