A former Trump administration staffer said she was advised not to play Taylor Swift in the White House: 'Are you trying to get fired?'

• Olivia Troye was an advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence, as well as a leader on the Coronavirus Task Force.
• She said a coworker warned her against playing Taylor Swift's music in the White House.

A former staffer of the Trump administration said she was warned against playing Taylor Swift's music in the White House because Swift wasn't "a fan of Trump's."

Olivia Troye, an advisor for former Vice President Mike Pence who served on the Coronavirus Task Force, said she went to her office in the White House following a contentious meeting about COVID-19.

"I came back and was playing Taylor Swift very loud in my office late that night, and I had a colleague knock on the door, and he said, 'Are you trying to get fired?' I was super confused about that," Troye told MSNBC's Chris Hayes.

Troye said she initially thought he was referring to the meeting about COVID-19, but the staffer was actually referring to her music.

"He said, 'Well, I don't think she's a fan of Trump's, and so if somebody hears that, you should really watch your back. You should be careful on that,'" Troye said the staffer told her, suggesting Swift was not a fan of the former president.

Former President Donald Trump joked about liking Swift's music less after the singer endorsed Democrats running for office in her home state of Tennessee in 2018.

"That is just so astonishing to me," Troye said on MSNBC. "It's late, I'm allowed to listen to whatever music I want."

Troye told Insider that her colleague warned that "Taylor Swift wasn't going to win me any favors."

"I sort of chuckled ... but then slowly turned down the volume fully knowing he was right. The last thing I needed was an excuse for someone to use against me and undermine my work. I had seen it happen to others. It was an environment where you had to be very guarded about everything," Troye told Insider.

It comes after news that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows got a phone call regarding a low-level staffer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development who had liked an Instagram post by Swift. The post from October 2020 encouraged people to vote and featured a photo of Swift holding a tray of Biden-Harris cookies.

Troye told Insider that she worked in the federal government under multiple administrations, both Republican and Democrat, but the culture under the Trump administration was different.

"I have never seen the type of bullying, intimidation and disparaging treatment of some of our nation's most devoted public servants and national security officials. Every day I walked into work wondering if that was going to be the day I would get fired for telling the truth or for pushing back on something in a meeting," Troye said. "By the time the last year of the administration was in full swing, most of the people I respected or could confide in had left, been pushed out, or fired."