A former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence is speaking out about President Donald Trump‘s response to the COVID-19 contagion, alleging “he doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
Olive Troye is a lifelong Republican who served as a homeland security adviser to Pence and his lead staffer on the White House’s coronavirus task force. She plans on voting for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden after witnessing first hand Trump’s handling of the pandemic that has killed over 200,000 Americans.
Troye recalls one task force meeting when Trump suggested COVID-19 was “a good thing” because “I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.”
The “disgusting people” he referred to are the “same people that he claims to care about,” she said in an interview, The Washington Post reports.
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“These are the people still going to his rallies today who have complete faith in who he is. If the president had taken this virus seriously, or if he had actually made an effort to tell how serious it was, he would have slowed the virus spread, he would have saved lives,” Troye added.
Troye left the White House in late July.
“Towards the middle of February, we knew it wasn’t a matter of if Covid would become a big pandemic here, it was a matter of when,” she said.
She is endorsing Biden because “I truly believe we are at a time of constitutional crisis. At this point it’s country over party.”
Meanwhile, the White House refute Troye’s claims and note that she didn’t raise objections while working for this administration.
President Trump told reporters on Thursday that he did not know Troye and believes she was coerced into making her remarks.
“Every time somebody leaves government — 99% of the time I’m not going to know these people. And they leave on a basis of almost like it’s a personal thing with me,” Trump said.
“Ms. Troye is a former detailee and a career Department of Homeland Security staff member, who is disgruntled that her detail was cut short because she was no longer capable of keeping up with her day-to-day duties,” retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser, said in a statement.
“Ms. Troye directly reported to me, and never once during her detail did she ever express any concern regarding the Administration’s response to the Coronavirus to anyone in her chain of command. By not expressing her concerns, she demonstrated an incredible lack of moral courage,” Kellogg added.
Pence also condemend his former aide.
“I haven’t read her comments in any detail, but it reads to me like one more disgruntled employee who’s left the White House and now has decided to play politics during an election year,” Pence said. “I think my staff has indicated that she made no comments like that when she was serving on our team here at the White House coronavirus task force.”
Troye, who took a job at the National Insurance Crime Bureau when she left the Trump administration, endorsed Biden in the video released Thursday, CNN reports. Despite being a staunch conservative, she did not vote for Trump in 2016 because she disliked his divisive rhetoric.
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