On Sunday, former President Donald Trump made good on his promise to work at a McDonald’s to see what it was really like. Trump worked the fryer and drive-thru at a McDonald’s in Bucks County, a key swing area in Pennsylvania, and drew massive crowds for it. 

The stunt was supposed to troll Kamala Harris over her dubious claim of working at the fast-food chain in the 1980s, but the move actually turned out to be a masterstroke. The event appeared to genuinely humble Trump.

When a customer asked Trump if he appreciated McDonald’s more from the experience, Trump said he did.

“Well, I do appreciate it; maybe a little bit more, yeah," Trump said. "You take it for granted. You say, ‘Give me French fries.' I'll never forget this experience. Okay? Now I know how to do it, and it's very good.”

This was an undeniable victory for Trump, and it thoroughly blindsided the Harris-Walz campaign. The campaign should have seen it coming — after all, Trump had been hinting for weeks about working a shift at McDonald’s, and it truly became one of the most brilliant political maneuvers of this election cycle. Harris’s team not only failed to counter it but also missed a golden opportunity to get ahead of the narrative. Team Harris got caught flat-footed, and it shows.

Of course, the Harris-Walz campaign did respond to Trump's McDonald's visit.

This guy spent decades stiffing workers pay, cut overtime benefits for millions of people, and opposed any effort to raise the minimum wage.

You know who has actually worked at McDonald's, joined workers on picket lines, and fights for working people? @KamalaHarris. https://t.co/QzFMVLiuaj

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) October 20, 2024

Does anything about this post stand out to you? The first thing I noticed is that it came from Tim Walz, not Harris. Why is that? Harris is the one who claims to have worked at McDonald’s, yet she’s conspicuously silent on the matter. Walz, her running mate, is the one stepping in to make the noise. 

If you look at her timeline on X, Harris doesn’t even mention Trump’s McDonald’s visit. Why is that? Why isn’t Harris herself addressing it? If she truly worked at McDonald’s, this would have been the perfect moment for her to chime in with a direct response like, “I actually worked there” and maybe even offer up some evidence of it to draw a clear contrast between her supposed experience and Trump’s trolling.

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She didn’t. I've checked her personal X account multiple times since Sunday, and there's nothing. No statement, no joke, not even a link to an article from some liberal rag mocking the visit. There is nothing.

And there's nothing on the KamalaHQ account, either.

The absence of such a direct response from Harris raises a lot of questions. It would have been much more effective if Kamala herself responded by saying, "Trump pretended to work at a McDonald's; I actually worked there, yada, yada, yada."

Last month, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle asked Kamala, “At any point in your life have you served two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun working at a McDonald’s?”

Kamala awkwardly laughed and nervously clasped her hands together and said, “I have,” but that was before Snopes fact-checked the claim and called it unproven.

If you were advising Harris, the obvious move would have been to tell her, “Give us some proof that you actually worked at McDonald’s, and we can easily upstage Trump or at least take the wind out of his stunt.” But she didn’t. In fact, the campaign didn’t even bother having Kamala respond herself. Instead, it sent out Walz to vouch for her — a guy who’s already been caught exaggerating his own military record. It’s a bizarre choice, especially when Harris could have taken this moment to own the narrative. 

Ask yourself why Kamala didn't respond to it.