In an explosive interview with Joe Rogan, former White House adviser Calley Means accused powerful White House insiders of selling out the Make America Healthy Again agenda.
By Catholics for Catholics
Calley Means, the businessman who recently quit as a top federal health official after conflicting with the White House, accused President Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, of caving to “unrelenting” pressure from industry lobbyists while giving priority to political fund-raising over Americans’ health.
According to a story by The Defender, Means, in a two-hour interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan, asserted that Wiles reserved support from his work to make children’s diets healthier, quoting the need for sugar industry money. He added that her team pressed for more approvals of flavored e-cigarettes, a top priority for major tobacco companies that donated at least $20 million to the G.O.P. in 2026. And he added that they gave in to heavy lobbying from the kratom industry to relax proposed restrictions on products often referred to as “gas station heroin.”
Means told Rogan that corporate influence on the Trump administration effectively derailed key planks of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, including works to probe vaccine safety, reduce glyphosate exposure and reform the food system.
During the interview, Means, who appeared Nov. 6 on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” pointed to the former White House Chief of Staff, Wiles, formerly a lobbyist and political consultant for the pharmaceutical industry, the pesticide industry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Means contends that Wiles’ career was cemented on “taking money from the industries and foreign governments who would pay her the most money.”
Wiles, Means said, became “the most powerful chief of staff in modern American history,” exerting a “stranglehold” on public health policy, he said. He accused her of selling out Americans’ health to raise money for political campaigns.
He said she repeatedly told him, “We need money for the midterms.”
In addition, Means also singled out Wiles aides James Blair, Walker Barrett and Richard Walters, along with Tony Fabrizio — a top pollster for the administration — as members of a small cabal of lobbyist-linked insiders who he said undermined the administration’s MAHA agenda.
“There is a very concentrated group of people in the Trump administration” who are antagonistic to the agenda voters supported, Means said.
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