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"It Was All About the Election": Olivia Troye on Trump's Narcissistic Narcissistic Mishandling of CO
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/it-was-all-about-the-election-the-ex-white-house-aide-olivia-troye-on-trumps-narcissistic-mishandling-of-covid-19By Susan B. Glasser
September 18, 2020
Excerpt:
. . .
When I spoke with Olivia Troye on Thursday afternoon, she sounded more than a little scared. She was about to go public with a scorching video, in which she would denounce President Donald Trump and his stewardship of the country during the coronavirus pandemic. Troye, who served as Vice-President Mike Pences adviser for homeland security until late July, has witnessed the Administrations response to the crisis, as Pences top aide on the White House coronavirus task force. She had seen Trump rant in private about Fox News coverage as his public-health advisers desperately tried to get him to focus on a disease that has now killed some two hundred thousand Americans. She had decided that Trump was lying to the American public about the disease, and that words matter, especially when youre the President of the United States, and that it was time to speak out. She was nervous and scared and worried for her family and her career. But she plunged ahead anyway.
I asked about her firsthand observation of the President during the crisis. She said that Trump was disruptive. That he could not focus. That he was consumed by himself and his prospects in November. For him, it was all about the election, Troye told me. He just cant seem to care about anyone else besides himself.
Troye joined the coronavirus task force when it was first established, in late January, before any Americans had died from covid-19. Her experience on it, Troye told me, convinced her that Trumps handling of the situationthe conscious spreading of disinformation, the disregard for the task forces workhad made the crisis far worse for Americans. She warned about the Presidents push for a vaccine before the November election and said that she did not trust him to do the right thing for the countrys health and safety. What Im really concerned about is if they rush this vaccine and pressure people and get something out because they want to save the election, she said.
Read The New Yorkers complete news coverage and analysis of the coronavirus pandemic.
Troye is the first White House staff member who has worked on the coronavirus response to speak out publicly against Trump, but the President and the Administration she described were drearily consistent with portraits that have emerged in countless other tell-all interviews and books: a White House riven by backstabbing and suspicion, where trouble flowed from the top and good governance was subordinate to Presidential whim and partisan calculation. She told me she believed that most other staffers on the coronavirus task force were genuinely motivated to help Americans weather the pandemic but that Trump blocked them from implementing the right policies. Everything that youre putting in place is derailed not just by a random personits derailed by a No. 1. Its derailed by the person at the very top, she said.
Troye described herself to me as a lifelong Republican, whose first job out of college was at the Republican National Committee. On 9/11, she fled her office on foot, walking home past the smoldering fire of the Pentagon, a moment that convinced her, like many others in her generation, to pursue a career in national security. She went on to serve as a George W. Bush Administration appointee in the Pentagon. For the first year and a half of the Trump Administration, she worked at the Department of Homeland Security, as a career intelligence official, before being detailed to Pences staff. Civil servants like herself were reviled as deep staters by Trumps political appointees, she said. They were viewed with even more suspicion after Trumps impeachment in the House, in December, was aided by testimony from mid-level White House staffers, including Jennifer Williams, Pences national-security aide, who worked in the office next to Troyes. I actually find that term very offensive, she told me, because not once while I was there did I do anything that I believe would lead anyone to think that I was a deep stater, constantly undermining his agenda. . . . At the end of the day, Im a career officer and my job was to serve, no matter who was in office.
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"It Was All About the Election": Olivia Troye on Trump's Narcissistic Narcissistic Mishandling of CO (Original Post)
swag
Sep 2020
OP
Saying what I really think, the way I really, really want to say it would get me a hide.
marble falls
Sep 2020
#1
marble falls
(56,358 posts)1. Saying what I really think, the way I really, really want to say it would get me a hide.
Skittles
(152,964 posts)2. can you give us a hint?
marble falls
(56,358 posts)3. The hint would probably get a hide in itself.