The clock is ticking until Election Day, and Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are working to get voters to the polls.
Many Americans use social media to talk about politics, and campaign-related moments can rack up millions of views on platforms like TikTok.
Here are some of this week’s viral moments.
Trump serves fries at McDonald’s
The former president served fries at a McDonald’s franchise in Pennsylvania over the weekend. At the staged event, Mr. Trump wore an apron and worked as a fly attendant, handing out food to people at a drive-thru that had been closed due to the campaign shutdown.
The event got people talking online. A video of the visit posted by President Trump’s TikTok account has been viewed more than 41 million times and received more than 4.6 million likes.
The video’s caption reads, “I’ve officially worked at McDonald’s longer than Kamala.” Harris said she worked briefly at the chain in the summer of 1983, when she was still a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C. “You guys are having so much fun here,” Trump said while sitting in his car and dangling food from the drive-thru window.
The stop also became the lifeblood of late-night programming. “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart posted a clip on TikTok of him making fun of the former president, which has been viewed 3.5 million times.
Watch President Trump’s McDonald’s moment below.
@cnn
Donald Trump swapped his suit jacket for an apron on Sunday to operate the fried chicken and drive-thru window at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. Fly machine pilot is the same job Kamala Harris held as a young woman, details of whose career were revealed during her first presidential campaign. It has since become central to her middle-class origin story, which has been key to her pitch to voters as the Democratic presidential candidate.
♬ Original song – CNN
Coach Walz goes for a run.
The Harris campaign has used social media to highlight aspects of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s biography.
“Coach Walz is here. The title of their game plan is ‘Project 2025,'” Walz says in a TikTok video posted to his account.
Standing in front of a whiteboard wearing a baseball cap, Walz created a play, using football terminology, that voters should go to the polls to “defend” and block the 920-page document and its proposals. It is claimed that there is. Despite the former president’s attempts to distance himself from the document, it will go into effect if President Trump is elected.
But Waltz didn’t stop there. The vice presidential candidate has described himself as a runner during his campaign and fielded questions on the go with popular social media influencer Kate Macks. Walz participated in a four-mile run in New York City’s Central Park on Monday, joining Macks as he interviewed runners. Walz told young viewers watching a TikTok video that has been viewed 3.8 million times that they should “go out and vote” regardless of who they vote for.
From TikTok itself
While scrolling through their feeds, some TikTok users may see ads from the social media platform itself promoting election centers. The ad, which has more than 23,000 likes, tells users how to find election centers within the app, including information on voting dates and how to check registration.
Lawmakers are doubling down on their focus on TikTok this election year. President Joe Biden signed a bill in April that would effectively ban TikTok or force the sale of TikTok in the United States, citing national security concerns that the social media platform’s parent company ByteDance is based in Beijing. did.
There is already some evidence that the platform is influencing elections. TikTok announced in September that it had removed accounts associated with two Russian media groups that the company accused of attempting to exert so-called “covert influence” over the upcoming election.
