Exclusive — John McEntee: Donald Trump ‘Will Have the Best Group of People’ in a Second Term

John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office during former President Donald Trump’s administration and founder and CEO of The Right Stuff, told Breitbart News that Trump has learned from his first term and “will have the best group of people” surrounding him in a potential second term.

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Breitbart News Saturday host Matthew Boyle opened the interview by asking McEntee his thoughts about former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign announcement.

McEntee believes that the GOP presidential nomination “is his to lose,” and said things “could get interesting” if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) runs, but ultimately “It’s Trump’s for the taking.”

“I just would never bet against the guy,” McEntee said.

McEntee noted that the media seems to be downplaying coverage of Trump and said the media blackout could benefit Trump “because it’s so early in the race, that people probably don’t want to be inundated with politics right now.”

The conversation switched gears to Trump’s hiring process when Boyle asked McEntee if Trump learned from his staffing blunders during his first administration.

McEntee believes Trump’s staffing decisions would be better in a potential second term and pointed to the president’s staffing decisions toward the end of his first term as evidence.

“I mean, we thought we were going into a second term. And we were preparing to have a much better group of people. So I think he did learn from that. I think he would be better,” McEntee said. “I think the first term of any other Republican would be far worse with personnel than it would be in a second term with Donald Trump.”

“Donald Trump will have the best group of people, I think, in a second term, better than any Republican that will be challenging them,” he added.

McEntee then explained the importance of the president surrounding himself with staff members who align with their agenda.

“And there’s really only a few key positions you need to just have really strongwilled people in that understand the agenda and are gonna go for it,” McEntee said. “That’s like White House Chief of Staff, a few different cabinet secretaries, your national security adviser. If those people are all on board, and competent and willing to like, do what it takes, you’ll be all set.”

“So having the people that can just go out and understand what he’s trying to accomplish, and only bring him the really major stuff that’s high level. That’s important,” McEntee added.

McEntee said it was “really tough” finding the right people during Trump’s first administration, but he said it would be “a lot easier” in a second Trump term “because a lot of the young people got credentialed and they know what they’re doing now, and they can come into more senior roles.”

McEntee then told Boyle that finding the right people for the right positions requires intensive interviews and opening the applications up to more than just Washington, DC, workers.

“You just got to have a really good transition team that can find people throughout the country who are willing to come to D.C. and do a year or two,” McEntee said. “But, you need to open it up to the country. You can’t just look in D.C. There really aren’t enough of the people you need there, and it’s also good to just have fresh blood.”

Boyle then asked McEntee what he thought about the GOP’s performance during the midterm elections. McEntee said the “biggest highlight of the midterms is the fact that we got out eight of the ten impeachment voters.”

However, he urged the GOP to improve at mail-in voting and ballot harvesting in states where those are the leading voting mechanics.

“I think places where we’re not going to be able to able to change that anytime soon. We have to work with that system and use it to our benefit, you know, the mail and stuff the harvesting,” McEntee said. “But I think anywhere else where we can, where we control like the legislator, the governor, however we can get rid of that is the best possible thing we can do.”

He also mentioned that conservatives were “in a right wing echo chamber” by criticizing Fetterman voters because they more than likely were “just voting Democrat.”

McEntee said:

They’ve made it clear, like people will just vote Democrat. They don’t care about the candidate. We’re in a right-wing echo chamber saying, “look at Fetterman and like all these memes and you know, he’s an idiot and all this. But how could anyone vote for Fetterman?” It’s like, they probably haven’t heard him speak. You know, they’re just voting Democrat. They’re going into Philadelphia, they’re getting hundreds of thousands of people, and they just check Democrat. You know, they didn’t watch the debate. They’re not researching candidates.

McEntee then talked about his new dating app targeted towards conservatives, The Right Stuff.

“There’s a dating app for almost every group out there. There’s one for Jewish people, black people, gay people, fat people, you know, but there hasn’t been a dating app for the, for the identity most important to people. And that’s political affiliation, right?” McEntee said.

“So what we want to do, or what we’re doing is creating a space where we’re all in one place,” he said.

Despite being publicly open for only three weeks, McEntee announced that the app already has “a few success stories,” but noted that “there’ll be a lot more success stories the more people we get on.”

McEntee explained that the app is necessary because “the county is just really divided.” He noted that conservatives on other dating apps often hide their political affiliation out of fear of being threatened.

“But even the ordinary person that’s just kind of going about their life. If they’re even modestly conservative, they don’t want to date somebody on the left, because, you know, it turns into an argument, it just, it doesn’t go anywhere,” McEntee said.

Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.

Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.