Harris struggles to loosen Trump’s grip on the media

Former President Trump’s brief stop at a suburban Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Sunday was largely a political stunt, but one that catapulted him into a viral moment his campaign seized upon to win headlines and attention.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, Vice President Harris on the same day spoke to a giant congregation at a Black Baptist megachurch. At another stop, Stevie Wonder sang her “Happy Birthday” as she turned 60.

But both moments hardly registered.

The stark contrast showed off a key difference between the two candidates that could explain why the presidential race appears to be turning in Trump’s favor.

The former president, long a master of manipulating the media, is consistently getting attention with unscripted and sometimes erratic moments, while Harris’s more conventional approach wins less widespread coverage.

Harris says she’s running a campaign based on “discipline” when questioned about why she does not stray far from her talking points.

But experts warn it will take more than just discipline and prepared speeches to break through in today’s environment. Trump, for his part, rarely has trouble doing so, whether it’s the takeover of a McDonald’s or lewd remarks about the late golfer Arnold Palmer.

“She’s up against the car wreck on the side of the street syndrome,” said Frank Sesno, a former national political journalist and media professor at George Washington University.

“Trump shows up at McDonald’s, he’s dunking fries, he’s trolling Harris because she worked at McDonald’s,” Sesno said. “It’s Trump doing what Trump knows how to do best, which is being a showman.”

It’s a formula Trump rode to the White House in 2016. It didn’t work in 2020 against President Biden, but that election took place during the COVID-19 pandemic with much of the country in isolation. Despite Biden at times being criticized by Trump supporters for running a campaign out of his basement because he largely stayed off the trail, the Democratic nominee won anyway.

Strategies are largely revamped for 2024. Harris has embarked on her own media blitz — sitting for mostly friendly interviews but also more contentious ones, namely with Fox News’s Bret Baier, that her campaign saw as a win. She plans to be in, of all places, in deep red Texas on Friday.

Her travels have increased on some days, like on Monday when she hit three "blue wall" states with former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), one of several Republicans who have openly turned on Trump to support Harris.

But her efforts are often overshadowed by Trump. At the McDonald's in Bucks County, Pa., Trump manned a fry station and handed out fast-food from the drive-thru window with his signature suit jacket replaced by an apron.

He also gave a makeshift interview with a local TV reporter, taking shots at Harris.

The scene was entirely manufactured. The restaurant was closed to the public and the enthusiastic drivers passing through had been prescreened by the Secret Service, the Washington Post reported.

But none of that mattered to Trump and his campaign, who enjoyed the attention on both social and traditional media.

“He is a stuntman,” said Barbara Perry, a presidential studies professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “She is doing the normal things that a candidate does and he is completely abnormal in every way.”

Neither the Trump nor Harris campaign returned requests for comment about how they assessed their candidate's media strategy so far and whether they had any plans to change things up in the last two weeks of the campaign season.

Back in Georgia on Sunday, Harris was met with a roaring applause when she took to the stage and delivered remarks at New Birth Church in Stonecrest, Ga., before a congregation of what was estimated to be thousands of people and where the pastor called her “born for a time such as this,” according to reporters traveling with the vice president.

She later strolled into a second church in suburban Atlanta alongside Wonder, who encouraged those in attendance to vote. It was another instance of Harris harnessing celebrity star-power and, like McDonald’s, a symbolic American iconic figure — though it did little to bolster widespread media coverage. It is unclear whether independent press cameras had been let inside.

Sesno said that while Harris’s media presence has seen some improvements, she’ll need more unscripted moments to get more widespread attention, particularly ones in which she can be more genuine instead of sticking to a script.

“What people want from their candidate is their genuineness and you can love Trump or hate Trump, but he’s pretty genuine,” Sesno said. “I’m not surprised by this at all and the kind of thing that makes an event viral is not an earnest political speech in front of a big crowd.”

Rema Rahman is the White House editor for The Hill.