Vance Scorches ‘Stage-Managed’ Critique Of Trump’s McDonald’s Stop

On Monday, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) served up a sizzling response to how the media covered former President Donald Trump‘s visit to a McDonald’s restaurant in the swing state of Pennsylvania over the weekend. The Washington Post dubbed it “stage-managed campaign stop” — a particular description which Trump’s VP pick rebuked.

“The fact that these people are accusing him of a ‘stage-managed’ thing — of course, the president has to have security because there have been two attempts on his life in the last eight weeks,” Vance said during a Fox News interview. “He can’t just walk into a McDonald’s and sign a W-9 and actually go on the payroll. That’s just not how this works, especially given the security threats on his life.”

President Trump showed how to connect with voters in Pennsylvania yesterday better than anyone else could – from the french fry station at McDonald's to the Steelers game on Sunday night. pic.twitter.com/lKlLKlEvk8

— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 21, 2024

While in the McDonald’s in Feasterville, Bucks County, near Philadelphia, Trump put on an apron, worked the fry cooker, and even handed out food at the drive-thru window. He also talked with people, including journalists and employees.

Trump was doing what “I think what he does best, which is just being among the people, talking to them about what they care about,” Vance said. “He showed I think genuine interest in the employees and their lives and where they came from and what they were actually doing in their job, and that’s something you can’t stage, and you can’t fake. That is just a genuine person that Donald Trump is.”

Vance stressed that these interactions are “why I think a lot of working people, even though, of course, he’s a successful real estate billionaire, have this emotional connection to Donald Trump. You can’t make up that kind of connection.”

Also during his visit to McDonald’s, Trump took jabs at his 2024 rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, over her saying that she held a job at McDonald’s while she was a college student in the 1980s. The Washington Free Beacon and others have raised questions about the claim, noting a lack of documentation to back it up.

RELATED: Tim Walz Says Trump ‘Disrespected’ McDonald’s Employees By Serving Fries There

Vance said he and Trump find it to be “weird” that Harris has “been able to produce no evidence that she worked at McDonald’s, and she didn’t even talk about it until 2019” — when she ran her first campaign for the presidency.

“I don’t know what’s ultimately true here,” Vance added, “but it’s interesting where the media will try to nitpick and micromanage every single thing that me or Donald Trump has said. And yet they just buy into this narrative” from Harris.