Donald Trump's Secret Weapon Is a Quarterback

Speaker 1 Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 1 One of his duties was like he literally walked Trump up the stairs to the White House private quarters at night.

Speaker 8 So, like, other than Melania's stunt double, he was the last person to see Donald Trump every night.

Speaker 1 Right after this ad.

Speaker 9 You're listening to DraftKings Network.

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Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Miami's only a three-hour flight. They're debuting like new heat culture jerseys and a court.
It's incredible, dude. Those are disgusting.
All of it is just horrible.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 11 Former President Donald Trump has taken the stand in his civil fraud trial in New York City.

Speaker 11 The judge presiding over the case has already found the Trumps fraudulently inflated the value of their assets to obtain favorable loans.

Speaker 12 Donald Trump has been on the witness stand about an hour now, and already the judge has had to warn him him not to make speeches and just to answer the questions.

Speaker 13 It's a very sad situation for our country. We shouldn't have this.
This is for third world countries.

Speaker 1 This is a legitimately unprecedented political moment in a decade full of them.

Speaker 1 We have the former president of the United States on the witness stand in a quarter billion dollar civil suit, a fraud trial.

Speaker 1 And yeah, the Attorney General of New York is prosecuting him and his family and his entire empire. Isn't Trump like also facing like 100 other criminal charges? Yeah, 91 actually.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 in the presidential election a year from now. Dude, Donald Trump might get reelected as president from jail.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Like that could happen.

Speaker 1 actually might. We need to reckon with this.
And it would be the most absurd magic trick, I think, in American political history.

Speaker 15 Objectively, it is nuts.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 17 What's up? This is Johnny McIntyre representing UConn Football. Trick Shot video.

Speaker 1 The hell was that?

Speaker 14 Why did you waste my time with that?

Speaker 15 What was that?

Speaker 1 This I'm not familiar with that. You've never seen Trick Shot Johnny Mac.
No. This video was one of the first viral YouTube videos I ever remember seeing.
It was from 2011, and this was before

Speaker 1 Dude Perfect. I am.

Speaker 1 as an elder millennial, Johnny McIntyre was the guy who came before all of these TikToks, all of these YouTube videos about people throwing like shit into basketball hoops and garbage cans and throwing like footballs blindfolded.

Speaker 1 Johnny McIntyre, that UConn quarterback we just saw, was an early internet celebrity. And this was, yeah, a dozen years ago.

Speaker 15 Fair enough. Why does Election Day remind you of him?

Speaker 1 Because last month, okay, I was reading an article about all of all the Trump s

Speaker 1 in puck.

Speaker 1 And the article was about all the people who are already planning to staff the next Trump administration.

Speaker 1 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 McIntye.

Speaker 1 as senior advisor. He was one of Trump's closest confidants and still is.

Speaker 1 Okay, so hold on.

Speaker 15 How did this guy go from like trickshot QB guy to like a weapon for Trump, actually?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 this is the question that I have been wanting to find out about. And to my genuine shock, okay,

Speaker 1 trickshot Johnny Mac, secret weapon of the Trump administration, one of the most powerful people in Trump world that most people don't know anything about.

Speaker 1 actually agreed to sit down for an in-depth interview with a very special Pablo Torre finds out correspondent. Great.

Speaker 1 And that's after the break. Let's do it.

Speaker 1 If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Ramy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Speaker 1 This smooth, smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Speaker 1 Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

Speaker 1 So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Speaker 1 Learn more at remymartin.com. Remy Martin Cognac, Veeen Champain, afforded to alcohol by volume, reported by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated in York, New York, 1738, Centaur design.

Speaker 1 Please drink responsibly.

Speaker 1 Devin Gordon, are you

Speaker 1 a little offended that I gave you this assignment?

Speaker 20 I love this guy. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 10 I don't love this guy.

Speaker 21 Oh my God, I already have to start over.

Speaker 1 No, we're keeping this in. This is the tension, Devin Gordon, journalist, magazine writer, one of my favorite writers.
Thanks.

Speaker 1 Who's written for The Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, GQ, ESP, and Vanity Fair. I gave you this assignment that is on a couple of levels kind of beneath you.

Speaker 1 You've interviewed like Nikki Minaj and Jon Stewart. You've interviewed Grimes.
Yeah. Devin.
Yeah. And I said, hey, this Johnny McIntye guy.

Speaker 23 Yeah, but you know, you also sent me to explore a mysterious Trump associate who somehow blossomed into his right-hand man.

Speaker 21 Of all the people I profiled, he has one of the more unique arcs of anyone I've ever covered.

Speaker 1 So just describe, Devin, if you could, Mr. Magazine writer, if you have not seen or heard Johnny Mack yet, what is he like?

Speaker 28 I think if you're trying to get a basic sense of him, close your eyes and picture an all-American quarterback.

Speaker 29 You are picturing Johnny Mack.

Speaker 30 I mean, for starters, he's

Speaker 3 really dreamy.

Speaker 3 He is as gorgeous as your Calves.

Speaker 1 Let's put it that way.

Speaker 31 And

Speaker 22 really sculpted.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 6 He's very handsome. He's kind of like Apparatchic Ken, you know, kind of like Ken doll in that kind of way.

Speaker 1 But he's also very, like, he's super easy in his own skin.

Speaker 10 I mean, he showed up wearing like shorts and sneakers.

Speaker 34 He looked like he'd come from the driving range.

Speaker 17 As I've gotten older, I introduced myself as John. Right.
Anyone that knew me young, of course, calls me Johnny. Of course, my family calls me Johnny.
The president calls me Johnny.

Speaker 21 You know, he arrived alone.

Speaker 36 You know, there was no hair and makeup.

Speaker 33 He didn't look in the mirror.

Speaker 23 He just rolls out of bed like this.

Speaker 36 He was very friendly.

Speaker 1 He is instantly likable.

Speaker 29 Like I could,

Speaker 37 in some basic way, I could very quickly see why

Speaker 38 people liked having him around.

Speaker 1 Right, right, right, right. So in terms of where he came from, what's his actual human birthplace?

Speaker 6 Well, I mean, if you walk back from that, it's probably not so surprising, right?

Speaker 24 He's a classic affluent white kid from Orange County,

Speaker 23 which means he's conservative. He's Republican.

Speaker 20 He was the star quarterback at an elite private school called Servite High.

Speaker 36 You know this guy. You've pictured this guy.
You've seen this guy.

Speaker 33 But he was never under any illusions that he was going to go play in the NFL.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he started something.

Speaker 42 Second level. Net here.

Speaker 17 Mark, move it back 10 yards.

Speaker 1 He starts doing the trick shot stuff because why?

Speaker 10 There was apparently a trick shot predecessor that of course deserves the real credit, right?

Speaker 10 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

Speaker 28 UConn women's basketball team.

Speaker 1 I did not know any of this.

Speaker 17 There's a viral video on campus. Everyone's going crazy.
It gets 200,000 views.

Speaker 17 It's a women's basketball player who I was friends with, and she's doing all these cool trick shots around campus, basically.

Speaker 17 And one of my buddies, not a football player, he's like, you need to do a football version of this.

Speaker 44 So Johnny and a couple of his buddies who knew that he had this sort of trick shot proficiency

Speaker 28 decided to sort of make a spoof video of their own as sort of an answer to it.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And me and two guys just went around and did that all day.

Speaker 42 The biggest thing with quarterbacks is if they can make all the throws. So I'm going to try to do it.

Speaker 17 Blindfold.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 1 But this is where also Johnny McIntyre gets, it seems like his first taste, I presume, of like cable news juice.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 47 For this kid, it's like shooting footballs in a barrel

Speaker 47 or in a basket.

Speaker 47 His name is Johnny McEntee, second string quarterback at the University of Connecticut, presenting his trick shot video. That's now gone viral.

Speaker 33 You know, it got like 7 million views, which doesn't sound like a lot now.

Speaker 1 Oh, with inflation adjusted. Yeah, that's like that.
Like in 2011, that was like the whole internet. Correct?

Speaker 6 Yeah. Everyone saw this video.

Speaker 1 But Johnny McIntyre, young Johnny McIntyre at UConn in that locker room, what was his,

Speaker 1 what was, what was his rep? What was he like as just a dude?

Speaker 49 So he's described in a lot of clips about that time in his life as a teetotaler,

Speaker 23 occasionally just referenced as the designated driver, didn't drink.

Speaker 45 He defies some of the stereotypes we have of those kinds of rowdy Division I quarterback, Trumpy guys by being quite disciplined, it seems.

Speaker 1 And so if I'm to look at

Speaker 1 the back of his football card, what do the actual numbers say about him?

Speaker 35 A little over 2,000 yards passing in 12 games, 12 touchdowns and interceptions.

Speaker 23 My favorite stat, though, is that he rushed for minus 148 yards in this season, which means he got sacked a lot.

Speaker 1 How do we go from that ground game to the Trump ground game?

Speaker 17 That last year when I wasn't playing was the 2012 Romney Obama election.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I'm from a conservative area.

Speaker 17 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 to get into politics.
I can tell.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 49 Yes. She saw something in him.

Speaker 31 And

Speaker 50 this sort of new path through politics that obviously leads him to Donald Trump, who of course

Speaker 36 is famous for ripping up the entire rule book about how you do this.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 this is your future?

Speaker 33 Well, so he goes to New York and he's, you know, sleeping on couches, not really sure what he's going to do.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I got an entry-level job. I was working on the digital team.

Speaker 23 He had referenced that, that maybe he would have been better off on the TV side. And for the record, I agree,

Speaker 46 having gazed into his eyes for about an hour.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 7 Wow. Whoa.

Speaker 52 That is some group of people. Thousands.

Speaker 17 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 is a guy's a clown.
He has no chance.

Speaker 17 It's the most momentous announcement you can make in your entire career.

Speaker 1 You're like, I want to commute on an escalator.

Speaker 17 It had the total opposite effect on me. I thought he had a great chance and I knew I wanted to work for him.

Speaker 1 Why do you think you had the total opposite reaction?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 53 When do we beat Mexico at the border?

Speaker 52 They're laughing at us, at our stupidity.

Speaker 53 And now they're beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me.

Speaker 10 This is like refreshing.

Speaker 17 Like people are going to gravitate to this like I was. And

Speaker 17 not to mention the celebrity and the anti-political correctness.

Speaker 53 Because I don't need anybody's money. It's nice.
I don't need anybody's money.

Speaker 53 I'm using my own money. I'm not using the lobbyists.
I'm not using donors. I don't care.

Speaker 52 I'm really rich.

Speaker 17 I'll show you that in a second. I just, yeah, I was just gravitating towards him.
I knew I wanted to be part of it.

Speaker 33 And then he goes to that and he's just

Speaker 54 dumbstruck with this sense that I've got to go work for this guy.

Speaker 30 This is the guy.

Speaker 1 What does he set out? to do that gets him in the door.

Speaker 7 He's going to go get a job with the Trump campaign come hell or high water.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 1 And they responded to this one.

Speaker 50 And they said, okay, come work for us.

Speaker 28 One of the three people who was working on the campaign finally checked the inbox and said, all right, sure.

Speaker 17 I quit my job at Fox. I showed up as a volunteer and worked my way up from there.

Speaker 50 I think he's even assuming this isn't going to go anywhere.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And he walked in. He had his notebook.
And I was just like, oh my God, there he is.

Speaker 25 And we all know where that.

Speaker 54 led over the course of the year, it starts to get realer and realer and realer.

Speaker 1 God, that's, that's unnerving.

Speaker 19 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 16 what's, to me,

Speaker 27 unnerving and

Speaker 23 sort of makes you think twice about him is that he saw it.

Speaker 1 Well, it's a little on the nose now that you frame it that way, that the first viral trick shot quarterback saw...

Speaker 1 saw how to get this thing exactly where he wants it in a way that most people couldn't. Yeah, it was one of the more, you know, the trick-shot viral presidential campaign moments, right?

Speaker 46 Where it just, you know, he pulls this move that everybody thinks is crazy and it works.

Speaker 4 It works.

Speaker 1 What's his job? What does he do when he's actually in the door? I mean, he's starting out at the very bottom.

Speaker 17 The first almost year I worked on the campaign, I was a gopher. I was running around.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 But he very quickly uh ascends the ladder going up the golden escalator up the golden escalator yes um really quickly um 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 a relationship still not that close although i was traveling with him 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.

Speaker 17 You know, I like,

Speaker 17 I don't think I get frazzled.

Speaker 17 He probably liked that. I know he liked central casting.
He probably thought I looked the part of what an age should look like.

Speaker 19 Trump liked that, that he looked the part.

Speaker 29 And I remember thinking, like, this is the only person I've ever.

Speaker 46 heard describe themselves as out of central casting

Speaker 3 and and be totally fine with it like not be like you know a little bit insulted um but be glad to to just look the part as look like someone who should have the job of standing next to Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not the most diverse cast. No, I mean, I would dare say.

Speaker 27 No, I mean, when, if you're thinking of the words, the phrase central casting and what does Trump picture?

Speaker 6 What does Donald Trump picture when he says central casting?

Speaker 25 I think we all know what we're looking at.

Speaker 1 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. Yeah, it's like Republican Barbie and Ken.

Speaker 16 Yes. Right.

Speaker 31 That's what we're picturing. And

Speaker 7 Johnny McIntyre very enthusiastically

Speaker 16 describes himself as fitting that part right out of central casting.

Speaker 36 And, you know, that was an interesting insight into the unreflectiveness, I think, of the Trump experience.

Speaker 46 It's just sort of not even questioning what central casting is and why central casting is generally considered problematic.

Speaker 1 So, Devin, what I have in front of me, thanks to you, is this fable,

Speaker 1 this fable of modern American politics.

Speaker 1 We have the former UConn 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.

Speaker 1 Despite his virality and his central casting effect,

Speaker 1 he knew

Speaker 1 not to be the face of things, that he wasn't actually there to be the star quarterback. He was there to be what?

Speaker 23 He has this sense now that his job is to be completely in the background and that that's the way to

Speaker 5 get ahead and make himself useful, ascend the escalator of the Trump campaign experience.

Speaker 17 He likes anyone that will do their job, do it quietly. You know, there's only one star of the show.

Speaker 17 That's a lot of the reason why I never got into social media.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 1 But that is something that I didn't infer based on all of the traits that we've been describing. This central casting character who is like in his mind, like viral quarterback.
He is not there.

Speaker 1 He seems to know this very, very immediately. He's not there to be the star or the face of this, obviously.

Speaker 16 It reminds me of the dual role of a quarterback, right?

Speaker 22 There is this sort of

Speaker 4 icon of a quarterback as being at the center of the huddle, leading the team.

Speaker 2 Prom king, charisma machine.

Speaker 19 Everybody's looking to him.

Speaker 22 But there's another job of the quarterback, which is to do whatever the head coach says, be very deferential.

Speaker 29 be loyal, execute the game plan, follow instructions.

Speaker 23 And Johnny is, it turns out, equally good at that and especially proficient at knowing the right time for each of those jobs.

Speaker 50 He immediately slips into this role where he's doing everything and anything that Trump needs to the point where eventually,

Speaker 46 you know, when we're in the White House, he's got a desk right outside the Oval Office.

Speaker 5 He's with the president morning, noon, and night.

Speaker 23 He's by his side wherever he goes. He's on Air Force One.

Speaker 6 He's at Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 10 He's waiting outside the bathroom with the golden toilet.

Speaker 44 He's the guy.

Speaker 50 And his job becomes Trump's body man.

Speaker 17 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, it's called the body man.
He travels with him.

Speaker 17 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. I could be that.

Speaker 14 This was a huge job that he had ascended to because

Speaker 10 you're kind of like the president's butler. It's much more than a gopher, even if it does have,

Speaker 36 you know, a lot of gopher responsibilities.

Speaker 1 But the proximity to power is physically, it's literally unrivaled.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 8 So like other than Melania's stunt double, he was the last person to see Donald Trump every night.

Speaker 1 But now I have questions. I have many, many questions about

Speaker 1 what the life of Donald Trump is like behind these closed doors. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Give me Trump's KFC order.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 28 Are we original, crispy?

Speaker 1 Yeah, original. Original.
Yep.

Speaker 23 According to Johnny, Trump was very particular about getting a bucket that everyone shared because he was a man of the people.

Speaker 1 Of course.

Speaker 27 Preferred original recipe.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 1 Make Kentucky Fried Chicken great again.

Speaker 21 For the American people.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 44 He was trusted with with the fast food order.

Speaker 1 But that's sort of the light side of things.

Speaker 35 Like one thing that he told me that I thought was really funny was that he mastered

Speaker 48 the ability to forge Donald Trump's signature.

Speaker 1 Wait, what? Which is a federal crime. I was going to point that out, by the way.

Speaker 55 I think.

Speaker 36 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.

Speaker 23 So he's just, you going around the West Wing leaving federal crimes on people's desks.

Speaker 19 And so we had him actually, you know, we wanted to check it out.

Speaker 46 And so after the interview, we actually had him sign a piece of paper as Donald Trump.

Speaker 8 And it was bang on.

Speaker 7 It was conviction level.

Speaker 1 This is a hell of a power to have.

Speaker 54 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.

Speaker 17 When we got into the White House, his longtime aide, Keith Schiller, really took me under his wing.

Speaker 17 And then

Speaker 17 Keith and I worked together for the first six months of the administration.

Speaker 2 This guy is Trump's chief security guard from way back.

Speaker 16 This is the guy who knows everything about Donald Trump.

Speaker 22 He knows, proverbially speaking, where all the bodies are buried because he buried them.

Speaker 33 You know, pretty soon Keith isn't in the White House for very long.

Speaker 46 He leaves and sort of slips back into the shadows.

Speaker 2 And in a lot of ways, Johnny kind of fills some of those voids and becomes, you know, Chump's, he would very quickly become a guy known as Trump's chief enforcer.

Speaker 17 I just learned, you know, how to act around the boss. That's what we call the president.
And

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 28 He had this great line that I'm definitely borrowing someday.

Speaker 17 We had a saying, whales that surface get harpooned.

Speaker 28 You know, interesting.

Speaker 17 So if you want to do the work, just do the work.

Speaker 17 I think the loudest people in politics are doing the least.

Speaker 36 That's a really good line.

Speaker 23 Shouts to Keith Schiller for having that line.

Speaker 1 And I think that that helps explain

Speaker 8 how

Speaker 48 someone like Johnny Mack, 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.

Speaker 43 not to be that guy,

Speaker 29 when it's time to not surface and let the other people be the whales who get harpooned.

Speaker 7 And we know how much Trump likes absolute loyalty.

Speaker 23 And we know how much he likes people who look the part.

Speaker 43 And Johnny checks those boxes.

Speaker 1 But in terms of just the mundane to now get a little more invasive, like what would Donald Trump and Johnny McIntye do while just like hanging out? Like, what does that look like?

Speaker 29 You know, I asked.

Speaker 1 I asked Johnny, I was like,

Speaker 23 is there a TV show he liked, a movie, something like that?

Speaker 19 And Johnny was like, he really liked the greatest showman.

Speaker 1 This is the, for people who don't know, this is like Hugh Jackman, the Hugh Jackman musical.

Speaker 46 P.T.

Speaker 3 Barnum, at your service.

Speaker 17 I am putting together a show, and I need a star.

Speaker 46 You want people to laugh at me. Well, I've been laughing anyway, kids, so might as well get paid.

Speaker 48 Which, you know, it's one of those things where you hear it and you're like, Trump liked the greatest showman.

Speaker 7 And then you hear Johnny's explanation, which is that Trump really liked P.T.

Speaker 23 Barnum.

Speaker 6 And you're like, oh, dude.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
Now, now

Speaker 1 deeply on the nose. Yeah.

Speaker 33 But there is this thing of like Trump folks being really into like musical theater.

Speaker 23 Like Johnny was planning to see Mulan Rouge on Broadway for the second time.

Speaker 36 Okay.

Speaker 29 The night of our interview. He's a big, big, big, big, big fan of Mulan Rouge.

Speaker 1 This man

Speaker 1 contains multitudes.

Speaker 54 Sure.

Speaker 1 When did things get real topsy-turvy for this administration?

Speaker 7 We're getting into 2017, early 2018.

Speaker 39 We're about a year, a year and a half into the administration.

Speaker 36 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 building.

Speaker 36 What we know from the outside is that the Trump administration is absolute chaos, right?

Speaker 54 People stabbing each other in the back, leaks everywhere.

Speaker 3 And a man named John Kelly is brought in as Trump's chief of staff.

Speaker 17 He will do a spectacular job, I have no doubt.

Speaker 43 John Kelly is brought in to bring order and discipline.

Speaker 39 He's going to be the adult in the room.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 43 And one of his top targets is Johnny McIntyre.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 34 It turned out that a lot of these hooligans that Trump was hiring out of God knows where had problems getting security clearances for very simple reasons.

Speaker 38 Well, very conveniently for this new chief of staff, John Kelly, a red flag went up on Johnny.

Speaker 9 And another firing, President Trump's longtime personal aide, John McEntee, is out of his job.

Speaker 9 A source says McIntye was fired because he is under investigation for serious issues related to gambling and taxes.

Speaker 23 When there were stories starting to be written about why Johnny McIntyre was on shaky footing footing in the White House, I assumed it was because he had a gambling problem and that there were big gambling losses.

Speaker 24 It turns out that rather large sums of money were appearing in his bank account and they were due to gambling winnings, he said.

Speaker 17 That is true. I was probably being a little careless, especially the role I was in.
You know, I had no business doing that.

Speaker 17 That was the case, though.

Speaker 1 Wait, so when you ask Johnny Mac about the reason he got fired from the job that he loved.

Speaker 1 His explanation was what specifically, though.

Speaker 14 Okay, but tell me, what did you get? What did you win?

Speaker 14 What did you bet correctly on?

Speaker 17 No,

Speaker 17 it was playing blackjack and stuff like that.

Speaker 24 Oh, oh, stuff like that.

Speaker 10 It wasn't like sports cowboy or something like that.

Speaker 14 You're good at blackjack then.

Speaker 17 It got on a heater.

Speaker 24 This is the low moment, the demise of Johnny Mack, and what we would assume would be the end of the Johnny Mac story, right?

Speaker 46 He's getting escorted out. He's crashed and and burned.

Speaker 7 But within hours, the Trump re-election campaign for 2020 issues a press release saying that Johnny McIntye has been hired by the Trump campaign, which

Speaker 24 sort of lets you know what the boss thought of Johnny's firing.

Speaker 7 This was clearly not something that made him happy.

Speaker 23 This is the period when Trump is growing to hate John Kelly.

Speaker 1 Despite the org chart now in Donald Trump's personal John power rankings, it's clear which one he actually favors.

Speaker 23 Yeah, John Kelly is at best number two and plummeting fast.

Speaker 22 In fact, within a year, John Kelly's out of the White House, fired by Donald Trump.

Speaker 57 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.

Speaker 44 And Johnny McIntyre is right back outside the Oval Office, restored to his spot.

Speaker 49 Only this time, he's not the body man.

Speaker 24 He's gotten

Speaker 29 a big promotion.

Speaker 1 And his new job with tail presumably tucked between his legs is what?

Speaker 26 Well, I mean, you know, I think this is one of those moments where,

Speaker 26 again,

Speaker 2 I'm thinking,

Speaker 7 man, I've underestimated Johnny McIntye again.

Speaker 36 He comes back bigger and better than ever.

Speaker 7 It's Johnny McIntye.

Speaker 1 2, the sequel, right?

Speaker 43 His new job is a job that I didn't even know it existed, but it's a really big one.

Speaker 28 He is the director of the presidential personnel office.

Speaker 36 Turns out to be one of those incredibly important, incredibly influential jobs in the federal government.

Speaker 14 And what he's basically doing is he's choosing the people who become cabinet secretaries, you know, undersecretaries,

Speaker 33 you know, top intelligence officials, ambassadors.

Speaker 23 When you hear someone on the news talk about a person being handpicked by Donald Trump, Johnny was doing the picking.

Speaker 43 That's the job that he came back to

Speaker 23 in 2019.

Speaker 1 So Johnny Mack II, Electric Boogaloo, has him picking

Speaker 1 cabinet secretaries and diplomats and all sorts of jobs that, by the way,

Speaker 1 kind of essential. Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 48 he's helping Trump execute his foreign policy.

Speaker 54 So

Speaker 2 he's the one like calling the Secretary of Defense and saying, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 45 The boss doesn't want you to do that. He wants you to do this.

Speaker 29 Trickshot Johnny Mack, the guy who

Speaker 36 less than a decade earlier was bouncing footballs off the turf into a door to open it from 50 yards away is now

Speaker 23 you know, executing American foreign policy.

Speaker 1 He is now throwing a football off the turf and accessing the nuclear football.

Speaker 19 Yeah, just clunking it right into Iran.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the obvious question. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What experience has he had to justify any of this power? Well, I asked him that.

Speaker 1 I asked him pretty bluntly, had you ever hired anyone for a job before?

Speaker 17 No, I had not.

Speaker 14 So you're walking into this job.

Speaker 1 Are you ever like, oh my God, what the hell am I doing?

Speaker 17 No,

Speaker 17 I had watched this job in my first stint at the White House, and there were a lot of problems with it. And,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So I was actually pretty confident that I could do it.

Speaker 28 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,

Speaker 24 he said, you can learn policy, you can't learn loyalty.

Speaker 10 Does that sort of drive what you were sort of looking for in a lot of ways?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 We might have had the competency with certain appointees, but we didn't have the alignment. And that just doesn't work.

Speaker 7 This is around the time when the mainstream media, the political press, starts to get interested in Johnny McIntyre.

Speaker 23 There start to become some stories about him.

Speaker 29 And it's noteworthy that he's not quoted in any of them. He's never on TV.
He's, you know, know, he's not going to get harpooned.

Speaker 23 But he starts being referred to in the media as Trump's enforcer, even a shadow president.

Speaker 39 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.

Speaker 23 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,

Speaker 44 but not really doing anything.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 16 And this is an article about Johnny McIntye.

Speaker 28 Yes.

Speaker 33 And look, I don't, 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 24 And of course, I asked him about that and he very

Speaker 23 quickly and

Speaker 46 politely and unruffled brushed off as, oh, that's just

Speaker 28 a left-wing attack. How did you feel about like in the sort of more mainstream press?

Speaker 24 They're quoting people in the office where you're working in as describing as like the Stasi or the Gestapo.

Speaker 41 How did you feel about being called that?

Speaker 17 That doesn't bother me at all. Yeah.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 1 So, where was not the, now I'm deposing you, where was John McIntyre on January 6th?

Speaker 31 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, stuff like that.

Speaker 29 And he went over to his apartment to check it out on TV.

Speaker 10 And then, of course, I asked him what he thought.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 1 I just thought, like, whoa, they're really going for it. Devin, the phrase, wow, they're really going for it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 49 Huh?

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's a risk.
Yeah, that's. What the f? How about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, okay, so I'll just say this as my bull detector is, I believe, just like. deafening in my own head.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 19 And he didn't get indicted.

Speaker 14 So precisely. So,

Speaker 1 you know, there's either there, there's a couple of explanations there, which is one, he's telling the truth.

Speaker 6 Number two, he's lying for some reason.

Speaker 28 Number three is that he's turned on Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 Hell of a plot twist. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it begs another question,

Speaker 1 which is like,

Speaker 1 so what is Johnny McIntye doing now?

Speaker 14 The short answer is that he

Speaker 35 created an app. Johnny started a right-wing dating app called The Right Stuff.

Speaker 29 It is an app for conservative singles.

Speaker 1 In fact, the way I located Johnny Mac and set up our interview was

Speaker 51 I

Speaker 26 followed the right stuff on Instagram and I and I slid into their DMs.

Speaker 16 That's how I hooked up with the right stuff.

Speaker 39 And I started texting with someone, DMing with someone who I assumed to be the social media director.

Speaker 55 And very quickly after a few

Speaker 46 exchanges, realized I was texting with Johnny Mac.

Speaker 1 Which is all to say that Johnny Mac, true to his origin story, is answering the emails

Speaker 1 that you might suspect that people are too good for.

Speaker 22 Exactly.

Speaker 36 He's the CEO and he's the social media director and he's also a client.

Speaker 1 So you got to explain what this, like, how does a right-wing dating app

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 work?

Speaker 22 Well, let me back up and say that if this seems like

Speaker 26 a complete 180 or just an out of nowhere plot twist career change, Johnny actually has has a pretty tidy explanation for it that kind of makes sense.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 1 Half of his

Speaker 23 career and work is focused on bringing another conservative administration back to the White House in 2024.

Speaker 10 And the other half of his career is getting conservatives laid.

Speaker 23 And he wanted to create a safe space for conservative singles to meet and mingle.

Speaker 18 So how have the other apps been getting too woke? Like what's going on?

Speaker 17 Yeah, I mean the leftism is actually built into them by the tags and the stickers and the things they fund.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Not to mention conservatives can't be themselves openly because of the hostility we face. So we're putting everyone in one place.

Speaker 1 Man who was hiring ambassadors and cabinet secretaries. His screening process for conservative singles is what?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 29 So in order to join the app and sign up, you go through a questionnaire

Speaker 10 that sort of susses out

Speaker 7 your beliefs, your alignment with other people.

Speaker 10 Basically, it's to weed out the libs.

Speaker 1 And the survey portion of the registration process entails what sorts of questions.

Speaker 4 My favorite Bible verse, of course.

Speaker 37 Of course. That's a good opener.

Speaker 40 Love that one.

Speaker 35 A random fact I love about America is dot, dot, dot.

Speaker 7 There's a lot of finish this sentence kind of things.

Speaker 4 And my favorite of this variety is January 6th was dot, dot, dot.

Speaker 1 It's just perfect. It's perfect.

Speaker 27 And then there's another one

Speaker 23 that is another fill-in-the-blank favorite liberal lie.

Speaker 54 And liberal lie is sort of

Speaker 2 a recurring theme for him in his social media videos.

Speaker 37 And so, of course, I asked him, knowing how popular a series this was with his audience, what is his favorite liberal lie?

Speaker 1 Oh, I have a lot.

Speaker 17 Anything related to COVID.

Speaker 17 But if you want a more mainstream one

Speaker 17 that's controversial, diversity is our strength.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 10 That's a liberal lie.

Speaker 17 I think so, yeah. Okay.

Speaker 29 It made me think back to the central casting line,

Speaker 54 where there's just this sort of close your eyes picture of what America is and should be.

Speaker 24 And that fundamentally, when he closes his eyes, he sees the same thing as Donald Trump.

Speaker 31 And

Speaker 23 if you feel that way, you're, I suppose, kind of sick of the idea that that picture needs to be changed or redrawn.

Speaker 1 We like original recipe America. Yes, yes, yes.
Well, Devin, it just, my instinct truly is to be like, I don't even want to take this guy seriously.

Speaker 1 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 McIntyre

Speaker 17 really

Speaker 10 matters.

Speaker 43 He actually has a second job, sort of a side job.

Speaker 22 in this thing called Project 2025, which he is a consultant on that is basically gathering names, gathering applications to staff the federal federal government when and if Donald Trump wins again.

Speaker 7 I mean, this article in Puck describes the leadership of Project 2025 considering Johnny McIntyre to be their, quote, secret weapon.

Speaker 30 So the secret weapon also happens to be the guy whose main hustle right now

Speaker 31 is running a right-wing dating app and seeing Mulan Rouge on the 48th, I believe, of 51st dates.

Speaker 33 It's the same guy.

Speaker 30 These are his two jobs.

Speaker 6 And in some ways, that's perfectly fitting who Johnny McIntyre is.

Speaker 1 It really is.

Speaker 1 It is

Speaker 1 a life of trick shots that

Speaker 1 I think reveals a lot about how I guess the American dream actually works for some.

Speaker 1 I just wonder, Devin, if you are left here with the same foreboding feeling creeping in the back of my head, which is

Speaker 1 I wouldn't be surprised if his girlfriend undershot it.

Speaker 5 There were several times over the course of my interview with him

Speaker 1 where I thought, is this guy going to be president?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 why not at this point?

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 17 I think right now now I'm better assisting him

Speaker 17 in his pursuit of the presidency.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 23 It certainly seems like Trump would want him there.

Speaker 30 And by the way he describes it, it's pretty hard to resist.

Speaker 4 the glamour of it.

Speaker 17 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 in the NFL or what's it like?

Speaker 17 And they'll say, it's nothing like the movies. However, working at the White House is exactly like the movies.

Speaker 1 Really? Yeah.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 36 I think it's noteworthy that when John McIntyre 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

Speaker 26 all of these things.

Speaker 1 Like service. Service.

Speaker 16 And even if they don't mean it,

Speaker 56 they're supposed to say that.

Speaker 54 That's what they say.

Speaker 1 And Johnny doesn't say that.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 35 Ryan, I'm the chopper.

Speaker 1 Devin Gordon, thank you for sending a chill up my spine.

Speaker 15 Happy to do it.

Speaker 1 So what I found out today is that if you wanted to make the ultimate Trump world character,

Speaker 1 you could not do better than trick-shot Johnny Mack.

Speaker 1 A self-made YouTube star before those even really existed, who used everything he learned while being repeatedly sacked at UConn

Speaker 1 to get hired by the Trump White House and then fired by the Trump White House

Speaker 1 and then hired back. by the Trump White House to do the hiring.

Speaker 1 While secretly never leaving Donald Trump's innermost circle this entire time.

Speaker 1 Including right now, as he is, you know, running this right-wing dating app.

Speaker 1 He is the most powerful Trump world figure that until today,

Speaker 1 I didn't know nearly enough about.

Speaker 1 In fact, the greatest trick that Johnny Mac ever pulled

Speaker 1 was convincing the world

Speaker 1 that he didn't exist.

Speaker 1 This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metalark Media production.

Speaker 24 And I'll talk to you next time.