‘A bald-faced lie’: Ex-coronavirus task force aide calls bull on White House claim she was fired

The White House tried Tuesday to discredit ex-coronavirus task force member Olivia Troye as a disgruntled employee who was fired for slacking at work — but Troye pushed back against that narrative by showing off official tokens of appreciation from her former boss.

Troye, a former homeland security aide to Vice President Mike Pence who also served as his lead staffer on the COVID-19 task force, got the boot last month because she was a “backbencher” whose “performance had started to drop,” according to Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser.

“I fired her,” Kellogg told reporters in the White House briefing room. “She was responsible for coordinating meetings, bringing people together and when the performance level dropped off, I went to the vice president of the United States and recommended she leave. I’m the one that escorted her off the compound.”

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany laid it on even thicker and took aim at Troye’s recent Joe Biden endorsement.

"These are not profiles in courage, but these are profiles in cowardice,” McEnany said.

But Troye punched back against the political jabs.

“Sad that Gen. Kellogg is telling a bald-faced lie to protect the president. I resigned on my own accord and was asked to stay. He never escorted me out. He knows this,” Troye tweeted. “I wrote a note thanking all the colleagues who had worked so hard with me in spite of POTUS, and I stand by that.”

To back up her version of events, Troye posted a photo on Twitter of an Instagram post she made on Aug. 15, one of her last days at the White House.

The post featured a photo of a commemorative coin with Kellogg’s name on it that she said he gave her as a parting gift.

“This gift is not the action of someone who did what Kellogg claims he did,” Troye said.

A spokesman for Kellogg did not return a request for comment.

Troye endorsed Biden last week in a video produced by advocacy group Republican Voters Against Trump.

In the video, the ex-White House aide offered a blistering rebuke of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans.

“The truth is he doesn’t actually care about anyone else but himself,” Troye said in the video. “If he made an effort to explain how serious it was, he would’ve slowed the virus spread, he would’ve saved lives.”

Trump has continued to downplay the pandemic despite the horrific death toll, which is the worst in the world by far.

At a campaign rally in Ohio on Monday night, the president claimed the virus “affects virtually nobody."

Asked Tuesday to explain how that makes any sense, McEnany demurred and claimed the president should receive praise for the U.S. death toll not being closer to 2 million.

“The fact that we have come nowhere near that number is a testament to this president taking immediate action,” she said.