You’re a youngish white dude sitting alone in your mom’s basement. You’ve got guns, gear, camo outfits, and your MAGA hat is resting on the mattress on your bed. Posters of Trump, and the January 6 riot at the Capitol are plastered on your walls. You’re proudly unvaccinated and you’ve tweeted out diatribes against “woke” culture and Black Lives Matter. You’ve got everything you ever wanted or needed … except for one thing. You can’t get a date!
Now thanks former Trump staffers John McEntee, who was a personal aide to former President Trump and then director of the White House presidential personnel office, and Daniel Huff, a Trump appointee in the Department of Housing and Urban Development and also a White House adviser, there may be some hope, by signing on to “The Right Stuff” (https://www.joinrightstuff.com/home) a new conservative dating app scheduled to launch in September.
According to McEntee and Huff, the app aims to get conservatives in “the right dating pool, with people who share the same values and beliefs.” The app will only accept two genders, “ladies and gentlemen” with “no pronouns necessary.” According to The Wrap’s Loree Seitz, “’Ladies’ will get a free premium subscription for inviting friends to join the app and ‘gentlemen’ will have to pay if they want premium access.”
In a promotional video for the app, Ryann McEnany, the sister of former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, is responsible for marketing. “We’re sorry that you’ve had to endure years of bad dates and wasted time with people who don’t see the world our way — the right way.”
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal, invested $1.5 million into the app that was “created for conservatives to connect in authentic, meaningful ways,” according to The Hill. As The Hill’s Emily Brooks recently reported (https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3544402-swipe-right-wing-former-trump-aides-seek-singles-for-thiel-backed-dating-app/), “There is a long list of failed or now-defunct dating apps aimed at conservatives that have popped up in recent years, including Righter, Donald Dater, TrumpSingles, Patrio and Conservatives Only.”
According to Brooks, Thiel’s investment in The Right is “one of many of his investments on the political right. He’s also invested in Rumble, an alternative to YouTube that is popular among conservatives, and this election cycle he’s poured millions into supporting Trump-endorsed GOP Senate candidates J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona.”
Some of those apps were aimed specifically at Republicans; others were aimed at people who might want to date Republicans; and still others had a more hardline ideological bent.
In 2018, reporting for Politico, Daniel Lippman and Ben Schreckinger wrote about young Trump political operatives that were struggling not only to avoid harassment on the streets of Washington, D.C., but with the difficulty of getting dates (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/22/trump-millennial-supporters-washington-dc-218833/).
In an interview, Huff said, “What we’re doing has really not been done before. No one has built a high quality, properly funded app with a dedicated team. It’s an important, underserved market. Liberals own the education, media corporations, and we can’t let them control our personal relationships.”
Huff added: “It’s for all types of conservatives and all types of dating.” And, while now it is focused on heterosexual relationships, it might expand to same-sex relationships “down the road,” Huff said.
Ryann McEnany, “has been sliding into conservative women’s DMs on social media to recruit them to join the app. She also headed to the conservative Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Texas last month, a gathering of thousands of young women, to recruit for The Right Stuff,” The Hill’s Brooks reported.
Naturally, news of the app caused quite a stir on Twitter:
“Question 1 on app: “What’s your ideal first date?” Acceptable responses: Klan rallies, MAGA rallies, CPAC conventions, shooting guns, berating women going to Planned Parenthood, placing “Let’s go Brandon” stickers all over town. You know, just the usual stuff. – S’coolhouse Rock (@Nicoolio1973)
You know your racist when you start a business dividing your client base. Calling it The Right Stuff knowing you mean The White Stuff. @kayleighmcenanyyou’re sister Ryann’s business will fail just like Truth Social for racists. https://t.co/pQDtxv2tqs-- Opal (@Opalluvs)
With its tech expertise, “The Right Stuff” organizers boast of “new features [that] set it apart from competitors. One feature with the working name ‘Posted Date’ lets users advertise potential dates to encourage in-person interaction. ‘Basically, ‘Oh, I got two tickets to a ballgame, who wants to go?’ And then, you know, multiple people can say, ‘Hey, I’m interested,’ and then you wind up in picking one,’ Huff said. ‘It’s an idea of getting people out on fun dates, instead of just sitting on the phone, you know, messaging back and forth.’”