Donald Trump campaign worker Johnny McEntee is facing criticism for a recent TikTok video in which he proudly describes how he gives counterfeit money to homeless individuals so that they will be arrested when they attempt to use it.
“So I always keep this counterfeit Hollywood money in my car so when a homeless person asks for money, then I give him like a fake $5 bill, so I feel good about myself, they feel good,” McEntee explains in the clip. “And then, when they go to use it, they get arrested so I’m actually like helping clean up the community. You know, getting them off the street.”
McEntee served as a personal aide to the president and led the White House Presidential Personnel Office during the Trump administration. He currently works in human resources on Trump’s presidential campaign and is also a senior advisor on The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – a far-right wish list laying out policy positions for the next Republican president, which include several viciously anti-LGBTQ+ proposals.
Project 2025 calls for Trump to reinstate his transgender military ban; end educational, workplace, and healthcare protections for transgender people; and instruct Congress to define gender as male and female and fixed at birth. The plan would end all acknowledgment of trans people and gender identity. It also conflates “transgender ideology” with pornography and suggests imprisoning and classifying as sex offenders anybody associated with either part of the “psychologically destructive” and unfounded combination.
Endorsed by about 100 right-wing organizations and filled with contributions by Trump loyalists, the group suggests the next conservative presidential administration “must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for culture warriors” and proposes removing terms such as gender equality, DEI, abortion, and reproductive rights from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”
The TikTok video was originally posted to the account of the right-wing dating app, The Right Stuff, co-founded by McEntee, but it has since been re-posted across the Internet. The caption on the original clip reads, “Just a joke. Everyone calm down,” but it was not enough to appease folks who know how dangerous rhetoric like this can be, serious or not. Additionally, many did not seem convinced it wasn’t a legitimate confession of his actions.
In fact, many on social media tagged the FBI and Secret Service, hoping to trigger an investigation into McEntee’s claim that he is intentionally distributing counterfeit money, which is against the law.
Others on the site called him “sick,” “evil,” “repugnant,” an “entitled, psycho monster,” and a “degenerate racist,” with one user warning, “This could be one of the most powerful men in America if Trump wins.”
“Johnny McEntee, senior advisor to Project 2025 & Trump’s Director of the Office of Personnel Management, says he likes to distribute fake money to homeless people so that they will be arrested when they spend it,” the Republicans against Trump account wrote on X. “This is disgusting and illegal.”
A 2021 story in the Atlantic refers to McEntee as the person who enabled January 6. He apparently gained influence in Trump’s White House by being willing to fulfill any request from the former president.
He got fired in 2018 by then-Chief of Staff John Kelly for depositing large sums of cash into his bank account, later revealed to be gambling winnings. McEntee was rehired after Kelly was removed from the position.
“McEntee and his enforcers made the disastrous final weeks of the Trump presidency possible,” wrote Atlantic reporter Jonathan D. Karl. “They supported the president’s frenzied effort to overturn the election and helped pave the way for the January 6 attack on the Capitol. As a result, the elusive ‘adults in the room’—those who might have been willing to confront the president or try to control his most harmful tendencies—were silenced or gone.”
“But McEntee was there—commanding Cabinet secretaries, removing civilian leadership at the Pentagon, and compelling officials at all levels to declare their loyalty to Trump.”
