Garrison Payne, the U.S. Navy's First Black Commissioned Officer

USS SC 83 underway. Lt. j.g. Payne was awarded the Navy Cross for his service as commanding officer. (Photo: National WWI Museum via subchaser.org.)

Published Nov 10, 2024 7:40 PM by CIMSEC

 

 

[By Reuben Keith Green]

The hidden story of the U.S. Navy’s first Black commissioned officer spans five decades, three continents, two world wars, two wives from different countries, and one hell of a journey for an Indiana farm boy. For mutual convenience, both he and the United States Navy pretended that he wasn’t Black. This story had almost been erased from history until the determined efforts of one of his extended relatives, Jeff Giltz of Hobart, Indiana, brought it to light.1

From before World War I until after World War II, leaders in the U. S. government and Navy would make decisions affecting the composition of enlisted ranks for more than a century and that still echo in officer demographics today. Memories of maelstroms past reverberate in today’s discussions regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), affirmative action in the military academies, meritocracy over so-called “DEI Hires,” who is and is not Black, and in renaming – or not – bases and ships that honor relics of America’s discriminatory and exclusionary past.

Before Doris “Dorie” Miller received the Navy Cross for his actions on December 7th, 1941, and long before the Navy commissioned the Golden Thirteen in 1945, Lieutenant (junior grade) William Lloyd Garrison Payne was awarded the Navy Cross for the hazardous duty of commanding the submarine chaser USS SC-83 in 1918. While his Navy Cross citation is sparse, the hazards of hunting submarines from a 110-foot wooden ship were considerable. His personal and professional history, still emerging though it may be, reveals much about the nation and Navy he served and deserves to be revealed in full. Understanding the racial and political climate during which he received his commission is crucial to understanding the importance of his place in Navy history.Quietly Breaking Barriers

William Lloyd Garrison Payne was born on Christmas day in 1881 to a White Indiana woman and a Black man, and completed forty years of military service by 1940 – before volunteering for more service in World War II. Garrison Payne’s virtual anonymity, despite his groundbreaking status as the first Black naval officer and a Navy Cross recipient, stemmed from pervasive racial discrimination, manifested in political and public opposition (notably by white supremacist politicians like James K. Varner and John C. Stennis), and internal resistance within the Navy. His long anonymity exemplifies a failure to learn from the past.2

Fig. 02. Ensign Payne (seated), in command of USS SC-83. (Photo credit: subchasers.org.)

Garrison Payne, or W.G. Payne, served in or commanded several vessels and had multiple shore assignments during his five-decade career. His officer assignments include commanding the aforementioned USS SC-83 and serving aboard the minesweeper USS Teal (AD-23), the collier USS Neptune (AC-8), submarine chasers Eagle 19 and Eagle 31, which he may have also commanded, and troop ship USS Zeppelin. He had a lengthy record as a Chief Boatswain’s Mate (Chief Bos’n).

Fig. 03: 1917 North Carolina Service Card, thirty-three year-old Chief Boatswain’s Mate Garrison Payne was discharged from the Navy and immediately “Appointed Officer” (Commissioned) on 15 December 1917 while assigned to the USS Neptune (AC-8) at Naval Base, Plymouth, England. (Credit: Public record in the public domain.)

After his commissioning in Plymouth, he presumably stayed in England and later took command of the USS SC-83 after she transited from New London, Connecticut to Plymouth, England in May 1918.

Garrison Payne took Rosa Manning, a widow with a young daughter, as his first wife in 1916. The 1910 North Carolina Census records indicate that she was the daughter of Sami and Annie Hall, both listed as Black in the census records. Later census records list Rosa Payne as White, and using her mother’s maiden name (Manning), as she did on their 1916 marriage license. His race was also indicated as White on the license, and his parents listed as Jackson Payne and Ruth Myers (Payne), his maternal grandparents.

Fig. 04: Garrison Payne and an unidentified woman, possibly his second wife Mary Margaret Payne, presumably taken in the later 1920s, location unknown. Courtesy of Jeff Giltz.

In the photo above, Payne, wearing the rank of lieutenant, stands beside an unidentified Black woman, who may be his wife. He brought back Mary Margaret Duffy from duty in Plymouth, England on the USS Zeppelin, a troop transport, in 1919, listing her on ship documents as his wife. He used various first names and initials to apparently help obscure his identity.

Jeff Giltz of Hobart, Indiana is the great grandson of Gertrude “Gertie” Giltz, Garrison’s half-sister by the same mother, Mary Alice Payne. She was unmarried at the time of his birth in 1881. Her father, Jack Payne was the son of a Robert Henley Payne, who traveled first from Virginia to Kentucky, and then settled in Indiana, may have been mixed race. During the U.S. Census, census takers wrote down the race of household occupants as described by the head of the household. Many light-skinned Blacks thereby entered into White society by “turning White” during a census year. It is unknown when Garrison made his “transition” from Black or “Mulatto” to White.

None of Garrison’s half-siblings, who were born to his mother after she married Lemuel Ball, share his dark complexion. When she married, Garrison was sent to live nearby with his uncle, William C. Payne, whose wife was of mixed race. In the 1900 Census, Garrison is listed as a servant in his uncle’s household, not his nephew.

Taken together – Garrison Payne’s dark skin, the fact that the identity of his father was never publicly revealed and that he was born out of wedlock with no birth certificate issued, that he was named for a famous White Boston abolitionist and newspaper publisher,3 that his White mother gave him her last name instead of his father’s, that he was sent away after his mother married, and the oral history of his family – all point to the likelihood that Garrison Payne was Black.

In the turn of the century Navy, individuals were sometimes identified as “dark” or “dark complexion” with no racial category assigned. Payne self-identified as White on both of his known marriage licenses. According to Jeff Giltz, there are many references to Garrison Payne in online genealogy, military records and newspaper sites, but none appear on the Navy Historical and Heritage Command (NHHC) website. His military service likely began in 1900.

Rolling Back Racial Progress during Modernization

In his 1978 book Manning the Navy: The Development of a Modern Naval Enlisted Force, 1898-1940, former U.S. Naval Academy Associate Professor Frederick S. Harrod discusses several of the policies enacted during that period that helped shaped today’s Navy.4 He describes how the famously progressive Secretary of the Navy (1913-1919) Josephus Daniels, otherwise notorious for banning alcohol from ships, brought Jim Crow policies to a previously partially integrated Navy (enlisted ranks only) and banned the first term enlistment of Negro personnel in 1919, a ban that would last until 1933. No official announcement of the unofficial ban was made, but Prof. Harrod asserts that it was instituted by an internal Navy Memorandum from Commander Randall Jacobs, who later issued the Guide to Command of Negro Personnel, NAVPERS-15092, in 1945. President Woodrow Wilson and Daniels were both staunch segregationists and White supremacists. The Navy became more rather than less racially restrictive during the Progressive Era because of the lasting effects of both Secretary Daniels and President Wilson.

The number of Negro personnel dropped from a high of 5,668 in June of 1919 – 2.26% of the total enlisted force – to 411 in June of 1933, a total of 0.55% of the total force of 81,120 enlisted men. Most of the Black sailors were in the Stewards Branch, and most were low ranking with no authority over White sailors, despite their many years of service and experience. Those very few “old salts” outside that branch, like Payne, were difficult to assign, as the Navy did not want them supervising White sailors, despite their expertise and seniority.

Following his temporary promotion to the commissioned officer ranks – rising as far as lieutenant on 01 July 1919 – Garrison Payne was eventually reverted to Chief Bos’n, until he was given an honorific, or “tombstone”, promotion to the permanent grade of lieutenant in June of 1940, just before his retirement. Payne died on 14 October 1952 in a Naval Hospital in San Diego California, and was interred in nearby Fort Rosacrans National Cemetery on 20 October 1952, in Section P, Plot P 0 2765 – not in the Officer’s Sections A or B, despite being identified as a lieutenant on his headstone. Garrison Payne’s hometown newspaper’s death notice indicates that he was the grandson of Jack Payne, with no mention of his parents. A handwritten notation on his Internment Control Form indicates that he enlisted on 31 March 1943, making him a veteran of both world wars, as also reflected on his headstone. His service in World War II – as a volunteer 62-year-old retiree – deserves further investigation.

Fig. 05: Garrison Payne’s final resting place, in Section P, Plot P 0 2765 of Fort Rosacrans National Cemetery. Courtesy of U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs, Veteran’s Legacy Memorial.

The Navy reluctantly commissioned the Golden Thirteen in 1945 only because of political pressure from the White House and from civil rights organizations like the NAACP, led by Walter F. White, the light-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed Atlanta Georgia native who embraced his Black heritage. Unlike Walter White, though, Garrison Payne likely hid his mixed-race heritage to protect his life, his family, and his career. When he married Mary Margaret Duffy in 1937, at the age of 54, he travelled more than 170 miles from San Diego, California to Yuma, Arizona to do so. Why? His new wife, Mary Margaret Duffy, was 37, and an immigrant from Ireland. He had previously listed her as his wife when he transported her to America in 1919. Are there records of this marriage overseas? Would that interracial marriage have been recognized, given that interracial marriage would remain illegal in both states for years to come? On their marriage certificate, as with Payne’s first marriage certificate, both spouses are listed as White.

The Navy’s Circular Letter 48-46, dated 27 February 1946, officially lifted “all restrictions governing the types of assignments for which Negro naval personnel are eligible.” Despite that edict, and President Truman’s Executive Order desegregating the armed forces in 1948, it would be decades before the Navy’s officer ranks would include more than fifty Blacks.

The stories of several early Black chief petty officers are missing from the Navy’s Historical and Heritage Command’s website, though it does include the story of a contemporary of Payne’s, Chief Boatswain’s Mate John Henry “Dick” Turpin, a Black man. That Payne, a commissioned officer, is absent and unrecognized can be attributed to at least five possible reasons.

The first is that the Navy didn’t know of his existence, significance, or accomplishments. Table 5 in Professor Harrods’s book is titled “The Color of the Enlisted Forces, 1906 – 1940,” and is compiled from the Annual Reports of the Chief of Navigation for those years, with eleven different racial categories, including “other.” Where Garrison Payne fell in those figures during his enlisted service is uncertain, but he was present in the Navy for each of those year’s reports.

The second is that Payne had no direct survivors to tell his story, and no one may have asked him to tell it. He and his first wife Rosa likely divorced sometime after the death of their only child. It is unknown if his Irish-born wife Mary Margaret produced any children by Garrison.

The third reason could be that the Navy may have kept his story quiet for his own protection, and that of the Woodrow Wilson administration and the Indiana political leadership. Garrison Payne was commissioned by the same President Woodrow Wilson who screened the movie Birth of a Nation at the White House in 1915, re-segregated the federal government offices in Washington DC, refused to publicly condemn the racial violence and lynching during the “Red Summer” of 1919, and whose Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, was one of the masterminds behind the 1898 Wilmington Insurrection, which violently overthrew an elected integrated government in Wilmington, North Carolina. Acknowledging Payne as a decorated and successful Black naval officer would have been an embarrassment to Wilson, Daniels, and undercut their political and racist agendas.

Black veterans were specifically targeted after both world wars, by both civilians and military personnel, to reassert White supremacy. Payne was from Indiana, where the Ku Klux Klan was revived in 1915 and became a very powerful organization in the 1920s. Such organizations may have sought out and harassed Payne and his family, had they known that this Black Indiana farm boy, born to a White mother, had not only received a commission in the U.S. Navy but had commanded White men in combat.

The fourth reason is that the Navy may have wanted to hide his racial identity. His record of accomplishment as a Navy Cross recipient and ship’s C.O. would have undermined the widespread belief that Black men could not perform successfully as leaders, much less decorated military officers. He was not commissioned as part of some social experiment or social engineering, but because the Navy needed experienced, reliable men to man a rapidly-expanding fleet and train inexperienced crews. Garrison Payne did just that, during years of dangerous duty at sea.

The fifth reason may be that Payne recognized the benefits of passing for White to his life and career, which may have compelled him to do so. He was raised in a largely white society, by white-appearing relatives. Had he not successfully “passed,” he likely would not have been commissioned.

Regardless of the reasons in the past, it is now time to herald the brave naval service of Garrison Payne. The Navy Historical and Heritage Command, the Smithsonian Institution, the Indiana Historical Society, the Hampton Roads Navy Museum, and others should work together to bring his amazing story out of the shadows.

Why Garrison Payne’s Story Matters

For years, many Black naval officers have searched in vain for stories of their heroic forebearers. Actions taken by politicians regarding nominations to military academies for much of the 20th century helped ensure that Black military officers remained a rarity, particularly those hailing from Southern states.5 The life story of Lieutenant Garrison Payne needs to be thoroughly documented and publicized because representation matters.

On a personal note, knowing of his story while I was serving as one of the few Black officers in the Navy would have inspired me immensely. Garrison Payne served as likely the only Black officer in the Navy for his entire career. He showed what was possible. Heralding his trailblazing career can only positively impact the discussions about the future composition of the U.S. Navy’s officer corps as it inspires generations of sailors. Historians and researchers should continue the work of archival research to gain a fuller understanding of his story and significance. My hope is that veteran’s organizations and national institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution begin the effort to flesh out the story of Lieutenant Garrison Payne.

This article appears courtesy of CIMSEC and may be found in its original form here. 

Reuben Keith Green, Lieutenant Commander, USN (ret) served 22 years in the Atlantic Fleet (1975-1997). After nine years in the enlisted ranks as a Mineman, Yeoman, and Equal Opportunity Program Specialist, he graduated from Officer Candidate School in 1984 and then served four consecutive sea tours. Both a steam and gas turbine qualified engineer officer of the watch (EOOW), he served as a Tactical Action Officer (TAO) in the Persian Gulf, and as executive officer in a Navy hydrofoil, USS Gemini (PHM-6). He holds a Master’s degree from Webster University in Human Resources Development, and is the author of Black Officer, White Navy – A Memoir, recently published by University Press of Kentucky.

Endnotes

1. Except as otherwise cited, research in this article is based on documents in the author’s possession and oral history interviews with Mr. Jeff Giltz.

2. War and Race: The Black Officer in the American Military. 1915-1941, 1981, Gerald W. Patton, Greenwood Press

3. All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, 2008, Henry Mayer, W. W. Norton and Company

4. Manning the New Navy: The Development of a Modern Naval Enlisted Force, 1899-1940, 1978, Frederick S. Harrod, Greenwood Press.

5. The Tragedy of the Lost Generation, Proceedings, August 2024, VOL 150/8/1458, John P. Cordle, Reuben Keith Green, U.S. Naval Institute.

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

The Bipartisan Border War is Turning America into a Prison

Nicky Reid

 November 5, 2024
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Image by Barbara Zandoval.

I write this screed during the waning hours of an election season that has made me thirst for the taste of a blue steel shotgun barrel like a newborn craves mother’s milk. I hate all of you people so fucking much and I will never forgive you for doing this to me every four years. But I digress…

Chances are that by the time you read this you will have done one of two hideous things which will likely end in the same tragic outcome. You will have voted for Donald Trump for some stupid fucking reason or another, which will give him the mandate to carry out the largest mass deportation since Josef Stalin, or you will have voted for Kamala Harris to stop him even though she has more or less promised to do the same goddamn thing in slow motion with a side of joy as displayed by her administration’s recent attempts to slam the border shut like the jaws of life.

All of this is fucking insane and what makes it even crazier is that it is driven by tabloid stoked popular demand. Around the country, Republicans and Democrats alike are flipping out over the border. Why, most of my neighbors in rural Pennsyltucky have never even seen a Venezuelan and yet they still seem to believe that scores of them are coming scuttling down the chimney for their daughter’s virginity with freshly sharpened knives in their teeth.

All of this hysteria, what we now call the “border crisis”, is built on the fundamental lie consistently embraced by both parties that more “border security” aka “police state” equals less immigrants and a more orderly border. This is total bullshit, and it is easily disproven with pretty basic statistics.

Tax funding for a wide range of border security experiments has pretty consistently increased in this country over the last several decades with funding for the Department of Homeland Security between 2001 and 2020 more than six times as high as the previous twenty years.

This spending spree continued to increase under Biden and Kamala, with their 2024 budget for border and immigration enforcement breaking Trump’s record at $30.2 billion dollars, which is nearly double what it was in 2012. In fact, the “open borders” administration has forked over $28.1 billion dollars in private contracts for border and immigration enforcement since 2021 which is $8.2 billion more than Donald Trump’s $20.9 billion between 2017 and 2021.

Meanwhile, the border has only became increasingly ungovernable during this time. The undocumented population has more than doubled since the mid-nineties, growing from 5 million in 1996 to nearly 12 million in 2024. And this trend only continued during Trump’s reign of terror.

While that loud-mouthed terrorist sent children to concentration camps, illegal entry measured by apprehensions doubled between 2016 and 2019. In fact, the Cato Institute actually estimates that the number of immigrants who have gotten into this country without being caught increased during every year of Orange Man Bad’s first term.

So, what does all this bewildering math mean? Well, for starters it means that border security, at least over an area as vast and unpopulated as the Rio Grande is a fucking flop. It doesn’t work. It never worked. But we all keep shoving money into it anyway and the Democrats are far from a lesser evil on this scam. They fucking started it.

Bill Clinton’s Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act aka IIRIRA, unleashed with overwhelming bipartisan fanfare in the wake of his similarly fascistic Crime Bill, essentially created the modern-day deportation apparatus. Before IIRIRA deportations were actually pretty rare in this country. After it, they became a veritable cottage industry. Billions were pumped into migrant detection and removal with an army of heavily armed guards whose jurisdiction now includes any patch of dirt within 100 miles of either border.

As stated above, none of this worked. In fact, it had the opposite effect. Before 2014, your average border crosser was just some dude going back and forth across an invisible line for his day job. When the border became militarized, those dudes simply stayed where the work was and brought their families with them. In other words, IIRIRA only succeeded in making the border more chaotic and every administration that followed Clinton simply decided to double down and make it worse.

Despite the fact that every single one of the 9/11 hijackers was a green card holder who came through a legal port of entry, Bush used those attacks to move the flailing border Cthulhu from the Department of Justice to the Department of Homeland Security and juiced it up like Schwarzenegger with militaristic surveillance paraphernalia like drones and aerostats. And Barack Obama still holds the title belt for deporter in chief, building the concentration camps and turning ICE into the dick swinging gestapo that Trump used to raid kindergartens and children’s hospitals to fill them.

Of course, everything got way more complicated in 2014 when Central American women and children seeking sanctuary began to outnumber Mexican men looking to make a paycheck. The root causes behind this migrant sea change are not particularly hard to figure out when you consider that most of those families were fleeing from the Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

All three of those poverty racked nations has been subjected to decades of American funded death squads and juntas, including the one that Obama put in charge of Honduras in a 2009 coup which pretty much openly colluded with local gangsters and Mexican cartels. However, by the end of Trump’s first executive killing spree, this deluge became just one small piece of a massive international refugee crisis, exacerbated by the Pandemic but largely born from the wreckage of two other disastrous American experiments known as the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

And this is actually how America’s border crisis can probably be best understood. Just like the war machine and the prison state, the American border is a failure industrial complex. Nobody has ever been made safer by any of those rackets, but a very small group of corporations and federal bureaucracies have gotten very rich, and the sickest part of the con is that the worse the blowback from its fascist adventures gets, the more money the scumbags behind them get to clean up their own mess or fail trying.

Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans have taken this industry to new lows and they’re still digging. Whether that dayglow corporate crybaby wins or not, his party is now defined by an insane conspiracy to use war powers to evict 3% of this country’s population, and if Kamala has proven anything with her long miserable career as a glorified deadbeat cop it’s that her only real ideology is ‘just following orders’ unburdened by what has been. Either way, the border police state wins and no one should feel safe.

The federal government detains and deports thousands of American citizens every year and federal policy permits the use of racial and ethnic profiling to enforce migration restrictions in so-called “border areas”, which thanks to Bill Clinton and his Democrats now legally includes two-thirds of American territory. And for every honky sitting pretty on a porch swing saying, ‘not my problem’, let me remind you of the increasing diversity of the refugee crisis and the expanding battle lines of NATO’s proxy apocalypse in Ukraine. In other words, what’s going to stop the ATF from sending your pale ass back to the old country when Kamala comes to take your guns away, Jethro?

This is how borders work, especially when applied arbitrarily on a massive scale to govern nebulous colonial territories. They don’t do jack shit to keep people out because they aren’t designed to. They’re designed to police and control the people trapped between them and when imperialist maniacs in decline are manning the guard towers that nation in question might as well be a prison.

Happy Election Day, morons. Regardless of which asshole wins, we’re already fucked.

Nicky Reid is an agoraphobic anarcho-genderqueer gonzo blogger from Central Pennsylvania and assistant editor for Attack the System. You can find her online at Exile in Happy Valley.

Trump says he will ‘do everything’ at McDonald’s during Pennsylvania visit

FRY COOK TRAINEE

Filip Timotija
Sat, October 19, 2024 

Trump says he will ‘do everything’ at McDonald’s during Pennsylvania visit

Former President Trump quipped in a recent interview that he will “do everything” at a McDonald’s during his visit to battleground Pennsylvania over the weekend.

“A friend of mine owns a McDonald’s someplace,” Trump said Friday during his in-person interview with “Fox & Friends.”

“Oh, I’m going. I’m going to do everything,” he added.


Trump claimed during the interview, and on the campaign trail, that his Democratic rival, Vice President Harris, did not work at the popular food chain. The comments came after the Harris campaign issued an ad over the summer highlighting her upbringing and outlined her time working at McDonald’s.

“I’m going because she lied,” Trump said Friday.

“You don’t think she ever worked in McDonald’s?” he was pressed by “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade.

“I know she didn’t. We checked it out,” the former president said. “They said she never worked here. She even picked the store. We went to the manager. The manager’s been there forever. ‘You remember her. No, she never worked here.’”

Harris has repeatedly said that she has worked at the fast-food chain during her time as an undergraduate student.

“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,” the vice president said last month during an interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle. “I worked there as a student.”

“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,” she added at the time.

The former president will visit the McDonald’s on Street Road in Lower Southampton Township, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill.

Trump’s visit to the golden arches comes as the two party nominees make their way through the key battleground states. With less than three weeks left until the election, Trump will rally voters Saturday evening in Latrobe, Pa. — about an hour outside of Pittsburgh.

President Biden won the Keystone State by just more than 1 percentage point in 2020, raking in the state’s 19 Electoral College votes.

The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s aggregate of polls shows Harris ahead in Pennsylvania by less than half a point — with 48.7 percent support to Trump’s 48.3 percent.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 

Trump cooks fries at McDonald's as he attempts to cast doubt on Harris' earlier employment at the chain

John L. Dorman,Lauren Edmonds
Sun, October 20, 2024


Donald Trump visited a McDonald's in a key Pennsylvania county on Sunday.


Kamala Harris said she once worked at a McDonald's, which is a key part of her biography.


Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Harris did not work at McDonald's.

Former President Donald Trump has long been known for his love of the Golden Arches.

After landing at the Philadelphia International Airport on Sunday, Trump and his team traveled to a McDonald's franchise in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, where he donned an official employee apron and began handing out orders to customers waiting in the drive-thru line. He also helped cook the restaurant's signature fries.

Trump's visit, however, had little to do with his fondness for the food.

For weeks, Trump has attempted to sow doubt — without providing evidence — that Vice President Kamala Harris ever worked at McDonald's, which has become a key part of her biography.

Harris said she worked the cash register and made fries during the summer of 1983. At the time, Harris was an undergraduate at Howard University, and her campaign says she worked at a McDonald's in Alameda, California, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The former president said in Detroit on Friday that Harris "lied about working at McDonald's."

Trump senior advisor Jason Miller also cast doubt on Harris' McDonald's employment on Saturday, telling reporters that Trump was going to the restaurant "so that one candidate in this race could have actually worked at McDonald's."

Trump needled Harris again on Sunday. While at the drive-thru window, he said he worked at McDonald's for "15 minutes more than Kamala" and once again accused her of never having worked at the chain.

Harris has firmly pushed back against Trump's accusation.

The Harris campaign has promoted the vice president's experience at McDonald's as a part of a middle-class upbringing that might resonate with millions of Americans — and that separates her from the affluent life led by Trump.

"When Trump feels desperate, all he knows how to do is lie," Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams told The New York Times. "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."

Harris and Trump remain locked in a historically tight race. Trump has sought to promote his handling of the economy, an issue he used to his advantage when President Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee.

But when Biden exited the race in July, and Harris became the nominee, she quickly went to battle with Trump on the economy and succeeded in eroding his once huge advantage on the issue in key swing states.

McDonald's, which is headquartered in Chicago, is the world's largest fast-food chain, with more than 40,000 locations. The chain plans to have 50,000 locations around the globe by the end of 2027, according to its company website.

McDonald's is also a major employer. In Pennsylvania alone, the company says its franchises employ over 25,000 people. In a statement provided to Business Insider on Sunday, the owner of the McDonald's location that Trump visited said he was honored to "showcase" the restaurant chain.

"As a small, independent business owner, it is a fundamental value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Feasterville community. That's why I accepted former President Trump's request to observe the transformative working experience that 1 in 8 Americans have had: a job at McDonald's," Derek Giacomantonio said.

"As a former crew member, I can attest this job is more than burgers and fries, but a meaningful pathway to opportunity."

Trump's appetite for McDonald's — and other fast food chains — has been well documented.

After winning the requisite number of GOP delegates needed to secure the party's 2016 presidential nomination, Trump was photographed eating a McDonald's Big Mac on his private jet.

And in January 2019, Trump hosted the college championship-winning Clemson University football team at the White House, where he ordered an assortment of fast-food staples from McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Domino's Pizza for the players.

Business Insider reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment.

 Business Insider


Donald Trump visits Pennsylvania McDonald's, alleges without evidence Kamala Harris lied about college work

JD Mullane, Bucks County Courier Times
Sun, October 20, 2024 

Former President Donald Trump showed up for his quick shift at McDonald's in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, on Sunday − and doubled down on accusations he's made without evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris lied about working at the fast food chain.

“I’ve now worked at McDonald’s 15 minutes longer than Kamala Harris,” Trump said, as reporters shouted questions while he worked the window at the restaurant in his apron.

With just over two weeks to Election Day, and Pennsylvania still hotly contested as possibly the swing state needed to capture the White House, Trump came to the pivotal Bucks County to woo undecided voters in hopes of securing the state's critical 19 electoral votes.

Trump's visit was prompted by a claim by the vice president, who has said she had worked at a McDonald’s in the 1980s. Trump said he doesn’t believe it, and agreed to “work the fries” at a McDonald’s as a campaign stop. The fast food mainstay has not confirmed whether the vice president was employed by the chain.

Trump, the Republican, and Harris, the Democrat, are locked in a tight race in Pennsylvania. Both are barnstorming the state in the waning days of the campaign ahead of Nov. 5, and while Pennsylvania voters are already returning mail-in ballots.

The event, arguably the most unique campaign stop in Bucks County in decades, brought out crowds, tight security and had the national media watching.

Trump handed McDonald's McNuggets, burgers and fries in signature brand brown bags to customers, all pre-selected and pre-screened, in maybe a half-dozen cars. “What a beautiful family,” he said to the first car full.

Trump also wished Harris a happy birthday. The vice president turned 60 on Sunday.

Donald Trump works the drive-through at McDonald’s on Street Road in Feasterville On Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024.

Trump could be seen on national news networks wearing an apron and learning how to make fries from an employee. He also talked about Sunday's Steelers game and asked about how to "shake" the grease off the fries, according to multiple reports. Trump is expected to attend the Steelers' game on Sunday against the Jets.


Donald Trump works the drive-through at McDonald’s on Street Road in Feasterville
Supporters of Trump and Harris come out to McDonald's campaign stop

The unconventional campaign stop brought out thousands of supporters of the former president and a smaller group of Harris supporters, who carried signs and stood nearby the McDonald's.

As with other Trump events, it was a party atmosphere. The weather was sunny and warm, and signs and flags were everywhere, including “Cats for Trump.”

It was also loud, with chants of “USA, USA” amid breaks for music Trump often plays at rallies, including “God Bless the USA” and the Village People’s “YMCA.” Supporters danced and bounced. Passing cars rigged with freight train horns blasted the crowd, which whooped and cheered.

Donald Trump works the drive-through at McDonald’s on Street Road in Feasterville.

At least three dozen Kamala Harris supporters stages a protest against the appearance of former President Donald Trump at a Feasterville McDonald's restaurant on Sunday Oct. 20, 2024

John and Kate Devlin of Huntington Valley said they came to the campaign stop just to get a glimpse of Trump. “It’s really a chance for our kids to see history,” Kate Devlin said.

John Devlin said he moved his barber shop from Northeast Philadelphia to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, because of crime. “There was a shooting in front of my shop. This country needs better policing on crime,” he said.

Families were everywhere Sunday, along with small business owners. But the crowd was mostly filled working people who want the economy fixed. “I believe Donald Trump holds the future for us,” said Luba Kaun, of Holland. She was with her son, Donald Julian, 3.

“He has the same name — Donald J,” she said.

At the McDonald's, customers chosen to be served by Trump waited in line at the drive thru well before the former president arrived Sunday afternoon. The first car, a black Jeep Wrangler driven by a man who identified himself as Jim from Bucks County, said his order would be fries and McNuggets.

Security was tight, with sniper teams on top of the McDonald's and atop Guy’s Bicycles next door. Secret Service agents and K-9 dogs patrolled, and local police wore military green SWAT gear.

Former President Donald Trump dons an apron at the McDonald’s on Street Road in Feasterville on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024.
Why was Donald Trump at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania today?

In interviews since at least 2019, Harris has said she worked at a McDonald's while in college in the 1980s.

"I did fries and then I did the cashier," she told an interviewer earlier this year. Asked what she'd order at McDonald's at a drive-through, she said, "Probably the Quarter Pounder with cheese and fries," she said.

Trump has for months claimed without evidence that Harris did not work at the fast food establishment.

Buh-bye birtherism Trump finally says Obama born in U.S., blames Clinton for controversy

McDonald's has stayed out of it.

Jim Worthington, a Trump supporter and owner of the Newtown Athletic Club, said he arranged the McDonald’s visit through franchise owner and friend Derek Giacomantonio, who declined to speak, and a spokesman said all communication had to be approved by corporate offices in Chicago.

However, a McDonald's executive on site declined to answer when a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times, part of the USA TODAY Network, asked him if Harris had ever worked for the company. In a statement distributed to the press on Sunday, McDonald’s said, “As a brand, McDonald's does not endorse candidates for elected office and that remains true in this race for the next President. We are not red or blue — we are golden.”

Trump and Harris are in a battle for Pennsylvania in the presidential race, which could turn on white working-class voters, people who tend to be familiar with minimum or lower-paying wage jobs such as McDonald's.
A pivotal part of Pennsylvania

Trump's Sunday's appearance in Bucks County was the second in the Philadelphia area since last Monday.

In Oaks, in Montgomery County, Trump stopped taking questions at a town hall event after a pair of medical emergencies in the crowd, instead dancing and playing music for 39 minutes as supporters trickled out.

Harris held an event in Washington Crossing Historic Park in Bucks on Thursday urging "country over party," appearing with more than 100 Republicans.

Bucks County is the narrowest of the swing counties in southeastern Pennsylvania and, apart from Luzerne County, has the smallest divide between Republicans and Democrats as a percent of total voters. Pennsylvania is critical to the 2024 election with its 19 electoral votes.

Out of 486,740 voters in Bucks County, Republicans make up about 41.6% of voters while Democrats make up about 41% of voters. Democrats lost their voter advantage over the GOP for the first time in at least a decade in July. Luzerne County has Republicans leading by just 0.46%.

While Trump hasn’t managed to win Bucks County in either of the last two presidential elections – Clinton took the county 48.7% to 47.6% and Biden won with a four-point lead at 51% of the vote – he does have a strong following of supporters.

JD Mullane can be reached at jmullane@couriertimes.com.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Trump visits PA McDonald's, alleges Harris lied about college work





Trump Makes Fries at McDonald’s in Bizarre Attempt to Troll Harris
Peter Wade
Sun, October 20, 2024 at 12:29 PM MDT·2 min read
105




Donald Trump is spending part of his Sunday afternoon behind the counter at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s. The former president, who has frequently said he loves the chain’s food, donned an apron to work the fry machine and hand food to customers at the drive thru. It’s an attempt to bring attention to his unfounded allegations that his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, did not work there during college.

When asked why he wanted to come to the fast food restaurant, Trump responded, “I like McDonalds. I like jobs. I like to see good jobs and I think it’s inappropriate when someone puts down that they worked at McDonalds… She [Harris] never worked at McDonalds.”

“Should I give them extra salt?” Trump asked a McDonald’s worker while salting fries.

Rolling Stone has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment. A campaign official told CNN that she worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, in the summer of 1983 while a student at Howard University, working the register as well as the fry and ice cream machines.

“I did fries. And then I did the cashier,” Harris said on Drew Barrymore’s talk show in April.

Trump, who recently complained that he “used to hate to pay overtime” to his employees, has proposed a policies that would end taxes on overtime and tips. Harris has proposed a similar no tax on tips policy for hospitality and service industry workers.

“I know a lot about overtime. I hated to give overtime, I hated it. I’d get other people—I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay,” Trump said at a Pennsylvania rally last month, basically confessing to committing wage theft.

Reacting to Trump’s remarks at the time, the Harris campaign said in a statement to The Daily Beast, “Donald Trump is finally owning up to it: He’s built an entire career on screwing over workers. It’s exactly what he did in the White House — trying to rip away tips and overtime pay for millions of workers — and exactly what he plans to do in a second term.”

 Rolling Stone


Trump thrusts McDonald’s into the political arena in final days of campaign

Steve Contorno, CNN
Sun, October 20, 2024 

Trump thrusts McDonald’s into the political arena in final days of campaign


Donald Trump is pulling one of the most iconic American companies – McDonald’s – into the political arena in the final days of his third White House bid.

The former president stopped by one of the fast-food chain’s Pennsylvania franchises during his Sunday swing through the Keystone State, where he swapped his suit jacket for an apron to work as a fry attendant. He later handed customers food through the drive-thru window, telling them he had made it himself and that it was all on him.

Manning the fry machine is the same job Vice President Kamala Harris has said she held as a young woman, a biographical detail revealed during her first campaign for president. It has since become a centerpiece of the middle-class origin story she has made key to her pitch to voters as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

Trump, whose deep affection for the Golden Arches and its offerings is well documented, has meanwhile grown fixated on Harris’ employment there. In interviews and on the campaign trail, he regularly accuses Harris – without evidence – of making up the factoid. His visit to the restaurant is his latest attempt to sow doubt about the Democrat’s work history.

“I’m looking for a job,” Trump said to the owner of the McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose on Sunday. “And I’ve always wanted to work at McDonald’s, but I never did. I’m running against somebody that said she did, but it turned out to be a totally phony story.”

Harris has largely ignored Trump, as well as calls from his supporters and inquiries from conservative news outlets to provide proof of her time there. Her campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about Trump’s accusation and his upcoming visit to McDonald’s.

A campaign official told CNN that Harris worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, California, during the summer of 1983 when she was still a student at Howard University in Washington. She worked the register and manned the fry and ice cream machines, according to the official.

On Drew Barrymore’s talk show earlier this year, Harris told the actor, “I did fries. And then I did the cashier.” And as a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris mentioned her work at the fast-food chain while joining striking McDonald’s workers on the picket line.

Her time there was repeatedly referenced onstage at this summer’s Democratic National Convention as her allies contrasted her upbringing with Trump’s upper-class roots. Former President Bill Clinton joked that Harris would “break my record as the president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.” Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett asserted that “one candidate worked at McDonald’s,” while “the other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

“Can you simply picture Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s?” said Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “He couldn’t run that damn McFlurry machine if it cost him anything.”

Trump over the years has repeatedly questioned the biographies of his rivals, often without merit. He was one of the loudest voices in the debunked “birther” movement that falsely questioned Barack Obama’s citizenship and eligibility for the White House, eventually leading the Hawaiian-born president to release his long-form birth certificate. During the 2016 Republican primary, Trump pushed an unfounded conspiracy theory that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father aided in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This election cycle, Trump wrongly suggested his Republican primary opponent, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, wasn’t a natural-born US citizen and falsely claimed that Harris has only lately embraced her Black heritage.

Yet, even as he lobbed these accusations, Trump littered his own personal story with exaggerations and fabrications. He coined the phrase “truthful hyperbole” in his best-selling autobiography “The Art of the Deal,” an oxymoronic term that nevertheless illustrates his relationship with facts about himself.

“It’s an innocent form of exaggeration,” he wrote, “and a very effective form of promotion.”

During a 2007 deposition, lawyers caught Trump lying at least 30 times over two days, mostly over mundane facts about his businesses such as the size of his workforce, a payment for speaking fees and the cost of his golf membership. He also once claimed that he stood on the rubble at ground zero after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and that he paid his workers to clear away the debris, neither of which is backed by public record.

And there are multiple accounts of Trump calling reporters under the alias “John Barron,” a supposed executive at his company who once duped a Forbes reporter into inflating Trump’s fortune on the magazine’s list of wealthiest people.

It’s unclear why Trump has latched on to Harris’ McDonald’s employment or why a visit there was warranted during one of his few remaining weekends before Election Day. But in recent interviews, Trump has suggested that a small detail about his rival’s past shouldn’t be dismissed.

“We would say, well, that’s not a big lie. It’s a huge lie,” Trump said, “because McDonald’s was part of her whole thing.”

Trump also visited a McDonald’s early in his presidential campaign, this one in East Palestine, Ohio, after a train carrying hazardous materials derailed there, sparking an environmental and public health crisis. There, he joked to a woman working the register, “I know this menu better than you do. I probably know it better than anybody in here.”

The former president has long stated his affinity for fast food. During a 2016 CNN town hall, Trump, a self-described “very clean person,” attributed his preference for their offerings to the quality control, saying, “You’re better off going there than someplace you have no idea where the food is coming from.”

“I think the food is good. I think all of those places, Burger King, McDonald’s, I can live with it,” he added. “The other night I had Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not the worst thing in the world.”

Trump brought that affection into the White House, where he once served Clemson’s national championship football team a smorgasbord of burgers and pizza. His son-in-law Jared Kushner quipped in his autobiography that he knew Trump had turned the corner in his battle with the coronavirus when he requested his favorite McDonald’s order.

“McDonald’s Big Mac, Filet-O-Fish, fries and a vanilla shake,” Kushner recounted.

In an appearance last week on Fox News, Donald Trump Jr. bemoaned that the network in its interview with Harris didn’t ask her which McDonald’s she worked at. He also asserted that his father’s familiarity with the chain’s offerings would surpass the Democratic nominee’s.

“I think my father knows the McDonald’s menu much better than Kamala Harris ever did,” Trump Jr. said.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Kristen Holmes, Kate Sullivan and Ebony Davis contributed to this story.

Donald Trump Does Time Working at a McDonald’s to Troll Kamala Harris | Video
Stephanie Kaloi
Sun, October 20, 2024 

Donald Trump stopped by a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania Sunday to work the fryer, give orders at the drive-thru and neg Kamala Harris about her time working at the fast food chain years ago.

Trump appeared to swing by the french fry station first, where he pulled a basket of fries out of oil and positioned it so the fries could be salted.

The Republican presidential nominee also spent time at the drive-thru window, where he greeted customers, passed out their orders and spoke about his campaign to attending media.

“It’s a great franchise, it’s a great company, and they’ve been very, very nice,” Trump said.

“And, you know, if you look at really what’s happening, look right over there, look at how happy everybody is,” he continued. “They’re happy because they want hope. They need hope. And that’s what we’re doing.”

Watch highlights below:

Trump also alluded to his previous assertions that Harris never actually worked at McDonald’s when she was young. “Now I have worked at McDonald’s,” he added. “I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala. She never worked here.”

In another clip from the visit, Trump is seen telling reporters, “I could do this all day.” He added, “I wouldn’t mind this job. I like this job, I think I might come back and do it again.”

Trump was then greeted by two customers who appeared happy to see him. “Thank you, Mr. President,” an unidentified man told him. “You made it possible for ordinary people like us to meet you. Thank you so much for everything you are doing. We pray for you.” A woman traveling with the man added, “Thank you for taking a bullet for us.”

Trump also told reporters he will accept the results of the election next month “if it’s a fair election … We’re leading in all the polls now, we’re leading in every swing state.”

After he was asked about raising minimum wage, Trump offered, “Well I think this. These people work hard. They’re great. And I just saw something … a process that’s beautiful.”

You can watch a 13-minute video from Trump’s McDonald’s visit in the video below.

The post Donald Trump Does Time Working at a McDonald’s to Troll Kamala Harris | Video appeared first on TheWrap.