Counter-Currents
1,053 words 
As we head into the home stretch of the most recent Most Important Election of Our Lifetime, I find it impossible to avoid electoral chitchat no matter how hard I try. Perhaps it’s solipsism, or maybe it’s the sober realization that more important issues currently tug at my attention than who gets elected president on November 5, but lately I’ve been hyper-focused on finalizing all the details for a cross-country move.
A week ago, I hired a trio of helpers from a local moving company to assist me in packing a 26-foot truck for my drive from Georgia to New Mexico. All three of them were black because not only was this Georgia, but they were the only ones available in my area.
Without any prodding from me and my politics-avoidant temperament, the most amiable and helpful of the three mentioned that he planned to vote for Donald Trump because Trump would bring jobs back for menial laborers such as himself. He said couldn’t trust any woman to be stable enough to make life-or-death decisions in a world perched on the brink of chaos. Things got even odder when he began blasting music from Morgan Wallen, a mullet-headed white country singer who barely escaped career death a few years back when he drunkenly referred to another white guy as a “nigga.”
Audio version: To listen in a player, use the one below or click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link/target as.”
In the suburban wilds due south of Atlanta, I’d encountered that rarest of breeds—a MAGAnigga.
Teeth clenched and bladder a-burstin’, I commandeered that preposterously large truck for three days along the 1,500-mile westbound route as Mrs. Goad followed closely behind in her car. I listened mostly to AM talk radio, a staticky mishmash of Buck Sextons and Sean Hannitys, all of them agitating for Trump.
Stranded out in the heartland far from the nation’s media centers, we’d stop for breakfast at greasy spoons in Palestine, AR and Weatherford, OK. These charming little places were staffed and patronized by Middle American MAGAmaniacs, at least half of whom were wearing camouflage and all of whom were white. Such rural spots serve as preservation zones for a vanishing sort of Americana that seems increasingly threatened the more coastal and plugged-in one ventures.
Bleary and road-weary, we arrived in northern New Mexico on Saturday morning, three days after leaving Georgia.
On Sunday afternoon, with my energies still devoted to unpacking and getting oriented, Donald Trump did something that reminded me why I love the guy and hope he gets elected—if only for spite.
He staged a publicity stunt where he donned an apron at a McDonald’s in Feasterville, PA, cooked some French fries, and served them up steamin’-hot to an adoring series of drive-thru patrons. Here’s video of the event as it happened.
Trump claimed it was a reaction to the following comments Kamala Harris had made in September about working as a McDonald’s fry chef while on summer break from college in 1983:
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…. 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 said Harris was lying and that she’d never worked at McDonald’s. On Monday, the food giant released a noncommittal statement:
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.
Though we are not a political brand, we’ve been proud to hear former President Trump’s love for McDonald’s and Vice President Harris’s fond memories working under the Arches. While we and our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early ’80s, what makes “1 in 8″ so powerful is the shared experience so many Americans have had.
The “1 in 8” slogan refers to McDonald’s claim that one in every eight Americans has toiled for them at some point in their lives.
For all I can tell, Harris may have worked for McDonald’s. But I don’t think it matters. And I doubt that Donald Trump has any idea what it’s like to have to scrape by on fast-food wages merely to feed himself. But the hilariously crass specter of him in an apron, cooking fries just to be a dick to Kamala Harris, is why he resonates with working-class people. Seeing him make small talk with the McDonald’s workers, and then schmooze with and compliment the series of drive-thru patrons as he hands them their bags of fries, reveals him to be intensely more likable than Harris could ever hope to be.
Behold Harris at a deli in Philly this week, straining her ovaries to seem authentic and relatable, yet coming off desperately out of touch.
Witness the shrill, humorless hyperbole of her supporters as they dredge up previous health-inspection violations from the McDonald’s where Trump staged his French-fry stunt. Watch as they tsk-tsk the fact that he’s not wearing a hairnet or his “approved uniform shirt.” Marvel as commenters on X attempt to link Trump’s 15-minute fry shift with a subsequent deadly e. coli outbreak at McDonald’s outlets in other states.
Compare all that academic nastiness and bitter nitpicking with Trump’s entire performance as he wows and dazzles and compliments and cheerleads and butters up that Pennsylvania crowd.
The whole comical event spoke directly to my soul, as back in 1979 for a few months between high school and college, I manned the French-fry station at a Wendy’s in Media, PA, only 25 miles from Feasterville.
The minimum wage back then was $2.90 an hour. I would hitchhike to and from work each day. Hovering over those boiling fry cages was like taking an oily steam bath. I endured more than a few burns on my hands and forearms. Besides being a cabdriver in Philadelphia a few years later, it was the most working-class job I’d ever had.
Only a fool would say that Donald Trump came from the working class, but only a drooling imbecile would deny that he speaks their language and makes them feel heard far better than a thousand howling Bernie Sanders clones could ever hope to do.
The proof is in the French fries.
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28 comments
This pic of french fries mimicking Trump’s hair is adorable.
Ditto. The Trump fries pic made my day.
McDonald’s was my first real job back in 1986 (excluding my paper route) and the brand new franchise location I worked for had actual standards. That meant I had to get a haircut and buy special work boots to go with the McWork uniform that was provided. It was like joining the McArmy! Because they had standards, I was later fired for uttering a curse word in the kitchen! Lately I’ve been eating a lot of McDonald’s (large #1 with a coke and maybe add a filet of fish sandwich) so to see McDonald Trump there doing what he was doing put a smile on my face. I think he will win in November.
I wasn’t aware corporate America was hair trigger fire back then. Was that for all jobs or just fast food.
I think the working world was a more serious place and that the expectations of employers was higher. I was just 16, it’s not like I didn’t deserve to be fired for other more serious infractions, but it was my immature foul mouth that took me down.
This is a beaut’. Thanks Jim.
I have to agree Jim. The French Fry stunt takes the cake, and the uniform was the icing on it.
Congratulations on surviving the move.
I will celebrate with a bag of fries on November 5th if he wins.
Moving sucks. Much happiness to you in your new home.
Dammit, now I want some french fries.
“…cooking fries just to be a dick to Kamala Harris” made me laugh out loud enough to startle my coworker.
ODonnyBoy did another stunt a few years back where he went to his hotel to vacuum, load luggage, walk a dog & deliver a meal to a black’n’white couple. I doubt that it all took more than 15 minutes but never mind. He has the workingman’s touch.
If Amerikans know what is good for them, they’d ask him to remuster* to full-time Hotel Worker, pronto.
*The action or process of assigning or being assigned to a different category of tasks for a candidate in the military or in the Indian army is known as remustering. (We’ll be majority Asian Indian soon enough by the looks of things.)
@Jimmy. I hope your life in your new locale turns out happy. Moving is such hell even when to a better home. If you have a baby or two with you it is worse, so be glad you are borderline elderly.
Fries hot, not cold.
I too consider myself a MAGA Nigga.
Word
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e61cxZtPe2I&pp=ygUcTGVha2F2ZWxpIGxldCB0aGUgd2hpdGUga2lkcw%3D%3D
From here on out the correct answer to the Inevitable Question is always “Christmas”.
Not impressed. What happened to Make America Healthy Again? Next on the list after closing the border should be the closing of all fast food & chain restaurants.
Free will, my brother. If it’s good enough for God…
Fast food had been around for decades before the obesity problem in America began.
Yeah, because it helped cause it.
That would be like asking what model Glock she owns and how many rounds it holds.
Has Harris ever revealed the street address (I presume in Oakland) where she worked at McDonald’s? If she can’t remember that, then she’s definitely lying. Everybody remembers the physical location where they worked, even decades in the past, especially if it was their first job.
Perhaps French fries are one of the only things Trump is an expert in given that he spent much of his first term munching them while sipping his Diet Cokes and eating Big Macs as he perused the news channels at night in the White House.
Delightful column. I enjoyed the travelogue, & your interaction with your dusky loaders the most, though. I’ve had many adventures in New Mexico, so as you explore your new home base, I hope you will regale us with your impressions.
I might have missed it, but I was expecting to see Jim Goad cover the Sydney Wilson shooting. She was a 6-foot-plus black ex female basketball player who incongruously charged at a police officer with a knife, stabbing him and then getting shot for her trouble. I would appreciate a Goad deep dive on this one.
I thoroughly recommend the “Doom” edit -> https://files.catbox.moe/9wpjrp.mp4
Him, not her.
This was a master class in how to run a political campaign. The amount of butthurt this has inflicted is beyond palpable. It works on so many levels. Like you said, it doesn’t matter if Kamala worked at McDonald’s or not. I don’t think she did to be honest. The fact of the matter is the optics of Trump at McDonalds doing his thing. Him saying “Happy birthday, Kamala!” is the salt in the wound. There’s a synergy here and hence all the butthurt from the media elites.
I really enjoyed the closing sentence.
The black mover is correct to be worried about his job. Go around any home depot parking lot and there will be a cluster of non-English speaking migrants looking to take Mr. Mover’s job for the day.
While there is no likelihood a right-leaning party will capture the black vote, there should be a lot more education that immigration is hurting the black working class and black descendants of slavery. Even the black students at Harvard are mostly immigrant blacks. It’s a trick of the Democrats to mitigate diversity requirements by importing persons of color who will out compete descendants of slavery.
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