JD Vance says it's 'weird' VP Harris won't prove McDonald's employment, rips media's 'lack of curiosity'

Sen. JD Vance said Monday that VP Kamala Harris is not facing any mainstream media scrutiny over her previous claim that she worked at McDonald's in college. 

Vance called out the mainstream media for its coverage of former President Trump's trip Sunday to a Pennsylvania McDonald's, where he interacted with workers, served fries and greeted customers at the drive-thru. 

"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. 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," he told "America's Newsroom."

"But look, he was interacting with people. He was talking to the employees. He was giving people food, and he was just [doing] I think what he does best, which is just being among the people, talking to them about what they care about. He showed 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."

He continued, "That is just a genuine person that Donald Trump is, and it's 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."

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He took a swipe at Vice President Harris shortly after, telling Fox News' Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino that the Democratic nominee has "tried and failed," to establish similar connections with voters. 

"I think it's why her campaign is flailing a little bit right now, because she goes into Sheetz and does four takes of her buying Doritos. Donald Trump just goes to McDonald's and he is who he is and people love him," he added.

Trump traded in his suit for an apron and worked the fry cooker at a Philadelphia-area McDonald's location over the weekend.

Video of Trump holding the fry basket and shoveling fries into McDonald's signature red cardboard cartons during the unusual campaign stop has since gone viral, garnering reaction from left-leaning outlets like Rolling Stone and The Washington Post that have labeled the gesture as "bizarre" and "stage-managed."

Vance, meanwhile, mingled with voters as he served beer to sports fans at a bar near Lambeau Field before the Green Bay Packers game in Wisconsin on Sunday.

He said that he felt "upstaged" by his running mate as reactions poured in.

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"I felt pretty good about myself, then I saw all these news headlines about Donald Trump at McDonald's, and I called him. I said, ‘Sir, you showed me up here because I was serving beers. You were serving fries,’ and I think that he really did win the news day."

Trump said he planned the visit to troll Harris over her previous claims that she worked at a McDonald's while in college, a claim he insists is false.

Harris-Walz 2024 spokesperson Joseph Costello released a statement following Trump's fry cook shift claiming "Trump doesn't understand what it's like to work for living."

"Today, Donald Trump showed exactly what we would see in a second Trump term: exploiting working people for his own personal gain. Trump doesn’t understand what it’s like to work for a living, no matter how many staged photo ops he does, and his entire second-term plan is to give himself, his wealthy buddies, and giant corporations another massive tax cut," the statement read. "Vice President Harris on the other hand has a record of standing up for workers and taking on bad actors who rip people off, and she’ll do the same as President."

Hemmer asked Vance what the Trump campaign's position – or his own personal position – on Harris' claims about working at McDonald's in the past.

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"I don't know if there a campaign position on it, but I have spoken to Donald Trump about this. What we find weird about this is that Kamala Harris has been able to produce no evidence that she worked at McDonald's, and she didn't even talk about it until 2019 during, I believe, her first run for the United States Senate, so I don't know what's ultimately true here, but it's interesting where the media will try to nitpick and micromanage every single thing that me or Donald Trump has said," he replied.

"And yet they just buy into this narrative from Kamala Harris that she invented five, six years ago. Why don't they just do some journalism? Maybe it's true. Maybe it isn't, but I know I don't trust the media's lack of curiosity about this issue when they're so curious and nitpicking everything else that the Republican candidates do."

Fox News' Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.