A fresh-faced Johnny McEntee was interviewed by CNN back in 2011. A soft-focus piece about how the then second-string quarterback at University of Connecticut went viral via a compilation of outlandish trick shots filmed around campus.
Here he was hurling the football into a basketball hoop from way up in the bleachers, there he was impressively going all William Tell at a water bottle perched on an unflinching friend’s head. McEntee came across as an aw-shucks college athlete enjoying the modicum of national fame his eye for catchy content had brought him.
A more recent trawl of YouTube dredges up a video featuring the now grown-up John McEntee, the hair slicker, the voice more certain, sitting in his car explaining why he always keeps a stash of fake Hollywood money on hand. He needs it to perform his party piece, giving counterfeit five-dollar bills to homeless people.
This act of pretend charity makes him feel good about himself and he also considers it a public service because attempting to use the cash subsequently gets the unfortunate mendicants arrested. Some regard the clip as a tasteless joke by a misunderstood japester with a toxic online highlight reel, others reckon it is scarily true to his personality.
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Between his days playing college football and current persona as conservative TikTok provocateur, McEntee served two stints in the Trump White House. An initial spell as the president’s body man (personal assistant cum valet) ended prematurely when he was frog marched out because of FBI security clearance issues related to his dodgy gambling.
No matter. His boss later rehired him for the far weightier role of director of presidential personnel. Utterly unqualified for the job, his appointment yet another reminder Trump loves to have good-looking people, especially those of an athletic bent, in his orbit. Regardless of their ability.
“He became the deputy president,” said one official of McEntee’s outsized influence in the last year of the administration.
McEntee is now senior adviser to Project 2025, the ultra-right wing group who’ve been busy formulating the policies and staffing of the next republican administration. Following a slew of negative headlines regarding its proposed assault on women’s rights, birth control, and IVF, Trump has lately tried to distance himself from the think-tank and its bizarre wish list.
Among other goals, they want to abolish the department of education, make the department of health more biblically based, repeal any laws designed to combat climate change, and reduce spending on welfare for the poor.
The involvement of McEntee, one of his most trusted confidantes, in the project demonstrates the strong and enduring connection between the 45th president’s re-election campaign and the uber-conservative apparatchiks who hope to fire thousands of career civil servants and replace them with Trump loyalists. Indeed, the one-time quarterback has previous when it comes to doing his master’s outrageous bidding in this way.
“While the country battled a pandemic and fears of economic collapse, Trump’s most loyal lieutenant would lead a witch hunt, browbeating cabinet secretaries, scouring voting records and social media accounts of officials high and low, conducting loyalty interviews, and installing inexperienced people with questionable backgrounds into some of the most sensitive and important positions in the US government,” wrote Jonathan Karl of McEntee’s body of work, in his excellent book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
“And as Trump became increasingly isolated in his final year in office, McEntee became his indispensable man . . . also aiding and abetting the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”
Growing up just outside Los Angeles, where his father ran a successful entertainment agency, McEntee was an altar server who became the star quarterback at Servite High, an all-boys Catholic high school.
At the University of Connecticut, he was a walk-on (a player who didn’t receive a scholarship) who went from being a perennial reserve to starting for one full season. No small feat but not enough to attract NFL scouts.
After graduating with a degree in communications, he worked briefly at Fox News Channel before becoming an unpaid volunteer on the first Trump campaign in 2015. Family money ensured he could live in New York without earning a wage while ingratiating himself with the candidate, something at which he excelled.
In victory, he was given a desk right outside the Oval Office. Enjoying the primest of real estate, he had access to and the ear of the man behind the Resolute Desk. Most significantly, he possessed knowledge of the sycophancy required to retain it.
After defeat in November 2020, when Trump was frantically shopping for conspiracy theories and faux constitutional routes to overturn the result, McEntee, neither a law or history graduate, stepped up. Using his own misinterpretation of an incident involving vice-president Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 election, he persuaded his boss that Mike Pence should not ratify the vote. His impact on his boss’s thinking led The Atlantic magazine to dub him, “The man who made January 6th possible”.
After that shameful episode, McEntee pivoted to pseudo-political grifting, launching a dating app for MAGA folk called The Right Stuff. Shockingly, it struggled despite bonkers promotional videos in which the founder is filmed ranting to an off-camera partner about drag queens, government conspiracies, and the like.
“Johnny understands people,” said Trump of his protege. “He understands loyalty.”
The only thing he really understands is Trump. A trick play that has taken him a long way.
