Calley Means, a former Trump White House health adviser and top aide to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., accused senior administration figures of catering to powerful industries — remarks that landed on Friday as Susie Wiles prepared to leave her post as White House chief of staff.
Speaking on a new episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Means said he resigned last month because a “very concentrated group of people” inside the administration were “antagonistic to what people voted for” and, in his view, were in many cases acting “to enrich their families.”
Means, an architect of the administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, said fundraising pressures repeatedly overrode health-policy priorities. He claimed Wiles told him multiple times that the White House needed money for the midterms, and he alleged that companies that hired Wiles’s daughter as a lobbyist received higher priority for administration funding.
He also revisited the fight over Bayer and its Roundup weedkiller. Means said administration backing for Bayer’s efforts to limit cancer-related lawsuits — including a draft Justice Department opinion he said was written by a lawyer who previously worked at a firm that represents Bayer — showed how lobbyists shaped health policy at the expense of the MAHA agenda. He separately criticized delays in defining “ultra-processed food,” arguing food companies were fighting a clear definition.
The Rogan episode posted shortly before President Trump announced that Stephen Miller would replace Wiles as chief of staff starting Monday, November 9. Wiles said Friday was her last day in the West Wing role and that she is moving to the Trump political operation.
White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster said the administration has already secured “extensive victories” for the MAHA agenda, including overhauling dietary guidelines, removing artificial ingredients from the food supply, and investing in regenerative farming. Health and Human Services pointed to a post from Kennedy saying he and Trump “intend to keep fighting until the American people—not corporate influence—drive our health policies.”
Means’ public break is one of the first high-profile insider critiques from a former Trump health adviser after Republicans’ midterm losses this week.