When Grace Carter heard about the story from The Right Stuff’s Instagram account, the person behind it identified himself as John, and provided a phone number with a Southern California area code that a WIRED reporter had used to contact McEntee in the past.
There was no clear reason why he reached out to her in particular; Carter had around 17,000 followers on TikTok at the time of the connection, and still has around 1,500 on Instagram. “I actually have no idea how he found me,” she said. “Based on the other accounts I follow and the things I post, I’m very left-wing, so I was surprised when he found me.”
Carter said she never used McEntee’s number, but she did accept his offers of free designer hoodies. According to messages reviewed by WIRED, Carter rarely responded to McEntee, but he repeatedly offered to fly her and her girlfriend to Los Angeles. “I’ll pay,” he wrote.
“I remember telling my boyfriend about it, and I joked about him being the other girl,” Carter said, adding that she continued to talk to McEntee as a sort of “prank.” “I kept the conversation going at first because I wanted a free trip.”
In messages seen by WIRED, McEntee told Carter, “I think you’re a liberal,” but added, “As long as you’re having fun, I don’t care.” She said the conversation died down after Carter declined to visit McEntee over winter break.
“I would have felt uncomfortable meeting him in person,” she says.
After the September 10 presidential debate, McEntee posted a video titled, “Can anyone find the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding to death in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned? Don’t get your hopes up.” The comments section of the video was quickly flooded with women from around the country sharing their own experiences.
Carter said she saw the post and felt it was important to share her story. “I was really shocked by the abortion video he made,” she said. “And I thought this needs to be brought to justice.” After posting a video to TikTok sharing her conversation with McEntee, Carter said she received messages from several other young women who said they had had similar experiences.
One woman who spoke to WIRED, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for her safety, said she connected with McEntee on the dating app The Right Stuff and then began texting him. The phone number provided matched one given to her by Carter and one previously used by a WIRED reporter. The messages, reviewed by WIRED, also included a selfie that was clearly of McEntee. Like Carter, McEntee was 18 at the time.
“I would describe myself as semi-conservative,” the young woman says. Unlike Carter, she knew who McEntee was, and initially thought his profile on the app was an example for users, rather than his actual account. (A series of TikTok videos last year showed McEntee going on first dates in different cities with women he’d matched with on the app.) “I’d seen him on TikTok. I’d seen him on the news. My family is pretty conservative, so I’d seen him before.”
