Olivia Troye, an official in the Trump administration, told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that she was cautioned by a coworker after playing specific music at the White House.
Troye, who worked as an aide to former Vice President Mike Pence and served on the administration coronavirus task force, said on “All In With Chris Hayes” on Tuesday that she became enraged after an argument about the COVID-19 pandemic during a meeting and retreated to her office, where she began loudly playing Taylor Swift music.
She said that a coworker then knocked on her office door and asked, “Are you trying to be fired?”
Troye was perplexed by the remark, so she inquired for clarity, wondering whether her colleague was asking because she was forthright during meetings. He answered, she stated “I don’t think she’s a fan of Trump’s,” meaning Swift, and added, “If someone hears that … you should really watch your back. You should be careful on that .”
Troye told Hayes that it was “astonishing” to her, and that she had informed her colleague that it was “late, and I’m allowed to listen to whatever music I want.”
Her tale follows the release of a piece in The Atlantic on Tuesday by Jonathan Karl, ABC News’ top Washington correspondent, recounting a similar occurrence.
He wrote that former President Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows had requested that a top staffer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) call him because Meadows had heard that an assistant in the department liked one of Swift’s Instagram posts in which she encouraged people to vote and expressed support for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.
“We really can’t have our people liking posts promoting Joe Biden,” Meadows said to Hughes, per Karl’s article.
The HUD assistant was a Swift fan and had also liked every other Instagram post the singer had ever posted, Karl wrote.
Swift is usually silent when it comes to politics, but she directed a tweet at Donald Trump. Swift’s tweet was in response to the death of George Floyd and a tweet Trump made about the riots in Minneapolis.
Protests broke out across the city in response to the officer responsible for Floyd’s death being arrested.
Protesters burnt down a police station and a few hours later it was announced that the officer responsible for Floy’s death had been arrested.
Trump fueled the controversy and violence taking place by calling protesters “thugs” and encouraging police to shoot protesters.
“…These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
Swift tagged Trump directly in her tweet responding to his threats. “After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump.”
Though Swift spoke about her disapproval of Trump’s actions in interviews. This is the first time she has directly criticized him.
During an interview with The Guardian, Swift called the political atmosphere that Trump had created as “gaslighting the American public into being like, ‘If you hate the president, you hate America.’”
She would then add, “We’re a democracy—at least, we’re supposed to be—where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate. I really think that he [Trump] thinks this is an autocracy.”
Swift used Twitter once again to speak out against Donald Trump.
Swift joins a growing number of celebrities that have called Trump out for his decision to not fund the United States Postal Service.
“He is WELL AWARE that we do not want him as our president. He’s chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power,” Swift tweeted on Saturday.
The USPS has struggled throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The health crisis has caused a decrease in the amount of mail and packages in transit. As more people are applying to vote-by-mail this year because of the coronavirus, Trump has decided to dub mail-in-voting “fraudulent,”
By not funding the USPS, Trump believes he will render it unable to handle mail-in-voting.
In another tweet, Swift encouraged all of her fans and followers to request their 2020 ballot earlier in order to bypass and delays that may come due to actions taken by Trump.
“Donald Trump’s ineffective leadership gravely worsened the crisis that we are in and he is now taking advantage of it to subvert and destroy our right to vote and vote safely. Request a ballot early. Vote early,” Swift tweeted.
Swift’s weekend tweets are not the first time that the songstress has spoken out against Trump. Back in May she tweeted to Trump directly telling him that voters were preparing to give him the boot in November. Her post was made amid Black Lives Matter protests that had just broken out across the country following the murder of George Floyd. Floyd was killed by a white officer who placed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than 8 minutes. Protests continue in larger cities across the country.
