A lifelong Republican says she’s voting for Joe Biden after witnessing first hand how President Donald Trump appreciated the coronavirus pandemic. Olivia Troye was Vice President Mike Pence’s homeland security, counterterrorism and coronavirus adviser. And she says she’s voting for Joe Biden.

Troye says Trump didn’t want to hear about the coronavirus “because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year, and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success.”

Trump, she says, “doesn’t actually care about anyone else but himself.”

“You know I’ve been on the COVID task force from day one,” Troye says in a video recorded for Republican Voters Against Trump.

“I mean the virus was very unpredictable, at the beginning there were a lot of unknowns but towards the middle of February, we knew it wasn’t a matter of if COVID would become a big pandemic here in the United States, it was a matter of when. But the President didn’t want to hear that because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year, and how was this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success.”

She calls it “shocking to see the president saying that the virus was a hoax, saying that everything’s okay when we know that it’s not. The truth is, he doesn’t actually care about anyone else but himself. He made a statement once that was very striking. I never forgot it because it pretty much defined who he was, when we were in a taskforce meeting the president said, ‘maybe this COVID thing is a good thing. I don’t like shaking hands with people, I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.'”

“Those ‘disgusting people’ are the same people that he claims to care about. These are the people still going into his rallies today, who have complete faith in who he is. If the President had taken this virus, seriously, or if he had actually made an effort to tell how serious it was, he would have slowed the virus spread, he would have saved lives.”

“It was the opportunity in honor of a lifetime, to be able to serve in the White House, I put my heart and soul into this role, every single day, but at some point I would come home at night, I would look myself in the mirror and say are you really making a difference? Does it matter because no matter how hard you work in what you do. The President is going to do something that is detrimental to keeping Americans safe, which is why you signed up for this role. It was awful. It was It was terrifying. I have been a Republican for my entire life. I am a McCain Republican, I am a Bush Republican, and I am voting for Joe Biden because I truly believe we are at a time of constitutional crisis. At this point it’s country over party.”

Watch:

In this new ad @OliviaTroye reveals that during a COVID task force meeting, President Trump said "Maybe this COVID thing is a good thing. I don't have to shake hands with these disgusting people."

WOW. pic.twitter.com/1W1tQgZCWv

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@RVAT2020) September 17, 2020

Back in April as coronavirus was exploding across the country, the U.S. Postal Service had a plan to send five reusable facemasks to every home across the country.

The White House killed the plan.

“USPS leaders drafted a news release announcing plans to distribute 650 million masks nationwide, enough to offer five face coverings to every American household,” The Washington Post reports.

“This unprecedented undertaking is being done in partnership with the White House Coronavirus Task Force,” the press release reads, “and a consortium of textile manufacturers.”

It called the project a “critical national initiative.”

The hardest hit areas would be the first to receive them.

Related: CDC Director Decimates Trump Vaccine Prediction: Not ‘Generally Available’ Until Late Spring or Summer 2021

“The service specifically identified Orleans and Jefferson parishes in Louisiana as the first areas to receive face coverings, with deliveries shortly thereafter to King County, Wash.; Wayne County, Mich.; and New York, according to the newly unearthed document, which is labeled a draft.”

Having drafted a press release means the project was pretty far ahead.

But top administration officials nixed it.

“There was concern from some in the White House Domestic Policy Council and the office of the vice president that households receiving masks might create concern or panic,” one administration official told the Washington Post.

The White House Domestic Policy Council includes President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Its acting director is Brooke Rollins. It also includes most of the President’s Cabinet.

The Post adds that the Dept. of Health and Human Services “created Project America Strong, a $675 million effort to distribute ‘reusable cotton face masks to critical infrastructure sectors, companies, healthcare facilities, and faith-based and community organizations across the country.’”

Image: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian via Flickr 

President Donald Trump is now claiming he has met his own expectations and prediction of the number of coronavirus deaths. That’s false.

The early on insisted that if the number of people who died from COVID-19 were 60,000 he would have done a good job.

Then he upped the number.

At the end of March Trump decreed, “if we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000, it’s a horrible number, maybe even less, but to 100,000, so we have between 100 [thousand] and 200,000, we altogether have done a very good job.”

On April 19 Trump told Americans, “It looks like we’ll be at about a 60,000 mark, which is 40,000 less than the lowest number thought of,” as if the pandemic had ended.

That was almost exactly five months ago.

The current death toll is now at 200,000.

“This was our prediction,” Trump said Wednesday, “that we do a really good job will be at about 100 – 100,000 to 240,000 deaths. And we’re below that substantially and we’ll see what comes out but that would be the good job, the not so good job was done he had been between 1.5 million I remember these numbers so well and 2.2 million.”

No credible and respected expert predicted 1.5 million to 2.2 million deaths.

“That’s quite a difference. So we’re down,” Trump said, again falsely.

He then went on to blame “blue states,” as if they somehow are not part of the United States. He’s also ignoring that the virus hit states which happen to be run by Democratic governors first.

“And that’s despite the fact that the blue states had had tremendous death rates. If you take the blue states at we’re at, at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at, we’re really at a very low level but some of the states,” Trump said, again falsely.

“Because if you look at certain of them, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and a couple of others. We have to get those states open. It’s hurting people it’s hurting people far more than the disease itself.”

That, too, is false.

Watch:

From ‘we will be down to zero cases in a few days’ to basically making the argument that if population centers didn’t exist he’d have the best COVID response in the world pic.twitter.com/70DXSLiOyw

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) September 16, 2020