Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Donald Trump's Secret Weapon Is a Quarterback About this episode 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.
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2:56 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
3:02 Speaker 02 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.
3:15 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
3:18 Speaker 03 You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.
3:33 Pablo Torre? 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.
3:43 Speaker 04 Yeah, Miami's only a three-hour flight. They're debuting like new Heat culture jerseys and a court. It's incredible, dude.
3:48 Pablo Torre? Those are disgusting. All of it is just horrible. It looks like you designed them.
3:51 Speaker 04 That's a good thing.
3:53 Pablo Torre? But speaking of horrific debuts, what I'm actually referring to, the news story I'm referring to, is this.
3:59 Speaker 05 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 fraudulently inflated the value of their assets to obtain favorable loans.
4:12 Speaker 06 Donald Trump has been on the witness stand about an hour now, and already the judge has had to warn him not to make speeches and just to answer the questions.
4:19 Speaker 07 It's a very sad situation for our country. We shouldn't have this. This is for third-world countries.
4:25 Pablo Torre? This is a legitimately unprecedented political moment in a decade full of them. We have the former [bleep] 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.
4:43 Speaker 04 Isn't Trump also facing like 100 other criminal charges?
4:46 Pablo Torre? 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.
5:11 Speaker 04 Dude, Donald Trump might get reelected as president from jail.
5:14 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
5:15 Speaker 04 Like, that could happen.
5:16 Pablo Torre? He actually might. We need to reckon with this. And it would be the most absurd magic trick, I think, in American political history.
5:24 Speaker 04 Objectively, it is [bleep] nuts.
5:26 Pablo Torre? 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.
5:59 Speaker 04 The hell was that? Why did you waste my time with that? What was that?
6:02 Pablo Torre? This-
6:03 Speaker 04 No, I'm not familiar with that.
6:03 Pablo Torre? You've never seen Trick Shot Johnny Mac?
6:05 Speaker 04 No.
6:06 Pablo Torre? This video was one of the first viral YouTube videos I ever remember seeing. It was from 2011, and this was before-
6:14 Speaker 04 You're old.
6:14 Pablo Torre? Dude, perfect, I am. And as an elder millennial, Johnny McEntee was the guy who came before all of these TikToks, all of these YouTube videos about people throwing like [bleep] into basketball hoops and garbage cans and throwing like footballs blindfolded. Johnny McEntee, that UConn quarterback we just saw, was an early internet celebrity, and this was, yeah, a dozen years ago.
6:39 Speaker 04 Fair enough. Why does Election Day remind you of him?
6:42 Pablo Torre? Because last month, okay, I was reading an article about all of the Trump [bleep]. 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."
7:16 Speaker 04 Okay, so hold on. How did this guy go from like trick shot QB guy to like a weapon for Trump, actually?
7:22 Pablo Torre? So this, this is the question that I have been wanting to find out about. And to my genuine shock, okay? Trick shot Johnny Mac, secret weapon of the Trump administration, uh, 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.
7:47 Speaker 04 Great.
7:48 Pablo Torre? And that [bleep] is after the break.
7:50 Speaker 04 Let's do it.
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11:40 Speaker 05 Devin Gordon, are you, uh, are you a little offended that I gave you this assignment?
11:48 Speaker 02 I love this guy. Are you kidding me? I don't love this guy. Oh, my God, I already have to start over.
11:54 Speaker 05 No, we're keeping this in. This is the tension, Devin Gordon, journalist, magazine writer, one of my favorite writers.
12:00 Speaker 02 Thank you.
12:00 Speaker 05 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, Nicki Minaj and Jon Stewart. You've interviewed Grimes.
12:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:14 Speaker 05 Devin.
12:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:15 Speaker 05 And I said, hey, uh, this Johnny McEntee guy.
12:19 Speaker 02 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.
12:31 Speaker 05 So just describe, Devin, if you could, Mr. Magazine Writer. If you have not seen or heard Johnny Mac yet, what is he like?
12:42 Speaker 02 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, he's really dreamy. He's, he's, he is as gorgeous as your Cavs. Let's put it that way. And he's-
13:03 Speaker 05 Sumptuous.
13:04 Speaker 02 Sumptuous. Really sculpted.
13:07 Speaker 05 All right. Good.
13:10 Speaker 02 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.
13:26 Speaker 06 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.
13:34 Speaker 02 You know, he arrived alone. You know, there was no hair and makeup. He didn't look in a mirror. He just, 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.
13:52 Pablo Torre? Right, right, right, right. So in terms of where he came from, what's his actual human birthplace?
13:58 Speaker 02 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 know this guy. You've pictured this guy. You've seen this guy. But he's, he was never under any illusions that he was gonna go play in the NFL.
14:21 Pablo Torre? So I should say, the trick shot thing was not a thing before I saw Johnny McIntyre do it. On some level, he is like this, a genuinely deserving footnote in sports internet history.
14:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, he started something.
14:34 Pablo Torre? Second level. Net here. Mark, move it back 10 yards. He starts doing the trick shot stuff because why?
14:44 Speaker 02 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 this. It was the UConn women's basketball team.
14:57 Pablo Torre? I did not know any of this.
14:58 Speaker 06 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
15:07 Speaker 05 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."
15:15 Speaker 02 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.
15:27 Speaker 05 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 that they can make all the throws. So I'm gonna try to do it. Blind. The last shot where I'm in the arena, hucking it. I still have an elbow problem to this day from that, by the way.
15:49 Pablo Torre? But this is where also Johnny McEntee gets, it seems like his first taste, I presume, of like, cable news juice.
15:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, there's something innate about his ability to go viral before you even know what the concept of virality is.
16:07 Speaker 05 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?"
16:13 Speaker 07 For this kid, it's like shooting footballs in a barrel. Or in a basket.
16:25 Speaker 07 His name is Johnny McEntee, second-string quarterback at the University of Connecticut, presenting his... Trick shot video. That's now gone viral.
16:36 Speaker 02 You know, it got like 7 million views, which doesn't sound like a lot now, but...
16:40 Pablo Torre? Oh, with inflation adjusted?
16:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's like that, like in 2011, that was like the whole internet.
16:44 Pablo Torre? Correct.
16:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, everyone saw this video.
16:46 Pablo Torre? But Johnny McEntee, young Johnny McEntee, at UConn in that locker room, what was his, what was, what was his rep? What was he like as just a dude?
16:56 Speaker 02 So he's described in a lot of clips about that time in his life as a teetotaller. 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.
17:15 Pablo Torre? 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?
17:22 Speaker 02 A little over 2,000 yards passing in 12 games, 12 touchdowns and interceptions.
17:27 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
17:28 Speaker 02 My favorite stat, though, is that he rushed for minus 148 yards.
17:32 Pablo Torre? Oh, tremendous.
17:33 Speaker 02 Which means he got sacked a lot.
17:35 Pablo Torre? How do we go from that ground game to the Trump ground game?
17:40 Speaker 05 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.
18:05 Pablo Torre? 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.
18:15 Speaker 02 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, is, is famous for ripping up the entire rulebook about how you do this.
18:32 Pablo Torre? Well, himself, Donald Trump, was proto-viral.
18:36 Speaker 02 Proto-viral, yeah.
18:37 Pablo Torre? And so you have this guy, this trickshot quarterback, who is a, eh, 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.
18:54 Speaker 02 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.
18:59 Speaker 05 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.
19:10 Speaker 02 He had referenced that, that maybe he would have been better off on the TV side. And for the record, I agree, having, having, 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, his famous campaign announcement speech, infamous campaign announcement speech where he comes down the escalator.
19:34 Speaker 07 That is some group of people, thousands.
19:37 Speaker 05 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.
19:47 Speaker 07 It's the most momentous announcement you can make in your entire career. You're like, I want to come in on an escalator. Yeah.
19:54 Speaker 05 It had the total opposite effect on me. I thought he had a great chance, and I knew I wanted to work for him.
19:59 Speaker 02 Why do you think you had the total opposite reaction?
20:01 Speaker 05 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.
20:10 Speaker 07 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.
20:20 Speaker 05 This is like refreshing. Like, people are gonna gravitate to this, like I was. And not to mention the celebrity and the anti-political correctness.
20:31 Speaker 07 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.
20:42 Speaker 05 I just, yeah, I was just gravitating towards him. I knew I wanted to be part of it.
20:46 Speaker 02 And then he goes to that, and he's just dumbstruck with this sense that I've gotta go work for this guy. This is the guy.
20:56 Pablo Torre? What does he set out to do that gets him in the door?
21:01 Speaker 02 He's gonna go get a job with the Trump campaign, come hell or high water.
21:05 Speaker 05 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.
21:21 Speaker 02 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, alright, sure.
21:31 Speaker 05 I quit my job at Fox, I showed up as a volunteer, and worked my way up from there.
21:35 Speaker 02 I think he's even assuming this isn't gonna go anywhere.
21:39 Speaker 05 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.
21:56 Speaker 02 And we all know where that led. Over the course of the year, it starts to get realer and realer and realer.
22:03 Pablo Torre? God, that's unnerving.
22:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, what's, to me, unnerving and sort of makes you think twice about him is that he saw it.
22:18 Pablo Torre? Well, it's a little on the nose now that you frame it that way, that the first viral trickshot quarterback saw how to get this thing exactly where he wants it in a way that most people couldn't.
22:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's one of the more, you know, the trickshot viral presidential campaign moments, right? Where it just, you know, he pulls this move that everybody thinks is crazy and it works. It works.
22:45 Pablo Torre? What's his job? What does he do when he's actually in the door?
22:48 Speaker 02 I mean, he's starting out at the very bottom.
22:50 Speaker 05 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.
23:02 Speaker 02 But he very quickly ascends the ladder.
23:06 Pablo Torre? Going up the golden escalator.
23:08 Speaker 02 Up the golden escalator, yes. Really quickly, maybe skipping a few steps even.
23:14 Speaker 05 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 them every day. It was a familiar face that maybe he felt comfortable with.
23:26 Speaker 02 Why do you think he liked having you around?
23:28 Speaker 05 I like to think I have a calm demeanor, you know? 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 aide should look like.
23:43 Speaker 02 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.
24:05 Pablo Torre? Yeah, not the most diverse cast.
24:08 Speaker 02 No, I mean.
24:08 Pablo Torre? I would dare say.
24:09 Speaker 02 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.
24:19 Pablo Torre? 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.
24:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like Republican Barbie and Ken.
24:29 Pablo Torre? Yes.
24:30 Speaker 02 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.
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28:25 Pablo Torre? 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 UConn 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
28:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:50 Pablo Torre? not to be the face of things, that he wasn't actually there to be the star quarterback. He was there to be what?
28:56 Speaker 02 He has this sense now that his job is to be completely in the background and that that's the way to get ahead, make himself useful, ascend the escalator of the Trump campaign experience.
29:11 Speaker 05 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.
29:31 Pablo Torre? 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 immediately, he's not there to be the star or the face of this, obviously.
29:50 Speaker 02 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.
30:01 Pablo Torre? Prom king.
30:02 Speaker 02 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. He's the guy.
30:47 Speaker 02 And his job becomes Trump's body man.
30:51 Speaker 05 If you're a young person, the best job in politics is personal aide 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.
31:06 Speaker 02 This was a huge job that he had ascended to because you're, you're, you're kind of like the President's butler. It's much more than
31:14 Speaker 05 Yes.
31:14 Speaker 02 A gopher, even if it does have, um, you know, a lot of gopher responsibilities.
31:21 Speaker 05 But the proximity to power is, is physically, it's literally unrivaled.
31:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, he, 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.
31:40 Speaker 05 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.
31:48 Speaker 02 Yeah. Give me Trump's KFC order.
31:51 Speaker 05 Um, 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.
31:58 Speaker 02 Are we original, crispy?
32:00 Speaker 05 Yeah, original, original, yep.
32:02 Speaker 02 According to Johnny, um, Trump was very particular about getting a bucket that everyone shared because he was a man of the people.
32:08 Speaker 05 Of course.
32:08 Speaker 02 Um, preferred original recipe.
32:11 Speaker 05 That's right. Make, make Kentucky Fried Chicken great again.
32:13 Speaker 02 For the American people.
32:16 Speaker 05 That's right.
32:17 Speaker 02 He was trusted with the, with the fast food order. But that's sort of the, the, the light side of things. Like, one thing that he told me that I thought was really funny was that he mastered, um, the ability to forge Donald Trump's signature.
32:34 Speaker 05 Wait, what?
32:35 Speaker 02 Which is a federal crime.
32:36 Speaker 05 I was gonna point that out.
32:37 Speaker 02 By the way.
32:37 Speaker 05 I think.
32:38 Speaker 02 Um, he would play this prank on people, uh, in the West Wing where he would leave notes for people with the impression that they were from, from the boss. So he's just, you know, just going around the, the West Wing, leaving federal crimes on people's desks.
32:52 Speaker 05 And, um...
32:55 Speaker 02 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.
33:07 Pablo Torre? This is a hell of a power to have.
33:10 Speaker 02 And that brings us to sort of the darker side, I guess, of what he's, you know, what he's learning and being mentored in at the White House.
33:17 Speaker 05 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.
33:28 Speaker 02 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.
34:01 Speaker 05 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. 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.
34:26 Speaker 02 He had this great line that I'm definitely borrowing someday.
34:28 Speaker 05 We had a saying, whales that surface get harpooned, you know?
34:32 Speaker 02 Interesting.
34:33 Speaker 05 So if you want to do the work, just do the work. I think the loudest people in politics are doing the least.
34:40 Speaker 02 It's a really good line. Shouts to Keith Schiller for having that line. And I think that that helps explain how.
34:52 Speaker 02 Someone like Johnny Mack, 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 look the part, and Johnny checks those boxes.
35:28 Pablo Torre? But in terms of just the mundane, to now get a little more invasive, like, what would Donald Trump and Johnny McIntyre do while just, like, hanging out? Like, what does that look like?
35:39 Speaker 02 You know, I asked, I asked Johnny, I was like, can you just, 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.
35:50 Pablo Torre? This is the, for people who don't know, this is like Hugh Jackman?
35:55 Speaker 02 The Hugh Jackman musical.
35:57 Speaker 06 P.T. Barnum, at your service. I am putting together a show, and I need a star. You want people to laugh at me? Well, I've been laughing anyway, kid, so might as well get paid.
36:10 Speaker 02 Which, you know, it's one of those things where you hear it, 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, duh.
36:20 Pablo Torre? Yeah, okay, now, now, deeply, deeply on the nose.
36:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, but there is this thing of, like, Trump folks being really into, like, musical theater. Like, Johnny was planning to see Moulin Rouge on Broadway for the second time, the night of our interview. He's a big, big, big, big, big fan of Moulin Rouge.
36:35 Pablo Torre? This man contains multitudes.
36:38 Speaker 02 Sure.
36:39 Pablo Torre? When do things get real topsy-turvy for this administration?
36:43 Speaker 02 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, he's just one of the more well-liked guys around the, around the building. What we know from the outside is that the Trump administration is absolute [bleep] 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.
37:19 Speaker 07 He will do a spectacular job, I have no doubt.
37:23 Speaker 02 John Kelly is brought in to bring order and discipline. He's gonna 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 stories about how all these Trump employees were having trouble at the White House getting security clearance because red flags kept going up.
37:48 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
37:50 Speaker 02 It turned out that, 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.
38:02 Speaker 03 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.
38:15 Speaker 02 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 that 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.
38:32 Speaker 05 That is true. I was probably being a little careless, especially the role I was in. You know, I had no business doing that. That was the case, though.
38:41 Pablo Torre? Wait, so when you ask Johnny Mac about the reason he got fired
38:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:49 Pablo Torre? from the job that he loved.
38:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:51 Pablo Torre? His explanation was what specifically, though?
38:54 Speaker 02 Okay, but tell me, what did you get, what did you win? What did you bet correctly on?
38:58 Speaker 05 No, it was, uh, it was playing blackjack and stuff like that.
39:01 Speaker 02 Oh, oh, stuff like, it wasn't like sports gambling or something like that? You're good at blackjack, then?
39:06 Speaker 05 I got on a heater.
39:09 Speaker 02 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 reelection campaign for 2020 issues a press release saying that Johnny MacIntyre 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, this is the period when Trump is growing to hate John Kelly.
39:43 Pablo Torre? Despite the org chart now, in Donald Trump's personal John power rankings, it's clear which one he actually favors.
39:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, John Kelly is at best number two and plummeting fast. In fact, within a year, John Kelly's out of the White House, fired by Donald Trump.
40:02 Speaker 06 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.
40:10 Speaker 02 And Johnny MacIntyre is right back outside the Oval Office, restored to his spot. Only this time, he's not the body man, he's gotten, he's gotten a big promotion.
40:22 Pablo Torre? And his new job, with tail presumably tucked between his legs, is what?
40:27 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, you know, I think this is one of those moments where, again, I'm thinking, ah, man, I've underestimated Johnny MacIntyre again. He comes back bigger and better than ever. It's Johnny MacIntyre 2, 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, under secretaries, you know, top intelligence officials, ambassadors.
41:12 Speaker 02 When you hear someone on the news talk about a person being handpicked by Donald Trump, Johnny was doing the picking. That's the job that he came back to.
41:23 Pablo Torre? Dear God.
41:24 Speaker 02 In 2019.
41:25 Pablo Torre? So Johnny Mac 2 Electric Boogaloo has him picking [bleep] cabinet secretaries and diplomats and, and all sorts of jobs that, by the way... Kind of essential.
41:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, he's, 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, no. The boss doesn't want you to do that. He wants you to do this.
41:55 Pablo Torre? Hmm.
41:55 Speaker 02 Trick shot 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.
42:10 Pablo Torre? He is now throwing a football off the turf and accessing the nuclear football.
42:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, just clunking it right into Iran.
42:20 Pablo Torre? So, so, so, the obvious question.
42:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:24 Pablo Torre? What experience has he had to justify any of this power?
42:29 Speaker 02 Well, I asked him that. Um, I asked him pretty bluntly. Had you ever hired anyone for a job before?
42:35 Speaker 05 No, I had not.
42:36 Speaker 02 So you're walking into this job. Are you ever like, oh, my God, what the hell am I doing?
42:41 Speaker 05 No, I, uh, I had watched this job in my first stint at the White House, and there were a lot of problems with it.
42:47 Speaker 02 Okay.
42:48 Speaker 05 Uh, 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.
43:06 Speaker 02 Sounds like one person that you hired, Andrew Kloster.
43:09 Speaker 05 Yeah.
43:09 Speaker 02 I think his name had a, 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?
43:21 Speaker 05 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.
43:34 Speaker 02 This is around the time when the mainstream media, the political press, starts to get interested in Johnny Mac and T. 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, you know, he's not going to get harpooned.
43:52 Speaker 02 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.
44:15 Pablo Torre? Yeah, non-player characters in the role-playing video game of Trump World.
44:20 Speaker 02 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.
44:30 Pablo Torre? Yes.
44:31 Speaker 02 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 brushed off, "Oh, that's just a left-wing attack." How did you feel about, like, in the more mainstream press?
45:16 Speaker 02 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?
45:25 Speaker 05 It doesn't bother me at all, yeah.
45:28 Speaker 05 I mean, we're there to do a job. If you're super-conservative, they're gonna 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.
45:43 Pablo Torre? So, where was, now I'm deposing you. Where was John McEntee on January 6th?
45:51 Speaker 02 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.
46:01 Pablo Torre? Yeah, stuff like that.
46:02 Speaker 02 And he went over to his apartment to check it out on TV. And then, of course, I asked him what he thought.
46:10 Speaker 05 They were walking through the rope and stanchions. So I don't know if I would call them anything other than curious, enthusiastic people that took things too far. I'm gonna give riot warnings. Gonna try and 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. 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. We've lost the riot. We've lost the riot. I want to be. I just thought, like, whoa, they're really going for it.
46:45 Pablo Torre? Devin, the phrase, wow, they're really going for it.
46:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:51 Pablo Torre? That's like what you would observe about a college football game that you didn't care about.
46:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:57 Pablo Torre? Like, oh, wow, they went for it on fourth down, huh?
46:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:00 Pablo Torre? That's a risk.
47:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's.
47:01 Pablo Torre? What the?
47:02 Speaker 02 How about that?
47:04 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, OK, so I'll just say this as, as my bull detector is, I believe, just like deafening in my own head. Um, 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.
47:27 Speaker 02 And, and he didn't get indicted, so.
47:29 Pablo Torre? Precisely.
47:30 Speaker 02 So, you know, there's either, there, there's a couple of explanations there, which is, one, he's telling the truth. Uh, number two, he's lying for some reason. Number three is that he's turned on Donald Trump.
47:47 Pablo Torre? Hell of a plot twist.
47:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:49 Pablo Torre? And it begs another question.
47:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:52 Pablo Torre? Which is like, uh, so what is Johnny McEntee doing now?
47:58 Speaker 02 The short answer is that he, uh, created an app. Johnny started a right-wing dating app, uh, 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.
48:18 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
48:19 Speaker 02 I followed, uh, The Right Stuff on Instagram and I, and I slid into their DMs.
48:26 Speaker 02 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.
48:39 Pablo Torre? Which is all to say that Johnny Mac, true to his origin story, is [bleep] in answering the emails
48:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:46 Pablo Torre? that you might suspect that people are too good for.
48:49 Speaker 02 Exactly. He's the CEO and he's the social media director and he's also a client.
48:56 Pablo Torre? So you got to explain what this, like, how does a right-wing dating app, like, work?
49:05 Speaker 02 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.
49:22 Speaker 05 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?
49:32 Speaker 02 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.
49:53 Pablo Torre? So how have the other apps been getting too woke? Like, what's going on with them?
49:57 Speaker 05 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.
50:09 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
50:09 Speaker 05 Not to mention conservatives can't be themselves openly because of the hostility we face. So we're putting everyone in one place.
50:15 Pablo Torre? Man who was hiring ambassadors and cabinet secretaries. His screening process for- Conservative singles is what?
50:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, so in order to join the app and sign up, you go through a questionnaire
50:32 Speaker 02 that sort of susses out your beliefs, your alignment with other people. Basically, it's to weed out the libs.
50:39 Pablo Torre? And the survey portion of the registration process entails what sorts of questions?
50:44 Speaker 02 My favorite Bible verse, of course.
50:46 Pablo Torre? Of course.
50:47 Speaker 02 That's a good opener.
50:48 Pablo Torre? Love that one.
50:49 Speaker 02 A random fact I love about America is... There's a lot of finish this sentence kind of things. And my favorite of this variety is January 6th was... There's a lot of finish this sentence kind of things. And my favorite of this variety is January 6th was... It is perfect.
51:13 Speaker 02 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.
51:41 Speaker 02 But if you want a more mainstream one,
51:45 Speaker 02 that's controversial. Diversity is our strength. Okay. Yeah. That's a liberal lie? 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 redrawn.
52:21 Pablo Torre? We like original recipe, America.
52:23 Speaker 02 Yes, yes, yes.
52:26 Pablo Torre? Well, Devin, it just... The vibe I get from your reporting at the end here is that Johnny McEntee
52:28 Pablo Torre? 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,
52:33 Pablo Torre? really matters.
52:35 Pablo Torre? except for the fact that...
52:36 Speaker 02 He actually has a second job, sort of a side job, in this thing called Project 2025, which he is 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 Moulin Rouge on the 48th, I believe, of 50 first dates. It's the same guy. These are his two jobs.
53:20 Speaker 02 And in some ways, that's perfectly fitting who Johnny McEntee is.
53:25 Pablo Torre? It really is. It 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.
53:55 Speaker 02 There were several times, over the course of my interview with him, where I thought, is this guy gonna be president?
54:05 Pablo Torre? Yes. I mean, why not at this point?
54:10 Speaker 02 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.
54:18 Speaker 05 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.
54:32 Speaker 02 It certainly seems like Trump would want him there.
54:36 Speaker 02 And by the way he describes it, it's pretty hard to resist the glamour of it.
54:42 Pablo Torre? 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."
54:55 Speaker 02 Really?
54:55 Pablo Torre? 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.
55:02 Speaker 02 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...
55:18 Pablo Torre? Yes.
55:19 Speaker 02 And all of these things.
55:20 Pablo Torre? Like service.
55:21 Speaker 02 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.
55:30 Pablo Torre? No, it's a remarkable bluntness.
55:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:33 Pablo Torre? That feels like honesty. It's the inverse of the JFK quote.
55:38 Speaker 02 Yes.
55:39 Pablo Torre? He's literally asking, "What can my country do for me?"
55:42 Speaker 02 Yes.
55:43 Pablo Torre? Make me feel [bleep] cool.
55:44 Speaker 02 Ryan, I'm a chopper.
55:47 Pablo Torre? Devin Gordon, thank you for sending a chill up my spine.
55:53 Speaker 02 Happy to do it.
56:09 Pablo Torre? So what I found out today is that if you wanted to make the ultimate Trump world character, you could not do better than trick-shot Johnny Mac.
56:23 Pablo Torre? A self-made YouTube star, before those even really existed, who used everything he learned while being repeatedly sacked at UConn
56:34 Pablo Torre? 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,
56:48 Pablo Torre? while secretly never leaving Donald Trump's innermost circle this entire time,
56:56 Pablo Torre? 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.
57:13 Pablo Torre? In fact, the greatest trick that Johnny Mac ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist.
57:36 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.
57:42 Pablo Torre? And I'll talk to you next time.
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