Donald Trump’s latest campaign publicity stunt, which saw him working a shift in a McDonald’s, has prompted a flurry of memes comparing him to the award-winning restaurant-based TV show The Bear.
With just weeks to go until the 5 November election, where he and Kamala Harris are almost level in the polls, Trump turned up in an apparent scheme to help him appeal to the American “everyman”.
The roughly hour-long photo opp took place at a closed restaurant in the Feasterville neighbourhood of the Lower Southampton Township. A sign on the door said that the restaurant would be closed Sunday until 4 pm after the president and his entourage had left.
During the visit, Trump had an apron tied behind his back by a McDonald’s cashier before he received a short demonstration of how to work the fry station and stuck his head through the drive-thru.
Images of Trump’s shift soon went viral, with many noticing that his garments bore a striking similarity to Jeremy Allen White’s character, “Carmy”, from The Bear.
“New season of The Bear looks s***,” joked one person on X/Twitter.
Another said: “Man, The Bear Season 4 is low-energy.”
Others recreated scenes or lines of the dialogue from the show, which has just finished its third season.
One, joking about the size of Trump’s hands, wrote: “Hands! I need hands, please! Someone please get me some f***ing bigger hands!”
Meanwhile, someone else imagined what it would be like if Trump and Carmy worked together.
It came just a day after Trump shared a 12-minute anecdote about the former pro golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia during a rally in Pennsylvania.
Speaking in Latrobe, Palmer’s birthplace, Trump told his crowd of supporters: “This is a guy that was all man. He took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’ I had to say it.”
“I had to tell you the shower part because it’s true,” he added.
The bizarre quotes then led to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson getting into a very awkward exchange with CNN’s Jake Tapper after the news anchor questioned why Trump was using valuable campaign time to talk about Palmer’s penis.