No one’s route to the inner circle of the White House is ever the same. Some advisers gained fame and notoriety in the world of business before coming to politics. Other presidential confidants might have come from the world of education or entertainment.
However, without going too far out on a limb, Trump presidential aide John McEntee might be the first White House insider to come from the world of trick-shot football throwing.
Nancy Cook and Ben Strauss write in the Politico Magazine, about the incredible and improbable rise of Trump presidential aide John McEntee. From a man once known as the University of Connecticut quarterback who could throw a football blindfolded with pinpoint accuracy. To today, where McEntee is best known as the aide who serves at the right-hand of the most powerful man in the world.
Strauss and Cook write:
At age 27, John McEntee, a former University of Connecticut quarterback and star of a viral YouTube trick-throw video, former low-level Fox News staffer and campaign official, now makes $115,000 a year as Trump’s personal aide and body man. How he rose to this level of prominence is in some respects the quintessential tale of success within Trump’s organization, where loyalty and looks often matter more than résumé. Athletically handsome and a sharp dresser—one former campaign official called him “so pretty”—McEntee arrived at Trump’s doorstep in August 2015 with no more qualifications than his determination to make the boss happy.
On McEntee’s level of dedication to the president:
He’s a teetotaling former altar boy, and he can talk confidently about sports with a boss who, it’s fair to say, has a few opinions on the subject. Outside of Hicks and Scavino, McEntee is one of the only White House employees whose contact with the president spans his political and personal lives. But he has a conspicuously low profile—McEntee’s a “lock box,” in the words of his father and one White House aide, who won’t even dish to his own family. “He literally loves the president. Not even to me, he would never say anything negative, not in a million years,” his father, John, says. “He loves the president and that family. Jared and Ivanka, too.”
On how closely McEntee serves the president:
McEntee is the one who greets the president in the morning inside the White House residence and the one who walks the president back upstairs at night. He’s been by Trump’s side, but not too close—McEntee’s father says he’s seen him duck out of live camera shots to avoid being seen—from campaign rallies in Alabama and Las Vegas to those early hectic days inside the Oval Office to foreign trips with the president to Europe and Asia. He sits outside of the Oval Office, partly as gatekeeper and partly to maintain proximity to his boss. He’s one of the few White House staffers who gets his calls answered on the first ring. When he asks other aides for a briefing book or draft of an executive order, people know that it’s a request coming directly from the president.”
Read the rest here.