In early 2025, Gen Z conservatives were riding high.
President Donald Trump had recently clinched his landslide victory over Vice President Kamala Harris and voters under 30 were a big part of that, swinging rightward in a historic electoral shift.
I am Gen Z MAGA, hear me roar – so to speak.
For many of these newly emboldened young bucks and does, especially those living in blue cities, the hottest places to be were ‘Make America Hot Again’ parties.
The events catered to young singles who felt they were never able to truly speak their minds on the dating scene, until Trump’s win revealed that they weren’t alone.
Clad in ‘MAHA’ baseball hats (not to be confused with Robert F Kennedy’s Jr health movement), hundreds of like-minded attendees crammed into Manhattan bars, among tables littered with stickers reading, ‘where Reaganomics meets retinol.’
And behind it all were Canadian ‘Make America Hot Again’ creator Raquel Debono and Peter Thiel-backed, ex-White House aide John McEntee, who founded a dating app for conservatives called Date Right Stuff.
Debono, 29, was hired as Date Right Stuff’s Chief Marketing Officer. McEntee, 35, drove interest on social media with Gen Zers, the first digital native generation.
It was a perfect union. MAHA was being covered in the New York Times, New York Magazine and Wall Street Journal. Debono was on Fox News. Date Right Stuff was followed on social media by millions.
Then, it all went off the rails.
Debono (pictured), 29, was hired as Date Right Stuff’s Chief Marketing Officer. McEntee, 35, drove interest on social media with Gen Zers, the first digital native generation
Behind it all were Canadian ‘Make America Hot Again’ creator Raquel Debono and Peter Thiel-backed, ex-White House aide John McEntee (pictured in September 2010)
Now, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Debono spills the tea about her former boss and claims ‘Make America Hot Again’ is now hotter than ever – without him.
‘If I wanted to,’ Debono tells the Daily Mail, ‘I could destroy John’s life.’
McEntee first splashed onto the political scene during Trump’s 2016 campaign as the president’s body man. Then, he became a top personal aide to the president in the first Trump White House.
But in March 2018, McEntee suddenly left the administration. He was fired by White House Chief of State John Kelly for failing a security clearance check related to a reported gambling habit and he was allegedly escorted out of the West Wing.
When reached by the Daily Mail, McEntee did not address these claims.
McEntee was, however, rehired by Trump’s team in 2020 to lead the presidential personnel office, where he reportedly 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,’ according to a November 2021 profile in The Atlantic.
Two years after that, after leaving public service again, McEntee launched Date Right Stuff with ex-Trump staffers Isaac Stalzer and Dan Huff and financial support from billionaire Peter Thiel.
The app gained immediate traction, in part, due to McEntee’s social media persona. Date Right’s official TikTok and Instagram accounts – which currently boast a combined 4.8 million followers – are filled with videos of McEntee sounding off on political and cultural issues from transgender women in sports to illegal immigration to abortion laws and the odd hot take.
In March 2018, McEntee (pictured) suddenly left the administration. He was fired by White House Chief of State John Kelly for failing a security clearance check related to a reported gambling habit
MAHA events catered to young singles who felt they were never able to truly speak their minds on the dating scene, until Trump’s win revealed that they weren’t alone (Pictured: MAGA influencers Paula Scanlan, Raquel Debono, Debra Lea at a ‘Make America Hot Again’ event in New York City earlier this year)
MAHA was being covered in the New York Times, New York Magazine (cover pictured) and Wall Street Journal. Debono was on Fox News. Date Right Stuff was followed on social media by millions
‘I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car, so when a homeless person asks for money then I give them a fake $5 bill,’ he said in a Tik Tok clip in 2021. ‘I feel good about myself, they feel good — and then when they go to use it they get arrested. So I’m actually helping clean up the community, you know, getting them off the streets.’
The post drew some online outrage. It wasn’t lost on critics that in May 2020 Minneapolis man George Floyd was murdered during a struggle with police after he was detained for passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store.
Then, in September 2024, Wired reported that McEntee was accused of sending inappropriate messages via Instagram to two 18-year-old women in late 2023.
Both women claimed they received messages from Date Right Stuff’s official Instagram account – and, initially, they did not know that they were communicating with the company’s founder.
They alleged that McEntee offered to fly them to meet him in Los Angeles. One woman alleged that the conversations were ‘sexual from day one’ and that he propositioned her to ‘hook up.’
‘He kept making comments about my age and how hot it would be to sleep with someone who was my age,’ she reportedly claimed.
While Debono says McEntee was always outwardly kind to her, she tells the Daily Mail: ‘I’ll just say I’ve seen his DMs.’
She did not, however, reveal what exchanges she reviewed.
Eight months later, after working for Date Right Stuff for a year, Debono left – and took her burgeoning brand with her.
‘I lost faith in the vision,’ says Debono, who believes the ‘true conservative’ way to meet your match is by way of real-life meetups. ‘Dating apps are dead,’ she says.
McEntee, however, tells the Daily Mail that Debono ‘was fired because she wasn’t doing a good job.’ (He did not comment on any other allegations reported in this article.)
But at the time of Debono’s exit, the buzz about ‘Make America Hot Again’ had reached fever pitch.
A New York Magazine cover trumpeted that the young Republicans embodied the ‘cruel kids table.’ The Washington Post called them ‘MAGA fashionistas.’ Photos from one of the ticketed soirees were printed in the Wall Street Journal.
‘I always keep this fake Hollywood money in my car, so when a homeless person asks for money then I give them a fake $5 bill,’ McEntee said in a Tik Tok clip in 2021.
‘I lost faith in the vision,’ says Debono (pictured), who believes the ‘true conservative’ way to meet your match is by way of real-life meetups. ‘Dating apps are dead,’ she says.
MAGA influencers Paula Scanlan, Raquel Debono and Tiffany Wong at a Make America Hot Again event
Now, it’s a much different picture.
The content on McEntee’s social media accounts have seemingly dried up. His most recent TikTok post is from December 2024. The latest Instagram Reel was posted in March.
Debono says she was never told why McEntee seemingly stopped posting on social media, but she claims his relative radio silence contributed to a significant decline in Date Right Stuff users.
While she could not provide an exact figure, she says that numbers she viewed while working at the company ‘plummeted.’
The Debono-McEntee split could have easily spelled the end of ‘Make America Hot Again’ – but a determined Debono says she is, in fact, now doing better than ever before.
Attendance at MAHA events that she is staging on her own are, she claims, soaring ‘like crazy.’ More than 200 people attended her most recent party in New York City forcing her to book a bigger venue for the next event, DeBono says. Other events have been held in Washington DC.
Her success, she believes, is fueled by her authenticity. While working under McEntee, she claims she felt pressure to voice far-right beliefs that didn’t vibe with the moderate Republican crowd that she wished to cultivate.
‘Working at Date Right, I would never say I was pro-choice,’ she tells the Daily Mail. Now, she says she can.
In fact, Debono can ‘do and say’ what she wants, which has bolstered her online brand that has 100,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok.
So, was parting ways with John McEntee to MAHA?
‘This is going to sound so vain,’ Debono says. ‘But I’ve noticed that the events have gotten more and more hot people.’
Raquel Debono may be Making American Hot Again – again.
