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The ‘F*cking Idiot’ Who Ran the Final Days of Trump’s White House: 5 Craziest Details From Jon Karl’s New Tell-All [1]
['Colhall Is The Founding Editor Of Mediaite.Com. He Is Also A Peabody Award-Winning Television Producer Of Non-Fiction Narrative Programming As Well As A Terrific Dancer', 'Preparer Of Grilled Meats.']
Date: 2021-11-09 14:16:16+00:00
Jonathan Karl is a remarkably talented writer. This is best evidenced in The Atlantic’s just-published excerpt of his new behind-the-scenes account of the final days of the Trump White House, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, set for release next week.
The excerpt focuses on a surprising and heretofore, largely unknown player in the Trump administration: Johnny McEntee. Karl goes into painstaking detail in describing the remarkably powerful role this 29-year-old former college football quarterback played within the White House, in a manner that is equal parts absurd and frightening.
Karl paints McEntee as a far more important player in the Trump administration than anyone had previously reported. He started as the “body man” for former President Donald Trump, where his job was to carry his bags when traveling. But by the end, he had been put in place to oversee White House personnel, a massive job that would be a challenge for anyone, but especially for a 29-year-old with barely any political experience within the beltway.
But Karl proceeds to paint McEntee, and the crew of staff members he brought on to work with the Presidential Personnel Office (PPO), as the most extreme loyalists, almost verging on “East German Stasi or even the Gestapo.”
In the end, McEntee’s powers were so great that one unnamed source described him as “deputy president.” Here are some of the most revealing, and crazy details, in Karl’s fascinating excerpt:
1. McEntee was not just the “deputy president” but also called a “fucking idiot” by one of Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries:
The Presidential Personnel Office now run by McEntee took an extra edge in managing and controlling the Trump administration, and one visible Cabinet secretary thought very poorly of him:
The office was run by Johnny McEntee. Just 29 when he got the job, he’d come up as Trump’s body guy—the kid who carried the candidate’s bags. One of Trump’s most high-profile Cabinet secretaries described him to me as “a fucking idiot.” But in 2020, his power was undeniable. Trump knew he was the one person willing to do anything Trump wanted. As another senior official told me, “He became the deputy president.”
2. Trump loyalty was enforced to the degree that Chief of Staff Mark Meadow was alerted to a midlevel staffer liking a Taylor Swift Instagram post.
Mark Meadows took a phone call during the swearing-in ceremony of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The issue? A young HUD assistant had liked a politically-themed Taylor Swift post on Instagram:
On the line was Andrew Hughes, the top staffer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Meadows had asked him to call because it had been brought to Meadows’s attention that a young assistant at HUD had been caught consorting with the enemy. She had liked an Instagram post from the pop star Taylor Swift. The first photo in the post was of Swift with the word vote superimposed on it in large blue letters. But a swipe revealed a second photo, of Swift carrying a tray of cookies emblazoned with the Biden-Harris campaign logo. “We really can’t have our people liking posts promoting Joe Biden,” Meadows told Hughes.
3. McEntee was hired after Trump yelled at Mick Mulvaney deputy Emma Doyle, who politely pushed back on the hire.
McEntee worked under former Chief of Staff John Kelly, but was fired when he didn’t pass a security check as a result of reported gambling income. After Kelly left, Trump insisted McEntee run PPO, which McEntee accepted because he was ready now that he had turned 29 years old:
“You people never fucking listen to me!” Trump screamed. “You’re going to fucking do what I tell you to do.” A few hours later, Doyle was on Air Force One, along with McEntee, en route to a Trump rally in New Hampshire. She asked him about his interest in the position. “People have been telling me I should do that for a long time,” McEntee told her. “I didn’t feel ready before, but I am 29 now and I’m ready.” He added, “I’m the only person around here that’s just here for the president.”
4. The staff that McEntee assembled was derided by one senior official as “Rockettes and the Dungeons & Dragons group.”
It should come as no surprise if you put a 29-year-old in charge of the Presidential Personnel Office, the staff assembled would appeal to a 29-year-old’s point of view. A former Rockette, an Instagram influencer and friends of his that some thought were hired because they presented no threat to McEntees’s … charms:
McEntee’s underlings were, for the most part, comically inexperienced. He had staffed his office with very young Trump activists. He had hired his friends, and he had hired young women—as one senior official in the West Wing put it to me, “the most beautiful 21-year-old girls you could find, and guys who would be absolutely no threat to Johnny in going after those girls.” “It was the Rockettes and the Dungeons & Dragons group,” the official said. In fact, one McEntee hire was literally a Rockette; she had performed with Radio City Music Hall’s finest in the 2019 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The only work experience listed on her résumé besides a White House internship was a stint as a dance instructor. McEntee also hired Instagram influencers. Camryn Kinsey, for example, was 20 and still in college when McEntee gave her the title of external-relations director. In an interview with the online publication The Conservateur, she said, “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.” (Kinsey went on to work at the pro-Trump One American News Network.)
5. Despite zero constitutional expertise, McEntee led an effort to convince Pence to overturn the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6.
That’s right. This 29-year-old body man became a leading voice in trying to convince Mike Pence to overturn the election, speciously citing a historical event with then VP Thomas Jefferson that ultimately did not apply:
When White House Counsel Cipollone told Trump that Pence did not have the power to overturn the election, McEntee drafted his own constitutional analysis, with an assist from his own rogue legal advisers, directly contradicting Cipollone and every other serious expert in the country. McEntee sent the memo via text message on January 1 to Pence’s chief of staff. Here it is, in its entirety: Jefferson Used His Position as VP to Win · The Constitution sets precise requirements for the form in which the states are to submit their electoral votes. · In 1801, the ballots of all states were in perfect conformity except Georgia’s. · Georgia’s submission dramatically failed to conform to the requirements. · VP Jefferson presided over the counting of the ballots even as he was one of the candidates. · Had the defective ballots been rejected, Jefferson would have most likely lost the election. · Senate tellers told Jefferson in a loud voice that there was a problem with the Georgia ballots. · Rather than investigating, Jefferson ignored the problems and announced himself the winner. · This proves that the VP has, at a minimum, a substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process. McEntee was no constitutional scholar and no historian. His bullet-point description was, not surprisingly, deeply flawed. 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.
The truth is that there are maybe a dozen other instances or vignettes described by ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent, but the limits of responsible aggregation have already been tested. But do not deny yourself the pleasure of reading fascinating — and frightening — details for yourself.
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[1] Url:
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/the-fcking-idiot-who-ran-the-final-days-of-trumps-white-house-5-craziest-details-from-jon-karls-new-tell-all/
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