A former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence who also served on the White House coronavirus task force says President Donald Trump once suggested that COVID-19 might be a good thing because it would stop him from having to shake hands with “disgusting people.”
Olivia Troye is the latest former member of the Trump administration to speak out against him and urge voters to deny him a second term. She joins a growing list that includes Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
Troye, Pence’s former homeland security adviser, says in a new video released Thursday by the group Republican Voters Against Trump that working for Trump was “terrifying” and that he was more concerned about his reelection chances than about protecting the nation from the virus.
“The truth is he doesn’t actually care about anyone else but himself,” she says.
Troye alleges that, during one task force meeting that she attended, the president told the room that, “’Maybe this COVID thing is a good thing. I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.’”
“Those disgusting people are the same people that he claims to care about. These are the people still going to his rallies today who have complete faith in who he is,” she says, insisting, “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, a lifelong Republican, said she plans to vote for Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, in November.
The White House adamantly denied the exchange had happened, with White House spokesperson Judd Deere saying “her assertions have no basis in reality and are flat out inaccurate.”
He further dismissed Troye as “disgruntled” and said she generally watched task force meetings from an overflow staff room and was never in private meetings with the president.
“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,” added Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser, who said Troye reported to him and never once expressed concern about the administration’s response.
Josh Venable, the former chief of staff to Education Secretary Betsy Devos, has joined another former Trump administration official's group opposing the president.
Venable is lending his name as an adviser to the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform, a group former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor launched on Thursday of current and former Trump administration officials and other Republican leaders who want to see President Donald Trump defeated in November.
Taylor, who was chief of staff at DHS, and Elizabeth Neumann, another former senior Trump DHS official, started the group, which includes 26 Republicans, including Anthony Scaramucci, who served briefly as White House communications director. A current senior administration official is also part of the group, but Taylor declined to share that person's name.
