Pablo Torre Finds Out - Donald Trump's Secret Weapon Is a Quarterback

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

Johnny McEntee went viral before virality, as a trick-shot QB at UConn. He foresaw the rise of Donald Trump, while ordering him KFC on the campaign trail. He was straight out of central casting, but suddenly "Johnny Mac" the quarterback became enforcer-in-chief for the commander-in-chief, running a presidential "Gestapo" and hand-picking cabinet secretaries. Correspondent Devin Gordon meets a Trumpworld action figure and asks: How did this in-over-his-head loyalist get so powerful? And could it happen again?This episode originally aired November 7, 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. One of his duties was like he literally walked Trump up the stairs to the White House private quarters at night. So like other than Melania's stunt double, he was the last person to see Donald Trump every night. Right after this ad. You're listening to Draft King's Network. Cortez, I don't know if you appreciate this, but there is a legitimately enormous news story. that is breaking, unfolding, like not far from where we are sitting right now. Yeah, Miami's only a three-hour flight.

They're debuting like new he culture jerseys and a court. It's incredible, dude. Those are disgusting. All of it is just horrible. It looks like you design them. That's a good thing. But speaking of horrific debuts, what I'm actually referring to, the news story I'm referring to, is this.

Former president, Donald Trump, has taken the stand in his civil fraud trial in New York City. The judge presiding over the case has already found that Trump's fraudulent. inflated the value of their assets to obtain favorable loans. Donald Trump has been on the witness stand about an hour now, and already the judges had to warn him not to make speeches and just to answer the questions. It's a very sad situation for our country. We shouldn't have this. This is for third world countries. This is a legitimately unprecedented political moment in a decade full of them. We have the former president of the United States on the witness stand in a quarter billion

civil suit, a fraud trial, and yeah, the Attorney General of New York is prosecuting him and his family and his entire empire. Isn't Trump, like, also facing like 100 other criminal charges? Yeah, 91 actually. Like 91 exactly in four, and they're all felony counts, in four other criminal trials on top of the financial penalties that this civil suit might bring. And yesterday, the New York Times just reported on the front page that Joe Biden is losing to Donald Trump, polling worse than Trump in five of the six most important swing states in the presidential election a year from now. Dude, Donald Trump might get reelected as president from jail.

Yeah. Like, that could happen. He actually might. We need to like reckon with this. And it would be the most absurd magic trick, I think, in American political history. Objectively, it is f***ing nuts. And this, all of this is why the video that I've been thinking about, ahead of election day, for weeks now is actually this.

What's up? This Johnny Mac Tea representing Yukon football Trickshot video. What the hell was that? Why did you waste my time with that? What was that? No, I'm not familiar with that.

You've never seen Trickshot Johnny Mac? No. This video was one of the first viral YouTube videos I ever remember seeing. It was from 2011, and this was before... You're old. Dude Perfect. I am.

And as an elder millennial, Johnny McEntee was the guy who came before all. all of these TikToks, all of these YouTube videos about people throwing like shit into basketball hoops and garbage cans and throwing like footballs blindfolded. Johnny McEntee, that Yukon quarterback we just saw, was an early internet celebrity. And this was, yeah, a dozen years ago. Fair enough. Why does Election Day remind you of him? Because last month, okay, I was reading an article about all of all the Trump's in Puck.

And the article was about all the people who are already planning to staff the next Trump administration. And there is this quote that I need to read from you. Quote, there are several Trump alumni in Project 2025 with experience in staffing the government. But its secret weapon is the presence of Johnny McEntee

as senior advisor. He was one of Trump's closest confidants and still is. Okay, so hold on. How did this guy go from like trickshot QB guy to like a weapon for Trump actually? So this is the question that I have been wanting to find out about. And to my genuine shock, okay, trickshot Johnny Mack, secret weapon of the Trump administration, one of the most powerful people in Trump world that most people don't know anything about,

actually agreed to sit down for an in-depth interview with a very special Pablo Torre finds out. correspondent. Great. And that shit's after the break. Let's do it. Devin Gordon, are you a little offended that I gave you this assignment? I love this guy. Are you kidding me? I don't love this guy. Oh my God, I already have to start over. No, we're keeping this in. This is the tension, Devin Gordon, journalist, magazine writer. One of my favorite writers who's written for the Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, ESPN Vanity Fair.

I gave you this assignment that is on a couple of levels kind of beneath you. You've interviewed like Nikki Minaj and John Stewart. You've interviewed Grimes, Devin. And I said, hey, this Johnny McEntee guy. Yeah, but you know, you also sent me to explore a mysterious Trump associate who somehow blossomed into his right-hand man. Of all the people I profiled, he has one of the more unique arcs of anyone I've ever covered. So just describe, Devin, if you could. Mr. Magazine writer, if you have not seen or heard Johnny Mac yet, what is he like?

I think if you're trying to get a basic sense of him, close your eyes and picture an All-American quarterback. You are picturing Johnny Mac. I mean, for starters, he's really dreamy. He's, he's, he is as gorgeous as your calves. Let's put it that way. And he's... Sumptuous. Sculpted. Really sculpted. All right.

Good. He's very handsome. He's kind of like apparatchik Ken, you know, kind of like a Ken doll in that kind of way. But he's also very, like, he's super easy in his own skin. I mean, he showed up wearing, like, shorts and sneakers. He looked like he'd come from the driving range. As I've gotten older, I introduced myself as John. Right.

Anyone that knew me young, of course, calls me Johnny. Of course my family calls me Johnny. The president calls me Johnny. You know, he arrived alone. You know, there was no hair and makeup. He didn't look in a mirror. He just rolls out of bed like this. It was very friendly.

He's instantly likable. Like, in some basic way, I could very quickly see why people liked having him around. Right, right, right. So in terms of where he came from, what's his actual human birthplace? Well, I mean, if you walk back from that, it's probably not so surprising, right? He's a classic affluent white kid from Orange County, which means he's conservative. He's Republican. He was the star quarterback at an elite private school called Servite High. You've know this guy. You've pictured this guy. You've seen this guy.

But he was never under any illusions that he was going to go play in the NFL. So I should say, the trick shot thing was not a thing before I saw Johnny McEntee do it. On some level, he is like this a genuinely deserving footnote in sports internet history. Yeah, he started something. Second level. Net here. Mark, moving back, 10 yards. He starts doing the trick shot stuff because why?

There was apparently a trick shot predecessor that of course deserves the real credit, right? Like the men do it and get all the credit. But of course, there was a video by women before it that actually started. Of course. The Yukon women's basketball team. I did not know any of this. There's a viral video on campus. Everyone's going crazy.

It gets 200,000 views. It's a women's basketball player who I was friends with. And she's doing all these cool trick shots around campus, basically. And one of my buddies, not a football player, he's like, you need to do a football version of this. So Johnny and a couple of his buddies who knew that he had this sort of trick shot proficiency, decided to sort of make a spoof video of their own. sort of an answer to it. Then, yeah, it was like a Saturday or something in February, I think.

We had a lot of free time. We're like, let's go. We had one of those flip cameras at the time. And me and two guys just went around and did that all day. The biggest thing with quarterbacks is if they can make all the throws. So I'm going to try to do it. Blind. The last shot where I'm in the arena hocking it,

I still have an elbow problem to this day from that, by the way. But this is where also Johnny McEntee gets, It seems like his first taste, I presume, of like, cable news juice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's something innate about his ability to go viral before you even know what the concept of virality is. At the time, you know, a lot of different media outlets were reaching out to the University of Connecticut saying, can we get this guy on? For this kid, it's like shooting footballs in a barrel or in a basket.

His name is Johnny McEntee, second string quarterback at the University of Connecticut, presenting his trick shot video. That's now gone viral. You know, it got like 7 million views, which doesn't sound like a lot now. Oh, with inflation adjusted. Yeah, that's like that, like in 2011, that was like the whole internet. Correct. Yeah, everyone saw this video. But Johnny McEntee, young Johnny McEntee at Yukon in that locker room, what was his, what was his rep?

What was he like as just a dude? So he's described in a lot of clips about that time in his life as a teetotaler, occasionally just referenced as the designated driver. Didn't drink. He defies some of the stereotypes we have of those kinds of rowdy Division I quarterback, Trumpy guys by being quite disciplined, it seems. And so if I'm to look at the back of his football card, what do the actual numbers say about him?

A little over 2,000 yards passing in 12 games. 12 touchdowns and interceptions. Yeah. My favorite stat, though, is that he rushed for minus 148 yards on this season, which means he got sacked a lot. How do we go from that ground game to the Trump ground game? That last year, when I wasn't playing, was the 2012 Romney Obama election. And I was kind of following it a little closely, more than I had in the past.

You know, I wasn't part of college Republicans or anything like that. Obviously, the way I grew up, I'm a Republican. I'm from a conservative area. So I was just sort of, you know, thinking about it. I didn't know I would get into it. My girlfriend at the time, though, said, like, you're going to get into politics. I can tell.

What I love about this story, as much as I also am deeply terrified of this story, is the way in which retrospect enables us to say, and the girlfriend, obviously, was ahead of her time. Yes, yes. She saw something in him. And this sort of new path through politics that obviously leads him to Donald Trump,

who, of course, is famous for ripping up the entire rulebook about how you do this. Well, himself, Donald Trump, was proto-viral. Proto-viral, yeah. And so you have this guy, this trick-shot quarterback, who is a kind of like actual quarterback. How does he get into politics if he's just sort of playing footsie with the idea

and his girlfriend is the only one who's saying, like, this is your future? Well, so he goes to New York and he's, you know, sleeping on couch is not really sure what he's going to do. I met a guy at church that worked at Fox, and I was like, wow, well, I'm conservative. I love Fox. Like, I need to get in there. So he kind of pointed me in the right direction. I got an entry-level job.

I was working on the digital team. He had referenced that maybe he would have been better off on the TV side. And for the record, I agree, having gazed into his eyes for about an hour. But one of the things that did happen while he was there, was that Trump gave his famous campaign announcement speech, infamous campaign announcement speech where he comes down the escalator. That is some group of people, thousands.

One day we're all in our cubicles at Fox, and Donald Trump comes on TV and makes his announcement and everyone in the office is laughing. They're like, this guy's a clown. He has no chance. It's the most momentous announcement you can make in your entire career. You're like, I want to come in on an escalator. It had the total opposite effect on me. I thought he had a great chance and I knew I wanted to work for him.

Why do you think you had the total opposite reaction? All of the issues he was talking about were things the Republican base really cares about and things a lot of the establishment Republicans had forgotten about. When do we beat Mexico at the border? They're laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they're beating us economically. They are not our friend. Believe me.

This is like refreshing. Like, people are going to gravitate to this like I was. and not to mention the celebrity and the anti-political correctness. Because I don't need anybody's money. It's nice. I don't need anybody's money. I'm using my own money. I'm not using the lobbyists.

I'm not using donors. I don't care. I'm really rich. I'll show you that. I just, yeah, I was just gravitating towards him. I knew I wanted to be part of it. And then he goes to that and he's just dumbstruck with this sense that I've got to go work for this guy. This is the guy.

What does he set out to do that gets him in the door? He's going to go get a job with the Trump campaign come hell or high water. I was just harassing them. Yeah, I got no response. Every day I would go to Fox. I would get in my cubicle. The first thing I would do would be email the Trump for president campaign. Got no response.

Two weeks in, I say, you know, does this place have anyone to check emails? I'll take that job. I'll do it for free. And they responded to this one. And they said, okay, come. work for us. One of the three people who was working on the campaign finally checked the inbox and said, all right, sure. I quit my job at Fox. I showed up as a volunteer and worked my way up from there. I think he's even assuming this isn't going to go anywhere. I know the first time I saw Donald Trump,

I was super starstruck. It was like a few weeks in when I started in July of 2015. And the campaign office was about four interns and two staffers. And he walked in, he had his notebook. And I was just like, oh my God, there he is. And we all know where that led over the course of the year, it starts to get realer and realer and realer and realer. God, that's, that's unnerving. Yeah, I mean, what's, what's, to me, unnerving and sort of makes you think twice about him is that he saw it.

Well, it's a little on the nose now that you frame it that way, that the first viral trick-shot quarterback saw how to get this thing exactly where he wants it in a way that most people couldn't. Yeah, it's one of the more, you know, the trick-shot viral presidential campaign moments, right? Yes. Where it just, you know, he pulls this move that everybody thinks is crazy and it works. It works. What's his job?

What does he do when he's actually in the door? I mean, he's starting out at the very bottom. The first almost year I worked on the campaign, I was a gopher, I was running around, I was close to the campaign manager, close to the director of advance, close to a lot of the leadership, but not necessarily close to the candidate. But he very quickly ascends the ladder. Going up the golden escalator, yes. Really quickly, maybe skipping a few steps even. It wasn't until summer of 16 when I started traveling with them that I developed a little bit of a relationship. still not that close, although I was traveling with him every day. It was a familiar face that maybe he felt comfortable with.

Why do you think he liked having you around? I like to think I have a calm demeanor, you know? I like, I don't think I get frazzled. He probably liked that. I know he liked central casting. He probably thought I looked the part of what an age should look like. Trump liked that, that he looked the part. And I remember thinking, like, this is the only person I've ever heard

describe themselves as out of central casting. and be totally fine with it, like not be like, you know, a little bit insulted, but be glad to just look the part as look like someone who should have the job of standing next to Donald Trump. Yeah, not the most diverse cast. No, I mean...

I would dare say. No, I mean, if you're thinking of the words, the phrase central casting, and what is Trump picture? What is Donald Trump picture when he says central casting? I think we all know what we're looking at. Yeah, a bunch of high school quarterbacks

who look like they are leaders to a person who watches American life through movies from the 80s. Yeah, it's like Republican Barbie and Ken. Yes. Right? That's what we're picturing. And Johnny McEntee very enthusiastically

describes himself as fitting that part right out of central casting. And, you know, that was an interesting insight into the unreflectiveness, I think, of the Trump experience. It's just sort of not even questioning what central casting is and why central casting is generally considered problematic. So, Devin, what I have in front of me, thanks to you, is this fable, this fable of modern American politics. We have the former Yukon Trickshot quarterback, viral sensation, before virality was a thing,

becoming inspired existentially by Donald Trump coming down the golden escalator, given all of the preceding details. Despite his virality and his central casting effect, he, knew not to be the face of things, that he wasn't actually there to be the star quarterback, he was there to be what? He has this sense now that his job is to be completely in the background and that that's the way to get ahead and make himself useful, ascend the escalator of the Trump campaign experience. He likes anyone that will do their job, do it quietly. You know, there's only one star of the show. That's a lot of the reason why I never got into social media.

I never really had a desire, but I thought it was best if I just did my work quietly, kind of stayed under the radar when it came to politics, and that did serve me well. But that is something that I didn't infer based on all of the traits that we've been describing. The central casting character who is like in his mind, like viral quarterback, he is not there. He seems to know this very, very immediate. Immediately, he's not there to be the star or the face of this, obviously. It reminds me of the dual role of a quarterback, right? There is this sort of icon of a quarterback as being at the center of the huddle, leading the team.

Prom king. Prom king, charisma machine. Everybody's looking to him. But there's another job of the quarterback, which is to do whatever the head coach says. Be very deferential, be loyal, execute the game plan. follow instructions. And Johnny is, it turns out, equally good at that and especially proficient at knowing the right time for each of those jobs.

He immediately slips into this role where he's doing everything and anything that Trump needs to the point where eventually, you know, when we're in the White House, he's got a desk right outside the Oval Office. He's with the president morning, noon, and night. He's by his side wherever he goes. He's on Air Force One. He's at Mar-a-Lago. He's waiting outside the bathroom with the golden toilet.

But he's the guy and his job becomes Trump's body man. If you're a young person, the best job in politics is personal aid to the president. You know, the guy who's always with the candidate, it's called the body man, he travels with him, he meets, you know, he knows what he wants. He's with him 24-7. I thought that is the coolest job I've ever heard of him. I could be that. This was a huge job that he had ascended to because you're kind of like the president's butler. It's much more than a ghost.

even if it does have, you know, a lot of gopher responsibilities. But the proximity to power is physically, it's literally unrivaled. Yeah, he would, like, one of his duties was like he literally walked Trump up the stairs to the White House private quarters at night. So, like, other than Melania's stunt double, he was the last person to see Donald Trump every night. But now, now I have questions. I have many, many questions about what the... what the life of Donald Trump is like behind these closed doors.

Yeah. Give me Trump's KFC order. Well, no, we would usually just do a bucket of fried chicken and let him pick out which pieces he would like. You know, nothing crazy. But are we original? Krispy. Yeah, original. Original, yep.

According to Johnny, Trump was very particular about getting a bucket that everyone shared because he was a man of the people. Of course. Preferred original recipe. That's right. Make Kentucky Fried Chicken great again. for the American people. That's right.

He was trusted with the fast food order. But that's sort of the light side of things. Like one thing that he told me that I thought was really funny was that he mastered the ability to forge Donald Trump's signature. Wait, what? Which is a federal crime. I was going to point that out. By the way.

I think. He would play this prank on people in the West Wing where he would leave notes for people with the impression that they were from the boss. So he's just going around the West Wing leaving federal crimes on people's desks. And so we had him actually, you know, we wanted to check it out.

And so after the interview, we actually had him sign a piece of paper as Donald Trump. And it was bang on. It was conviction level. This is a hell of a power to have. And that brings us to sort of the darker side, I guess, of what he's learning and being mentored in at the White House. When we got into the White House, his longtime aide, Keith Schiller,

really took me under his wing. And then Keith and I worked together for the first six months of the administration. This guy is Trump's chief security guard from way back. This is the guy who knows everything about Donald Trump. He knows, proverbially speaking, where all the bodies are buried because he buried them. You know, pretty soon Keith isn't in the White House for very long. He leaves and sort of slips back into the shadows.

And in a lot of ways, Johnny kind of fills some of those voids and becomes, you know, Trump's, he would very quickly become a guy known as Trump's chief enforcer. I just learned, you know, how to act around the boss. That's what we call the president. And how to just be, you know, a loyal aide that gets the job done. And I think Keith understood when to talk, when not to talk, certain needs. So figuring all these things out, I mean, Keith's just a great guy. He likes to keep a low profile.

But I'm very grateful that he showed me the ropes and, like, taught me everything I knew. He had this great line that I'm definitely borrowing someday. We had a saying, whales that surface get harpooned, you know? Interesting. So if you want to do the work, just do the work. I think the loudest people in politics are doing the least. It's a really good line. shouts to Keith Schiller for having that line.

And I think that that helps explain how someone like Johnny Mac, who has become a viral sensation before viral sensations were a thing, a starting quarterback for a division one program, someone whose appeal to Trump is his central casting, clean cut good looks, understands and senses when. it's the right time not to be that guy, when it's time to not surface and let the other people be the whales who get harpooned. And we know how much Trump likes absolute loyalty. And we know how much he likes people who looked apart. And Johnny checks those boxes. But in terms of just the mundane to now get a little more invasive, like, what would Donald Trump and Johnny McEntee do while just like hanging out? Like, what does that look like? You know, I asked, I asked John And he's like, you know, like, is there a TV show he liked, a movie, something like that? And Johnny was like, he really liked the greatest showman.

This is the, for people who don't know, this is like Hugh Jackman. The Hugh Jackman musical. Pet Barnum, at your service. I am putting together a show and I need a star. You want people to laugh at me. Well, I'm laughing anyway, kids. Might as well get paid. Which, you know, it's one of those things where you hear,

and you're like, Trump liked the greatest showman. And then you hear Johnny's explanation, which is that Trump really liked P.T. Barnum. And you're like, oh, do. Yeah, okay. Now, now deeply on the nose. Yeah. But there is this thing of, like,

Trump folks being really into, like, musical theater. Like, Johnny was planning to see Mulan Rouge on Broadway for the second time, the night of our interviews. Big, big, big, big fan of Mulan Rouge. This man contains multitudes. Sure. When do things get real, topsy-turvy? for this administration.

We're getting into 2017, early 2018. We're about a year, a year and a half into the administration. And while Johnny is quickly ascending the ladder and ingratiating himself to Donald Trump, and everyone in the office, frankly, is just one of the more well-like guys around the building. What we know from the outside is that the Trump administration is absolute chaos, right?

People stabbing each other in the back, leaks everywhere. And a man named John Kelly is brought in as Trump's chief of staff. He will do a spectacular job, I have no doubt. John Kelly is brought in to bring order and discipline. He's going to be the adult in the room. And one of the first things he does is he starts trying to consolidate access to the president, cut off all these people that Trump is calling for opinions. And one of his top targets is Johnny McEntee.

You might recall around this time in the news there were a lot of, of stories about how all these Trump employees were having trouble at the White House getting security clearance because red flags kept going up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It turned out that a lot of these hooligans that Trump was hiring out of God knows where had problems getting security clearances for very simple reasons. Well, very conveniently for this new chief of staff, John Kelly, a red flag went up on Johnny. And another firing, President Trump's longtime personal aide, John McEntee is out of his job.

A source says McEntee was fired because he is under investigation for serious. issues related to gambling and taxes. When there were stories starting to be written about why Johnny McEntee was on shaky footing in the White House, I assumed it was because he had a gambling problem, and then there were big gambling losses. It turns out that a rather large sums of money were appearing in his bank account, and they were due to gambling winnings, he said. That is true.

I was probably being a little careless, especially the role I was in. I had no business doing that. That was the case, though. Wait, so when you ask Johnny Mack about the reason he got fired from the job that he loved, his explanation was what specifically, though? Okay, but tell me, what did you get, what did you win? What did you bet correctly on? No, it was playing blackjack and stuff like that. Oh, oh, stuff like, there wasn't like sports gambling or something like that. You're good at blackjack then. I got on a heater.

This is the low moment, the demise. of Johnny Mac and what we would assume would be the end of the Johnny Mac story, right? He's getting escorted out. He's crashed and burned. But within hours, the Trump re-election campaign for 2020 issues of press release saying that Johnny McEntee has been hired by the Trump campaign, which very, which sort of lets you know what the boss thought of Johnny's firing. This was clearly not something that made him happy.

This is the period when Trump is growing. you hate John Kelly. Despite the org chart now in Donald Trump's personal John power rankings, it's clear which one he actually favors. Yeah, John Kelly is at best number two in plummeting fast. In fact, within a year, John Kelly's out of the White House fired by Donald Trump. The departure of the retired Marine four-star general once tasked with bringing order to the Oval Office is just the latest shift in the president's inner circle. And Johnny McInty is really, is right back outside the Oval Office, restored to his spot. Only this time, he's not the body man.

He's gotten a big promotion. And his new job with tail presumably tucked between his legs is what? Well, I mean, you know, I think this is one of those moments where, again, I'm thinking, man, I've underestimated Johnny McEntee again. He comes back bigger and better than ever. It's Johnny McEntee, too, the sequel, right? His new job is a job that I didn't even know it existed, but it's a really big one. He is the director of the presidential personnel office.

Turns out to be one of those incredibly important, incredibly influential jobs in the federal government. And what he's basically doing is he's choosing the people who become cabinet secretaries, you know, undersecretaries, you know, top intelligence officials, ambassadors. When you hear someone on the news talk about a person being hand-picked by Donald Trump, Johnny was doing the picking. That's the job that he came back to in 2019. So Johnny Mack to Electric Bugaloo has him picking fucking cabinet secretaries and diplomats and all sorts of jobs that, by the way, kind of essential. Yeah, I mean, he's helping Trump.

Trump execute his foreign policy. So he's the one like calling the secretary of defense and saying, no, no, no, no, no. The boss doesn't want you to do that. He wants you to do this. Trickshot Johnny Mack, the guy who less than a decade earlier was bouncing footballs off the turf into a door to open it from 50 yards away is now, you know, executing American foreign policy. He is now throwing a football off the turf and accessing the nuclear football. Yeah, just clunking it right into a round.

So, so, the obvious question. Yeah. What experience has he had to justify any of this power? Well, I asked him that. I asked him pretty bluntly. Had you ever hired anyone for a job before? No, I had not. So you're walking into this job.

Are you ever like, oh my God, what that is? How the hell am I doing? No, I had watched this job in my first inn at the White House, and there were a lot of problems with it. And, you know, from my time on the campaign, I knew a lot of people in Trump world, and everyone was having an issue with this particular office. And because I was so close to the president or candidate at that time and watching all this happen, I had an understanding of what needed to be done. So I was actually pretty confident that I could do it. It sounds like one person that you hired, Andrew Kloster. I think his name had a really interesting quote

that I gather he shared with you as sort of like a... He said, you can learn policy, you can't learn loyalty. Does that sort of drive what you were sort of looking for in a lot of ways? Yeah, I think we just needed to be sort of mission aligned. And at the end of the day, if you're competent enough and you're aligned, like we can get a lot done. We might have had the competency with certain appointees,

but we didn't have the alignment. And that just doesn't work. This is around the time when the mainstream media, the political press starts to get interested in Johnny McEntee, there start to become some stories about him. And it's noteworthy that he's not quoted in any of them. He's never on TV. He's not going to get harpooned.

But he starts being referred to in the media as Trump's enforcer, even a shadow president. In one article I read, he refers to a group of Republicans in the Trump White House, the people he's working with on a daily basis as NPCs, non-player characters. Maybe we should define it just in case you're not familiar with NPCs, but basically what he's saying is they're pro-Trump, but not really doing anything. Yeah, non-player characters in the role-playing video game of Trump World. And there's an article in the Atlantic that is literally titled The Architect of January 6th,

and this is an article about Johnny McEntee. Yes. And look, I don't know that that article necessarily makes a persuasive case that anyone other than Donald Trump was the architect of January 6th, but it does give you the sense of just how far this guy has traveled from that athletics center after midnight in 2011 with his knucklehead buddies. But it is noteworthy that in that Atlantic story, he was accused of effectively being the head of a Trump Gestapo, of using Gestapo tactics. And of course I asked him about that, and he very quickly and politely and unruffled, you know, brushed off as, oh, that's just a left-wing attack. How did you feel about like in the sort of more mainstream press?

They're quoting people in the office where you're working in as describing as like the Stasi or the Gestapo. How did you feel about being called that? It doesn't bother me at all. Yeah. I mean, we're there to do a job. If you're super conservative, they're going to attack you. This is one thing I learned in Trump world. It doesn't bother me at all.

I think the more over the target you are, the more incoming you get. So we were just doing the best we could. So where was, now I'm deposing you, where was John McEntee on January 6th? He says that he had left work to pick up some dry cleaning, I believe, and was getting all these texts about some stuff. going down over at the Capitol. Yeah, stuff like that. And he went over to his apartment to check it out on TV.

And then, of course, I asked him what he thought. They were walking through the rope and stanchion, so I don't know if I would call them anything other than curious, enthusiastic people that took things too far. We're going to give riot warning. Trying to get compliant, but this is now effectively a riot. 49 hours declaring it a riot. You know, I didn't think, oh, this is some insurrection.

You know, I just thought, geez, these people, Like, how are there so many people and why are they on that? And, you know, like... I just thought, like, whoa, they're really going for it. Devin, the phrase, wow, they're really going for it. Yeah. That's like what you would observe about a college football game that you didn't care about. Yeah.

Like, oh, wow, they went for it on fourth down. Huh? Yeah. That's a risk. Yeah, that's... What the fuck? How about that? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, okay, so I'll just say this as my bull-h-dictor is, I believe, just, like, deafening in my own head. I don't believe, at the very least, I'm deeply suspicious of the way in which he conveniently is not at the thing that is the most indicting of all of the things you would imagine. And he didn't get indicted. So, you know, there's either, there's a couple of explanations there. which is one, he's telling the truth. Number two, he's lying for some reason. Number three is that he's turned on Donald Trump.

Hell of a plot twist. Yeah. And it begs another question. Yeah. Which is like, so what is Johnny McEntee doing now? The short answer is that he created an app. Johnny started a. a right-wing dating app

called The Right Stuff. It is an app for conservative singles. In fact, the way I located Johnny Mac and set up our interview was I followed the Right Stuff on Instagram and I slid into their DMs. That's how I hooked up with the right stuff. And I started texting with someone,

DMing with someone who I assumed to be the social media director And very quickly, after a few exchanges, realized I was texting with Johnny Mac. Which is all to say that Johnny Mack, true to his origin story, is in answering the emails that you might suspect that people are too good for. Exactly. He's the CEO and he's the social media director and he's also a client. So you've got to explain what this, like, how does a right-wing dating app like, um, work. Well, let me back up and say that if this seems like a complete 180 or just an out-of-nowhere plot twist career change, Johnny actually has a pretty tidy explanation for it that kind of makes

sense. Everything I'm doing, I'm trying to help the conservative movement. With the dating app, I mean, there's a dating app for almost every group. We thought, why not there'd be one for Republicans? Half of his, you know, career and work is focused on bringing another conservative administration back to the White House in 2024. And the other half of his career is getting conservatives laid. And he wanted to create a safe space for conservative singles to meet and mingle. So how have the other apps been getting too woke? Like what's going on with that? Yeah, I mean, the leftism is actually built into them by the tags and the stickers and the things.

they fund, so you're giving them your business, and then they're going, and if you look at their social media accounts or any of these things they're promoting, very far left. Not to mention conservatives can't be themselves openly because of the hostility we face. So we're putting everyone in one place. Man who was hiring ambassadors and cabinet secretaries. His screening process for conservative singles is what? Yeah, so in order to join the app and sign up, you go through a questionnaire. that sort of susses out your beliefs, your alignment with other people.

Basically, it's to weed out the lips. And the survey portion of the registration process entails what sorts of questions? My favorite Bible verse, of course. Of course. That's a good opener. Love that one. A random fact I love about America is dot, dot, dot, dot. There's a lot of finish this sentence kind of things.

And my favorite of this variety is January 6th was dot, dot, dot, dot. It is perfect. It's perfect. And then there's another one that is another fill in the blank, favorite liberal lie. And liberal lie is sort of a recurring theme for him in his social media videos. And so, of course, I asked him, knowing how popular a series this was with his audience,

what is his favorite liberal lie? Oh, I have a lot. Anything related to COVID. But if you want a more mainstream one, Um, that's controversial. Diversity is our strength. Okay. Yeah.

That's a liberal lot. I think so, yeah. Okay. It made me think back to the central casting line. Mm-hmm. Where there's just this sort of close your eyes picture of what America is and should be. And that fundamentally, when he closes his eyes, he sees the same thing as Donald Trump. And if you feel that way,

you're, I suppose, kind of sick of the idea that that picture needs to be changed or redrawn. We like original recipe America. Yes, yes, yes. Well, Devin, it just, my instinct truly is to be like, I don't even want to take this guy seriously, and I don't want to have to even give it the oxygen of a rebuttal, except for the fact that the vibe I get from your reporting

at the end here is that Johnny McEntee really matters. He actually has a second job, sort of a side job, in this thing called Project 2025, which he's a consultant on, that is basically gathering names,

gathering applications to staff the federal government when and if Donald Trump wins again. I mean, this article in Puck describes the leadership of Project 2025 considering Johnny McEntee to be their, quote, secret weapon.

So the secret weapon also happens to be the guy whose main hustle right now is running a right-wing dating app and seeing Moulon Rouge on the 48th, I believe, of 50 first dates. It's the same guy. These are his two jobs. And in some ways, that that's perfectly fitting who Johnny McEntee is. It really is. It is a life of trick shots that, uh, that I think reveals a lot about how, I guess, the American dream actually works for some. I just wonder, Devin, if you are left here

with the same foreboding feeling creeping in the back of my head, which is I wouldn't be surprised if his girlfriend undershot it. There were several times over the course of my interview with him where I thought, Is this guy going to be president? Like, yes. I mean, why not at this point? I think if Trump were to regain the White House in 2024,

it's pretty clear that he'll be part of that campaign process. I think right now I'm better assisting him in his pursuit of the presidency. So I don't know if I'll actually go work in an administration, but I definitely want to help staff it, get on the right track, get good people in that can just help see the mission three. It certainly seems like Trump would want him there. And by the way, he describes it, it's pretty hard to resist the glamour of it. I don't think you ever get sick of it.

It's pretty exciting. It's one of those things where you'll ask people, oh, you're a rock star, oh, you're in the NFL, or what's it like? And they'll say, it's nothing like the movies. However, working at the White House is exactly like the movies. Really? Yeah. It's fast-paced. You're on a helicopter.

You're on Air Force One. It's crazy. It's exciting. you're watching history unfold. I think it's noteworthy that when John McEntee is describing the job of being the White House and the lure of it,

you know, a lot of people in those positions talk about helping people and changing the world and all of these things. Like service. Service. And even if they don't mean it, they're supposed to say that.

That's what they say. And Johnny doesn't say that. It's a remarkable bluntness that feels like honesty. It's the inverse of the JFK quote. Yes. He's literally asking, what can my country do for me? Yes. Make me feel cool.

Ryan on the chopper. Devin Gordon, thank you for sending a chill up my spine. Happy to do it. So what I found out today is that if you wanted to make the ultimate Trump world character, you could not do better than trickshot Johnny Mac, a self-made YouTube star, before those even really existed, who used everything he learned while being repeatedly sacked at Yukon to get hired by the Trump White House and then fired by the Trump White House, and then hired back by the Trump White House to do the hiring.

while secretly never leaving Donald Trump's innermost circle this entire time, including right now as he is, you know, running this right-wing dating app. He is the most powerful Trump world figure that until today, I didn't know nearly enough about. In fact, the greatest trick that Johnny Mack. ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.