August 3, 2023 • 45 mins
As the homeland security advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, Olivia Troye is the go-to “crisis person.” But when a dangerous new virus emerges in January 2020, Olivia is forced to grapple with a leadership crisis – and revelations that send shockwaves through the U.S. political system.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
What bench were we sitting on?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Were we here or were we right over there?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Now I think we were on this spot.
Speaker 4 (00:09):
I think we sat over here.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
I think we sat over here. Let's let's relive it.
Let's see that life has changed a hell of a
lot since we sat on this bench. We grabbed coffees,
we walked down that bridge, and I'm pretty sure we
sat down, and you know, we were both nervous about
being seen by anyone.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
One of the more senior people in the Trump administration
who was still there, comes walking up with their puppy.
I remember my hands going cold and thinking, oh my god,
they're gonna think we're conspiring. They're gonna think that I'm
conspiring with Miles. I can just see it.
Speaker 5 (00:47):
Now.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
She's gonna go back and report this to the White House,
and the cat's out of the bag.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Olivia Troy and I first met at the Department of
Homeland Security when we were both working on counter terrorism.
I became DHS chief of staff, and she went on
to become a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence
and eventually the lead staffer on the White House's Coronavirus
Task Force. As you can imagine, we both experienced our
(01:16):
fair share of crises. In that first scene you heard
Olivia and I are reliving a stressful moment for both
of us. It was in September twenty twenty. I had
quit the Trump administration the year prior and was trying
to get others to come forward and talk about the
mayhem inside the Oval office. Olivia had just quit her position, too,
(01:39):
frustrated by White House mismanagement of the pandemic, so she
wanted to talk at least very discreetly. Unfortunately, we were
spotted by one of President Trump's lawyers, who happened to
be walking a dog in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
We had an awkward conversation with her when we pet
her dog, and I think we all agree we've got
to get together for lunch sometime. And you and I
walked away, and you basically said to me, Yeah, I
gotta gouch.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
If this run in makes Olivia uneasy, it isn't just paranoia.
By that point, I've been on TV daily speaking about
the chaos that I'd witnessed during the Trump presidency. Naturally,
I was getting attacked by the White House and Trump's allies.
Olivia being seen with me would definitely make anyone in
the administration suspicious that maybe she is planning to go
(02:31):
public with damaging information too, and she is. I was scared.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
My sense of purpose was leaning towards that direction because
I felt like if I could make a difference, or
if I could have a voice in it that maybe
might reach somebody, then I needed to do it. But
then seeing how you had been treated, seeing all the
threats that you had faced and what had happened, was
a pretty scary calculus, knowing that that would probably become
(03:01):
my life.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Nine days later, Olivia speaks out publicly and it does
become her life. I'm Miles Taylor. This is the whistleblowers
on this show. We're going deep into the heart of
power to meet people who spoke out about wrongdoing from
inside the Trump administration. Some were in the President's inner circle,
(03:28):
others were on the front lines of top agencies. But
they all have a few things in common, the ethical
gray areas, the doubts about whether what they did even
made an impact, and their decisions cost all of them
more than they ever imagined. Episode five, Homeland Insecurity. So
(03:57):
let's go back to the period when Olivia and I
first met She started work at DHS right around the
beginning of the Trump administration, and I came in a
few months later. Almost from day one, she realized this
was not going to be like anything she'd ever seen.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I remember that one of the first things issued was
what was called a travel band.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
January twenty seventh, twenty seventeen, the new president issues an
executive order banning travel from seven Muslim majority countries. The
announcement is all over TV, with Vice President Mike Pence
and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattison standing right behind Trump,
their faces unreadable.
Speaker 6 (04:42):
I'm establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists
out of the United States of America. We don't want
them here. We want to ensure that we are not
admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are
fighting overseas.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
It actually came as a part of a group of
executive orders, so we were drowning because all of them
hit at once. It was immigration executive orders, it was
talks about.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
The border wall construction.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And I remember thinking, like, they're flooding the system because
at some point, like the system breaks, because it is
the same people.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
All of it really falls under DHS.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Olivia is specifically working in the DHS Office of Intelligence
and Analysis, a unit that in any other presidential administration
would be consulted about changes to US counter tears and policy.
But she isn't consulted. No one on our team is.
In fact, before the order is issued, no one in
the entire Department of Homeland Security sees it, even though
(05:49):
it's allegedly focused on combating terrorism. Olivia realizes this is
the new normal. The experts are kept in the dark.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
And I remember we were in a meeting after they
briefed what this was. I looked around the room and
I could see the shocked look on people's faces.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
This travel ban includes people arriving from seven countries Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria,
and Yemen. And because no one thought to ask DHS,
the specifics are a mess. People are showing up at
airports in total disarray. Green cardholders are told they're exempt
than not exempt. Refugees promised asylum are suddenly not allowed
(06:30):
into the country, and family members arrive in America after
long journeys to find they can't see their sick relatives
or their loved ones. There were so many news reports
about the chaos this caused, like this story on CNN.
Speaker 7 (06:45):
Nemo Hashi is a broken wife without her husband, the
mother of a toddler without her father, but on government papers,
she's a Somali refugee, her husband trapped in Africa and
the legal tug of war over the travel ban. The
last time how she saw her husband was in a
refugee camp and eat the opia. Both had fled the
bloody war in Somalia.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
So President Trump ordered this initial ban without consulting experts
like Olivia, who are left cleaning up the mess. But then,
even as it's becoming clear the policy is a disaster,
he decides he wants DHS to come up with a
bigger list of countries, more than the original seven. He's
thinking citizens from dozens and dozens of countries should be
(07:33):
blocked from coming into the United States, and his advisors
are pressuring people at DHS like Olivia to come up
with a list and say that it's for national security reasons.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Within hours, we got to notice that, said me in
the conference room.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
We went in there and they say they said, don't
come out until you have a list of countries.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And it was like well, wait a second, like, we're
just making up this list, and they're like, you'll know
the ones.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
The subtext here, though it's not especially subtle, is Muslim countries,
ideally the poor ones.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
I remember walking out of that meeting shaking and going
back into my office and being like, what have I
just done? Like what I just took this job to
Scott hear? What is happening right now?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I came across Olivia for the first time while all
of this was unfolding. I started a few months into
the administration and quickly found myself on the same side
as her. The ban was ludicrous. There wasn't any intelligence
that showed that dozens and dozens of countries posed a
threat to the United States, and yet a White House
(08:51):
operative was demanding that DHS come up with a list.
In fact, he regularly rattled off the names of countries
that Trump wanted to see banned. This guy had his
list of countries that the President would want to see banned,
and he's telling you all the intelligence officials to give
a reason to ban them. And it was like the
(09:13):
first real moment I'd seen in the Trump administration of someone,
especially in the civil service, being like no, we can't
do that. We're not going to do that.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I do you remember that because this person came in,
I was like, no, the intelligence doesn't back that. Then
the things that we've looked at actually back then. And
I remember looking across the table at you, and I
remember the look on your face.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
You were like, WHOA. She just took him on both
of us.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I think by that point knew that that person had
a direct line to the White House and where that
was going, which was basically going to Stephen Miller as well.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Stephen Miller, Trump's senior policy advisor, the architect of the
travel band, child separation and other hardline immigration policies. He
pushed for the bigger list that Trump wanted. I agreed
with Olivia, the intelligence didn't justify it, Miles.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
I do remember you saying, well, if she's saying that
it's not there and this is a meeting, then.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
This isn't the list, and there's no way that this
is actually the correct thing to do. You were just
kind of like, look that the information isn't there. She's
just telling you it's not there.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So, tasked with managing this policy, Olivia says, her focus
immediately becomes narrowing down the ban to create human exceptions,
like for refugees and family members.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I worked very hard on the travel ban, and very
hard on that list to make sure that it was
done in the appropriate manner without completely destroying decades of
work in the intelligence and national security community for one.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And in the end, her team waters down the ban,
keeping it from spreading to dozens of new countries and
trying to limit it only to high risk travelers. But
you might be thinking there was another choice here. Why
didn't Olivia just quit on the spot. Isn't there a
line that professional people with some kind of conscience just
(11:11):
won't cross. You've heard why I stayed. To understand why
Olivia stuck it out, it's worth learning more about the
way she viewsed the world and her place within it.
Olivia is an old school by the book public servant
(11:32):
who went into government to give back to a country
that gave her so much. That sounds like a Folkesy trope,
but I know her pretty well and it's genuinely who
she is. David Rothcop shares this view. He is a
national security analyst and writer, and his book American Resistance
profiles public servants like Olivia, who stood up to pressure
(11:54):
from the Trump White House.
Speaker 8 (11:56):
I think people outside of Washington need to be disabused
of this notion that people in the United States government
are not working for them. Ninety nine percent of them
are dedicated public servants who take less money and endure
a lot of personal risk and sacrifice in order to
help make the country a better place.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Like a lot of people we've spoken to for this podcast,
myself included, the experience of nine to eleven was a
major catalyst for Olivia. She was working for the Republican
National Committee at the time.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I remember having to walk home from Capitol Hill all
the way to Arlington, Virginia because there was just no
weather way to get home. And I remember that day
watching the Pentagon.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
It was on fire.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I remember all the response vehicles, and in the aftermath
of those days, thinking there's got to be more that
I should be doing on this.
Speaker 8 (12:51):
She worked within the national security community for years and
years before the Trump administration, and the first assignment she
had in the government working in the national security community
as she did was in Baghdad and working in the
Green Zone in Baghdad and being at great personal risk.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
That was when She'd been a part of the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad, the transitional government established in i
Rock after the fall of Sodom Hussein. She then worked
as an advisor at the National counter Terrorism Center. This
type of grueling, dangerous work is the opposite of the
image that some politicians paint of Washington, DC bureaucrats in
(13:32):
a self serving swamp.
Speaker 8 (13:34):
Whether it was issues like immigration, issues like the rise
of right wing extremism in the United States. Olivia Troy
is somebody who every single day got up said how
do I serve my oath? How do I serve my country?
I think a lot of people grappled with the idea
(13:55):
of whether they should enter the Trump administration. One thing
that was striking me was how many of them realized,
very very early on that this was not going to
be an administration like any other. And many of them
had to grapple with that and said do I stay,
do I join, do I resign? And a number of them,
(14:16):
and I think We're better off for it, said no,
I'm going to go in. I'm going to do the
best I can. I'm going to do this to, you know,
make the world a better place.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So in that pivotal moment where she's asked to work
on Trump's ban, Olivia decides to stay. She doesn't think
it's right. In fact, she's appalled by the policy, but
she feels she can't do much about it if she's
outside of government. I was impressed by Olivia's poise throughout
all of this, her ability to navigate political land minds
(14:56):
while also steering things in the right direction. So when
I heard Vice President Pence was looking for a Homeland
security advisor, I immediately suggested her. By that point, I
was on my way to becoming DHS Chief of Staff,
and I knew more than ever that cool heads were
needed among the people in the inner circle of the administration.
In fact, she was the only candidate that I thought
(15:18):
could handle the job. You and I had a conversation
at some point. I was like, hey, trying to put
lipstick on a pig. What about going to the White House?
Speaker 3 (15:27):
It will be amazing, There's this great opportunity. And I
was like, oh, great, where in DHS am I going?
And you were like, actually, what about the Vice President's office?
And I was like, the United States, Mike Pence, And
you said, we need someone that is extremely competent, who
is willing to navigate in this environment?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
And I was like, I wonder what he meant by that.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
The translation here was please help experienced people were quitting
in droves or getting fired by the president, and we
needed more grown ups to keep the administration from going
off the rails.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Was just sort of like, can I serve this person
well and do my best to make a difference in
this scenario, even though I know that I'm pretty much
going into the frying pan. I'm familiar with my pets.
I had not worked with him before, but to me,
out of both sides of the house, he seemed like
the more sane person, and he seemed more constant, more steady,
(16:29):
So I was like, Okay, I can go there and
really try to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
She quickly becomes the crisis person.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
If it's really bad, it's going boom, that's Olivia's I
was like, why don't I get the plush Europe trips.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Why don't I get to go on cool travel. No,
I only get to.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Go to like devastation, tornadoes, floods, and whatever else happened.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
And she's busy because there are constant crises. But she's
able to do her job and find other smart people
on the team. At first, it seems to be somewhat
insulated from the rest of the political turmoil at the
White House.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I had a good working relationship with Mike Pence. He
knew that I was always very honest and very factual,
and that's what I went there to do, was operate
in a factually driven sense of trying to just inform
him and at the end of the day guide him
through some of the toughest decisions. And he took great
pride in making sure that it was sort of a
calmer environment, less chaotic to a certain extent. That is
(17:34):
year one of my tour in the White House that
actually goes downhill pretty quickly as things sort of start.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
To happen.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Downhill from the travel band to Nazis. August twelfth, twenty seventeen,
Vice News was first on the scene to document what
(18:05):
was called the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
White nationalist marchers, including neo Nazis, came to protest the
proposed removal of a General Robert E. Lee statue. Counter
protesters then come to oppose the rally and violence breaks out,
(18:26):
a self identified white supremacist rams his car into the crowd,
killing a woman named Heather Higher and injuring several others.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I remember Charlottesville happened, and I remember there were a
lot of heated conversations, the confusing things where there were
mixed signals, right, I mean, there were political pointees in
this office that were disbanding the domestic Terrorism Cell group.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
And I was like, Okay, we'll wait a second.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
This is on the rise, and we are not approaching
this in a systematic way where this is actually like
we're like actually going to tackle the problem. But the
other part of it, well, it was clear that, given
especially Trump's comments after Charlottesville, that there was no appetite
for taking this on seriously.
Speaker 9 (19:13):
I think there's blame on both sides, and I have
no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt
about it either. But you also had people that were
very fine people on both sides. You had people in
that group. Excuse me, excuse me.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That very fine people on both sides. Comment sounded like
a permission slip for the white supremacists, and it played
NonStop on news networks around the world.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Then it becomes a lot of domestic incidents, and a
lot of the hate crimes and some of the mass
shootings are tied to this. There are all these indicators,
and we know that this is a significant problem for Olivia.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
It's relentless, and it starts to feel like this is
not just a string of isolated incidents.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I probably worked on a mass shooting and probably every
other weekend. It wears on you. I remember every single
one of them, and I remember all the stats.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I remember all.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
The people that have passed away, the kids and families,
and what I started to see were the disturbing patterns
where this was violence.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
It was on the rise.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
There were certain sort of hateful movements that were driving
a lot of these, and a lot of it was
tied to the president's rhetoric at the time and what
he was saying.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
But when she and her colleagues try to push for
more attention on combating domestic terrorism, it's clearly not a priority,
and it's awkward.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It was very hard to go in and brief on
these types of situations and say, you know, just so
you know, we found Trump paraphernalia in the van on
some of these attacks, or just so you know, he
quoted something in the manifesto before he went in, and
then it happens in my own hometown.
Speaker 10 (21:01):
Panic in El Paso this morning, when a day of shopping,
let's go, Let's go, turned into warror with an active
shooter on the loose. Multiple victims are being treated at
area hospitals.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
August third, twenty nineteen, a chilling report from NBC News
details how twenty three people, most of them Latino, have
been murdered at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. It's
a targeted attack, and the shooter leaves behind a manifesto.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
He was talking about this, you know, nativism theory, and
he makes references to many of the things that Trump
had said, a lot of the things that were being
said on fire right media, a lot of honestly, things
that Stephen Miller had said himself in meetings that I
personally heard for his hand, and it was horrifying to think,
you know, this is happening in our country, but we're
(21:52):
turning a blind eye to it.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
In the manifesto, the shooter called the attack a response
to quote the Hispanic invasion of Texas. He used the
same language the White House had been using to describe
the situation at the southern border an invasion.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
I had those conversations in the office of the Vice
President with people. It was like feeling paralyzed on the
issue because I knew that he could only weigh in
to a certain extent, but there was no I guess,
will or appetite to take on the issue further because
(22:31):
at the end of the day, unfortunately, these movements have
become part of Donald Trump's base because he had emboldened them,
and these are unfortunately his.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Supporters, aids are just disregarded when they try to bring
up looming issues like domestic terrorism. So now Olivia is
constantly weighing that question that came up during the travel ban.
Can she stay and fix the situation or should she leave?
But then in January twenty twenty, there's a new crisis
(23:02):
on the horizon, and it's a big one and Wuhan, China,
a mysterious virus is burning its way through the local population.
But it won't be a local problem for law. January
(23:28):
twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I remember.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Feeling the panic of this being something that was going
to be really bad. I also remember doing the math
in my head and thinking there's no way that the
holidays just happened, and given the number of travel, there's
no way that this isn't here.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
There's just no way.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
With that many people, there are sec They started to
convene some of the doctors. I remember the seriousness of
these discussions, sort of the discussions what is this, what
does this mean?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
It's unknown territory, but Olivia can tell that this coronavirus
thing is bad and they need to be prepared, but
they are far from it.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
We couldn't get the attention of the leadership on it.
It's like, Okay, there is a room full of people
that think this is very serious and are highly concerned,
but we can't get the president to really focus on
it at the time because he's focused on other things
and he's focused on his trip. I think he was
going to India. Nobody thought he should travel there given
(24:31):
what we were like seeing. And I remember at some
point when we're trying to actually say we need to
stop the flights because this is serious enough that there
could be dangerous to Americans and we need to really
have a serious discussion about how we're going to contain this.
Because we're still thinking we can contain it.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
She has a good working relationship with Vice President Pence,
but he's also distracted.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
It was like an ordeal to get these memos of
the plane, to get a conversation with Trump on it.
I remember my boss at the time, General Kellogg, my
direct boss was the head of the National Security team,
was like pissed off because he was like, if Olivia's
saying this is serious, this MEMONI needs to get to
the Vice president tonight because she's telling them that there's
going to be a major decision happening tomorrow. But they
were down at a rally and they didn't care because
(25:12):
we literally had just kicked off an election here and
that was where the focus was.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
But finally they do pay attention. You can mark the
moment almost exactly. It's a little past noon on February
twenty fifth, when the stock market takes a nose dive
as the markets closed for the day. Yahoo finance hosts
are floored by what they see.
Speaker 11 (25:35):
We are looking at big losses here across the board,
accelerating into the clothes. We have another thousand point move
lower on the Dow. There is carnage basically everywhere.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
What point does the fake come in here?
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I think.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I walk in and everyone was staring at the TV,
and I was like, what did I miss? So I'm
thinking like a bomb went off somewhere, and no, it
was that the stock market had plumbed it based on
what I guess this lady had said very honestly at
the CDC.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
And people were livid.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
They were so mad, like we have bigger problems, as in,
like we don't have masks, we don't have.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Enough in our reserves.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And then I remember hearing the comments where they were like,
this is terrible. She tanked the stock market. We're in
an election year, like we are running on a jobs platform.
This is the worst thing that could have happened to us.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
No, the worst thing is still coming. In the weeks
after the market crash, as the pandemic starts to break
out around the country, the White House forms a coronavirus
task Force. The President taps Pence to lead it, and
Pence turns to his trusted advisor to be the task
(26:49):
force's top eight, Olivia Troy. By the end of March
and early April, the group is completely overwhelmed. Thousands of
Americans are dying, and hospitals across the country can't even
get the supplies they need. I remember, in those early
days talking to you a couple of times on the phone.
(27:09):
I was in the private sector, and I just remember
from the earliest days hearing it in your voice, like, Miles,
you don't understand. It's so much worse in here than
it looks. This is the moment where leadership really matters
and where great leaders shine. But Olivia has a different experience.
(27:30):
With the president, he.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Was so disruptive, like we would be having serious discussions
or meetings, and suddenly we would go down the rabbit
hole on random things that had nothing to do, sometimes
with what we were dealing with with the pandemic. Right
like half the time, it was a rant about how
Fox News had treated someone over the weekend in an interview,
and he was pissed off at talker Carletoner. He was
(27:52):
pissed off in Sean Hannity, and he was tasking people
during the meeting, like who's going to fix it? I
remember thinking, I just spent hours working on this agenda
for the vice president. We spent hours prepping him, and
we are not covering any of the items on this list,
Like what are we doing about protective equipment? They're telling
(28:14):
me on the ground that there are nurses making their
own gowns and that they're desperate. That is the kind
of discussions that I think we needed to be really
focused on. But Trump was just focused on other things.
And then he'd be like, all right, so how bad
is this? This is like the flu, right, And.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Soon Trump decides he's done with the bad news.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Doctor Burks would walk in with her big chart that
she had worked on all night with her team.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Doctor Deborah Burkes, the White House coronavirus Response coordinator. You
might remember her as the one with the silk scarves
sitting off to the side in Trump's public health briefings.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Doctor Fauci would walk in with his statue and they
could be like a medical pandemic crisis meeting, and everybody
else wu chime in on what you can do. And
I just remember thinking like it doesn't matter, because they're
going to brief the facts and they're going to be
overtaken by whatever political dynamic is happening in that day.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
The pandemic is not a positive for the Trump reelection campaign.
Every day that the lockdown continues and the markets sputter,
the president's main talking points of booming economy with record
job growth seem more and more irrelevant, and he blames
this blow to his political prospects on the doctors for
(29:34):
the terrifying truth they continue to share with the American public,
especially doctor Anthony Fauci. At first, the President just starts
blocking him at press briefings. Would you also weigh in
on this issue of hydroxy clorquin. Hydroxychloroquin is an unproven
drug that the President is starting to tout as a
(29:54):
treatment for COVID nineteen, which turned out to be totally ineffective,
Doctor Fauchi. She starts to answer, and then question, yeah,
I named.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Your fifth doctor fifteen times. You don't have this, he's.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Your medical efverst correct answer the question fifteen tribes. But
the President is frustrated with Fauci's stubborn insistence on medical science,
so Trump and his inner circle start attacking him.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I think Peter Navarro wrote an OpEd and attacked doctor Fauci.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Peter Navarro was one of the President's more eccentric staffers,
a guy with a taste for conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I walk in the next morning holding the op ed
that's been written about doctor Facci, and I had to
look doctor Fauci in the face and he just shakes
his head and looks at me. He's like, what did
I do? I remember I apologize to him. I remember
I apologize to doctor Fauci, and I was like, I'm
so sorry. I don't know what else to do. I
can't help you. I am so that is horrifying. I
(30:54):
can't believe this happened. It was like, we need to
muzzle the doctors. And I was a person that was
having to call doctor Fauci and be like, you're not
needed at the press briefing, and he's like, did I
do something again?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
The President is putting near constant pressure on the Task
Force to end on popular measures like lockdowns and social distancing,
and it doesn't really matter that the science says that
it's still too dangerous.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I started to get very anxious and upset when it
came to the discussions on schools. There was a lot
of pressure on schools opening up camps, and I remember
texting my calling an article about this Christian camp where
there had been a massive outbreak in kids, and we
(31:37):
were not sure the impacts of the virus on kids
at the time, and I remember thinking, great, so there
are these outbreaks happening in the camps because we are
now pressuring people to open up and we don't have
the ways to mitigate. We don't have that vaccidom, we
don't have things that are effective right now. We can't
even get the testing right because that was screwed up
and the numbers were being inflated and light about and compleat.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Olivia had many moments throughout her time in the administration
where she wanted to walk out, but she stayed and
tried to fix things. Then she found her breaking.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Point and at some point I was just like, we're
killing people. Then I was like these little kids and
these parents who are trusting the government and following their direction,
and we're going to put them in harm's way, And
like at what point, Like what exactly are.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
We doing here?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Even still ever, the public servant leaving in the midst
of a crisis isn't easy on Olivia.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
I was super committed in my role and I was
very concerned about leaving because of the amount of work
I was doing for the task Wars and for PENS
and trying to keep things running. And so it was
like a mixture of like loyalty to the job and
these people. But then also it was sort of like,
at this point, like I feel like I'm complicit, Like
(33:01):
I am part of this thing where people are dying,
and I can't counter these forces that are working against me.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
So in late July twenty twenty, she resigns from her
role in the Vice President's office, and not long after that,
she's sitting on a park bench with me. Remember how
I said Olivia had a right to be paranoid. Well,
when she comes forward shortly after our conversation on the
(33:28):
park bench, the reaction from the White House is swift
and brutal.
Speaker 12 (33:34):
These are not profiles in courage, but these are profiles
in cowardice. Troy failed to speak up, and she struggled
to keep up because she was constantly complaining about how
exhausted and overwhelmed she was coordinating conference calls and scheduling meetings.
Troy's detail was cut short. And now she's cutting commercials
for a fringe club of quote never Trumpers who are
(33:56):
desperate for relevancy, and the price of admission to this
club is fabricated smears and flat out lies against President Trump.
Troy joins the similarly irrelevant, Miles Taylor.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
That's September twenty second, twenty twenty and Press Secretary Kaylee
Mcananey is blasting Olivia, who's just released a video testimonial
on social media that's touted by a group called Republican
Voters against Trump and it goes viral.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
The President is so disconnected from the reality of the
problems across our country. We will no longer be America
after four more years of Trump. We know that President
Trump cares only about himself, given where we are as
a country now.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
Is a Tina Tel truth.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
It's a big deal for Olivia to make herself the
public face of this criticism. She's not only the first
staffer on the COVID task Force to come out against
the president, she was the leader of the task force.
Staff Susan Glasser of The New was one of the
first journalists to interview Olivia after the video came out.
Speaker 13 (35:05):
It actually gone on the phone with this very hesitant,
very concerned woman who seemed like she knew she was
about to bring down the House upon her, but actually
didn't really know how big of a deal it was
going to be. The White House started to attack her personally,
started to you know, say things that were not accurate
(35:26):
about her personnel record, to try to portray her as
simply a discrundled employee.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
They attack her because the message is powerful and it's
coming from a real insider.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
There was just the you know, general journalistic like, wow,
this person is actually a really interesting whistleblower coming public
to us for the first time from directly inside that
COVID House. Was right in the middle of the pandemic
at a moment when it really mattered both politically. It was,
you know, before the twenty twenty election, and when it
(35:57):
really mattered to people's lives.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
So what made Olivia go from resigning her position to
speaking out so loudly. It certainly wasn't seeing how great
my life was after coming forward. Olivia says, it was
the fear, the fear of what would happen if President
Trump got four more years in office.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I had been having nightmares while working in the White House,
and I wasn't, you know, sleeping much, just because we
had so much to do.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
I started to really think about this every day. I
felt like I was in a daze.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I remember taking walks around my neighborhood and I felt
like time had frozen around me. I couldn't understand why,
but it was just such a toxic thing. I was watching,
you know, a lot of the rallies and stuff coming up,
and I knew that the danger of what had happened
in the Trump administration and what he had done was
(36:51):
not going to end election day.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
It was going to continue on.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
So Olivia becomes determined to talk about what she witnessed
on the inside, whether it was the mishandling of the
travel ban, or domestic terrorism or the pandemic. And as
I said, the attacks against her are bruising. Her former
direct boss, retired General Keith Kellogg, takes the podium at
(37:18):
a White House press briefing and says they fired Olivia
because she was a bad employee. He also adds that
he's proud of President Trump's response to the COVID crisis,
but quote, I am not proud of Olivia Troy. But
what's harder for Olivia is being shunned by all her
other former colleagues, many of whom shared her concerns and
(37:42):
expressed their own angst over the President's actions. It feels
like a betrayal.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Every single person that knew I was telling the truth
was suddenly my biggest enemy, and I think that is
that's a hard thing to carry, right because then you've
made all these friendships, you know all these people, and
in an instant overnight, you're scene as an enemy simply.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Because you stood up and you told the truth.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
It's very lonely and it can be scary. After coming forward,
Olivia faces withering attacks on social media, lawsuits from Trump allies,
and death threats.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
It's been really hard for my family living in a
world where you just don't know what's going to happen
when you're out in public. You don't know what's going
to happen at night to your house. You have to
be superguarded. You have to have incredible amount of security.
I know that my address and name has been out
there on far right social chat channels. These people plot
(38:48):
against me, they plot against others.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
What's been the most unnerving episode that you've had to confront?
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I think the graphic images that I got of my pets.
In some ways, that's so alarming that you would threaten
in that way and send pictures of my own dogs
with things having been done to them that I I mean,
they're safe, but just to think that that's the type
of person and that these are the things they think
(39:15):
about doing and taking action when you can do that too,
it's an animal, right, I mean, what would that mean
for what they would do to me or my family,
my husband and my mom. It definitely takes a mental
toll and a physical toll on you. It's devastating on
(39:38):
your entire life. I'm sure that people were like, oh,
they're seeking the spotlight and things like that. It's actually
it's a spotlight that I certainly never thought I would
be in. But I'm only hanging in there because it
matters so much.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
So Olivia's decision to step forward. Did it make a difference,
I asked Susan Glasser.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
I have always believed that Trump's mishandling of the early
days of the pandemic and then his politicization of the
response to it were important factors in the twenty twenty election,
and so having some credible testimony in effect emerge from
(40:22):
inside that operation was significant in terms of establishing the
facts for the American people in the middle of the election.
Speaker 8 (40:31):
David Rothkopp again, the people who are the real heroes
of the effort to found ways to get Trump to
do the right thing, first the fifteen days to stop
the spread, extending the fifteen days to stop the spread,
starting to provide the ppe that people needed, starting to
provide the kind of support that states required. The people
(40:54):
responsible for that, like Olivia troy like Tony Fauci, are
vilified to this day. To this day, there are people
in the United States saying Fauci should be prosecuted. Fauci
saved lives, Olivia Troyce saved lives, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner,
(41:15):
people surrounding them cost lives.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
If I would have just kept my mouth shut, I'd
probably be, you know, in some senior role at DHS.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
The threats, the abuse, all of that is pretty awful.
But what's the worst punishment for a mission oriented public
servant like Olivia. It's not being able to serve in
government anymore.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Hey, I'm watching some of these people that were those
civil servants who drank the koolid and went all win
that were complicit that are now apparently serving on the
Secretary staff.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
Must be nice.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
In other words, the people who held their tongues got promotions,
and the ones who spoke out, well, most of them
are still trying to figure out what comes next.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
I actually just saw Annie McCabe maybe a couple of
weeks ago. We were both at CNN together in the
green room. He looked at me and he's like, how
are you, And for some reason I knew that he
would get it. And I looked at him and I
was like, I'm still trying to find my way, and
(42:33):
he just he looked at me and he was like,
I completely get that. And you know, I left there
that day and I was thinking to myself, like, how pathetic.
It's been two years almost and I'm telling someone that
I'm still trying to buy my way.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
But that's just the reality of how hard this is.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
But even on her darker days, she tries to go
back to why she became an outsider in the first place.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
This is like bigger than just like me.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
It's bigger than the political party I was affiliated with.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
It's bigger than all of that.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
It's really about what this the future means for all
of us. And I'm just hoping that this never happens again.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Next time. On the Whistleblowers, We're going somewhere you wouldn't
expect to a detention facility in rural Georgia, where, at
the height of the pandemic, a nurse uncovers widespread medical
malpractice and a for profit system almost custom built to
look the other way, but when she speaks out, her
(43:52):
revelations reverberate all the way back to the nation's capital.
(44:17):
The Whistleblowers is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership
with Best Case Studios and ARC Media. It was hosted
by me Miles Taylor and written by me Isabel Evans
and Adam Pinkis. Isabel Evans is also our producer. Associate
producers are Hannah leebelwoodz Lockhart, and Ashley Warren. Darcy Peakele
is consulting producer. Zach Herman is the VP of Development
(44:37):
of ARC Media. This episode was edited by Daniel Tuik
with assistants from Max Michael Miller. Original music is by
James Newberry. Executive producers are Me Miles Taylor, Adam Pinkis
for Best Case Studios, and Barrick Goodman for ARC Media.
Beth Anne Mcaluso is our executive producer for iHeartMedia, along
with Ali Perry. Special thanks to Kevin Famm, all of
(44:57):
our contributors and interviewees and are in an eleven and
a big thanks to the teams at Government Accountability Project
and Whistleblower Aid, two of the best organizations for government
and private sector whistleblowers seeking legal support. Follow and rate
the Whistleblowers on the podcast site of your choice to
hear what these whistleblowers and others have to say about
(45:18):
what they believe will happen under a second Trump administration
or in the White House of AMaGA successor, you can
pick up my new book, Blowback from Simon and Schuster
What bench were we sitting on?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Were we here or were we right over there?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Now I think we were on this spot.
Speaker 4 (00:09):
I think we sat over here.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
I think we sat over here. Let's let's relive it.
Let's see that life has changed a hell of a
lot since we sat on this bench. We grabbed coffees,
we walked down that bridge, and I'm pretty sure we
sat down, and you know, we were both nervous about
being seen by anyone.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
One of the more senior people in the Trump administration
who was still there, comes walking up with their puppy.
I remember my hands going cold and thinking, oh my god,
they're gonna think we're conspiring. They're gonna think that I'm
conspiring with Miles. I can just see it.
Speaker 5 (00:47):
Now.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
She's gonna go back and report this to the White House,
and the cat's out of the bag.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Olivia Troy and I first met at the Department of
Homeland Security when we were both working on counter terrorism.
I became DHS chief of staff, and she went on
to become a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence
and eventually the lead staffer on the White House's Coronavirus
Task Force. As you can imagine, we both experienced our
(01:16):
fair share of crises. In that first scene you heard
Olivia and I are reliving a stressful moment for both
of us. It was in September twenty twenty. I had
quit the Trump administration the year prior and was trying
to get others to come forward and talk about the
mayhem inside the Oval office. Olivia had just quit her position, too,
(01:39):
frustrated by White House mismanagement of the pandemic, so she
wanted to talk at least very discreetly. Unfortunately, we were
spotted by one of President Trump's lawyers, who happened to
be walking a dog in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
We had an awkward conversation with her when we pet
her dog, and I think we all agree we've got
to get together for lunch sometime. And you and I
walked away, and you basically said to me, Yeah, I
gotta gouch.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
If this run in makes Olivia uneasy, it isn't just paranoia.
By that point, I've been on TV daily speaking about
the chaos that I'd witnessed during the Trump presidency. Naturally,
I was getting attacked by the White House and Trump's allies.
Olivia being seen with me would definitely make anyone in
the administration suspicious that maybe she is planning to go
(02:31):
public with damaging information too, and she is. I was scared.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
My sense of purpose was leaning towards that direction because
I felt like if I could make a difference, or
if I could have a voice in it that maybe
might reach somebody, then I needed to do it. But
then seeing how you had been treated, seeing all the
threats that you had faced and what had happened, was
a pretty scary calculus, knowing that that would probably become
(03:01):
my life.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Nine days later, Olivia speaks out publicly and it does
become her life. I'm Miles Taylor. This is the whistleblowers
on this show. We're going deep into the heart of
power to meet people who spoke out about wrongdoing from
inside the Trump administration. Some were in the President's inner circle,
(03:28):
others were on the front lines of top agencies. But
they all have a few things in common, the ethical
gray areas, the doubts about whether what they did even
made an impact, and their decisions cost all of them
more than they ever imagined. Episode five, Homeland Insecurity. So
(03:57):
let's go back to the period when Olivia and I
first met She started work at DHS right around the
beginning of the Trump administration, and I came in a
few months later. Almost from day one, she realized this
was not going to be like anything she'd ever seen.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I remember that one of the first things issued was
what was called a travel band.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
January twenty seventh, twenty seventeen, the new president issues an
executive order banning travel from seven Muslim majority countries. The
announcement is all over TV, with Vice President Mike Pence
and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattison standing right behind Trump,
their faces unreadable.
Speaker 6 (04:42):
I'm establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists
out of the United States of America. We don't want
them here. We want to ensure that we are not
admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are
fighting overseas.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
It actually came as a part of a group of
executive orders, so we were drowning because all of them
hit at once. It was immigration executive orders, it was
talks about.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
The border wall construction.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And I remember thinking, like, they're flooding the system because
at some point, like the system breaks, because it is
the same people.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
All of it really falls under DHS.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Olivia is specifically working in the DHS Office of Intelligence
and Analysis, a unit that in any other presidential administration
would be consulted about changes to US counter tears and policy.
But she isn't consulted. No one on our team is.
In fact, before the order is issued, no one in
the entire Department of Homeland Security sees it, even though
(05:49):
it's allegedly focused on combating terrorism. Olivia realizes this is
the new normal. The experts are kept in the dark.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
And I remember we were in a meeting after they
briefed what this was. I looked around the room and
I could see the shocked look on people's faces.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
This travel ban includes people arriving from seven countries Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria,
and Yemen. And because no one thought to ask DHS,
the specifics are a mess. People are showing up at
airports in total disarray. Green cardholders are told they're exempt
than not exempt. Refugees promised asylum are suddenly not allowed
(06:30):
into the country, and family members arrive in America after
long journeys to find they can't see their sick relatives
or their loved ones. There were so many news reports
about the chaos this caused, like this story on CNN.
Speaker 7 (06:45):
Nemo Hashi is a broken wife without her husband, the
mother of a toddler without her father, but on government papers,
she's a Somali refugee, her husband trapped in Africa and
the legal tug of war over the travel ban. The
last time how she saw her husband was in a
refugee camp and eat the opia. Both had fled the
bloody war in Somalia.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
So President Trump ordered this initial ban without consulting experts
like Olivia, who are left cleaning up the mess. But then,
even as it's becoming clear the policy is a disaster,
he decides he wants DHS to come up with a
bigger list of countries, more than the original seven. He's
thinking citizens from dozens and dozens of countries should be
(07:33):
blocked from coming into the United States, and his advisors
are pressuring people at DHS like Olivia to come up
with a list and say that it's for national security reasons.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Within hours, we got to notice that, said me in
the conference room.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
We went in there and they say they said, don't
come out until you have a list of countries.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And it was like well, wait a second, like, we're
just making up this list, and they're like, you'll know
the ones.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
The subtext here, though it's not especially subtle, is Muslim countries,
ideally the poor ones.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
I remember walking out of that meeting shaking and going
back into my office and being like, what have I
just done? Like what I just took this job to
Scott hear? What is happening right now?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I came across Olivia for the first time while all
of this was unfolding. I started a few months into
the administration and quickly found myself on the same side
as her. The ban was ludicrous. There wasn't any intelligence
that showed that dozens and dozens of countries posed a
threat to the United States, and yet a White House
(08:51):
operative was demanding that DHS come up with a list.
In fact, he regularly rattled off the names of countries
that Trump wanted to see banned. This guy had his
list of countries that the President would want to see banned,
and he's telling you all the intelligence officials to give
a reason to ban them. And it was like the
(09:13):
first real moment I'd seen in the Trump administration of someone,
especially in the civil service, being like no, we can't
do that. We're not going to do that.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
I do you remember that because this person came in,
I was like, no, the intelligence doesn't back that. Then
the things that we've looked at actually back then. And
I remember looking across the table at you, and I
remember the look on your face.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
You were like, WHOA. She just took him on both
of us.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I think by that point knew that that person had
a direct line to the White House and where that
was going, which was basically going to Stephen Miller as well.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Stephen Miller, Trump's senior policy advisor, the architect of the
travel band, child separation and other hardline immigration policies. He
pushed for the bigger list that Trump wanted. I agreed
with Olivia, the intelligence didn't justify it, Miles.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
I do remember you saying, well, if she's saying that
it's not there and this is a meeting, then.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
This isn't the list, and there's no way that this
is actually the correct thing to do. You were just
kind of like, look that the information isn't there. She's
just telling you it's not there.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
So, tasked with managing this policy, Olivia says, her focus
immediately becomes narrowing down the ban to create human exceptions,
like for refugees and family members.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I worked very hard on the travel ban, and very
hard on that list to make sure that it was
done in the appropriate manner without completely destroying decades of
work in the intelligence and national security community for one.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And in the end, her team waters down the ban,
keeping it from spreading to dozens of new countries and
trying to limit it only to high risk travelers. But
you might be thinking there was another choice here. Why
didn't Olivia just quit on the spot. Isn't there a
line that professional people with some kind of conscience just
(11:11):
won't cross. You've heard why I stayed. To understand why
Olivia stuck it out, it's worth learning more about the
way she viewsed the world and her place within it.
Olivia is an old school by the book public servant
(11:32):
who went into government to give back to a country
that gave her so much. That sounds like a Folkesy trope,
but I know her pretty well and it's genuinely who
she is. David Rothcop shares this view. He is a
national security analyst and writer, and his book American Resistance
profiles public servants like Olivia, who stood up to pressure
(11:54):
from the Trump White House.
Speaker 8 (11:56):
I think people outside of Washington need to be disabused
of this notion that people in the United States government
are not working for them. Ninety nine percent of them
are dedicated public servants who take less money and endure
a lot of personal risk and sacrifice in order to
help make the country a better place.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Like a lot of people we've spoken to for this podcast,
myself included, the experience of nine to eleven was a
major catalyst for Olivia. She was working for the Republican
National Committee at the time.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I remember having to walk home from Capitol Hill all
the way to Arlington, Virginia because there was just no
weather way to get home. And I remember that day
watching the Pentagon.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
It was on fire.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I remember all the response vehicles, and in the aftermath
of those days, thinking there's got to be more that
I should be doing on this.
Speaker 8 (12:51):
She worked within the national security community for years and
years before the Trump administration, and the first assignment she
had in the government working in the national security community
as she did was in Baghdad and working in the
Green Zone in Baghdad and being at great personal risk.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
That was when She'd been a part of the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad, the transitional government established in i
Rock after the fall of Sodom Hussein. She then worked
as an advisor at the National counter Terrorism Center. This
type of grueling, dangerous work is the opposite of the
image that some politicians paint of Washington, DC bureaucrats in
(13:32):
a self serving swamp.
Speaker 8 (13:34):
Whether it was issues like immigration, issues like the rise
of right wing extremism in the United States. Olivia Troy
is somebody who every single day got up said how
do I serve my oath? How do I serve my country?
I think a lot of people grappled with the idea
(13:55):
of whether they should enter the Trump administration. One thing
that was striking me was how many of them realized,
very very early on that this was not going to
be an administration like any other. And many of them
had to grapple with that and said do I stay,
do I join, do I resign? And a number of them,
(14:16):
and I think We're better off for it, said no,
I'm going to go in. I'm going to do the
best I can. I'm going to do this to, you know,
make the world a better place.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So in that pivotal moment where she's asked to work
on Trump's ban, Olivia decides to stay. She doesn't think
it's right. In fact, she's appalled by the policy, but
she feels she can't do much about it if she's
outside of government. I was impressed by Olivia's poise throughout
all of this, her ability to navigate political land minds
(14:56):
while also steering things in the right direction. So when
I heard Vice President Pence was looking for a Homeland
security advisor, I immediately suggested her. By that point, I
was on my way to becoming DHS Chief of Staff,
and I knew more than ever that cool heads were
needed among the people in the inner circle of the administration.
In fact, she was the only candidate that I thought
(15:18):
could handle the job. You and I had a conversation
at some point. I was like, hey, trying to put
lipstick on a pig. What about going to the White House?
Speaker 3 (15:27):
It will be amazing, There's this great opportunity. And I
was like, oh, great, where in DHS am I going?
And you were like, actually, what about the Vice President's office?
And I was like, the United States, Mike Pence, And
you said, we need someone that is extremely competent, who
is willing to navigate in this environment?
Speaker 4 (15:50):
And I was like, I wonder what he meant by that.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
The translation here was please help experienced people were quitting
in droves or getting fired by the president, and we
needed more grown ups to keep the administration from going
off the rails.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Was just sort of like, can I serve this person
well and do my best to make a difference in
this scenario, even though I know that I'm pretty much
going into the frying pan. I'm familiar with my pets.
I had not worked with him before, but to me,
out of both sides of the house, he seemed like
the more sane person, and he seemed more constant, more steady,
(16:29):
So I was like, Okay, I can go there and
really try to make a difference.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
She quickly becomes the crisis person.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
If it's really bad, it's going boom, that's Olivia's I
was like, why don't I get the plush Europe trips.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Why don't I get to go on cool travel. No,
I only get to.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Go to like devastation, tornadoes, floods, and whatever else happened.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
And she's busy because there are constant crises. But she's
able to do her job and find other smart people
on the team. At first, it seems to be somewhat
insulated from the rest of the political turmoil at the
White House.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I had a good working relationship with Mike Pence. He
knew that I was always very honest and very factual,
and that's what I went there to do, was operate
in a factually driven sense of trying to just inform
him and at the end of the day guide him
through some of the toughest decisions. And he took great
pride in making sure that it was sort of a
calmer environment, less chaotic to a certain extent. That is
(17:34):
year one of my tour in the White House that
actually goes downhill pretty quickly as things sort of start.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
To happen.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Downhill from the travel band to Nazis. August twelfth, twenty seventeen,
Vice News was first on the scene to document what
(18:05):
was called the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
White nationalist marchers, including neo Nazis, came to protest the
proposed removal of a General Robert E. Lee statue. Counter
protesters then come to oppose the rally and violence breaks out,
(18:26):
a self identified white supremacist rams his car into the crowd,
killing a woman named Heather Higher and injuring several others.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
I remember Charlottesville happened, and I remember there were a
lot of heated conversations, the confusing things where there were
mixed signals, right, I mean, there were political pointees in
this office that were disbanding the domestic Terrorism Cell group.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
And I was like, Okay, we'll wait a second.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
This is on the rise, and we are not approaching
this in a systematic way where this is actually like
we're like actually going to tackle the problem. But the
other part of it, well, it was clear that, given
especially Trump's comments after Charlottesville, that there was no appetite
for taking this on seriously.
Speaker 9 (19:13):
I think there's blame on both sides, and I have
no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt
about it either. But you also had people that were
very fine people on both sides. You had people in
that group. Excuse me, excuse me.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That very fine people on both sides. Comment sounded like
a permission slip for the white supremacists, and it played
NonStop on news networks around the world.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Then it becomes a lot of domestic incidents, and a
lot of the hate crimes and some of the mass
shootings are tied to this. There are all these indicators,
and we know that this is a significant problem for Olivia.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
It's relentless, and it starts to feel like this is
not just a string of isolated incidents.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
I probably worked on a mass shooting and probably every
other weekend. It wears on you. I remember every single
one of them, and I remember all the stats.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I remember all.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
The people that have passed away, the kids and families,
and what I started to see were the disturbing patterns
where this was violence.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
It was on the rise.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
There were certain sort of hateful movements that were driving
a lot of these, and a lot of it was
tied to the president's rhetoric at the time and what
he was saying.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
But when she and her colleagues try to push for
more attention on combating domestic terrorism, it's clearly not a priority,
and it's awkward.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It was very hard to go in and brief on
these types of situations and say, you know, just so
you know, we found Trump paraphernalia in the van on
some of these attacks, or just so you know, he
quoted something in the manifesto before he went in, and
then it happens in my own hometown.
Speaker 10 (21:01):
Panic in El Paso this morning, when a day of shopping,
let's go, Let's go, turned into warror with an active
shooter on the loose. Multiple victims are being treated at
area hospitals.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
August third, twenty nineteen, a chilling report from NBC News
details how twenty three people, most of them Latino, have
been murdered at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. It's
a targeted attack, and the shooter leaves behind a manifesto.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
He was talking about this, you know, nativism theory, and
he makes references to many of the things that Trump
had said, a lot of the things that were being
said on fire right media, a lot of honestly, things
that Stephen Miller had said himself in meetings that I
personally heard for his hand, and it was horrifying to think,
you know, this is happening in our country, but we're
(21:52):
turning a blind eye to it.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
In the manifesto, the shooter called the attack a response
to quote the Hispanic invasion of Texas. He used the
same language the White House had been using to describe
the situation at the southern border an invasion.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
I had those conversations in the office of the Vice
President with people. It was like feeling paralyzed on the
issue because I knew that he could only weigh in
to a certain extent, but there was no I guess,
will or appetite to take on the issue further because
(22:31):
at the end of the day, unfortunately, these movements have
become part of Donald Trump's base because he had emboldened them,
and these are unfortunately his.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Supporters, aids are just disregarded when they try to bring
up looming issues like domestic terrorism. So now Olivia is
constantly weighing that question that came up during the travel ban.
Can she stay and fix the situation or should she leave?
But then in January twenty twenty, there's a new crisis
(23:02):
on the horizon, and it's a big one and Wuhan, China,
a mysterious virus is burning its way through the local population.
But it won't be a local problem for law. January
(23:28):
twenty twenty.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I remember.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Feeling the panic of this being something that was going
to be really bad. I also remember doing the math
in my head and thinking there's no way that the
holidays just happened, and given the number of travel, there's
no way that this isn't here.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
There's just no way.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
With that many people, there are sec They started to
convene some of the doctors. I remember the seriousness of
these discussions, sort of the discussions what is this, what
does this mean?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
It's unknown territory, but Olivia can tell that this coronavirus
thing is bad and they need to be prepared, but
they are far from it.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
We couldn't get the attention of the leadership on it.
It's like, Okay, there is a room full of people
that think this is very serious and are highly concerned,
but we can't get the president to really focus on
it at the time because he's focused on other things
and he's focused on his trip. I think he was
going to India. Nobody thought he should travel there given
(24:31):
what we were like seeing. And I remember at some
point when we're trying to actually say we need to
stop the flights because this is serious enough that there
could be dangerous to Americans and we need to really
have a serious discussion about how we're going to contain this.
Because we're still thinking we can contain it.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
She has a good working relationship with Vice President Pence,
but he's also distracted.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
It was like an ordeal to get these memos of
the plane, to get a conversation with Trump on it.
I remember my boss at the time, General Kellogg, my
direct boss was the head of the National Security team,
was like pissed off because he was like, if Olivia's
saying this is serious, this MEMONI needs to get to
the Vice president tonight because she's telling them that there's
going to be a major decision happening tomorrow. But they
were down at a rally and they didn't care because
(25:12):
we literally had just kicked off an election here and
that was where the focus was.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
But finally they do pay attention. You can mark the
moment almost exactly. It's a little past noon on February
twenty fifth, when the stock market takes a nose dive
as the markets closed for the day. Yahoo finance hosts
are floored by what they see.
Speaker 11 (25:35):
We are looking at big losses here across the board,
accelerating into the clothes. We have another thousand point move
lower on the Dow. There is carnage basically everywhere.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
What point does the fake come in here?
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I think.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I walk in and everyone was staring at the TV,
and I was like, what did I miss? So I'm
thinking like a bomb went off somewhere, and no, it
was that the stock market had plumbed it based on
what I guess this lady had said very honestly at
the CDC.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
And people were livid.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
They were so mad, like we have bigger problems, as in,
like we don't have masks, we don't have.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Enough in our reserves.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And then I remember hearing the comments where they were like,
this is terrible. She tanked the stock market. We're in
an election year, like we are running on a jobs platform.
This is the worst thing that could have happened to us.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
No, the worst thing is still coming. In the weeks
after the market crash, as the pandemic starts to break
out around the country, the White House forms a coronavirus
task Force. The President taps Pence to lead it, and
Pence turns to his trusted advisor to be the task
(26:49):
force's top eight, Olivia Troy. By the end of March
and early April, the group is completely overwhelmed. Thousands of
Americans are dying, and hospitals across the country can't even
get the supplies they need. I remember, in those early
days talking to you a couple of times on the phone.
(27:09):
I was in the private sector, and I just remember
from the earliest days hearing it in your voice, like, Miles,
you don't understand. It's so much worse in here than
it looks. This is the moment where leadership really matters
and where great leaders shine. But Olivia has a different experience.
(27:30):
With the president, he.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Was so disruptive, like we would be having serious discussions
or meetings, and suddenly we would go down the rabbit
hole on random things that had nothing to do, sometimes
with what we were dealing with with the pandemic. Right
like half the time, it was a rant about how
Fox News had treated someone over the weekend in an interview,
and he was pissed off at talker Carletoner. He was
(27:52):
pissed off in Sean Hannity, and he was tasking people
during the meeting, like who's going to fix it? I
remember thinking, I just spent hours working on this agenda
for the vice president. We spent hours prepping him, and
we are not covering any of the items on this list,
Like what are we doing about protective equipment? They're telling
(28:14):
me on the ground that there are nurses making their
own gowns and that they're desperate. That is the kind
of discussions that I think we needed to be really
focused on. But Trump was just focused on other things.
And then he'd be like, all right, so how bad
is this? This is like the flu, right, And.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Soon Trump decides he's done with the bad news.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Doctor Burks would walk in with her big chart that
she had worked on all night with her team.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Doctor Deborah Burkes, the White House coronavirus Response coordinator. You
might remember her as the one with the silk scarves
sitting off to the side in Trump's public health briefings.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Doctor Fauci would walk in with his statue and they
could be like a medical pandemic crisis meeting, and everybody
else wu chime in on what you can do. And
I just remember thinking like it doesn't matter, because they're
going to brief the facts and they're going to be
overtaken by whatever political dynamic is happening in that day.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
The pandemic is not a positive for the Trump reelection campaign.
Every day that the lockdown continues and the markets sputter,
the president's main talking points of booming economy with record
job growth seem more and more irrelevant, and he blames
this blow to his political prospects on the doctors for
(29:34):
the terrifying truth they continue to share with the American public,
especially doctor Anthony Fauci. At first, the President just starts
blocking him at press briefings. Would you also weigh in
on this issue of hydroxy clorquin. Hydroxychloroquin is an unproven
drug that the President is starting to tout as a
(29:54):
treatment for COVID nineteen, which turned out to be totally ineffective,
Doctor Fauchi. She starts to answer, and then question, yeah,
I named.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Your fifth doctor fifteen times. You don't have this, he's.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Your medical efverst correct answer the question fifteen tribes. But
the President is frustrated with Fauci's stubborn insistence on medical science,
so Trump and his inner circle start attacking him.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I think Peter Navarro wrote an OpEd and attacked doctor Fauci.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Peter Navarro was one of the President's more eccentric staffers,
a guy with a taste for conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I walk in the next morning holding the op ed
that's been written about doctor Facci, and I had to
look doctor Fauci in the face and he just shakes
his head and looks at me. He's like, what did
I do? I remember I apologize to him. I remember
I apologize to doctor Fauci, and I was like, I'm
so sorry. I don't know what else to do. I
can't help you. I am so that is horrifying. I
(30:54):
can't believe this happened. It was like, we need to
muzzle the doctors. And I was a person that was
having to call doctor Fauci and be like, you're not
needed at the press briefing, and he's like, did I
do something again?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
The President is putting near constant pressure on the Task
Force to end on popular measures like lockdowns and social distancing,
and it doesn't really matter that the science says that
it's still too dangerous.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I started to get very anxious and upset when it
came to the discussions on schools. There was a lot
of pressure on schools opening up camps, and I remember
texting my calling an article about this Christian camp where
there had been a massive outbreak in kids, and we
(31:37):
were not sure the impacts of the virus on kids
at the time, and I remember thinking, great, so there
are these outbreaks happening in the camps because we are
now pressuring people to open up and we don't have
the ways to mitigate. We don't have that vaccidom, we
don't have things that are effective right now. We can't
even get the testing right because that was screwed up
and the numbers were being inflated and light about and compleat.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Olivia had many moments throughout her time in the administration
where she wanted to walk out, but she stayed and
tried to fix things. Then she found her breaking.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Point and at some point I was just like, we're
killing people. Then I was like these little kids and
these parents who are trusting the government and following their direction,
and we're going to put them in harm's way, And
like at what point, Like what exactly are.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
We doing here?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Even still ever, the public servant leaving in the midst
of a crisis isn't easy on Olivia.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
I was super committed in my role and I was
very concerned about leaving because of the amount of work
I was doing for the task Wars and for PENS
and trying to keep things running. And so it was
like a mixture of like loyalty to the job and
these people. But then also it was sort of like,
at this point, like I feel like I'm complicit, Like
(33:01):
I am part of this thing where people are dying,
and I can't counter these forces that are working against me.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
So in late July twenty twenty, she resigns from her
role in the Vice President's office, and not long after that,
she's sitting on a park bench with me. Remember how
I said Olivia had a right to be paranoid. Well,
when she comes forward shortly after our conversation on the
(33:28):
park bench, the reaction from the White House is swift
and brutal.
Speaker 12 (33:34):
These are not profiles in courage, but these are profiles
in cowardice. Troy failed to speak up, and she struggled
to keep up because she was constantly complaining about how
exhausted and overwhelmed she was coordinating conference calls and scheduling meetings.
Troy's detail was cut short. And now she's cutting commercials
for a fringe club of quote never Trumpers who are
(33:56):
desperate for relevancy, and the price of admission to this
club is fabricated smears and flat out lies against President Trump.
Troy joins the similarly irrelevant, Miles Taylor.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
That's September twenty second, twenty twenty and Press Secretary Kaylee
Mcananey is blasting Olivia, who's just released a video testimonial
on social media that's touted by a group called Republican
Voters against Trump and it goes viral.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
The President is so disconnected from the reality of the
problems across our country. We will no longer be America
after four more years of Trump. We know that President
Trump cares only about himself, given where we are as
a country now.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
Is a Tina Tel truth.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
It's a big deal for Olivia to make herself the
public face of this criticism. She's not only the first
staffer on the COVID task Force to come out against
the president, she was the leader of the task force.
Staff Susan Glasser of The New was one of the
first journalists to interview Olivia after the video came out.
Speaker 13 (35:05):
It actually gone on the phone with this very hesitant,
very concerned woman who seemed like she knew she was
about to bring down the House upon her, but actually
didn't really know how big of a deal it was
going to be. The White House started to attack her personally,
started to you know, say things that were not accurate
(35:26):
about her personnel record, to try to portray her as
simply a discrundled employee.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
They attack her because the message is powerful and it's
coming from a real insider.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
There was just the you know, general journalistic like, wow,
this person is actually a really interesting whistleblower coming public
to us for the first time from directly inside that
COVID House. Was right in the middle of the pandemic
at a moment when it really mattered both politically. It was,
you know, before the twenty twenty election, and when it
(35:57):
really mattered to people's lives.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
So what made Olivia go from resigning her position to
speaking out so loudly. It certainly wasn't seeing how great
my life was after coming forward. Olivia says, it was
the fear, the fear of what would happen if President
Trump got four more years in office.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
I had been having nightmares while working in the White House,
and I wasn't, you know, sleeping much, just because we
had so much to do.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
I started to really think about this every day. I
felt like I was in a daze.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I remember taking walks around my neighborhood and I felt
like time had frozen around me. I couldn't understand why,
but it was just such a toxic thing. I was watching,
you know, a lot of the rallies and stuff coming up,
and I knew that the danger of what had happened
in the Trump administration and what he had done was
(36:51):
not going to end election day.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
It was going to continue on.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
So Olivia becomes determined to talk about what she witnessed
on the inside, whether it was the mishandling of the
travel ban, or domestic terrorism or the pandemic. And as
I said, the attacks against her are bruising. Her former
direct boss, retired General Keith Kellogg, takes the podium at
(37:18):
a White House press briefing and says they fired Olivia
because she was a bad employee. He also adds that
he's proud of President Trump's response to the COVID crisis,
but quote, I am not proud of Olivia Troy. But
what's harder for Olivia is being shunned by all her
other former colleagues, many of whom shared her concerns and
(37:42):
expressed their own angst over the President's actions. It feels
like a betrayal.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Every single person that knew I was telling the truth
was suddenly my biggest enemy, and I think that is
that's a hard thing to carry, right because then you've
made all these friendships, you know all these people, and
in an instant overnight, you're scene as an enemy simply.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Because you stood up and you told the truth.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
It's very lonely and it can be scary. After coming forward,
Olivia faces withering attacks on social media, lawsuits from Trump allies,
and death threats.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
It's been really hard for my family living in a
world where you just don't know what's going to happen
when you're out in public. You don't know what's going
to happen at night to your house. You have to
be superguarded. You have to have incredible amount of security.
I know that my address and name has been out
there on far right social chat channels. These people plot
(38:48):
against me, they plot against others.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
What's been the most unnerving episode that you've had to confront?
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I think the graphic images that I got of my pets.
In some ways, that's so alarming that you would threaten
in that way and send pictures of my own dogs
with things having been done to them that I I mean,
they're safe, but just to think that that's the type
of person and that these are the things they think
(39:15):
about doing and taking action when you can do that too,
it's an animal, right, I mean, what would that mean
for what they would do to me or my family,
my husband and my mom. It definitely takes a mental
toll and a physical toll on you. It's devastating on
(39:38):
your entire life. I'm sure that people were like, oh,
they're seeking the spotlight and things like that. It's actually
it's a spotlight that I certainly never thought I would
be in. But I'm only hanging in there because it
matters so much.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
So Olivia's decision to step forward. Did it make a difference,
I asked Susan Glasser.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
I have always believed that Trump's mishandling of the early
days of the pandemic and then his politicization of the
response to it were important factors in the twenty twenty election,
and so having some credible testimony in effect emerge from
(40:22):
inside that operation was significant in terms of establishing the
facts for the American people in the middle of the election.
Speaker 8 (40:31):
David Rothkopp again, the people who are the real heroes
of the effort to found ways to get Trump to
do the right thing, first the fifteen days to stop
the spread, extending the fifteen days to stop the spread,
starting to provide the ppe that people needed, starting to
provide the kind of support that states required. The people
(40:54):
responsible for that, like Olivia troy like Tony Fauci, are
vilified to this day. To this day, there are people
in the United States saying Fauci should be prosecuted. Fauci
saved lives, Olivia Troyce saved lives, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner,
(41:15):
people surrounding them cost lives.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
If I would have just kept my mouth shut, I'd
probably be, you know, in some senior role at DHS.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
The threats, the abuse, all of that is pretty awful.
But what's the worst punishment for a mission oriented public
servant like Olivia. It's not being able to serve in
government anymore.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Hey, I'm watching some of these people that were those
civil servants who drank the koolid and went all win
that were complicit that are now apparently serving on the
Secretary staff.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
Must be nice.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
In other words, the people who held their tongues got promotions,
and the ones who spoke out, well, most of them
are still trying to figure out what comes next.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
I actually just saw Annie McCabe maybe a couple of
weeks ago. We were both at CNN together in the
green room. He looked at me and he's like, how
are you, And for some reason I knew that he
would get it. And I looked at him and I
was like, I'm still trying to find my way, and
(42:33):
he just he looked at me and he was like,
I completely get that. And you know, I left there
that day and I was thinking to myself, like, how pathetic.
It's been two years almost and I'm telling someone that
I'm still trying to buy my way.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
But that's just the reality of how hard this is.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
But even on her darker days, she tries to go
back to why she became an outsider in the first place.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
This is like bigger than just like me.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
It's bigger than the political party I was affiliated with.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
It's bigger than all of that.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
It's really about what this the future means for all
of us. And I'm just hoping that this never happens again.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Next time. On the Whistleblowers, We're going somewhere you wouldn't
expect to a detention facility in rural Georgia, where, at
the height of the pandemic, a nurse uncovers widespread medical
malpractice and a for profit system almost custom built to
look the other way, but when she speaks out, her
(43:52):
revelations reverberate all the way back to the nation's capital.
(44:17):
The Whistleblowers is a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership
with Best Case Studios and ARC Media. It was hosted
by me Miles Taylor and written by me Isabel Evans
and Adam Pinkis. Isabel Evans is also our producer. Associate
producers are Hannah leebelwoodz Lockhart, and Ashley Warren. Darcy Peakele
is consulting producer. Zach Herman is the VP of Development
(44:37):
of ARC Media. This episode was edited by Daniel Tuik
with assistants from Max Michael Miller. Original music is by
James Newberry. Executive producers are Me Miles Taylor, Adam Pinkis
for Best Case Studios, and Barrick Goodman for ARC Media.
Beth Anne Mcaluso is our executive producer for iHeartMedia, along
with Ali Perry. Special thanks to Kevin Famm, all of
(44:57):
our contributors and interviewees and are in an eleven and
a big thanks to the teams at Government Accountability Project
and Whistleblower Aid, two of the best organizations for government
and private sector whistleblowers seeking legal support. Follow and rate
the Whistleblowers on the podcast site of your choice to
hear what these whistleblowers and others have to say about
(45:18):
what they believe will happen under a second Trump administration
or in the White House of AMaGA successor, you can
pick up my new book, Blowback from Simon and Schuster
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.