Trump aide says she was warned she’d be fired for playing Taylor Swift music after singer criticised president

Olivia Troye says White House staff were subject to constant loyalty checks and ‘Gestapo’-like surveillance

An aide who worked in the White House under Donald Trump has said she was told she could be fired for playing Taylor Swift after the singer criticised the president.

Olivia Troye, who was an adviser to vice president Mike Pence and served on Mr Trump’s coronavirus task force, told MSNBC that she was warned in spring 2020 to "watch her back" if anyone close to the President heard her music.

"I was really angry after a meeting where I had lost an argument with someone ... and I came back and was playing Taylor Swift very loud in my office late that night," Ms Troye said in an interview with TV host Chris Hayes on Tuesday.

"I had a colleague knock on the door and he said, ‘are you trying to get fired?’ I was super confused ... he said, ‘well, I don’t think she’s a fan of Trump’s. So if somebody hears that, you should really watch your back, you should be careful on that.’"

Swift had previously endorsed a Democratic candidate for the Senate in 2018, and been quoted in a Netflix documentary in early 2020 saying she wished she had spoken out against Mr Trump earlier.

The prolific country and pop singer would later respond caustically to Mr Trump’s threat of "shooting" Black Lives Matter protesters that May, accusing him of "stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism [his] entire presidency".

Ms Troye’s claim built on an earlier report in The Atlantic that Mr Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows had demanded to speak to a top civil servant because someone lower down in the department had apparently liked an Instagram post by Swift expressing support for Joe Biden.

According to Ms Troye, the Swift incidents were just one example of the "Gestapo"-like behaviour of top Trump aides, who she described as demanding complete loyalty from their underlings.

She said: "The fear was real. It was well known that there were social media checks being conducted. I had a conversation with [national security adviser] General Kellogg directly where he told me to watch my every move, to be careful."