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Olivia Troye, a former aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, claimed on The View that former President Donald Trump routinely insulted his own supporters behind closed doors.
She made the accusations as a guest on Tuesday's episode when asked why she thought Trump has a stranglehold on the Republican Party and a large chunk of its voters.
The current GOP frontrunner for president in 2024 has a 42-point lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his closest challenger, in one poll released in September, while a Washington Post poll showed him comfortably defeating President Joe Biden in a rematch of 2020.
"Why do you think so many people still have this blind loyalty to him?" asked The View co-host Sunny Hostin, referencing a Morning Consult poll and Trump garnering 61 percent support. "What does that say about the party now?"
"I think it speaks to an unfortunate state of the Republican Party," Troye said. "It is certainly not the party that I want it to be and not the party that I believe it has been in the past. I think he has done a great job of sort of marketing himself as the champion for all of these people who are behind him in this movement.
"But we've sat in these meetings. What is so frustrating and angering to me is he has nothing in common with any of his supporters and I detest the way he speaks about them. Like, when he would talk about them in meetings, it was so disparaging to them.
"I think about my own family members who, by the way, are very unhappy with me. I have a lot of family members who are still Trump supporters. They're very upset that I'm a Trump critic. I think about them and I'm like, I hate the way you speak about them sometimes behind closed doors."
Troye worked on national security and homeland security issues at different levels of government prior to working as a homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Pence. After being Pence's lead staffer on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, she resigned in August 2020.
"Olivia Troye is an idiot and a nobody who pretends she had access while in the administration," Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek via email. "She was a paper pusher and was routinely mocked by her peers because she online shopped the entire day."
Joy Behar, another co-host, rhetorically questioned whether Trump would invite any of his supporters to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
She then brought up Pence's dismal polling numbers, asking Troye why the ex-vice president has not been adamant or forceful in his convictions when it comes to Trump and making a run for the GOP nomination, especially considering the vitriol Pence received after certifying the 2020 election.
"I have been wanting [Pence] to take Trump on from day one, especially on January 7 of 2021," Troye said. "I wanted him to be out there saying, 'This is everything that we've lived.'
"I have tremendous respect for former Vice President Mike Pence still, I worked very closely with him. He and Trump cannot be any more different. They are very different people."
Pence believes in his faith and is guided by it, she added, while wishing that he would move more to a moderate position on issues like reproductive rights. Troye supported Biden in the last presidential election.
Newsweek reached out to Troye via email for comment.
About the writer
Nick Mordowanec is a Newsweek investigative reporter based in Michigan. His focus includes U.S. and international politics and policies, immigration, ... Read more