John McEntee

John David McEntee II (born May 9, 1990) is an American entrepreneur and political advisor who served in the first Trump administration. He has been a Trump loyalist during and after Trump's first term. He began as a body man and personal aide to the president but was dismissed by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly in March 2018 after failing a security clearance background check, which had found that he was under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for issues related to gambling.

After Kelly was dismissed in December 2018, Donald Trump rehired McEntee and named him Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in February 2020.

McEntee played a significant role in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election in the lead-up to the January 6 Capitol attack. His role in the last year of Trump's first term presidency earned him the moniker, "Deputy President". He also co-founded The Right Stuff, a discontinued dating app for Republican singles.

Early life McEntee was born on May 9, 1990, in Fullerton, California, to a Catholic family. He first attended St. Angela Merici Parish School in Brea, California, and then attended Servite High School in Anaheim, where he played quarterback on the varsity football team.

McEntee was a redshirt his first year at the University of Connecticut, and completed his sociology degree in the spring of his senior year. He played college football for the Huskies, but was used sparingly in his first two seasons. McEntee was named the starting quarterback during the 2011 season, after a strong performance against Buffalo. In the next game against Western Michigan, he recorded his season and career-high, after throwing for 300 yards and four touchdowns. During that season, McEntee appeared in a viral YouTube video that featured him throwing football trickshots. McEntee lost the starting job to transfer Chandler Whitmer in the 2012 season, and dropped down the depth chart to third-string, making just three appearances for the Huskies.

Career Trump campaign and first term In 2015, McEntee worked as a production assistant for Fox News, focusing on the channel's social media accounts. He successfully lobbied for a job on the Trump campaign, joining as a volunteer in July of that year and later being promoted to a full-time position as trip director.

After Donald Trump won the 2016 election, McEntee was asked to join his staff as an aide, serving as his body man. McEntee accompanied Trump on all trips, most notably the President's trip to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, where "Man in red tie" (McEntee) and "#Trump's_daughter" (Ivanka Trump) briefly became the most trending hashtags in that country.

McEntee's first term of service in the White House ended on March 13, 2018, after Chief of Staff John Kelly ousted him on the pretext of an "unspecified security issue" that was later revealed to be unreported gambling winnings.

2020 United States presidential election and attempts to overturn it

After his dismissal from the White House, McEntee was hired by Trump's 2020 reelection campaign as a senior adviser for campaign operations. In January 2020, McEntee returned to the White House in his old position of bodyman, where he shared some of his former duties with Nick Luna, the Director of Oval Office Operations. Shortly after his return, McEntee was then promoted to Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, overseeing the President's 4,000 appointments to the federal bureaucracy. McEntee reported directly to the President and continued to hold his role as Trump's bodyman concurrently. He was tasked with identifying and removing political appointees and career officials deemed insufficiently loyal to the administration, despite having no previous personnel or people management experience. McEntee then installed officials who were ideologically in line with the Trump campaign themes of non-interventionist foreign policy, immigration restriction, and economic nationalism. McEntee's purge of the Trump administration was lauded by many Trump loyalists who have long urged President Trump to terminate those in his administration who were part of the Washington establishment.

McEntee also engineered a purge of neoconservatives from the senior ranks of the Pentagon, appointed the officials who led the effort to crack down on social media companies for censoring conservatives, and got rid of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation.

In the closing weeks of the Trump presidency, McEntee worked with Douglas Macgregor, who McEntee appointed to the role of Senior Advisor to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, to draft a brief document ordering the swift withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Germany, and Africa.

Leading up to the certification of the 2020 election, McEntee falsely claimed Mike Pence had the authority to overturn the results. McEntee sent a series of bullet points via text message to Pence's chief of staff to assert that Thomas Jefferson "Used His Position as VP to Win" the 1801 election. On two occasions in 2022, he appeared before the committee in a taped deposition, returning in person in January 2023.

The Right Stuff Dating App

After leaving the White House in 2021, McEntee met with billionaire Peter Thiel to pitch him several tech startup ideas, one of which was the idea for a conservative dating app called The Right Stuff. Thiel agreed to fund the app and subsequently made a seed round investment of $1.5 million. The app launched on September 30, 2022. The Right Stuff's official launch was announced exclusively on Tucker Carlson Tonight, where McEntee appeared as a guest.

Rather than pursue conventional marketing techniques, McEntee utilized a unique new strategy in which he promoted the app in part through videos staged to appear as though the viewer was on a date with McEntee, where he shared controversial and provocative opinions on a variety of topics. The style of these videos remains a notable feature of McEntee's online presence, particularly on TikTok, where his account has amassed over 2 billion views as of 2026.

Project 2025

In May 2023, it was announced that McEntee was joining The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 as a senior advisor. Described by The New York Times as "one of Trump's most trusted aides", McEntee and his association with Project 2025 serves as the main link between the Heritage Foundation and former President Trump. McEntee has stated that as part of Project 2025, he supports a total ban on pornography.

Lobbying Tencent’s U.S. arm hired McEntee in July 2025 to assist with an “erroneous trade restriction designation” after the Pentagon listed the tech giant to its list of Chinese military companies. In September 2025, McEntee officially registered to lobby for the company and lobbied the Treasury Department, arguing that the Biden Administration only included Tencent to the Pentagon list “as part of their political vendetta against anything Chinese”. McEntee has stated that Tencent is not a military company and that “the President has made it clear he wants cooperation and mutual investment from China”.

Controversies

Allegations of inappropriate conduct

In 2024, multiple reports surfaced accusing McEntee of sending inappropriate and sexually explicit messages to young women, including teenagers, through social media platforms and The Right Stuff. One woman, Grace Carter, shared that McEntee reached out to her in October 2023, when she was 18 years old, offering merchandise from the app and attempting to arrange a trip for her and a friend to visit him in Los Angeles. Despite Carter expressing discomfort and declining to visit, McEntee continued to contact her. Another woman reported similar advances and inappropriate sexual comments from McEntee after connecting with him through the Right Stuff app. Both women indicated that McEntee's behavior made them uncomfortable.

In April 2023, McEntee became the first conservative to defend TikTok when President Biden and Congressional Republicans moved to ban the app, stating that the ban was "a Washington Uniparty plan to censor information they can't control, based on a fake national security narrative."

In May 2024, McEntee sparked outrage after posting a video on TikTok in which he made a joke about giving homeless people fake money, stating that they would be arrested when trying to use it. McEntee stated in the video, "I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car... so when a homeless person asks for money, I give them a fake $5 bill. So I feel good about myself. They feel good. And then when they go to use it, they get arrested." He went on to assert his efforts were helping "clean up the streets".

While the video included a caption stating "Just a joke. Everyone calm down," it was widely condemned. Critics described McEntee's actions as cruel and inhumane and several noted that, if McEntee had done what he had claimed, it would likely be considered a federal crime under 18 US Code section 480. which guaranteed the right of women to vote.

Personal life In 2026, McEntee backed Steve Hilton for California governor, donating the maximum primary contribution to Hilton’s campaign. McEntee has also made donations to the UCONN football program, most recently a six figure contribution in 2026.