Trump's former 'body guy' Johnny McEntee sparks backlash with outrageous video boasting about giving homeless people fake money so they get arrested

Donald Trump's former aide Johnny McEntee has sparked fury with a video claiming he gives homeless people fake money so they get arrested.

McEntee, 33, who now runs a right-wing dating app, said his outrageous and illegal prank was 'just a joke, everyone calm down' after he went viral. 

'So I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car, so when a homeless person asks for money, and I give them like a $5 bill, I feel good about myself, they feel good,' he said in the original TikTok video.

'And then when they go to use it, they get arrested, so I'm actually helping to clean up the community and get them off the street.' 

The video was pilloried as not just mean-spirited but was criticized for his brags about illegal behavior as distributing fake currency, which is also a crime.

'This can’t be legal. He is intentionally injecting counterfeit bills into circulation. Doesn’t matter if he trades it for something or gives it as a gift. What’s the charge for tricking someone into committing a crime so they’ll be arrested?' one viewer wrote.

Another added: 'He's so feeling his glee over being pure evil.'

'After watching this, my blood pressure shot up and I don’t have high blood pressure. This is extremely evil,' a third wrote.

'Johnny Cruelty. Wow that makes him feel good?'

In additional to his dating app advocacy, McEntee is a senior adviser to far-right group Project 2025, which aims to radically reshape government if Trump wins.

Among its many plans are to replace 'deep state' federal public servants with staunch conservatives, dismantle the FBI, abolish the Education, Homeland Security, and Commerce departments, and ban abortion and pornography.

The former UConn college quarterback has one of the most bizarre and controversial histories of Trump's inner circle.

McEntee began working for Trump at the age of 25 as his 'body guy', carrying around the then-presidential candidate's bags and relaying messages.

He was fired in 2018 when a background check turned up a gambling habit that was so serious it was seen as a potential national security risk.

But a change of White House chief of staff brought him back, this time as director of the Presidential Personnel Office, responsible for hiring and firing staff.

He went about his work with the zeal of a loyalist, rooting out anyone he deemed insufficiently Trumpist.

McEntee also wrote a list of objectives for the end of Trump's presidency, including getting troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Germany, and Africa.

As the clock ran out after Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, he tried to forced the issue by drafting a memo ordering the withdrawal.

'I hereby direct you to withdraw all US forces from the Federal Republic of Somalia no later than 31 December 2020 and from the Islamic Republican of Afghanistan no later than 15 January 2021,' it read.

Jonathan Karl chronicled the bizarre episode in his book Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.

McEntree was central to the removal of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and replacing him with Christopher Miller and his senior adviser, former army colonel Douglas Macgregor - the latter of whom Trump hired after seeing him on TV.

'Three days after Macgregor arrived at the Pentagon, he called McEntee and told him he couldn't accomplish any of the items on their handwritten to-do list without a signed order from the president,' Karl wrote. 

Macgregor told them it should focus on Afghanistan and include a specific deadline for withdrawal, and told them to find an old presidential decision memo and copy it. 

McEntee and his assistant wrote up the order and had it signed by the president and sent to Kash Patel, the new acting defense secretary's chief of staff.

But it caused immediate consternation when it reached senior officials including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and Keith Kellogg, national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence.

'This doesn't look right,' Kellogg said, noting the only part that looked legitimate was Trump's signature.

'You're telling me that thing is forged?' Milley said, 'That's a forged piece of paper directing a military operation by the president of the United States?' 

The worried officials confronted Trump. He said he had signed the document but they quickly explained that such a bold move needed to go through a thorough policy process.

'I said this would be very bad,' then National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien recalled telling Trump, and the order was invalidated. 

McEntee was asked by the January 6 commission about how his office 'drafted' the memo.

'Is it typical for the Presidential Personnel Office to draft orders concerning troop withdrawal"?' he was asked.

'Probably not typical, no,' he responded.

McEntee testified that he obtained Trump's signature, and then he emailed it to the Pentagon.

McEntee's influence became so outsized he 'became the deputy president,' a senior official told Karl. 

Trump aides compared his office to East Germany's infamous internal police, the Stasi, as well as the Gestapo for its pursuit of potential 'traitors'.

Even liking a Taylor Swift Instagram post was suspect because she was critical of Trump.

According to Karl, McEntee brought on a staff of young Trump activists who were 'comically inexperienced'.

A senior official said he hired '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.'

Karl notes that one of the hires was in fact a Rockette who performed at Radio City Music Hall's finest in the 2019 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

He may have been referring to Katie Forss, whose LinkedIn page says she is a Radio City Rockette and executive assistant to the director of the Presidential Personnel Office in 2020.

McEntee hired Instagram influencer Camryn Kinsey, who was 20 and still in college when McEntee gave her the title of external-relations director.

She told an online publication that: '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.'

McEntee also played a role in Trump's election overturn effort, which ultimately prompted multiple officials to quit in the last days of the administration.

Part of the effort was pushing a legal theory that Pence could refuse to accept votes certified by states when presiding over the counting of electoral votes January 6. 

'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,' Karl wrote.

The result was an 'absurd memo making the case that Pence would be following Thomas Jefferson’s example if he used his power to declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election'.