The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - PTFO EXCLUSIVE - Donald Trump's Secret Weapon Is a Quarterback

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

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? Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JZGb3Z3Qk68 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Giraffe King's Network. Cortez, I don't know if you appreciate this, but there is a legitimately enormous news story that is breaking, unfolding, not far from where we are sitting right now.

Yeah, my Emmy is only a three hour flight. They're debuting like new heat culture jerseys and of course not what I'm trying to do. Those are disgusting. All of it is just horrible. It looks like you designed 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 referring to the new story we're referring to is this. him not to make speeches and just to answer the questions. It's a very sad situation for our country. We should now 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 f***ing President of the United States on the witness stand in a quarter billion dollar 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 also facing like a hundred 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.

Did 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*** 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 is Johnny Magtine, representing you on football, trick shot video. The hell was that? Why did you waste my time with that? What was that? This is not familiar with that. You've never seen Trickshot Johnny Mack?

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 Mackinty was the guy who came before all of these TikToks, all of these YouTube videos about people throwing like sh** into basketball hoops and garbage cans

and throwing like footballs blindfolded. Johnny McIntee, 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**t 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 McInty as senior advisor. He was one of Trump's closest confidants and still is. Okay, so how did this guy go from like, trick shot QB guy to like a weapon for Trump actually? So this, this is the question that I have been wanting to find out about. And to my genuine shock, okay? Trickshot Johnny Mac, Secret Wipeout 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 Do you have a question? Devon Gordon, are you a little offended that I gave you this assignment? I love this guy. Are you kidding 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, Devon 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 Minnage and John Stewart. You've interviewed Grimes, Devon. And I said, hey, this Johnny Macinty 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 described, Evan, if you could, Mr. Magazinewriter, 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 is as gorgeous as your calves. Let's put it that way. And he's... Some shoe-ass. Some shoe-ass. Really sculpted.

All right. Good. He's very handsome. He's kind of like, aparachic 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. 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's 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 I could, in some, in some basic way, I could very quickly see why people liked having him around. Right, 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 quarter back at an elite private school called Servite High. You've know this guy, you 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 Mackinthe 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, move it 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 us. Of course. Because you con 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 as 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 where 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 gonna try to do it. Fine. The last shot where I'm in there, Reena,

hucking it. I still have an elbow problem to this day from that, by the way. But this is where also Johnny Mac and T gets, it seems like his first taste, I presume, of like cable news. 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 McIntee, second string quarterback at the University of Connecticut, presenting his trick shot. That's now gone viral. You know, it got like seven million views, which doesn't sound like a lot now, but- 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 McIntee, young Johnny Macinty, you con 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 T totaler, occasionally just referenced as the designated driver. That didn't drink. He defies some of the stereotypes we have of those kinds of rowdy division one quarterback, Trumpy guys by being quite disciplined, it seems. And so if I'm to look at, you know, his, his, 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, inner receptions. My favorite stat though, is that he rushed from minus 148 yards. So, I'm just saying. So, 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 falling a little closely. More than I had in the past, 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 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.

Wow. Whoa. 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 you on an escalator. Yeah. 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 opp 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 lobbyist, I'm not using donors, I don't care. I'm really rich, I'll share that in a second. I just, yeah, I was just gravitating towards him. I know I wanted to be part of it. And then he goes to that and he's just

Yeah, I was just gravitating towards him. I know 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 gonna go get a job at 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.

That's 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 star struck. 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. God, that's that's that's unnerving. Yeah, I mean, what's 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 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 actually in the door? I mean, he's starting out at the very bottom. The first, almost a year I worked on the campaign,

I was a go-for, 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. Up the golden escalator. Up the golden escalator.

Yes, really quickly maybe skipping a few steps even. Wasn't until summer of 16 when I started traveling with them that I developed a little bit of relationships still not that close, although I was traveling with them 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, not be 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 like movies from the 80s. Yes, like Republican Barbie and Ken.

Yes. That's what we're picturing. And Johnny Macinty very enthusiastically describes himself as fitting that part, right at a central casting. And that was an interesting insight into the unreflectiveness, I think, of the Trump experience. It's just not even questioning what central casting is and why central casting is generally considered problematic. So, Devon, what I have in front of me, thanks to you, is this fable, this fable of modern American politics.

We have the former U-Conn Trick Shot 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? If he has this sense now that his job is to be completely in the background and that that's the way to 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 immediately. who is like in his mind like viral quarterback, he is not there. He seems to know this very, very 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. From 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. And it'd 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, Orning, Newton Knight. He's by his side where every goes. He's on Air Force One. He's at Mar-a-Lago. He's waiting outside the bathroom with the golden toilet. 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.

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 is 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 gopher, 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 I have questions, I have many, many questions about what the, what the life of Donald Trump every night. But now I have questions, I have many, many questions about 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, nothing crazy. But are we original, Christmas? Yeah, original, original, yeah. 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 gonna 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, you know, just going around the West Wing leaving federal crimes on people's deaths. 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 little. 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, chumps, 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. I think Keith understood when to talk, when not to talk, certain needs. To figure out all these things out,

I mean, Keith's just a great guy. He likes to keep a little 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, Wales 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. So really good line. Shout out 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. Starting quarterback for a Division I 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 arpeggnt. And we know how much Trump likes absolute loyalty. And we know how much Trump likes absolute loyalty. And we know how much he likes people who look the part 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 McIntee do while just like hanging out? Like what does that look like? You know, I asked, I asked Johnny, I was like, can you just do like, does there a TV show he liked to movie something like that?

And Johnny was like, he really liked the greatest showman. Uh, this is the, for people who don't know, this is like Hugh Jackman. The Hugh Jackman musical. Peter Bohnen at your service. I am putting together a show and I need a star. You want people to laugh at me? Well, they're laughing anyway, kids, not as well-good-paying. Which, you know, it's one of those things where you hear it and you're like, Trump liked a great ass shulman and then you hear Johnny's explanation, which is that Trump really liked

P.T. Barnum and you're like, oh, yeah. Okay, now, now, deeply on the nose. Yeah, but there is this thing of like, like, Trump folks being really into like musical theater. Like Johnny was planning to see Mulan Rouge on Broadway for the second time. Okay. The night of our interviews, big, big, big, big fan of Mulan Rouge.

This man contains multitudes. Sure. When do things get real, topsy, tervey, 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 f***ing 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 McInty. You might recall around this time in the news, there were a lot of stories about how all these Trump employees were having trouble with the White House getting security clearance because Red flags kept going up. Yeah, it turned out that a lot of these hooligans that Trump was hiring at a God knows where

I 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 aid, John McIntee, is out of his job. A source says McIntee was fired because he is under investigation for serious issues related to gambling in taxes. When there were stories starting to be written about why Johnny McIntee was on shaky footing

in the White House, I assumed it was because he had a gambling problem. And then there are 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 know 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, it was playing Blackjack and stuff like that. Oh, oh, oh, stuff like there wasn't like sports, 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 crash and burned. But within hours, the Trump reelection campaign for 2020 issues, oppressorly saying that Johnny McIntee 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 to hate John Kelly. Despite the org chart now,

in Donald Trump's personal John power rankings, it's clear which one you actually favor. Yes, 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 McEncy 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 McInty again. He comes back bigger and better than ever. It's Johnny McInty to the sequel, right? His new jobs, the 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, under secretaries, you know, top intelligence officials and 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 Mac to Electric Bugaloo has him picking f***ing cabinet secretaries and diplomats

and all sorts of jobs that by the way, kind of essential. Yeah, I mean, he's helping Trump execute his foreign policy. So he's, he's the one like calling the secretary of defense and saying, no, no, no, no, the boss doesn't want you to do that. He wants you to do this. Trickshot Johnny Mac, 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 ran.

So, 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. Have 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 the hell am I doing? No, I had watched this job in my first in 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. Sounds like one person that you hired Andrew Closter, 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 Macinty. There's start to become some stories about him. And it's not worthy that he's not quoted in any of them.

He's never on TV. He's not gonna 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 that 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 McInty. 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 athletic center after midnight in 2011 with his knucklehead buddies, but it is noteworthy. 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, you know, 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 this like the stasi or the Gestapo. How did you feel about being called that? That 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, not the, now I'm depositing you, where was John Mackinth? He's 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. Yes, 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.

I'm going to get a wire warning. I'm going to try and get a wire, but this is now effectively a riot. 39 hours declaring it a riot. You know, I didn't think, oh, this is some insurrection, or 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 think they'll be holding it so hard. We're gonna hold the riot. I have to eat, sit back. I just thought, like, well, they're really going for it. Devon, 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. I Yeah, that's what the f*** how about that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, okay, so I'll just say this as my b*** detector 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 inditing of all of the things you would

imagine. And he didn't get indicted. So precisely. 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. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Hell of a plot twist. Yeah. And it begs another question, which is like, so what is Johnny McIntee doing now? The short answer is that he created an app. Johnny started 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 Mac true to his origin story is f***ing 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 got to explain what this like, how does a rightwing dating app like 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 be one for Republicans?

Half of his 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 low? What's going on with that? 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. Yeah. 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

lives. 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. There's a lot of finish this sentence, ton of things. And my favorite of this variety is January 6 was dot, dot, dot.

It is perfect. 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 eye? Oh, I have a lot. Anything related to COVID. But if you want a more mainstream one, that's controversial. Diversity is our strength. Okay. Yeah. That's a liberal line. I think so. Yeah. Okay. It made me think back to the central casting line, 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 re-drawn. We like original recipe America. Yes, yes, yes. Well, Devon, it just, my instinct truly is to be like, I don't 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 McIntee really f***** 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 McInty 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 Mulan Rouge on the 48th, I believe, the 51st days, it's the same guy. These are his two jobs.

And in some ways that's perfectly fitting who Johnny Macinty is. It really is. It is a life of trick shots that I think reveals a lot about how, I guess, the American Dream actually works for some. I just wonder, Devon, 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 gonna be president?

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 it on the right track, get good people in that can just help see the mission through.

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 he 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 McInty 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 Joey 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. Right on the chopper. Um, Devon 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 Mack. 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

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 Mac ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist. This has been Pablo Torei finds out a metal-like media production. And I'll talk to you next time. you