Why Trump and his chips was a masterstroke

HAD you gone out to buy chips at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania last Sunday, you might have been lucky enough to experience a presidential first: A paper bag of hamburgers delivered by the drive-thru window to you by one Donald Trump. Besides, he would have paid for it and you would have been kicking yourself for not ordering more junk food for lunch.

This is the type of trick that one remembers, regardless of who ends up in the White House in 2025 as America's 47th head of state.

Trump in a black and yellow apron, dipping potato chips into boiling oil and struggling with the salt shaker, was the type of marketing gimmick made for our time. It's the type of thing that the TikTok generation wants to see in a country where Maccy D's itself symbolises society.

Footage of Trump surprising Americans as if he were Leon Schuster has been playing on American late-night and news shows all week. It's the type of clip that will haunt Democrats for a long time to come. With only two weeks left until Americans decide who is going to succeed Joe Biden, Kamala Harris is all about casting pods instead of hanging out herself at a McDonald's. (The irony is, she was the one who had really worked at a McDonald's in her time).

The October Surprise

Political analysts here usually look right before Halloween for an “October Surprise”. When Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama, it was that sleazy video in which he told rich people how little respect he had for the masses. In Hillary Clinton's case, it was the FBI's investigation into her emails. For Harris, it may not so much be the McDonald's trick, as perhaps Elon Musk.

The South African-born billionaire, better known for his push to settle humanity on Mars, began targeting undecided voters in swing states this week. These are US states where voters had not consistently voted for one of the two major political parties in the past. Pennsylvania is one of those whose citizens overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2016 and then in 2020 (by a small majority) for Joe Biden.

Other states, such as New York, which repeatedly vote for the Democratic candidate, are not exactly places to focus on in a federal election that can literally be won by a few votes in one of the swing states. If all the other states vote as they have in the past, a swing state like Pennsylvania could mean securing the final electoral college tally for either Trump or Harris.

As a result of all this, Musk decided to give $1 million to voters in swing states every day leading up to the election. All they have to do is sign a piece of paper put together by his political action group America PAC. By adding your signature, you simply promise that you support free speech and the right to bear arms. These are enshrined in the first and second amendments in America's constitution, which Republicans currently focus on more than Democrats do.

The first few recipients of the large paper cheques were all residents of Pennsylvania. The Tesla boss hands over this handsome cheque every time after telling voters in large school halls in small Pennsylvania towns why Trump simply must win. People are hanging on Musk's lips, giving him school jerseys with his last name emblazoned on them, while local news channels broadcast the presentations as if they were some kind of local eisteddfod.

An election that is about money

It's somewhat ironic that Trump's biggest supporter at this moment of the fight is the world's richest man, precisely because it was poor people who got Trump into the White House the first time. In 2016, the vast majority of financial contributions to Trump's political campaign came from people who never gave more than $200 each. This month Trump collected more than half a billion dollars from donors who individually contributed more than $1 million each.

The money collected by either candidate is important, but it is not necessarily an indication of who will win. Those dollars simply ensure that more television ads are aired in towns where undecided voters live. Advertisements are often the primary means by which voters outside capital cities are ultimately persuaded for whom to vote. In the past, Trump had spent most of his money on Facebook ads. But since Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg changed the rules on how political parties can spend money on his social networks, television (again) is the most effective medium.

Vote for your favourite billionaire

Meanwhile, the wealthy on the Democrats' side have also woken up. Since becoming their nominee for president, Harris has raised a record $1.1 billion, more than double that of the Republicans. Harris also found a billionaire for herself, and he now appears on weeknight television advising voters to vote for her. His name is Mark Cuban, the internationally recognised investor better known to Americans as a judge on the reality series Shark Tank. In financial dailies, op-eds are loaded with references to Cuban versus Musk, rather than Harris versus Trump.

Cuban thinks Musk's attempt to buy votes with money is “desperate" but admits it is highly innovative. However, whether Cuban himself has the millions available to convince undecided voters of his cause is not clear.

Vote for chippies

But again, this adds to my personal belief that American voters don't really care which of these two candidates will do better with their tax dollars or bring down medical costs. I don't think they care about the promises, since elections in America are more about handouts. Which presidential candidate is going to give you free chips and paper cheques? Which one of the two is more of a people person and willing to joke about themselves? In my opinion, that is what will determine the outcome of the November 5 election.

• André-Pierre du Plessis has worked in the U.S. for ten years and is an American citizen.

♦ VWB ♦

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