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A Pennsylvania mother who was served by former President Donald Trump at a local McDonald's and begged him not to let the U.S. become "my native Brazil, please," revealed more details about their exchange during an interview with FOX News on Monday (October 21).
Nayara Andrejczyk, a mother of three who moved to the U.S. from Brazil 26 years ago, went viral after Margo Martin, Trump's Deputy Director of Communications, shared a video of her pleading with Trump, "please don’t let the US become Brazil, my native Brazil, please,” at the drive-thru window.
“My parents were victims of Brazilian corruption, government corruption. My mom lost a pretty successful business … almost 30 years ago, and that’s the reason why we moved to the United States,” Andrejczyk said during an appearance on The Story Monday. “I am very grateful for this country. I love this country. And I don’t want to see this country become the corrupt sewage that Brazil is at this moment, where politicians do whatever they want with no accountability to the people.”
Andrejczyk said she was asked to attend the Trump campaign event but surprised to see the former president actually in attendance.
“He looked us in the eye. The way he communicated with us, the way he greeted my children in the back seat. It was incredible. My kids were [saying], ‘I can’t believe I shook Donald Trump’s hand,'” she said. “I’m not going to wash my hands for the next couple of days. He was very genuine. He’s a genuine man.”
Trump appeared at a Feasterville-Trevose McDonald's during his campaign tour of the swing state in an effort to troll his presidential election opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and denounce her claim of having worked at the fast-food chain while attending college.
“I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala," he said via the New York Post.
An pro-Trump X user shared a photo of Trump waving out of the drive-thru window and wrote, "The exact moment Trump won the 2024 election #McDonalds," praising the former president's effort to reach the American working class, a sentiment echoed by many of his supporters. Others, including Harris spokesman Joseph Costello, claimed the photo-op at the Pennsylvania McDonald's, which was closed to the public at the time, was "staged" in an effort to exploit "working people for his own personal gain.”
“Trump doesn’t understand what it’s like to work for a living, no matter how many staged photo ops he does, and his entire second term plan is to give himself, his wealthy buddies, and giant corporations another massive tax cut,” Costello said in a statement obtained by ABC News.
Harris pushed back on Trump's claims that she lied about working at McDonald's during an interview with MSNBC last month.
“Part of the reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald’s is because there are people who work at McDonald’s in our country who are trying to raise a family,” Harris said. “I worked there as a student.”
“I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our perspective on the needs of the American people and what our responsibility, then, is to meet those needs," she added.