When Jenny and Adam got hitched a few weeks back in Connecticut, each of their vows included a special shoutout to the dating app they had met on. It wasn’t Bumble, Tinder, or Hinge, the three most downloaded dating apps in the United States. Last spring, the now-married couple met through The Right Stuff, the conservative dating app launched by former Trump aide John McEntee.
You might know his face. McEntee’s rise to online fame happened in 2017 when he accompanied his then-boss former President Donald Trump to Saudi Arabia. A photo of McEntee in a red tie carrying a Louis Vuitton bag soon went viral, and “man in the red tie” became the most trending hashtag in the country as Saudi women demanded to know the identity of the “classic American man” that was easy on the eye. Before then, Johnny, as Trump calls him, had managed to slip under the radar despite being powerful enough for someone in government to dub him “the deputy president.” In the years after the red tie photo, he would become famous, or infamous, enough to be the subject of vicious profiles in the Atlantic and Vanity Fair.
But enough of all that. After Trump’s reelection loss, McEntee was moving on, and while pondering what to do next, a girlfriend of his complained to him that all of her friends wanted to date Republicans but couldn’t seek them out. “Why don’t you make a dating app just for Republicans?” she asked McEntee. “Wow, it’s kind of a good idea,” he replied. At least that’s what he told me when I met McEntee in an ice cream shop in Washington, D.C., a year and a half after The Right Stuff launched. “I thought about starting my own business — the alternative tech stuff was becoming big,” he said. “I pitched an investor on it. He liked the idea. We just kind of started it.” Now, it has 60,000 users, a combined 3 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, and, most importantly for McEntee, a legitimate marriage under its belt.
The Right Stuff may be born from the Trump administration — founders McEntee, Daniel Huff, and Isaac Stalzer all worked for the former president — but it owes its start to venture capitalist Peter Thiel after he gave McEntee the $1.5 million to launch the app in 2022. Thiel, who is gay and married to his longtime partner, Matt Danzeisen, came under fire for his involvement with The Right Stuff upon its launch due to the app only allowing heterosexual matches. The app also caused ructions online after offering users two genders to choose from, ladies and gentlemen, and giving no options for an array of different pronouns. This is, as most would understand, kind of the whole point of the app. “Other dating apps have gone woke,” the website reads. “But there are people out there just like you.”
When downloading the app, users are first asked for some basic information: height, religious beliefs, five pictures, and a song that people will hear when they click on a profile. I chose from the few songs available and decided on “God Bless the U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood when I made my profile. But there are others: “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys, “Beautiful Girls” by Sean Kingston, and “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon & Garfunkel. After that’s squared away, users choose three prompts to answer. The choices range from “A quick rant about…” to “My favorite liberal lie is…,” “Jan. 6th was…,” and “My favorite Bible verse is…” After filling out the answers, an account is reviewed, and if McEntee and the team like what they see, if someone is made of the right stuff, so to speak, he or she is offered an invitation to use the app. Women who join are offered a free premium subscription after they invite two friends. Men who join are liable to foot the bill, which is $9.99 a month for a premium subscription. Chivalrous.
It’s no secret that the app suffered from a slow start — the number of users shot up within the first few months of release and then flattened out, and there are far more men on the app than women — but over some months, McEntee has successfully tapped into the power of social media. His TikTok and Instagram reels have made him an online celebrity, even more so than his “man in the red tie” moment. His 30-second daily clips on the apps, saying things such as, “Liberals always say to prepare for the future, but how will we if everyone’s either aborted or transgender?” have racked up an unbelievable 116 million likes on TikTok alone. It helps that McEntee can get away with saying most things because he is ludicrously handsome with a tan only a man who was born and bred in Orange County, California, can have. In the viral videos, he is often sporting a tailored suit and is usually eating with his hands. Maybe he is often hungry, or maybe McEntee is taking an acting tip from Brad Pitt, who eats in most scenes because, at some point, he worked out that women really like to watch his jaw move.
And regardless of what you think of McEntee or The Right Stuff or Trump or Thiel, the videos are a hit. I came across them after I noticed that people from London and my small hometown in Wales were sharing them online. These people aren’t particularly far to the right or even out-and-proud conservatives, but they are the type of people who can take a joke and even make fun of themselves if necessary. “I think people respond well when things are presented in a light, creative way,” McEntee said. “It’s less political than people might think, even though it’s for conservatives and it’s a Republican app, the content on our social media isn’t really that political. We stay away from the things a political commentator might talk about, like what’s going on on Capitol Hill. It’s cultural and general, that’s why I think it appeals to younger people. They think it’s funny. A lot of them are conservative and don’t even know it.”
There is another reason that McEntee thinks that The Right Stuff will become the next Tinder or Hinge. Other than political polarization, “unfortunately, politics is the new religion,” McEntee said. But he also thinks that the tide is turning. “I think conservatism in general is becoming countercultural because of how far left everything went. Young people always want to be associated with something cool and radical. So, I think there is a window here. I don’t know if the Right has captured it yet. But I’m optimistic about the future because it looks like things are trending that way. Gen Z has more conservative young men than my generation, millennials. The Left went so far that young people are sick of it. They’re looking for an out, but the old Republican Party, the old Republican media isn’t serving them, so that’s why we use TikTok. You have to meet people where they are.”
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As for the gender gap, and after McEntee said himself that it’s primarily young men who are turning more toward the right, he’s confident it will work itself out. In fact, McEntee said he believes that this app will serve women more than it will serve Republican men. “Women care more about politics than men. When it comes to dating, a Republican girl is far more hard-line on the issue of dating across the aisle than a Republican guy. I’ve seen it. They find it repulsive. Whereas a guy like me, even though I’m as right-wing as it comes, if a girl that was somewhat liberal wanted to go on a date, I would. But the same is not said of a girl because she wants someone that’s conservative. She wants someone that’s like her dad, she wants someone that’s traditional. She wants someone that she’s going to marry. I find that women are way more hardcore on this particular issue of dating than conservative men are.”
Whether The Right Stuff is to face the same fate as other conservative dating apps is yet to be seen. Righter, the MAGA dating app launched in 2019, flopped after, among other things, the female founder said women must “close their legs.” Donald Daters, an app that really needs no explanation, never managed to break out into the mainstream, shockingly. But if the proof is in the pudding, then The Right Stuff may be making dating great again. Since the first Right Stuff wedding last month, two more engagements have been announced.
Kara Kennedy is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C.
