The row between Trump’s ex-MAHA adviser and the fired chief of staff has taken a nastier turn, with him accusing her of disloyalty to the president.
Calley Means, a confidant of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and, until recently, a top White House health policy adviser, wrote on X accusing Susie Wiles of leaking to the press to shift the blame onto the president. In his lengthy post, he wrote, “I want everyone in the White House to know that Susie is executing a systematic strategy to throw President Trump under the bus.”
Means singled out a reporter he called Wiles’s “stenographer” and alleged the person was relaying her leaks as Trump, not Wiles, and she had been “captured” by Ballard Partners, the lobbying outfit she used to work with.
He also had words for the firm’s founder, Brian Ballard. According to Means, Ballard put in writing that he did not lobby Wiles or White House staff on glyphosate, but the firm’s own disclosure tells a different story, showing him personally lobbying the White House in the quarter a pertinent executive order was issued.
“He is either lying or throwing President Trump under the bus,” Means wrote of Ballard. Means also claimed Ballard is running a PR campaign to defend Wiles and argue “that President Trump is the sole reason the administration has caved to the tobacco and pesticide industries.”
Then there is James Blair, the former deputy chief of staff. Means says Blair has been angrily texting, in no uncertain terms, that “my problem is obviously with President Trump,” and sending quotes to the media, holding the president to account for corporate capture in the first two years.
To Wiles, he wrote, “I’m not intimidated and you will not scare me,” before asking her to stop sending “emotional texts.”
“This is not personal — this is civilizational.” He added, “If America doesn’t move on from the revolting version of politics you represent, our country will cease to exist.”
The former top White House adviser called on present and past administration officials to speak to the press, writing, “It is time to speak to the press about what you saw,” before adding that Stephen Miller and President Trump will “solve” it.
He said of the new controversial chief of staff: “Whatever side of the aisle we are on, we should pray for Miller’s to exorcise Susie’s culture of corruption from the admin and get us on a posture advocating for voters, not Ballard.”
Ballard Partners has dismissed his claims as false and characterized its interactions with Wiles as “limited.” For his part, Blair called the talk of corruption “scurrilous, false, and defamatory” in a statement to The Wall Street Journal and is considering legal action. Wiles told CBS News that Trump has done more for the MAHA movement than any other president.
All this came to a head after Means went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and said Wiles had put the interests of corporate donors before the administration’s healthy-eating platform, recalling her remark that she required “sugar money” to win the midterms.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the Democrat expected to run the House Oversight Committee in January, responded to Means’s claims that White House aides put corporations ahead of Americans' health and promised an investigation.
