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.[8][9][10][11] After leaving the
White House, McEntee founded
The Right Stuff, a dating app for conservatives, which he leads as CEO. Through his promotion of the app on TikTok and Instagram, McEntee has become a social media star, having amassed millions of followers to his social media handle "@DateRightStuff". [12][13][14]
McEntee was a
redshirt his first year at the
University of Connecticut, and completed his communications degree in the spring of his senior year.[18] He played
college football for the
Huskies, but was used sparingly in his first two seasons.[19] McEntee would be named the starting quarterback during the
2011 season, after a strong performance against
Buffalo.[20] In the next game against
Western Michigan, he recorded his season and career-high, after throwing for 300 yards and four touchdowns.[21] 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.[22]
Career
In 2015, McEntee worked as a production assistant for
Fox News, focusing on the channel's
social media accounts.[15] He successfully lobbied for a job on the
Trump campaign, joining as a volunteer in July of that year, later being promoted to a full-time position as trip director.[23] McEntee was responsible for executing the campaign's rallies while traveling with the candidate and coordinating the campaign's travel for all staff.[citation needed]
After
Donald Trump won the
2016 election, McEntee was asked to join his staff as an aide, serving as his
body man.[5] 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) were the most trending hashtags in the country.[24]
McEntee's service in the
White House ended on March 13, 2018, when he was fired due to an "unspecified security issue" that was later revealed to be an issue related to gambling. [25][26][27]
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, where he shared some of his former duties with Nick Luna, the Director of
Oval Office Operations.[28] Shortly after his return, McEntee was then promoted to Director of the
White House Presidential Personnel Office,[9] the role 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.[27][29][30][31] His reappointment was controversial given the circumstances of his dismissal.[32][10][11][33] On November 9, 2021, McEntee was issued a subpoena to testify by the House
January 6th Committee.[34] On two occasions in 2022, he appeared before the committee in a taped deposition,[35][36] before returning in person in January 2023.[37]
McEntee has developed a loyal following with the Republican Party base for his actions within the Trump Administration. Right wing media outlet Revolver News has described McEntee as "one of the very few who truly believed in and was willing to fight for the agenda Trump ran on in 2016." Breitbart News has gone into detail about how McEntee "fought back against the efforts of establishment Republicans and permanent bureaucrats to sabotage the Trump presidency". McEntee is often credited with purging the neocons from the senior ranks of the Pentagon and installing realist Christopher Miller as Acting Secretary of Defense and Colonel Douglas Macgregor as Senior Advisor to the Secretary. McEntee's subsequent attempt to engineer a military withdrawal from Afghanistan in order to fulfill Trump's campaign promise was thwarted by other officials, though McEntee was able to get the Pentagon to withdraw 700 troops from Somalia. [38][39][40]
McEntee also used his position to take on big tech companies. In 2020, he appointed Adam Candeub to lead the National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the Department of Commerce. Candeub would go on to lead the effort to have the FCC use its rulemaking powers to stop social media censorship of conservatives. [41] McEntee also withdrew the nomination of FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly after he criticized President Trump's Executive Order on combatting big tech censorship. McEntee replaced O'Rielly with Commissioner Nathan Simington. [42]
McEntee also 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, which McEntee claimed "proves that the VP has, at a minimum, a substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process."[8] In a piece about McEntee, journalist
Jonathan Karl characterized the analysis as "absurd" because "Jefferson didn't discard electoral votes, as Trump wanted Pence to do. He accepted electoral votes from a state that nobody had questioned he had won."[43]
In 2021, McEntee met with
Peter Thiel to pitch him on several tech startup ideas, one of which was the idea for a conservative dating app called
The Right Stuff. Thiel agreed to fund The Right Stuff and subsequently made a seed round investment of $1.5 million. The app launched on September 30, 2022.[44]
In May 2023, it was announced that McEntee was joining
The Heritage Foundation's
Project 2025 as a senior advisor.[45] Described by the New York Times as "one of Trump's most trusted aides", McEntee's association with Project 2025 serves as the main link between the Heritage Foundation and former President Trump. The New York Times has reported that his role includes working as "part of a team searching for potential lawyers" for Trump's next Administration. [46]
ABC News correspondent
Jonathan Karl wrote in November 2023 that in the closing weeks of the Trump presidency McEntee worked with
Douglas Macgregor to draft a brief document ordering swift withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan and Somalia. The president signed it and it was forwarded to
Kash Patel at the Pentagon without any review by the legal, military or national security apparatus, nor it being recorded by Derek Lyons, the White House staff secretary responsible for filing and transmitting official presidential orders. After acting defense secretary
Christopher Miller and Joint Chiefs chairman
Mark Milley went to the White House to inquire about the order, it was rescinded.[47]
In popular culture
In 2011, while he was a college football player, McEntee appeared in a viral
YouTube video that featured him throwing football trickshots.[7][15] The video was later featured on
CNN.[48]
In May 2024 he posted a satirical video to
TikTok claiming that he deliberately gives homeless people movie prop currency hoping they will be arrested for using
counterfeit money when they try to use it. McEntee wrote in the caption of the video "Just a joke. Everyone calm down". [49]
McEntee has become popular on TikTok and Instagram Reels through his account @DateRightStuff where he posts satirical videos to promote his dating app, The Right Stuff. Outlets have noted that given McEntee's relationship with former President Trump and his involvement with Project 2025, Trump could end up appointing a "TikToker" to one of the most powerful positions in government if he wins again. [50][51]
McEntee has made several media appearances where he defends TikTok from Republican efforts to ban the platform. He has ridiculed Republicans as "such nerds" for their attacks against TikTok and said the real reason TikTok is getting banned is because it's information the "uniparty" in Washington can't control. McEntee has debated multiple TV hosts on whether TikTok should be banned, pointing out that TikTok has satisfied concerns about data security and rebutting false claims about the Chinese government pushing content on TikTok's algorithm. [52][53][54]