Poo poo at your political peril Donald Trump working the french fry station last Sunday at a McDonald’s in Feasterville-Trevose, Pa. That photo-op, only 16 days out from the presidential election, gave Trump an everyman moment and hurt Kamala Harris’ working-class creds. Feasterville-Trevose is in Bucks County, a key swing voter area north of Philadelphia that’s evenly divided between Democratic and Republican registered voters. It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words. But how many votes is a picture worth? If, as she claims, a teenage Harris had worked at a McDonald’s in California during the summer of 1983, her campaign should have provided proof by now; Trump began questioning her early resume after Joe Biden passed her the baton. Ever since her brief run in the Democratic presidential primaries in 2019, Harris has spoken proudly of her working-class roots in Oakland, which included working the fryer at McDonald’s. A pay stub or tax statement would do the trick. But no such proof has been proffered. Which gave Trump the wide opening to work the fryer last Sunday. Wearing an apron. In the drive-through window of a McDonald’s. Billions and billions of voters served! Ron Kuby, an uber-liberal friend, dismissed Trump frying fries, greeting-and-serving McDonald’s fans. “He reminded me of Dukakis in the tank,” said Kuby, conjuring the unfortunate photo of Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic candidate for president Mike Dukakis riding atop a tank, wearing an embarrassingly-oversized helmet. That laughable image looked like what it was: a desperate, staged attempt by a diminutive Democrat to appear tough on defense. It backfired (not the tank, but the photo-op). Dukakis got blown out by incumbent Vice President George Walker Bush. Then there’s the tone-deaf optic of 2004 Democratic candidate for president John Forbes Kerry (yes, that Forbes family) wind-surfing, a rich man’s hobby not normally associated with mainstream Democrats. Kerry lost by 2.5% to incumbent President George Herbert Walker Bush, another rich guy. Go figure. Harris should’ve laughed off Trump’s challenge and showed off her frying skills at McDonald’s. Instead, she inexplicably handed him one of the greatest campaign photo-ops in political history. A McDonald’s campaign stop under the iconic Golden Arches should serve as a symbolic backdrop for Democrats seeking favor with budget-conscious American diners. Those same Democratic candidates should pose in front of the Statue of Liberty to burnish their freedom-and-equality bonafides. If she’s lied about working at McDonald’s, Harris pissed-off everyone who has, is or will wear the Mickey D’s uniform. You know, her base. If Harris misremembered about working at Burger King or Wendy’s, she should just say so. Lying about working at McDonald’s: UnAmerican. She’s pissed me off too. And I’ve never worked at McDonald’s. Which is not to say that I couldn’t. I’m a graduate of McDonald’s University on the “campus” of McDonald’s world headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill. and have the certificate to prove it. In the mid-to-late 1980s, I was a reporter for Nation’s Restaurant News, the leading foodservice trade publication. For a time, I covered the fast-food sector. One of my occupational perks was all-paid enrollment in the two-week McDonald’s U. management training program. I learned to work every station — including the deep fryer. As a career-fallback, I can always manage a McDonald’s. An educated student of McDonald’s, I suspect late founder Ray Kroc would be appalled by Trump’s dilettante drop by. But Trump would probably have loved Kroc, who stressed QSVC — Quality, Service, Value, Cleanliness. Trump is famously obsessed with cleanliness. He seemed genuinely thrilled that human hands, even his own “clean” hands, don’t touch the french fries at McDonald’s. The longer it takes for a candidate to produce proof to the contrary, the longer an opponent’s op-research challenge goes unanswered and sticks. The longer Trump’s challenge goes unanswered, the more reason for voters to believe that Harris lied about working at McDonald’s. Until I see irrefutable evidence that Harris worked at McDonald’s, I’ll assume she lied about her McDonald’s work experience to pander to working-class and minority voters. It also took too long for Barack Obama to produce his birth certificate after Trump challenged him to do so. My sense of both Obama and Harris is that they’re too good to respond to challenges from Trump. They’re not too good. Every candidate for office must defend him or herself against real and fictitious accusations. Even Kamala Harris. Frydman is CEO of Source Communications, a strategic communications firm in Manhattan.