Photo of Kamala Harris dressed in McDonald’s uniform is fake

On Oct. 20, former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump visited a McDonald’s restaurant in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, while campaigning in the battleground state. 

While there, Trump repeated an unfounded claim that his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, never worked at McDonald’s, contradicting Harris’ own anecdotes that she worked there during college.

A recent image appearing to show Harris wearing a McDonald’s uniform was posted online, gaining millions of views. People are sharing it as proof that she did work at the fast food chain, despite claims she didn’t, while others say the image isn’t real.

This X post with over three million views says “liberals on social media are sharing a viral faked image.” The X post includes a screenshot from pro-Harris Facebook page Progress Matters with the image of Harris in uniform, captioned with “Case closed. Now the cult can rest.”  

THE QUESTION

Is this image of Kamala Harris in a McDonald’s uniform real?

THE SOURCES

• VERIFY analysis of the image
• X posts from @TheInfiniteDude, who took credit for creating the image
• TinEye, a reverse image search tool
• Progress Matters Facebook post
• A statement from the Kamala Harris campaign

THE ANSWER

No, this image of Kamala Harris in a McDonald’s uniform isn’t real.

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WHAT WE FOUND

The image of Kamala Harris in a McDonald’s uniform is fake; a face that looks similar to Harris’ was digitally added to a photo of another woman’s body. An X user known for other hoaxes took credit for creating the image.

VERIFY used TinEye to conduct a reverse image search, which led us to the original photo posted to a memorial webpage for a Canadian woman who died in 2007. What appears to be Harris’ face was superimposed on the woman’s body, with the pose, uniform and name tag remaining the same. A monkey originally on the woman’s right shoulder was removed from the altered image.

On Oct. 24, X user @TheInfiniteDude, who describes himself as a content producer, posted the image with the caption “This is fake.” No reverse image search results show the image online prior to this post.

Four days later, @TheInfiniteDude took credit for the creation, writing: “This tweet is the first instance of this Kamala photo on the internet, because I made it, and in the tweet I'm fact-checking it myself as fake. Who removed the context and shared it among democrats?”

@TheInfiniteDude posted several times about the image and how this isn’t the first creation of his to be fact-checked. VERIFY reached out to @TheInfiniteDude for comment but did not hear back at the time of publication. Snopes, which also fact-checked this image, said @TheInfiniteDude told them he used artificial intelligence to help create the image.

Progress Matters, the pro-Harris Facebook page that appeared to have shared the image, deleted the post with the altered image and acknowledged it was fake. 

“As soon as we became aware that the image was altered, we promptly removed it, not to conceal the error but to prevent the spread of misinformation, something we wish the other side would do,” Progress Matters post says.

A spokesperson with the Harris campaign recently addressed the claims that Harris never worked at McDonald’s in an email to VERIFY. The campaign told VERIFY that Harris worked at a McDonald’s on Central Avenue in Alameda, California, in the summer of 1983 while she was a student at Howard University. She worked the register, fry station and ice cream machine, according to the campaign. 

In a McDonald’s message to employees, the company said franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early 1980s. 

VERIFY reached out to the Harris campaign for comment about the image but did not hear back at the time of publication.