A former White House aide who quit last month took broad aim at some of President Donald Trump’s senior advisers, saying they had treated the president “like a baby in many respects” and prioritized money for the midterms over Make America Healthy Again policy goals.
Calley Means, who also served as a top aide to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that he was concerned that Trump “has been subverted” by top aides and strategists who he alleged were seeking money from major industries for the midterm elections. He zeroed in on some top aides, notably Susie Wiles, who left her role as chief of staff Friday, as a staff shake-up is underway.
Means’s interview with “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan followed an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast in an episode released Friday in which he named staffers he believed blocked or hindered progress on policies popular within the MAHA movement.
Means’s comments have ignited a feud between those who helped build the president’s MAHA coalition and top White House strategists.
This comes after Democrats scored a massive electoral victory in the November midterms, spurring Republican finger-pointing and questions over the future of the GOP. Democrats, with their new power, have made clear they plan to probe alleged corruption involving Trump, his administration, his family and corporate allies.
In a statement, James Blair, Trump’s top political adviser, said that “I couldn’t tell you who donors are to what organizations other than minimal passing knowledge, because I am not a fundraiser and have no role in fundraising.” He added, “However, the implication of corruption towards me and all the others referenced by Calley is scurrilous, false, and defamatory.”
In a striking Fox News interview Saturday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) said that Means had laid out “in gory detail” concerning levels of corruption within government, including “within the Trump administration.”
“This is how government operates on a bipartisan basis,” Johnson continued, saying he believes that it’s been going on for decades.
Of Trump, Means said that “I think he had severe poor advice from people, I think, who treated him like a baby in many respects and used him.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. On Friday, spokeswoman Allison Schuster said in a statement that “the MAHA coalition has found a champion in President Trump, who has made incredible strides to Make America Healthy Again.” The MAHA movement was born out of the 2024 political alliance between Kennedy and Trump, and the movement is composed of various advocates pushing for healthier food, major changes to vaccines and less use of pesticides.
On Rogan’s podcast, Means accused Wiles of having a “stranglehold” on policy decisions and blocking one of the Department of Health and Human Services’ food initiatives out of fear it would hurt political donations from the sugar industry. In the CBS interview, Means also discussed what he said was an excessive influence that the food, pharmaceutical and pesticide industries had on policy matters. He said he believed “a lot of this happened without Trump’s full knowledge.”
Wiles did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The issues that came from Susie’s world were not healthy food, were not cleaning up pesticides, were not these core issues that Bobby Kennedy ran on,” Means said.
Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s chief pollster, whom Means included in his claims, said in a statement that “allegations that I am in the pocket of Big Pharma [are] not only ridiculous, but demonstrably false.” He said that findings from his firm’s research have “support[ed] cracking down on Big Pharma and imposing Most Favored Nation prescription drug pricing,” as well as campaigning on the issue of linking U.S. drug prices to the lower costs abroad, “which would harm Big Pharma’s bottom line.”
Democrats have sought answers regarding Means’s financial interests, particularly around when he was serving as a special government employee last year. In the interview with Brennan, he said that he fully divested from the company he started “against my economic interests” when he took a full-time government role.
On Friday, after the podcast episode was released, Trump announced that Wiles would be replaced as chief of staff by Stephen Miller, a longtime aide. Wiles submitted her resignation to the president Thursday night, The Washington Post previously reported.
On Sunday, Brennan directly asked Means if it was his “intention” for Wiles to be removed from her post. Means said it was.
Some White House officials have countered that Wiles is a MAHA champion. Some of Means’s claims could not immediately be independently verified. Kennedy posted on social media Friday that he was “grateful to Susie Wiles for her calm and inspiring leadership and wisdom.”
Some prominent MAHA supporters, including Means, cheered Miller’s appointment, saying he is committed to the movement’s causes.
“Stephen Miller wants to get transformative things done with Bobby Kennedy and President Trump that are not partisan but structural,” Means said. “He wants to get the same things done that Elizabeth Warren and [Abdul] El-Sayed and other people are running on,” he said referring to the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and the Democratic senator-elect from Michigan, respectively.
Yet Miller’s appointment drew outrage from Democrats’ newly empowered leadership, as he has directed some of the most controversial aspects of Trump’s second term, such as many of the administration’s immigration policies.
Means was critical of Heidi Overton, a top aide at the White House Domestic Policy Council who is Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, calling her the “biggest block to MAHA policies,” such as those on food and psychedelics. The FDA wields significant power over the MAHA agenda; Overton did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
White House spokesman Kush Desai has previously defended Overton and said that she has helped “deliver on almost every single MAHA victory that the Trump administration has secured for the American people.”
Ahead of a September confirmation hearing, two former FDA commissioners — Scott Gottlieb, who served in Trump’s first term, and Mark McClellan — endorsed Overton.
On Rogan’s podcast, Means also lamented a lack of midterm focus on issues central to the MAHA movement. Polls have shown the majority of Americans agree there is insufficient regulation of chemical additives in food and pesticides used to grow crops.
“On food, the only thing I did tell Calley is that the number one food-related concern of the vast majority of voters right now is that food and groceries are too expensive. It’s one of the voters’ top budget concerns in general,” Blair said. “He wasn’t interested in that.”
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