Was Charlie Kirk, or a person strongly resembling him, pictured in a job recruiting ad printed on a McDonald's tray liner? No, that's not true: The McDonald's job recruiting tray liner is real, but the model in the original photo does not closely resemble Kirk. The photo of the McDonald's tray liner was later altered to resemble Kirk, and the image visible beneath a McDonald's breakfast was posted by social media accounts in November 2025.
The altered image resurfaced in a post (archived here) published by the X account @nocontextmemes on June 23, 2026. The post had no caption but the image has a text overlay that says:
McDonald's breakfast🤤
This is the image included with the post:
(Image source: post by @nocontextmemes on X.)
The same meme as pictured above, with the same "McDonald's Breakfast" text overlay, was posted months earlier on the subreddit r/nonutnovember on Reddit on Nov. 11, 2025 (archived here). Another copy of the image was posted the same day by the TikTok account @partyboi1738 (archived here). The face of the person in the image had been edited to resemble Charlie Kirk.
The original McDonald's tray liner (pictured below) can be seen in a Feb. 17, 2025, post (archived here) on the subreddit r/emergencyintercom. The subreddit is dedicated to the Emergency Intercom comedy podcast, which is produced by Ky Newman. The post was captioned:
ky what you doing at mcdonald's?!?
(Image source: post on r/emergencyintercom.)
On Nov. 11, 2025, another photo of the tray liner was posted on an Instagram fan account called @ky.lookalikes, with a caption joking that the model in the photo actually is Newman (archived here).
ky in a mcdonalds tray paper mat
(Image source: post by @ky.lookalikes on Instagram.)
Additional photos of this model wearing a name tag, "Alex," appear on McDonald's affiliated websites -- dcclee.net (pictured below) and jobs.mchire.com (archived here and here).
(Image source: dcclee.net.)
