Former President Donald Trump’s impromptu trips to fast-food restaurants have gone viral, showcasing his rising popularity with communities that have soured on President Biden.
Mr. Trump’s recent visit to an Atlanta Chick-fil-A drew millions of views on social media. The GOP’s presumptive nominee was swarmed by customers and employees, among them young Black men and women, who sought autographs and photos. Mr. Trump pumped up the crowd, bantering with the diners and cashiers.
“That’s the lord’s chicken,” Mr. Trump said, announcing he’d buy everyone milkshakes. He grabbed a pen to sign a Make America Great Again hat handed to him by a young Black man, who said the souvenir came from the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where Mr. Trump was nominated the first time.
“You’ve been there since the beginning,” Mr. Trump said approvingly to the man, who replied, “Absolutely.”
Mr. Trump’s fast-food pit stops have become a signature part of his third presidential campaign and have served as a reminder of his enduring popularity with the working class. It has also helped to draw a sharp contrast with Mr. Biden, who has had difficulty generating enthusiasm among his base.
Mr. Trump’s rousing receptions at his unannounced campaign stops are reflected in poll numbers.
He’s picking up significant support among minority voters and young people, who have long been a reliable voting bloc for Democratic presidential candidates. He is solidifying his backing among working-class voters of all races and ethnicities, but particularly among white voters without a college degree.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, Mr. Biden still leads Mr. Trump comfortably among Black voters but he’s shed support.
The poll found that 30% of Black men plan to vote for Mr. Trump, up from 12% recorded in an AP poll taken in 2020. Among Black women, Mr. Trump’s support jumped from 6% in 2020 to 11% ahead of 2024.
Polling shows young voters are also flipping to Mr. Trump, and in some surveys, the former president is leading Mr. Biden among the under-30 crowd, which is unprecedented for a GOP presidential candidate.
Mr. Trump’s pollster, Jim McLaughlin, said working-class voters are clamoring for the former president to return to the White House, where he has promised to revive an economy dragged down by inflation, high-interest rates, and runaway energy costs under Mr. Biden.
Their enthusiasm is evident when they see Mr. Trump in the lobby of fast food establishments where they dine or work.
“It’s amazing the reaction he gets from working Americans,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “Biden is destroying their country. They are having trouble making ends meet and President Trump is truly their way of fighting back. We have never seen anything like this before.”
The Biden campaign team scoffed at the notion that Mr. Trump is winning in the realm of retail politicking, or that the viral videos of his visits to fast food joints equate to broad enthusiasm for the former president.
During the short-lived competitive primary, Mr. Trump consistently underperformed with moderates and suburban voters he’ll need to win in November, for example.
Mr. Biden has been barnstorming the battleground states, focusing on smaller communities and face-to-face meetings with voters, while Mr. Trump has mostly remained at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Biden campaign officials said.
In the past two months, Mr. Biden stopped for boba tea in Las Vegas, breakfast burritos in Los Angeles, soul food in Charleston, South Carolina and spoke at a brewery in Superior, Wisconsin, among other local visits.
“Since the State of Union, President Biden has been to all eight battleground states — some multiple times — while Donald Trump has been to just three,” campaign spokesman Seth Schuster said. “President Biden is engaging directly with the communities and voters who will decide this election, while Trump is barely leaving Mar-a-Lago.”
Last month, Mr. Biden’s campaign staged an event in Delaware County, Pa., where he and First Lady Jill Biden sat down for a pizza dinner in the home of a local family. In January, Mr. Biden dined on Cook Out, a local fast food chain, in the home of a Raleigh, North Carolina family.
The dinner meetings were intimate and quiet. The Biden campaign produced their own videos of the events, leaving the press outside. At the pizza dinner, Mr. Biden let his wife do much of the talking and when the president chimed in, he communicated in a near-whisper.
The Biden campaign says the events allow the president to reach out to key voting groups and to convey his persona and message in ways that are impossible at rallies and larger campaign events.
However, for some, Mr. Biden’s smaller-venue visits show a big and unflattering contrast between the two candidates.
“This little simple thing shows the difference of Joe and Trump, to me,” one member of the Cartier Family, a popular group of vloggers, said in a recent YouTube video.
The group of four young Black men in the vlog analyzed the video of Mr. Trump’s visit to Chick-fil-A and opined that Mr. Biden would have been out of place at the establishment. He needed the more “chill” environment of the small family dinners to accommodate his elderly demeanor, they said.
Mr. Biden, at 81, is less than four years older than the 77-year-old Mr. Trump, but has faced far more scrutiny over his age, frail appearance and mental acuity.
“Joe couldn’t have been in there,” one of the Cartier Family vloggers observed while watching Mr. Trump hold court at the famed chicken sandwich establishment. They joked about the prospect of Mr. Biden handing a vanilla shake to a customer and instead dropping it on the floor. “He probably would have fell over,” one of the vloggers predicted.
Mr. Trump, in contrast, appears as comfortable in the lobby of a fast-food restaurant as he is on the campaign rally stage.
He handed out his Make America Great Again hats at a McDonald’s in East Palestine, Ohio, during a visit last year after the Norfolk Southern train derailment. He praised the “beautiful-looking group of people” in the restaurant, then ordered food for first responders and for himself and his staff to take back on his private plane. “I know this menu better than you do,” he boasted to the cashiers. I probably know it better than anybody in here.”
Both candidates will head to bigger venues in the coming days.
Mr. Biden will hit the campaign trail Tuesday for a three-stop swing through Pennsylvania, a must-win state for the president where polls show him statistically tied with Mr. Trump. He plans to deliver an address in Scranton to contrast his economic policies against those of Mr. Trump.
In a bid to shore up support among middle-class voters, Mr. Biden will pitch his plan to implement tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, who he believes are not paying their fair share.
Mr. Trump also planned a Pennsylvania visit with one of his signature rallies on Saturday at the Schnecksville Fire Company fairgrounds in North Whitehall Township. The venue is located in Lehigh County, a critical swing-voting region.
Officials expected 6,000 people to attend the rally, along with an overflow crowd of many more.
Lehigh County Republican Committee Chairman Joe Vichot told Lehigh Valley News he’s hearing from younger voters who did not bother to vote in the last presidential election who are now seeking lawn signs for Trump. “The excitement is probably bigger than 2020,” he said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.