A former aide to Mike Pence in the Trump administration has claimed that Donald Trump recruited some of his inner circle from an unlikely talent pool.
Olivia Troye, the former homeland security adviser to Mike Pence, said that Trump went to extreme measures to ensure a MAGA echo chamber around him, including recruiting carnies at the Iowa State Fair back in August 2023.
The master plan, according to Troye, is for Trump to replace his experienced policy experts from within the collection of yes-men, who may lack the know-how or desire to advise the president-elect wisely.
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“You say Schedule F and people don’t know what that is. When you say they implement Schedule F, tell the people what that means,” host Symone Sanders-Townsend prompted on MSNBC’s The Weekend on Sunday.
“Yeah, it means that anyone that’s in a policy-related role that is working for the greater good of the country is going to be replaced by the people they are recruiting,” Troye on MSNBC’s The Weekend on Sunday.
“I mean, I would say the carnies that they’ve been recruiting at the Iowa State Fair, because that’s actually what they were doing by the way. That’s not a lie, look it up!” she added.
Troye then alleged that Trump’s team was actively sniffing out talent from carnies at the event.
“They were recruiting and taking resumes at this thing. Just to paint a picture of that,” she said.
“And so, I‘m just concerned that what I saw was people being put in positions of power and replacing people who actually were there saying, ‘Hey, that’s actually unlawful. No, this is the reason you shouldn’t do that.’”
Troye suggested that policy advisers were being replaced by people unaware of the ins and outs of global politics, saying: “They’re replacing it with people that are yes-men, that aren’t looking at it from that lens, who are just getting the phone call from the likes of Steven Miller or Russ Vought saying, ‘Hey, this is what we want done. I don’t care what you have to do to do it. Just go do it.’”
Troye concluded that the selection of obedient fans—or carnies—into policy roles ultimately made the posts redundant.
“And then you see everyone fall in line. And that‘s why it’s frightening, because really these people are there in public service to kind of navigate it and advise the people in the administration,” she said.
