Donald Trump's McDonald's Meal — Donald Trump eating a McDonald's Big Mac and fries on his private plane

Donald Trump's McDonald's Meal

2016photoshop memeclassic

Published August 17, 2026

Donald Trump's McDonald's Meal is a photoshop meme built on a May 2016 Instagram picture of Trump eating a McDonald's burger and fries on his plane after clinching the Republican nomination. Reddit's r/photoshopbattles turned the shot into a wave of edits within hours, and the image was pulled back into circulation in October 2024 during Trump's campaign photo op at a Pennsylvania McDonald's.

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Overview

Donald Trump's McDonald's Meal refers to a photoshop meme built around a picture Trump posted to Instagram in May 2016, showing him eating a McDonald's burger and fries aboard his private jet3. He put the image up to celebrate hitting the 1,237 delegate threshold needed to lock down the Republican presidential nomination3. The staging, a fast food meal laid out on a napkin next to the Republican nominee mid-flight, gave image editors an easy setup to work from1.

Within a day, Reddit's r/photoshopbattles filled with versions swapping the meal, the setting, and the figures around Trump4. News outlets ran writeups on the wave of edits over the following days2. In October 2024, the picture came back into circulation when Trump staged a campaign photo op working the fryer at a McDonald's in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, prompting sites to loop back to the 2016 image7.

Origin & Background

Platform
Instagram (source photo) / Reddit (viral spread)
Creator
Donald Trump
Date
2016

On May 26th, 2016, Trump posted the picture to his personal Instagram account with the caption "Celebrating 1237! #Trump2016," a reference to the delegate count that officially handed him the Republican nomination3. Within four days, the post pulled in more than 124,000 likes and 16,900 comments7.

The same day the picture went up, Reddit user GoinFerARipEh submitted it to the r/photoshopbattles subreddit, opening the door for the community's regular remixers to start turning out their own versions4. That thread is credited as the launchpad for the meme's spread past Trump's own follower base1.

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How It Spread

The day after Trump's post, the "Truth About Donald J. Trump" Facebook page ran a black-and-white photo of former president Ronald Reagan eating McDonald's alongside the Trump shot, inviting followers to compare the two6. That side-by-side helped push the picture past political Instagram circles and into general meme feeds1.

UpRoxx pulled together the best entries from the photoshopbattles thread for a wider audience1, while The Huffington Post ran its own writeup on the picture2. Metro's coverage focused on the mockery piling up in the Instagram comments5, and AV Club published a short piece under the header "Donald Trump feasts on McDonald's"9. Daily Mail ran the shot under the tabloid headline "It's Donald McDonald!"8.

The picture had a second life in October 2024, when Trump staged a live photo op working the fry station at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania during his presidential run, sending traffic back to the original 2016 image and its edits7.

How to Use This Meme

The format typically starts from the original 2016 Instagram picture, with editors swapping out the McDonald's meal for a different food, replacing the plane's backdrop, or pasting other public figures into the seat next to Trump4. Common edits from the photoshopbattles thread turned the burger into caviar, put Trump at cartoon restaurant tables, or paired him with historical figures for a running visual gag1.

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