John McEntee, the new head of President
Donald Trump’s Presidential Personnel Office (PPO), asked White House
staff to list “anti-Trump” political appointees in the administration.
McEntee met with White House cabinet liaisons on Thursday to request a
list, according to three sources familiar with the meeting who
spoke to Axios reporter Jonathan Swan.
Trump enters the next phase of his presidency determined to root out
disloyalty in the administration, and McEntee’s return demonstrates his
commitment to the task.
McEntee is now in charge of political appointments to the
administration, and the president has empowered him to remove the Trump
appointees who are blocking his agenda and even working against him.
Fired and
escorted off
the premises at the command of former White House Chief of Staff John
Kelly in 2018, McEntee, Trump’s former body man, has returned to the
Trump White House as the head of the PPO.
Trump considers McEntee one of the “originals” — the small band of
people who worked with the president in the private sector and in the
early days of his campaign.
Other “originals” include Hope Hicks, who also recently returned to
the White House, and Dan Scavino, the president’s adviser and social
media director.
The news has delighted Trump loyalists in Washington, DC, who are already celebrating the president’s decision to
appoint
U.S. Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell as the Acting Director of
National Intelligence and the news that Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy John Rood
resigned Wednesday at Trump’s request.
“Johnny is the ultimate Trump loyalist and exactly the kind of guy,
if you support the president’s agenda, that you want to serve in that
position,” former White House aide Cliff Simms said to Breitbart News.
“This is a huge win for the MAGA movement to have him in that job.”
