John McEntee was President Trump’s personal aide during his first presidency, from 2017 to 2021. After the end of the administration, he founded a dating app geared towards conservatives called Date Right Stuff. This month, he visited Esztergom, Hungary to take part in a panel discussion at MCC Feszt 2024 about using social media professionally as a right-winger, along with Lauren Chen, Fleur Elizabeth Meston, and Amala Ekpunobi. Before the panel, he kindly sat down with Hungarian Conservative for a brief, exclusive interview.
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You’ve served in the first Trump administration. You’ve worked with the President personally, met him multiple times.
Yes.
Do you keep in touch with him? Either with him specifically, or somebody close to him. Do you have any inside information on how he feels about the race?
I think he’s still optimistic. I mean, I don’t talk to him as frequently. I worked for him very closely and was with him every day, in 2016, 2017 until 2020. But I still try to keep in touch with some of his team, and I think they’re staying optimistic, and they know what they need to do to try to win.
And how do you feel about this personally? Do you think that the Democrats can pull this off? After they pressured publicly the incumbent President to step down, they replaced him with somebody who is far-left. Do you think it is a possibility that they could get Kamala Harris into the White House?
It is a possibility, yes. I think the left has a lot of things going for them naturally: the media, and the machinery behind voting, they have a good infrastructure there. So, if they can energize their base, and get people out to vote for the first female President of the United States, I think that could be a danger. Now, I’m still hoping for a Donald Trump victory, but definitely, swapping the candidates changed the race.
You are very popular on Instagram and on TikTok, you have millions of followers on TikTok. But the popular understanding is that these are left-leaning platforms. Have you experienced any sort of censorship or artificial curbing of your reach?
Yeah, occasionally, a video will get taken down, but that happens very rarely. I think TikTok is unique in that you don’t need a big following to go viral. So, that’s why we started with TikTok, because we were just starting out a year and a half ago, and we had no following. So how do you get attention? Well, if you go on TikTok and you make creative content that people like to share, it’s very easy to go viral quickly. So, we’ve started with TikTok, we’ve had tremendous success there, we’ve also used Instagram, as you mentioned. And, you know, I think the tide is turning,
I think with Elon Musk purchasing Twitter, and then with Zuckerberg and some of the others saying they’re going to stay out of politics, I think the tide is turning in tech.
And hopefully that stays.
And how did you go from politics to a dating app? I understand you’ve founded a dating app for conservatives.
Yes.
It’s called Date Right Stuff. How was the journey to that decision that this was going to be the next step in your career?
So, when the administration was ending in early 2021, my colleagues and I decided let’s start a business, and we looked at what was popular. The alternative tech stuff was getting very big. You know, the right-wing version of YouTube, the right-wing version of Twitter, and my friend, who was a female, said you should make the right-wing version of a dating app. And we kind of thought about our own experiences dating, especially in very liberal areas, and we thought this could be a useful tool for a lot of Americans.
Is this your first time in Hungary right now?
This is my first time, yes.
How are your first impressions?
I’ve had a great, great experience so far. I’m very impressed with the festival. I’ve had a great tour guide, and I’m enjoying it.
In the American mainstream media, Hungary is often depicted as some oppressive regime, as a right-wing, if not dictatorship, ‘authoritarianism,’ as they describe it. Have you experienced any of that?
No, of course not. And I think being in the conservative world, you’re used to the media fabricating things. So, it’s nice to see with my own eyes, and to hear from the people that live here. Obviously, Hungary is viewed favourably by the right wing. I know Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán have met several times, Tucker Carlson has been here. So, in the circles I run in, people have great things to say about Hungary.
You grew up in California, right?
I grew up in Southern California.
By then, it was a very liberal state.
Yeah, my whole life has been pretty liberal. We had a Republican governor when I was young, but it was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s sort of a moderate and a celebrity. But there are enclaves, little parts of California, that are very conservative. It’s just that the state overall, unfortunately, is very Democrat.
Have you seen a decline in the standard of living and the way of life in your home state?
Yeah, I think the combination of homelessness, high taxation, and immigration has been slowly destroying the state. I still think it’s the best state, I still think it’s the most beautiful state, it’s where my family is. I don’t have any plans to leave it. But you can see how certain policies are affecting it in a drastic way in a short amount of time.
Kamala Harris is from there, and she very much stands for these liberal policies. So, maybe that can also help Donald Trump out.
Yeah, maybe. I know the campaign is probably going to try to paint her as a San Francisco liberal, which is true. So, do you want all of America to look like California in terms of politics? Probably not, so that message might resonate.
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