Live updates: Harris holds rally with Beyoncé, Trump campaigns in Michigan | CNN Politics
Time 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 are taking to social media to talk politics, and there are some campaign-related moments that can rack up millions of views on platforms like TikTok.
Here are some of those viral moments from the week:
Trump serves fries at McDonald’s
The former president dished out french fries at a McDonald’ franchise location in Pennsylvania over the weekend. At the staged event, Trump put on an apron to work as a fry attendant and handed people food out of the drive thru, which had been closed for the campaign stop.
The event got people talking online. A video of the visit posted by Trump’s TikTok account has received more than 41 million views and more than 4.6 million likes.
The caption of the video said, “I’ve officially worked longer at McDonalds than Kamala.” Harris says she briefly worked at the chain during the summer of 1983 when she was still a student at Howard University in Washington, DC. “I’m having a lot of fun here everybody,” Trump told people in a car while hanging out food from the drive thru window.
The stop was also fuel for the late night shows. “The Daily Show” posted a clip on TikTok that got 3.5 million views, with host John Stewart poking fun at the former president.
Watch Trump’s McDonald’s moment below:
Coach Walz goes for a run
The Harris campaign has been using social media to highlight aspects of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s biography.
“Coach Walz here. Their game plan is titled Project 2025,” Walz says in the TikTok video posted to his account that racked up to 1 million views and hundreds of thousands of likes.
Walz, standing at a white board wearing a baseball hat, draws up plays and uses football terms to argue that voters need to get to the polls to “play defense” and stop the 920-page document and its proposals, which Democrats warn will be implemented if Trump is elected, despite the former president’s efforts to distance himself from the document.
But Walz didn’t stop there. The vice presidential candidate has mentioned on the campaign trail that he is a runner, so he took questions on the go with popular social media influencer, Kate Mackz. Walz joined Mackz, who conducts interviews with runners, on a four a mile-long run in New York City’s Central Park on Monday. Walz told the young audience viewing the TikTok video — which got 3.8 million views — that they should “get out and vote,” regardless of who they vote for.
From TikTok itself
While scrolling through their feed, some TikTok users might see an ad from the social media platform itself promoting its Election Center. The ad, with more than 23,000 likes, tells users how they can find the Election Center in the app, which it says includes things like voting dates and how to check your registration.
Lawmakers have doubled down their focus on TikTok this election year. President Joe Biden signed a bill into law in April that would effectively ban TikTok in the United States or force its sale, citing national security concerns due to the social media platform’s parent company, ByteDance, being based in Beijing.
There is already some evidence of election influence on the platform. In September, TikTok said it removed accounts associated with two Russian media groups for trying to exercise what it called “covert influence” on the upcoming election.