For Democratic lawmakers and pundits, Kamala Harris's alleged summer job at McDonald's was proof of the presidential hopeful's working-class bona fides. For Harris and her campaign, it was a major source of anxiety.

Democrats from Bill Clinton to Jasmine Crockett gushed over the job during the Democratic National Convention last summer. "When she was young, she worked at McDonald’s and she greeted every person with that thousand-watt smile and said, ‘How can I help you?’" Clinton gushed. "And now she’s at the pinnacle of power, and she is still asking, ‘How can I help you?’" Crockett, meanwhile, used the gig to bash Harris's opponent, Donald Trump: "One candidate worked at McDonald’s while she was in college at an HBCU," she said from the convention stage. "The other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and helped his daddy in the family business."

The comments were part of a push from Team Harris to place Harris's alleged time under the Golden Arches at the center of the campaign. A Washington Free Beacon report that found zero evidence Harris worked for the fast food giant threw a wrench in that strategy. Trump began accusing Harris of embellishing her biography, a development that sent the Harris team into a tailspin, according to 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf.

Harris's aides "debated for weeks whether they should respond to Trump's attacks about McDonald's" and "spent weeks agonizing" about the decision, according to the book, which asserts without evidence that Harris worked at an Alameda, Calif., McDonald’s in the summer of 1983 for "two or three weeks."

Harris’s allegedly short stint on the job meant "most advisers didn't want to lean into her time at McDonald's, but it polled well," so Harris did it anyway. At one point, the campaign caught wind "that at least one major mainstream news outlet was investigating" Harris's McDonald's employment, which caused "alarm inside the campaign."

That alarm was not on display at the Democratic convention, which occurred one week before the Free Beacon published its investigation.

"There are so many people who can see themselves in her. If you’re middle class, you can see yourself in Kamala Harris. If you worked in a McDonald’s, you can see yourself in Kamala Harris," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) told ABC News while attending the convention.

When those claims came under scrutiny, media pundits defended Harris. The New York Times compared the Free Beacon McDonald's report to birtherism, while CNN's Brian Stelter called it "bewildering."

"Harris shared this and then a pro-Trump website started to talk about, 'Hey, is there evidence, is there proof she worked at McDonald’s, there’s no records, there’s no receipts,'" CNN’s Brian Stelter said in September. "I find that bewildering."