Transcript: Trump’s Unhinged Handling of Disasters Revealed By Insider

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 4, 2024, episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Greg Sargent: Trump has continued to push the vile claim that federal officials are withholding disaster aid from Republican areas devastated by Hurricane Helene. GOP governors have contradicted this, and it has backfired, focusing media attention on Trump’s own record of disaster relief as president, which really did feature the ugly politicization he’s now accusing others of. For instance, Politico just reported that President Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after wildfires in 2018 due to the state’s democratic lean, according to two former Trump officials. Today, we’re talking about this with one of those officials, Olivia Troye, who was a senior Homeland Security official in the Trump administration and has since been a leading critic of the former president. Thanks so much for coming on with us, Olivia.

Olivia Troye: Thanks for having me, Greg.

Sargent: OK, let’s start here. The other day after Trump started pushing that lie that disaster relief is being denied to Republicans, you did a tweet that got some attention. It said this, “As a Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump White House, I witnessed firsthand how Donald Trump politicized disaster relief, leaving devastated Americans waiting for help. Leaders across the country & government were calling my office, desperate for action as Trump failed them in moments of crisis.” Can you expand on that for us?

Troye: I have a lot of memories of working in the Trump White House where there are numerous situations where the government apparatus that does the whole disaster relief declaration process would come to a halt because the disaster declaration that needed to be signed by the president was sitting on Donald Trump’s desk. It was frustrating, as you can imagine, because we as national security officials serve for the greater good of the country. Our job is to help Americans, especially someone like me, who’s in the Homeland Security role working and advising the vice president. Our jobs are to work in response to a crisis as fast as possible and manage this. There were numerous instances where I had the head of government agencies calling me saying, Can you maybe get the vice president to weigh in on this because it’s still sitting on [Trump’s] desk and he hasn’t approved it yet.

Sargent: You were working for the vice president at the time. Can you characterize your official position?

Troye: Sure. I was Mike Pence’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor. In that role, I covered any crisis, global breaking news event that was related to whether it was global terrorism. On the Homeland space, I covered anything that was mass shootings, disaster relief like natural disasters like flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes. Anything that was a crisis domestically here that was related to the security and safety of Americans fall under me.

Sargent: All right. Just to be clear, what you just told us is that you had leaders who were trying to deal with disasters, whether in federal agencies or at the level of states or whatever, call you and try to get you to move stuff along that was being held up by the president of the United States, Donald Trump. They would try to get action by coming to you and working through the vice president. Is that what you’re telling us?

Troye: Yeah. There were numerous times when it was the secretary of DHS or the head of FEMA or even internally in the National Security Council process with the senior director we worked very closely on this effort. At times when they felt like it was stalled because Donald Trump was sitting on it or somebody had gotten to him, someone in OMB, one of whom was disagreeing with whatever was happening, depending on what state it was, they would come to me and say, We cannot get this moved forward, the people in this state are hurting right now, what can you do to help us?

I can think of a time when even Mike Pence was flying out. I believe he was flying to California and he called me. They called me from Air Force Two and said, Where is the disaster declaration? We still haven’t seen it. And I said, Well, sir, it’s sitting on the president’s desk, I can follow up on it. And he said, Please do that. I remember walking over to the West Wing and sitting outside the Oval Office saying the vice president would like to know what the status is on the disaster declaration, he would really like to get this moved along, we’ve been sitting on it for three days.

Sargent: Which disaster was this?

Troye: I am trying to think. I believe it was wildfire related. Definitely California was an ongoing contentious issue when it came to the president, but I say this because it matters to be nonpolitical when you’re dealing with the safety and security and the well-being of Americans who are in need, right? This carried on into 2020 when we had the global pandemic, the Covid pandemic, that was so devastating. Again, this partisan politics of red states versus blue states and how you’re going to do the response to it or send supplies came into play again and there it was. I had seen it from wildfires. I’d seen it from how we’re going to respond to hurricanes depending on who it was, whether it was Puerto Rico, and what happened in the aftermath of that.

And now it’s Covid and I’m seeing it again. It’s looking at, Oh well, it’s New York, it’s Cuomo, we don’t really care, let’s make it harder for them. I remember hearing a call with Vice President Pence who was like... We’re on with a governor who is out west in one of the first states that was hit with Covid that we knew of, and he was like, We’re not going to play partisan politics on this. This is really serious. We’re going to work closely together with you. Again, that’s Mike Pence’s perspective, right? We were trying to figure out how to navigate the situation in the Oval Office that we were up against.

Sargent: Politico just had a good scoop on all this too, reporting that in 2018, Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid to California after the 2018 wildfires because the state had a lot of Democratic voters. Worse, to change Trump’s mind, according to this report, senior officials showed him data confirming that Orange County, California, where there was wildfire damage, had lots of Republicans in it. That got Trump to finally move, apparently. You were one of the officials who confirmed this report by Politico. Can you confirm the story for us?

Troye: Yes. I remember that situation where we basically put together a briefing to inform the president because he wasn’t approving this mandated relief aid, this funding. They were federal management assistance grants—these are mandated funds. These are already approved funds that need to get to the people who are in need of them. And he wouldn’t budge on it. It was this readout put together to present to him and let him know and inform him actually that the people that were in need were in Orange County and that they were his supporters.

We compared it to the state of Iowa at the time and said there’s more voters in support of you than in the entire state of Iowa. It’s the way it was put. This is a very real thing. I’m telling you this because these are the conversations that would happen on senior staff, national security officers, working on these issues where our job was just to help, again, the American people in a nonpartisan way. This is the kind of thing that would get Donald Trump to move because for him, everything is through the political lens of anger and vengeance and retribution against the people that don’t stand with him.

I say this now, when I look at Donald Trump and disasters in places in red states, red-leaning states, like Florida, I think about his demeanor and his behavior. This is important because while you may have a Republican governor in your state, if you have a falling out with Donald Trump like we’re seeing with Governor Kemp—he constantly attacks Governor Kemp of Georgia—he’s going to turn that on you. He could potentially use disaster relief as one of the tools, because at that moment, he holds the levers when he’s in power, right? That’s the one thing that he can hold over this person’s head. Politics should never play a role when it comes to disaster relief and what is happening here in the apparatus of government. It just shouldn’t even be part of the conversation when it comes to disaster relief in this thing.

Sargent: Right. He clearly sees government funds and government resources as a tool to extort people. He did that in Ukraine, of course. I want to ask, though, on this decision involving disaster aid to California after the 2018 wildfires. This is a decision that would have been run through the senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council. You were on the National Security Council at that time, right? That’s how you know all this?

Troye: That is correct. Because as an advisor to the vice president, I’m actually a part of the National Security Council apparatus. I’m in all these meetings. I was in all the civitas as whenever there is a crisis, or planning for a crisis, any of these discussions, we are sitting in the coordination meetings with the entire U.S. government apparatus that plays a role in these things. These are all the things that we work on together as a team. My job is advising the vice president, so of course I have to track everything that’s happening.

Sargent: Just to really be as clear as possible about this, all these high-level staff, members, and assistants to the president on the National Security Council are sitting around talking about pulling data on the percentages of Republicans in Orange County in order to get the president to approve aid. That’s what happened?

Troye: How do you get Donald Trump to move this forward is what it comes down to.

Sargent: And this is what you were discussing. This was actually discussed at these high-level meetings.

Troye: Yeah. I think that’s a very valid point to point out to Americans and voters: We’re sitting here dealing with actual major crisis, situations that are affecting Americans. That’s already hard enough in moments of crisis. And the crises are only getting bigger and bigger every day, whether it’s overseas or here domestically. And I can’t tell you how exhausting, and the extra level of stress in addition to that, to have to sit here and not only making sure that Americans are going be safer, that they’re getting the help that they need, but figuring out how you’re going to navigate the person sitting in the Oval Office, which is the biggest obstacle to you. That is what is so upsetting about this is that now you have to think about how you navigate that personality in addition to the rest of your job responsibilities. Imagine, you’re a sitting cabinet member. That’s what you’re thinking about: how do you deal with that certain type of personality when your job is really just to run a cohesive response as a head of a department.

Sargent: It’s just...I shouldn’t be laughing at this, but picturing staffers discussing how to get the president to do this and hitting on this idea of pulling the percentages of Republican voters in a county is really striking. Let me ask you, do any other examples of this politicization of disaster response come to mind for you, Olivia? Personnel is a big part of this. Who is picked for these very high level jobs? Are there any examples that come to mind where hyperpoliticized personnel choices were made with these types of positions?

Troye: I’m thinking back to 2020 because that was right after the Ukraine impeachment had taken place, the hearings on it. Staff from the National Security Council testified, my own colleague on the vice president’s team testified in that. They were just telling the truth. After that, it really became a vendetta against national security officials, public servants, and the deep state. That’s where that really... That was always there, but it really starts to take hold. In 2020, they start to purge people from the National Security Council. That is when we start to see a shift in the type of persona that is in charge of some of these major policy initiatives, offices that are really leading complicated policy agendas that really have true world implications for the American people. We see them getting replaced with loyalists or we see shrinking staffs where they’re not backfilling them because they can’t find the right loyalists.

Sargent: Any specific examples of loyalists being considered for these positions?

Troye: First of all, I think about people like Kash Patel, who were serving on the National Security Council. We’re talking about the situation with the Senior Director for Resilience Mark Harvey. I remember he was departing the White House in early January, 2020. And I look back on this with shock because of given who this person is today.

But one of the people that was being considered for that role, which is a very serious role that requires the right experience and right reach into the U.S. government apparatus because we were dealing with disaster relief in a number of situations, was Christina Bobb. I mean...I don’t know if you know who Christina Bobb is.

Sargent: I do. Christina Bobb is a very prominent election denier. She was involved in one of the fake elector schemes in Arizona. She might’ve even been at the command center on January 6, trying to overthrow the election. And of course she’s now the RNC’s chief election integrity lawyer. She is absolutely full MAGA all the way. What exactly was the job she was considered for?

Troye: She was going to be the replacement for Mark Harvey. She was going to be the senior director for resilience policy. By the way, that office also works on election security issues and integrity issues. It covers a number of things.

Sargent: That’s a very senior position, isn’t it? This is on the National Security Council. It’s one of the special assistants to the president. What is the job? You’re really like the top person in the White House and the liaison between the president and the federal disaster response bureaucracy like FEMA and all those agencies, is that what that position does?

Troye: Yeah, you’re convening the entire U.S. government interagency on issues, whether it’s disaster relief, responses, election security. It’s all about critical infrastructure and resilience as well. You cover everything in that directorate that is critical and it does require the right type of leadership as well in leading that team.

I know this because I worked very closely. They were my right-hand partner on that staff. The people in those roles, for someone like me, were critical because they were definitely people that I was working very closely with to advise the vice president, working and getting the information and also just responding to things and being part of...They’re the ones joining the civitas with FEMA, joining the civitas with DHS, and really helping FEMA run the whole coordination where they’re attending what’s happening here. Christina Bobb gets her pose as an applicant and I get word that they were actually considering her seriously, that she was a front runner. And I have to tell you, I got—

Sargent: She was at DHS at the time, right? In some capacity?

Troye: She had served as, I believe, the executive secretary, which is great coordinating papers, agendas, and serving it through the department and getting it through, but certainly was not in a role with prior interaction with FEMA or anything like that. We knew that even the heads of government agencies had expressed concern to us about the possibility that this person was a candidate for the job.

Sargent: So the agency heads were concerned about Christina Bobb getting this top job, top disaster reliefs job, as a special assistant to the president?

Troye: Yeah. Look, I won’t speak for Mark. I know that Mark had very strong concerns. I was very concerned because it was start of 2020. I was already starting to... I was attending the Covid task force meetings at the time that was kicking off before Mike Pence was in charge of it. All I kept thinking was who is going to end up in this role because I’ve already lived the history of Donald Trump and how we have to navigate it in terms of how he politicizes these types of very critical responses to crisis and situations. Who is going to be appointed in this role because that person is going to matter significantly on whether they are going to serve with integrity, help us through this process, given what we’ve been navigating for the past couple of years with Mark Harvey, who served with great integrity and knew the job and did it well. That person was going to be my next partner. I was thinking about what does that look like with a Christina Bobb, because they’re going to go along with the politics of it. That is a significant challenge and problem.

Sargent: I want to underscore for people that this was at the very outset of the Covid crisis. We would have had the top person in the White House involved in disaster response, as Covid developed, being Christina Bobb, who went on to be one of the biggest MAGA election deniers in the country. That’s what we would have had under President Trump in 2020. Was she denied the job? What was the outcome there?

Troye: There were several of us who weighed in on this. I remember going to the West Wing and meeting with the National Security Advisor. I remember weighing in very strongly that I had concerns. I was like, I am the Vice-President’s Homeland Security Advisor, I will have to work with this person, I have very significant concerns about what this looks like, and I think that there are better candidates out there. And I know that Mark had concerns about this because it’s someone that is going to have to be an equal, level-headed player. It’s not a role that is for a complete partisan hack, which is what we were concerned about. It was just part of the whole, again, the staffing of the loyalists, like who was going to approve these positions. It wasn’t based on actual capability or expertise. It was based on whether you were just going to be loyal through and through regardless of whether you were going to know how to navigate the job. By the way—

Sargent: So it didn’t happen because you guys rallied against it.

Troye: Yeah. I remember actually thinking, this is tough—because I’m willing to fall on my sword on this one, because this is going to be so bad for the greater good of the American people. We’re in the middle of a crisis, this is only going to get harder. That was when we’re literally having discussions about, shutting down the flights from China. These are really serious real-world implications that I’m sitting in, and I’m thinking, this is my worst nightmare, having to work with someone like that. I remember thinking when I went over there, I’m seeing myself putting another target on my back by doing this because I am vetoing the appointment of someone that’s basically considered a loyalist. While I have valid concerns about why I think it needs to be a qualified person that’s in this role—I have concerns about this individual, and others did; I wasn’t the only one that raised it—when you do that, you’re essentially making yourself a target in that too because you’re not going along.

By the way, by that point, I’m fully aware that they’re purging the NSC. I’m fully aware the Schedule F order starts to surface around that time. I see the draft of it. I’m told to keep my head down. This is all of what’s happening in 2020. The guard that was coming in, and the loyalists that were being placed in certain roles, John McEntee started to play a bigger role, and the personnel he took over (he was now screening people), that is what a Trump presidency will look like. It will be those people if he gets back to office.

Sargent: Yes. This is all about what a second presidential term for Trump would look like. I want to clarify for people that Olivia Troye has become a very prominent Trump critic since those 2020 days and is out there a fair amount on this stuff. In fact, you’ve just cut an ad for the Kamala Harris campaign on immigration. As a result of your criticism, you’ve become MAGA public enemy number one or number 500, maybe, I’m not sure where on the list you are, but you’re pretty high up, right?

Troye: It has definitely made me a target. I think I’m on the deep state target list and I certainly know that I’m on their retribution list for sure.

Sargent: Olivia, what we’re talking about here again is what a second Trump term looks like. We’re talking Christina Bobb overseeing disaster relief, Kash Patel being in charge of the criminal justice or some element of the criminal justice bureaucracy after having openly and repeatedly said that what a Trump second term should do is prosecute the hell out of political opponents. This is what we’re looking at in the second term. Everything politicized all the way down and huge purges of the government, restocking with more MAGA loyalists. What are you anticipating? What does that look like, do you think?

Troye: Look, these are all really valid concerns that I have about what does that table look like when you convene your first cabinet meeting and you’ve got Kash Patel, Ric Grenell. Is Mike Flynn back in the conversation? Who’s going to be the national security advisor? It is very real because those are the type of personalities that are going to be making the decisions, and the rule of law will not matter when these circles, they have chosen to undermine it at times. Peter Navarro, is he going to be back in the picture? I had to deal with him in the White House and I can tell you that it wasn’t pretty. He was a very aggressive personality and he’s a dangerous man. He was willing to go to jail for this lie on the election.

Sargent: I was just about to tell a joke in very bad taste, which is that Trump keeps talking about foreign countries emptying their prisons to send people to the United States. Well, Trump’s going to have to empty out the prisons to stock his administration with MAGA loyalists. We’re talking about people like Christina Bobb overseeing disaster response. I don’t know how we get this across to the American people, but people like you are really trying to.

Troye: Yeah. The reason that I continue to look at things...When I saw Donald Trump lying basically this week, right? He was lying when he was down in Georgia, and he was lying about the Biden administration neglecting them or whatever. And I was like, This is complete projection. This is what you do. You always project because that’s what’s going through your mind because those are the types of things that you would actually be doing, because you did them or you plan to do them. That’s the thing about Donald Trump. He’s not very private about his plans. He tells us. He tells us straight out, and I think we should believe them. It’s all laid out. That Project 2025 playbook, it’s real. And that is their playbook.

Sargent: If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that when Trump went to tour some of the Hurricane Helene damage, and when Trump essentially said, OK, people in Republican areas are being denied rescue resources, that’s the way he sees the world, right? This is not how a lot of Republicans and Democrats see the world, right? We now have Republican governors working hard with the Democratic administration. They’re all very aware of what the other ones need in terms of public statements and things like that. Everyone’s being very cautious in the right way. There’s real bipartisan camaraderie around pulling through this disaster. And the only thing Trump can think about is, Well, I’d be denying rescue resources to blue areas. It’s something he actually tried to do or at least considered. So he just thinks, Well, I can just repurpose that what I would have done and turn it on them. They’re doing it.

Troye: Yeah. And it’s lies. It’s just blatant lies, right? We now have the governor of Georgia who was like, No. He’s saying that he talked to President Biden. Honestly, it’s abhorrent because if you are seeking the greatest office in our country, that should never be part of the conversation. You should be working in a bipartisan way when it comes to this issue. Again, I saw him do it when I was working in the Trump White House and it’s just incredibly disgusting to see him still doing it again today. He doesn’t change. It is who Trump is and it’s how he views the world and it’s how he’ll continue to govern if he gets back in the Oval Office, which is why it’s so alarming to me, and which is why I keep saying that people need to really understand what Trump truly stands for, what he does.

There’s a group of the people around him are now solely there as enablers. They’re not the Mark Esper’s, General Milley’s of the world. There’s no Mike Pence this time, right? It’s going to be JD Vance, and JD Vance told the entire world how he feels about the 2020 election. He basically said he wouldn’t be Mike Pence, in terms of the integrity that he showed in certifying the election. When you take a step back, we’re talking about politicizing every single aspect of the U.S. government in a way that they started to do during the first Trump administration. They did it. It will be worse this second time around because that’s the people that are going to be working with them.

Sargent: Well, you’ve made it about as clear as I think anyone can. Olivia Troye, thanks so much for coming on with us today. We really appreciate it.

Troye: Thank you, Greg.

Sargent: Everybody, make sure to check out some new content we have up at tnr.com. Dana Vachon, looking at the bankrupt Catholicism of JD Vance, and Heather Souvaine Horn taking a close look at both V.P. candidates’ responses to Hurricane Helene. Tune in to the newest episode of Deep State Radio where Tom Bonier, Simon Rosenberg, and Tara McGowan join David Rothkopf to clue us in on the Harris campaign’s strategy, what the polls are saying, and how we can help Kamala win it all. We’ll see you all Monday.

You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.