Former Trump administration aide says she was warned about playing Taylor Swift music in White House

An aide who worked in the White House during the Trump administration, Olivia Troye, told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that she was warned by a colleague after playing Taylor Swift in the White House. 

Troye, who worked as an aide for former Vice President Mike Pence and served on the administration coronavirus task force, said on “All In With Chris Hayes” on Tuesday that she felt angry following an argument related to the COVID-19 pandemic that occurred during a meeting and retreated to her office, where she began loudly playing Swift’s music.

She said a colleague then knocked on her office door and asked her, “Are you trying to get fired?”

The question confused Troye, she said, so she asked for clarification, inquiring whether her colleague was asking because she was blunt during meetings. She said he replied, “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 was “astonishing” to her and that she had replied to her colleague that it was “late, and I’m allowed to listen to whatever music I want.”

Her story comes after the publication of an article in The Atlantic on Tuesday by Jonathan Karl, the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, that recounted a related incident.

He wrote that former President Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows 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 had 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.

I spoke to @vmagazine about why I’ll be voting for Joe Biden for president. So apt that it’s come out on the night of the VP debate. Gonna be watching and supporting @KamalaHarris by yelling at the tv a lot. And I also have custom cookies

@inezandvinoodh pic.twitter.com/DByvIgKocr

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) October 7, 2020

The HUD assistant was a Swift fan and had also liked every other Instagram post the singer had ever posted, Karl wrote.