Matthew Chapman
August 29, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage / AFP)
One anecdote from Vice President Kamala Harris' middle-class upbringing on the campaign trail is that she worked a summer job at McDonald's after her freshman year of college to make ends meet. But Peter J. Hasson, editor of the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, tried to investigate whether this was really true — and ended up embarrassing himself.
"NEW: Kamala Harris’s missing 'summer job' at McDonald’s job," posted Hasson to X. "Her resume and job application a year after graduating college — [Free Beacon] obtained through FOIA — don’t mention it. Neither do either of her books, or either of the biographies on her." He posted the paper's report, written by Joseph Simonson, Chuck Ross, and Andrew Kerr, complete with scans of her original application to work in the district attorney's office.
But commenters on social media buried Hasson in mockery, with many people pointing out the obvious flaw in this investigation: people leave irrelevant details of their work history off of resumes and job applications all the time.
"This is a non-story. Plenty of people don't put their high-school jobs on their resume (partly because working at a fast food place as a 16-year-old often has no relevance or utility for most post-college employers)," wrote elections analyst Lakshya Jain.
"LOL - They’re checking to see if she put working at McDonalds on her post-grad resume?" wrote Maryville College history professor Aaron Astor. "I didn’t put my four years of working at a gas station on mine either. Wait, is this a serious article?"
"Imagine having McDonald’s on your resume applying to a law clerk position in an DA’s office," wrote investigative reporter Jacqueline Sweet.
"I wonder why Kamala Harris listed working at a law firm, Charles Schwab, and the FTC when applying for a legal job instead of McDonalds. Very suspicious!" wrote former White House economic adviser Brendan Duke.
Even Colin Wright, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, also thought this investigation was silly.
"I don't know whether Harris ever actually worked at McDonalds, and don't particularly care. But I used to work a crappy job at a buffet called Fresh Choice after high school," he wrote. "I opened the door for customers and said 'Welcome to/Thank you for coming to Fresh Choice!' That was my job. When I went to college and started applying for research internships, I never mentioned Fresh Choice on my previous work experience. I only put down work and experience relevant to the position I was applying for ... If I was applying to a clerk position at a district attorney's office, I probably wouldn't list my summer job at McDonald's either. I'm not voting for Harris so it's not like I'm running defense for her, but this line of attack ain't it."
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