Harris’s work at McDonald’s, which allegedly took place at a franchise in the California Bay Area the summer after her freshman year in college, is a recent addition to her carefully curated life story. For decades, Harris never mentioned it, not on the campaign trail nor in two books. It’s absent from a job application and résumé she submitted a year after she graduated from college. Third-party biographers did not write about it. Not until Harris ran for president in 2019 and spoke to a labor rally in Las Vegas did she mention the job, telling the crowd that she "was a student when I was working in a McDonald’s."

It is possible that Harris did indeed work at McDonald’s in the early 1980s. But the absence of that detail in public records and her campaign’s coyness and refusal to provide any further details raise questions about what is now a foundational narrative.

The Free Beacon also obtained a copy of Harris’s October 1987 job application for a law clerk position in the Alameda County district attorney’s office. On that form, Harris, who was in law school at the time, listed several jobs—including a month-long clerical job at a stock brokerage—in a section that asked her to list every position she held in the last 10 years. McDonald’s is absent.

But unlike Harris, there was no mystery surrounding Obama’s first job. News outlets published the address of the restaurant. Photographers posted pictures of the establishment online. Baskin-Robbins proudly touts on its website that Obama used to scoop ice cream for the chain. The manager of the store quipped after the 2008 election that she was somewhat of a media professional after having dealt with reporters from Good Morning America, CNN, and a television station from Norway asking questions about Obama.

The McDonald’s Corporation, which is proud of its 84-year history and employs a full-time archivist as its official historian, did not return several requests for comment. It has made no comment on Harris’s claims to have done the fries.