Donald Trump
On Monday, April 13, U.S. President Donald Trump received a well-publicized delivery at the White House: two bags of McDonald's food dropped off by 58-year-old DoorDash employee Sharon Simmons, now being dubbed "DoorDash Grandma" in media reports. Trump and his allies used the delivery to promote his "no tax on tips" policy, claiming that Simmons — who is reportedly using her DoorDash earnings to help pay for her husband's cancer treatment — is a prime example of someone who is benefitting from it.
Some liberal and progressive social media users are accusing Simmons of being a "paid plant" — a claim that Salon's Amanda Marcotte considers "not fair" in an article published on April 17. Marcotte also says there's "no reason to doubt" the "veracity" of reports that Simmons is "hustling for DoorDash because her husband has been battling cancer."
Marcotte, however, describes "DoorDash Grandma" as a "troubling example of how so many white working-class Americans have been persuaded into voting against their own economic self-interests by Republican politicians who promote dangerous myths centering on bootstraps and personal responsibility."
"Hers is a story of a society failing to meet basic responsibilities to its citizens," Marcotte argues. "As Paul Waldman wrote Thursday, (April 16) in The Cross Section, in a halfway decent political system, Simmons should be 'settling into a comfortable retirement.' Her family should have access to health care coverage that would ensure 'no one was crushed financially when they got sick.'"
Marcotte continues, "Simmons seems to have fully absorbed decades of toxic right-wing messaging that foists all the blame for an unjust system onto the very people who are being robbed blind. Last summer, she testified in a congressional field hearing, offering her support of DoorDash and GOP tax policy in a congressional field hearing — and her words made it clear how much she has internalized the view that it's OK for people like her to work their fingers to the bone without any real hope of getting ahead. Simmons spoke of having a 'strong work ethic' that was instilled by her parents, who started bringing her to work when she was only four."
The Salon journalist notes that while Simmons made $22,000 in 2025, DoorDash's CEO made $313 million last year.
"As Waldman noted, Simmons is just the latest in a long line of would-be Republican folk heroes — like 'Joe the Plumber' — meant to illustrate the party's supposed connection to working people," Marcotte writes. "The reality is a story involving the exploitation of working-class Americans by parasitic elites like Trump and the people in DoorDash's C-suites. The country's limited social safety net causes people — especially women like Simmons — to face impossible choices. By her own account, Simmons can't take on steady, stable employment to make sure her husband is cared for. Instead, she has to take a shadowy job as an 'independent contractor.' This allows the executives at DoorDash to extract often-excruciating hours of work from people like Simmons, without having to pay benefits or salaries that direct employees would receive…. Terms like 'work ethic' allow Americans who are being exploited to reimagine themselves as heroes, a personal identity that is psychologically soothing, even as they still struggle to make ends meet."
Marcotte adds, "Racist tropes have also been useful in selling this story to many white working-class people…. But it might also help if Democrats, progressives or anyone that is troubled or outraged by the DoorDash Grandma stunt to be more outspoken about the foul class politics this bit of Donald Trump's reality TV-style business is meant to hide."