During Trump’s presidency, former White House officials claimed that Taylor Swift music was unofficially banned.
Olivia Troye, former homeland security, counterterrorism, and coronavirus adviser to former vice president Mike Pence, was playing Swift’s music in her office when she was confronted by a colleague.
“Are you trying to get fired?” a colleague asked her at the time.
Troye was confused at first until the colleague explained and said: “I don’t think she’s a fan of Trump’s and so somebody hears that you should really watch your back. You should be careful about that.”
She told the Insider that she worked in a federal government under multiple administrations, both Republican and Democrat, but the culture under the Trump administration was different.
“I have never seen the type of bullying, intimidation, and disparaging treatment of some of our nation’s most devoted public servants and national security officials,” she said.
“I walked on the work every day wondering if that was going to be the day I would get fired for telling the truth or for pushing back on something in a meeting”, Troye said. “Most of the people I respected or could confide in had left, been push out, or fired.”
Trump’s action as president was denounced by Swift multiple times. In 2020, the singer took to Twitter to call the former president out for “stoking the fires of the white supremacy and racism”.
Speaking out during the Minneapolis, protests following the police killing of George Floyd, Swift called out the former president.
“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?” Swift posted on twitter. “When the looting starts the shooting starts??? We will vote you out in November.”
In 2018, the former president joked about liking Swift’s music less after the singer endorsed democrats running for the office in her home state of Tennessee.
During the November 2020 election, Swift officially endorsed Biden in an Instagram post, making it clear that Biden had her support. Naturally, this was enough to make her an enemy of the Trump administration.
The Atlantic reported that a young assistant at the Department of Housing and Urban Development had been reprimanded for liking the above photo and the post didn’t go down too well with the Trumps team.
Troye resigned from the White House in August 2020 and he is now the director of the Republican Accountability Project (RAP), and can now listen to Swift as much as she pleases.
The RAP is an anti-Trump organization committed to holding those who tried to overturn the November 2020 election accountable.
Troye said that she found it ‘astonishing’ that she could be fired over listening to music, speaking of the interaction with her colleague.
Last week, Taylor Swift made history with ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’, racking up the biggest number of first-day Spotify streams by a female artist in history.
The new album, the latest in the pop star’s series of re-recorded albums, came out on Friday (November 13) and features the entire original album re-recorded, along with a host of ‘vault’ tracks and rarities.