White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Keith Kellogg, national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, dedicated the end of Tuesday’s briefing to bashing former Trump administration officials who have recently come out against the President ahead of the November election.
Earlier Tuesday, Olivia Troye, a former top aide to Vice President Mike Pence who announced last week that she plans to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, jabbed Trump over his “frightening” COVID-19 response in a clip of an interview set to air on “NBC Nightly News” Tuesday evening.
Troye, who served for eight months on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, also criticized the President by claiming that he was more concerned about his “personal agenda” than protecting Americans against the infectious disease.
During a briefing at the White House later Tuesday, McEnany called Kellogg — who seldom makes media appearances — to the podium toward the end of the briefing. Kellogg proceeded to go after Troye by first claiming that he fired her “because her performance started to drop” after her time on the coronavirus task force as “a backbencher.”
Kellogg said that Troye was responsible for coordinating meetings and that when her “performance level dropped off,” he recommended to Pence that she leave.
“I’m the one who escorted her off the compound,” Kellogg said.
Kellogg went on to say that he had never heard of the claims that Troye waged that are critical of Trump, before adding that he particularly takes issue with her criticisms against the administration overall.
“What she has said I’ve never heard,” Kellogg said. “What bothers me about what Olivia said is, by insinuation, the disparagement of the task force, the vice president, and the President of the United States.”
Right after Kellogg concluded his remarks slamming Troye, McEnany took the podium again and referred to Troye as a “disgruntled detailee.”
“Troye failed to speak up and she struggled to keep up because she was constantly complaining about how exhausted and overwhelmed she was with coordinating conference calls and meetings,” McEnany said. “Troye’s detail was cut short and now she’s cutting commercials for a fringe club of ‘Never Trumpers’ who are desperate for relevancy and the price of admission to this club is fabricated smears and flat-out lies against President Trump.”
McEnany then railed against Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff who also threw his support behind Biden recently, by characterizing him as “similarly irrelevant.”
McEnany jabbed Taylor for his employment at CNN as a contributor as well as his work at Google. Taylor announced last month that he is taking a leave of absence from Google through the November election.
“Desperate to please his new Silicon Valley friends, Miles made up lies against President Trump to fit in,” McEnany said. “He can now rest easy at Google having earned his anti-Trump credentials and the approval of his big tech peers.”
McEnany concluded that neither Troye nor Taylor knew the President, “but they certainly are trying to profit off of their time here in the White House of flat-out lies.”
Watch their remarks below:
