Famous former Donald Trump aide Johnny McEntee says he gives fake money to homeless people to get arrested.
McEntee, 33, who now runs a right-wing dating app, claimed his outrageous and illegal prank was “just a joke, everyone calm down”.
“So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car, so when a homeless person asks me for money and I give them like a $5 bill, I feel good about myself, they feel good,” he said in a video from TikTok.
“And then when they go to use it, they get arrested, so I’m helping clean up the community and get them off the streets.”
Donald Trump’s famous former aide Johnny McEntee (R) says he gives fake money to homeless people to get arrested.
The video was ridiculed not only for being mean-spirited but also for flaunting illegal behavior, as distributing counterfeit currency is also a crime.
‘This can’t be legal. You are intentionally putting counterfeit bills into circulation. It doesn’t matter if you exchange it for something or give it as a gift. What is the charge for tricking someone into committing a crime so you can be arrested? one wrote.
Another added: “He gets so much joy from being pure evil.”
In addition to defending dating apps, McEntee is a senior adviser to the far-right group Project 2025, which aims to radically reshape the government if Trump wins.
Among his many plans are replacing “deep state” federal civil servants with staunch conservatives, dismantling the FBI, abolishing the departments of Education, Homeland Security, and Commerce, and banning abortion and pornography.
The former UConn college quarterback has one of the strangest and most controversial stories in Trump’s inner circle.
McEntee began working for Trump at the age of 25 as his ‘body man’, carrying the then-presidential candidate’s bags and delivering messages.
He was fired in 2018 when a background check revealed a gambling habit so severe that he was considered a potential national security risk.
But a change in White House chief of staff brought him back, this time as director of the Office of Presidential Personnel, responsible for hiring and firing staff.
He did his job with the zeal of a loyalist, weeding out anyone he deemed insufficiently Trumpian.
“I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car, so when a homeless person asks me for money and I give them like a five dollar bill, I feel good about myself, they feel good,” he said in a TikTok video , which he published. He later claimed it was just a joke.
McEntee began working for Trump at the age of 25 as his ‘body man’, carrying the then-presidential candidate’s bags and delivering messages, and by 2020 (pictured) was a powerful aide in charge of hiring and firing staff. .
McEntee also wrote a list of goals for the end of Trump’s presidency, including withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Germany and Africa.
When time ran out after Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, he tried to force the issue by drafting a memo ordering a withdrawal.
“I hereby order you to withdraw all US forces from the Federal Republic of Somalia no later than December 31, 2020 and from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan no later than January 15, 2021,” it said.
Jonathan Karl recounted the strange episode in his book Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.
McEntree was instrumental in ousting Defense Secretary Mark Esper and replacing him with Christopher Miller and his top adviser, former Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, whom Trump hired after seeing him on television.
“Three days after Macgregor arrived at the Pentagon, he called McEntee and told him that he could not perform any of the items on his handwritten task list without an order signed by the president,” Karl wrote.
Macgregor told them that it should focus on Afghanistan and include a specific deadline for withdrawal, and told them to find an old presidential decision memorandum and copy it.
McEntee went about his job with the zeal of a loyalist, weeding out anyone he deemed insufficiently Trumpian.
McEntee (right) arrives carrying boxes with then-White House senior adviser Steve Bannon aboard Air Force One, returning to Washington with Trump after a weekend in Florida.
McEntee and his assistant drafted the order, signed it by the president and sent it to Kash Patel, the defense secretary’s new acting chief of staff.
But it caused immediate consternation when it reached senior officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Keith Kellogg, Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser.
“This doesn’t seem right,” Kellogg said, noting that the only part that looked legitimate was Trump’s signature.
—Are you telling me that thing is fake? Milley said, ‘Is that a forged piece of paper directing a military operation for the president of the United States?’
Concerned officials confronted Trump. He said he had signed the document, but it was quickly explained to him that such a bold move needed to go through an exhaustive political process.
“I said this would be very bad,” National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien recalled then telling Trump, and the order was overturned.
The Jan. 6 commission asked McEntee how his office “drafted” the memo.
“Is it typical for the Office of Presidential Personnel to draft orders regarding troop withdrawal”? They Asked.
“Probably not typical, no,” he replied.
McEntee testified that he obtained Trump’s signature and then emailed it to the Pentagon.
Office of Presidential Personnel Director John McEntee in 2020. He took on an increasingly important role in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency later that year.
McEntee’s influence became so great that “he became vice president,” a senior official told Karl.
Trump’s advisers compared his office to East Germany’s infamous internal police, the Stasi, as well as the Gestapo for its persecution of potential “traitors.”
Even liking a Taylor Swift post on Instagram was suspicious because she criticized Trump.
According to Karl, McEntee hired a team of young Trump activists who were “comically inexperienced.”
A senior official said he hired “the most beautiful 21-year-old girls you can find, and guys who would pose no threat to Johnny by pursuing those girls.”
“It was the Rockettes and the Dungeons & Dragons group.”
Karl points out that one of the hires was, in fact, a Rockette who performed at Radio City Music Hall’s highlight reel at the 2019 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
He may have been referring to Katie Forss, whose LinkedIn page says she is a Radio City Rockette and executive assistant to the director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in 2020.
McEntee hired Instagram influencer Camryn Kinsey, who was 20 years old and still in college when McEntee gave her the title of director of external relations.
She told an online publication that: “Only in Trump’s America could I go from working in a gym to working in the White House, because that’s the American dream.”
Camryn Kinsey was 20 years old when Johnny McEntee hired her as director of external relations. “Only in Trump’s America could I go from working in a gym to working in the White House, because that’s the American dream,” she said.
McEntee also played a role in Trump’s effort to overturn the election, which ultimately caused several officials to resign in the final days of the administration.
Part of the effort was to push a legal theory that Pence could refuse to accept votes certified by states when he presides over the recount of electoral votes on January 6.
“When White House counsel Cipollone told Trump that Pence did not have the power to overturn the election, McEntee wrote his own constitutional analysis, with the help of his own dishonest legal advisors, directly contradicting Cipollone and all other serious experts in the country”. Karl wrote.
The result was an “absurd memo arguing that Pence would be following Thomas Jefferson’s example if he used his power to declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election.”