Trump Aide Wanted Staff Fired Because She Liked Taylor Swift's Instagram Post: Book

Mark Meadows, chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, allegedly wanted to fire a staffer who liked an Instagram post by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift just two weeks before the presidential election.

In an upcoming book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” by Jonathan Karl, the author claimed Meadows urged Andrew Hughes, the top staffer at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to fire a young assistant at the HUD.

Enforcers working for the Presidential Personnel Office caught the assistant liking a post by Swift where she was seen carrying a tray of cookies with the Biden-Harris campaign logo.

“We really can’t have our people liking posts promoting Joe Biden,” Meadows told Hughes in a phone call, according to an excerpt of the book obtained by The Atlantic.

During the final year of the Trump administration, the enforcers had begun monitoring staffers for any signs of disloyalty. Many who were deemed “insufficiently devoted” were also purged from their positions.

The move led many former aides to compare Trump’s Presidential Personnel Office to the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.

The Gestapo was an infamous political police force tasked with ruthlessly eliminating anyone who showed opposition to the Nazis. They were also responsible for rounding up the Jews throughout Europe to be sent to concentration camps.

In January 2020, the administration tapped 29-year-old Johnny McEntee to run the Presidential Personnel Office. He had previously served as the former president’s “bag man” before being fired in 2018 amid an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security into his finances.

"More than anyone else in the White House, McEntee was Trump's man through and through—a man who rose to power at precisely the moment when American democracy was falling apart," Karl wrote in his book.

During the days following the election, McEntee axed a number of high-ranking officials in the Trump administration, including top Pentagon aides, two top Homeland Security officials, a senior climate scientist and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

McEntee had also allegedly sent then-Vice President Mike Pence’s office a memo about Thomas Jefferson as part of an effort to persuade him to overturn the results of the election, according to Business Insider.