FEASTERVILLE-TREVOSE, Pa. (AP) – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump manned the fry station at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania on Sunday before hosting an impromptu news conference and answering questions through the drive-thru window.

As reporters and aides looked on, an aide showed Trump how to dip baskets full of French fries in oil, salt the fries and use a scoop to load them into boxes. Trump, a known fast food fan and notorious germaphobe, expressed surprise that he didn't have to touch the fries with his hands.

“It actually takes a lot of expertise to do it right and quickly,” Trump said with a grin, putting away his jacket and wearing an apron over his shirt and tie.

The visit came as he sought to counter Democratic candidate Kamala Harris' statements about the campaign, where he worked Fast food chain while studyingan experience that Trump has claimed – without providing evidence – never happened.

A large crowd lined the street outside the restaurant in Feasterville-Trevose, which is part of Bucks County, a key swing voter area north of Philadelphia. Later Sunday, Trump attended an evening town hall in Lancaster before watching the Pittsburgh Steelers' home game against the New York Jets.

After serving bags full of take-out food to people on the drive-thru, Trump, still wearing his apron, leaned out the window to answer questions from the media staged outside. The former president, who has consistently spread falsehoods about his 2020 election defeat, said he would respect the results of next month's vote “if it was a fair election.”

He joked about getting ice cream for a reporter, and when another asked what message he had for Harris on her 60th birthday on Sunday, Trump said, “I would say, 'Happy birthday, Kamala,'” adding “I think I'll get her some flowers.”

Trump did not respond directly to a question about whether he would support higher minimum wages after seeing McDonald's workers in action, but said, “These people work hard. They're great.”

He added: “I just saw something… a process that is beautiful.”

When his advisers finally urged him to wrap things up so he could head to his next event, Trump said, “Wasn't that a strange place for a press conference?”

Trump has long questioned Harris' story about working at McDonald's

Trump has focused in recent weeks on the summer job that Harris reportedly held while she was in college: While in college, she worked the cash register and made fries at McDonald's. Trump says the vice president “lied about working there” but offered no evidence of that.

Harris spokesman Joseph Costello said the former president's McDonald's visit showed “exactly what we would see in a second Trump term: the exploitation of working people for his personal gain.”

“Trump doesn't understand what it's like to make a living no matter how many staged photo ops he does, and his entire second term plan is to give himself, his wealthy friends and giant corporations another massive tax cut,” Costello said in a statement.

In an interview on MSNBC last month, the vice president dismissed Trump's claims and said she worked at the fast-food chain four decades ago while in college.

“One of the reasons I even talk about working at McDonald's is because there are people in our country who work at McDonald's and are trying to raise a family,” she said. “I worked there as a student.”

Harris also said, “I think part of the difference between me and my opponent is our view of the needs of the American people and our responsibility to meet those needs.”

Trump has long made unsubstantiated claims about his opponents based on their personal histories, particularly women and racial minorities.

Before running for president, Trump was a leading voice of the “birther” conspiracy, which baselessly claimed that President Barack Obama was from Africa, was not an American citizen, and therefore unfit to be president. Trump used it to raise his own political profile by demanding to see Obama's birth certificate, and five years after Obama did so, Trump finally admitted that Obama was born in the United States.

During his first presidential run, Trump repeated a tabloid's claim that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's Cuban-born father had ties to President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Cruz and Trump competed for the party's 2016 nomination.

When Trump faced Nikki Haley, his former UN ambassador, in the Republican primaries in January of this year, he shared a post on his social media network with the false claim that Haley's parents were not citizens when she was born and she Therefore, he was not eligible to be president.

Haley is the South Carolina-born daughter of Indian immigrants, which automatically makes her a native-born citizen and meets the constitutional requirements to run for president.

And Trump continued to spread unsubstantiated claims during the campaign. Trump said during his presidential debate with Harris that immigrants who settled in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents' pets – a claim he claimed in an interview on Saturday was still true, although he did not provide any confirmation could.

Trump's visit caused a spectacle in Pennsylvania

“It is a core value of my organization that we proudly open our doors to everyone who visits the Feasterville community,” Derek Giacomantonio, owner of the McDonald's location, said in a statement. “That's why I accepted former President Trump's request to experience the transformative work experience that one in eight Americans have had: a job at McDonald's.”

During Trump's visit, police closed the busy streets around McDonald's. Authorities cordoned off the restaurant as a crowd gathered across the street, stretching for a few blocks, sometimes 10 to 15 people away, trying to get a glimpse of Trump. Horns blared and music blared as Trump supporters waved flags, held signs and took photos.

John Waters, of nearby Fairless Hills, had never been to a Trump rally and had hoped to see the former president so close to his home after missing other rallies nearby.

“As I pulled up, all the cars, unbelievable, I thought, 'He's here, he's coming, he's definitely coming with all this traffic,'” Waters said.

Trump has a particular fondness for McDonald's Big Macs and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches. He has often spoken about how he trusts large chains more than smaller restaurants because they have reputations to uphold, and the former president's staff often picks up McDonald's and serves it on his plane.

Jim Worthington, a Trump supporter and fundraiser who owns a nearby sports complex and chaired Pennsylvania's delegation to the Republican National Convention, said he arranged Trump's visit to the local McDonald's.

The campaign contacted him looking for a McDonald's in Pennsylvania, and Worthington went looking for one. He contacted Giacomantonio through a friend and reassured the franchise owner about his initial nervousness.

Giacomantonio first had to know that McDonald's corporate headquarters would approve. Second, he feared that being seen as a Trump supporter could hurt his business or trigger a boycott, Worthington said.

“He certainly had concerns, but I reassured him and talked to him about the benefits,” Worthington said.

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Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.