Former Trump Covid-19 Task Force Staffer: President Has 'Flat-Out Disregard for Human Life' - 2020-09-18
Former Trump Covid-19 Task Force Staffer: President Has 'Flat-Out Disregard for Human Life' September 18, 2020,
Someone who left the president's Coronavirus Task Force just two months ago(!) says he has "a flat-out disregard for human life." This is not some anonymously sourced report: Olivia Troye was an adviser to Mike Pence for two years, and says she attended "every single meeting" of the White House pandemic task force from February to July. There are photos. She spoke to the Washington Post on the record.
Troye joins a growing list of people who worked directly with Donald Trump on a daily basis who have since publicly denounced him. The president's former Secretary of Defense, for instance, declared him a threat to the Constitution. His former Secretary of State said he is "undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports, doesn't like to get into the details of a lot of things." His former chief of staff said that going forward, "I think we need to look harder at who we elect. I think we should look at people that are running for office and put them through the filter: What is their character like? What are their ethics?"
But it's Troye who had a front-row seat to the greatest disaster of Trump's presidency, his failed pandemic response. The United States is coming up on 200,000 deaths—very likely an undercount, based on excess deaths compared to the same period last year—which constitutes 21 percent of the world's Covid-19 deaths spread across just over four percent of its population. By Troye's account, this was primarily down to the fact that Trump did not care at all whether people got sick and died, and was more concerned with propping up the economy with an eye on the November election. That it was necessary to contain the virus to protect the economy was never going to make it into his brain.