No, McDonald’s didn’t say there’s ‘no record’ Kamala Harris worked at the fast food chain

Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign opponent, former President Donald Trump, has asserted that Harris fabricated a story about working at McDonald’s.

He made the comments at an Aug. 30 conference and in two Truth Social posts.

Trump has not cited clear evidence to contradict Harris’ account. But now some social media users are doing it for him — they say McDonald’s itself denied her employment story.

"MCDONALD’s CORPORATE has come forth and said they have no record whatsoever of KAMALA HARRIS ever working at any of their locations," an X post screenshot shared Aug. 31 on Facebook said.

Other posts on Facebook, Instagram and Threads and X made similar claims. Some posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

(Screengrab from Facebook)

But these posts are wrong: McDonald’s has issued no such statement.

Harris has mentioned her job at McDonald’s on the campaign trail and in other public appearances. Her campaign told PolitiFact that Harris worked the cash register and staffed the fry and ice cream machines at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, in summer 1983. Harris attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., from 1982 to 1986.

We searched McDonald’s Corp.’s website and social media accounts and found no public statements from the company about Harris’ work experience there. We also found no news coverage of such a statement from the company.

PolitiFact contacted McDonald’s about this claim but did not receive a response before publication.

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When we asked Trump’s campaign for evidence, spokesperson Anna Kelly told PolitiFact, "Kamala Harris said that she paid her way through college by working at McDonald's. Why won’t she prove it?"

Trump’s campaign also pointed to an Aug. 29 article from the conservative Washington Free Beacon that said Harris did not mention her McDonald’s job in her books or on a 1987 resume. The article did not cite evidence disproving Harris’ work experience there.

Harris has not talked extensively about her job at McDonald’s when she was a college student, but since the 2024 presidential campaign started, the mentions have become more frequent.

The earliest instance PolitiFact could find of Harris talking about her McDonald’s job is from 2019, when Harris marched with striking McDonald’s workers in Las Vegas. At the time, Harris was a Democratic presidential candidate for the 2020 election.

"I worked in McDonald’s. I was a student when I was working in McDonald’s. There was not a family relying on me to pay the rent, put food on the table and keep the bills paid by the end of the month," Harris said in 2019.

In April, before Harris launched her 2024 presidential campaign, she talked about working at the fast food chain on "The Drew Barrymore Show." Harris said she "did fries" and worked as a cashier. She said her go-to order is a "quarter-pounder with cheese and fries" and her favorite dipping sauce for McNuggets is barbecue.

Since launching her 2024 presidential campaign in July, Harris has highlighted her summer job at McDonald’s in campaign ads and on her personal and campaign X accounts. A pro-Harris political group also touted her McDonald’s job in an ad.

"Determination is how Kamala Harris went from working in McDonald’s to prosecutor, state attorney general, U.S. senator and our vice president in only one generation," one of her ads said.

Harris’ running mate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has also pointed on the campaign trail to Harris’ McDonald’s job. At the Aug. 13 American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Convention in Los Angeles, Walz talked about Harris’ middle-class upbringing and how she "picked up shifts at that McDonald’s as a student."

There is no evidence that McDonald’s has called into question Harris’ work experience at the company.

We rate the claim that McDonald’s "said they have no record whatsoever of Kamala Harris ever working at any of their locations" False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.