Calley Means, a senior White House adviser who recently stepped down from his role assisting Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has leveled significant allegations of corruption against top administration officials. During an interview on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, Means argued that several aides are effectively operating as lobbyists to advance the agendas of industries they were originally tasked with regulating, including the vaping, ultra-processed food, pharmaceutical, and pesticide sectors. In many cases, you had a group of former lobbyists, catering to the vaping industry, catering to the ultra-processed food industry, catering to the pharmaceutical industry, catering to the pesticide industry and doing their bidding with an excuse that we need their money for the midterms and really need to actually go against what voters said,” Calley Means told “Face the Nation” moderator, underneath Trump’s nose. According to he, Wiles and “a very close-knit crew” of other White House advisers “were taking money from the industries we ran on fighting against. Calley is intentionally misrepresenting my role and my responsibility because he opposes the issue entirely. Shop owners and vaping enthusiasts, mr. Trump won backing from e-cigarette companies. Calley just doesn’t like it. The departure became public shortly after Mr. Trump taped an interview with 60 Minutes midday Friday. It is not clear at this time whether the public remarks factored into the president’s decision to expedite Wiles’ departure. They would block access to and information to him all the time,” Means alleged. “I would be not surprised at all, you know, if they had very short conversations on these issues, you know, where the president’s extremely busy and the president said, ‘OK, whatever. But structural,” he said. “He wants to get the same things done that Elizabeth Warren and (Abdul) El-Sayed and other people are running on, stephen Miller wants to get transformative things done with Bobby Kennedy and President Trump that are not partisan.
As a key architect of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement and a primary figure in building the political alliance between Donald Trump and Kennedy during the 2024 campaign, Means held a significant position in the administration. His tenure focused on major health reforms, most notably efforts to update national dietary guidelines and the removal of candy and soda products from eligibility under SNAP benefits. According to as a 2024 presidential candidate, Mr. Trump vowed to “save” vaping and mentioned his past efforts on behalf of flavored vaping during his first administration, which he, In a social media post was intended to get people off smoking.
Means explicitly targeted recently resigned White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and a small circle of advisers, accusing them of accepting influence from industries that the administration had pledged to challenge. In a separate appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, he urged the President to clear his staff of these entrenched interests, specifically alleging that Wiles and her deputy, James Blair, exerted persistent pressure on the Department of Health and Human Services to secure approvals for fruit-flavored vaping products. Even though the president himself has made his position on smoking and smoking alternatives known very publicly and has provided clear direction.
James Blair disputed these characterizations, stating that his directives were focused on ensuring the FDA followed standard federal procedures for nicotine delivery device applications. I didn’t promote flavored vaping specifically at all,” Blair said. “I was tasked with driving FDA to make its process for approving or denying nicotine delivery device applications work the way current federal law dictates it works, which is that applicants get a yes or no answer on approval in six months.
Blair maintained that he did not promote flavored vaping as a specific policy goal but was instead managing the administrative workflow for the agency.
Sources familiar with the internal deliberations confirmed that President Trump had directed Blair to push then-FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary to accelerate the processing of industry applications, a move consistent with the President’s past public vows to protect vaping access. According to three sources familiar with the matter, her resignation was tied to Republicans’ midterm defeats.
The policy tensions contributed to Dr. Makary’s departure from the FDA in May, amidst internal disputes regarding the approval of fruit-flavored e-cigarettes. Makary asserted that he faced repeated pressure from tobacco industry connections to authorize products that specifically appeal to younger demographics, pressure he claimed he successfully resisted. These accounts align with earlier reports that tobacco lobbyists were seen meeting with the President at his Florida golf club to discuss vaping regulations. According to big tobacco exploited their connections to administration and HHS officials to put repeated pressure on me to approve fruit-flavored vapes that appeal to children—I wouldn’t do it,” Makary, In a statement to. “The Kratom/7-OH lobby ran the same playbook to undermine my efforts to make this new ‘gas station heroin’ illegal.
Susie Wiles, who resigned her post on Thursday night following midterm election results, denied the allegations brought forward by Means regarding her role in coordinating meetings between the tobacco industry and the White House. Meanwhile, internal conflict persists regarding the administration’s stance on agricultural chemicals. Despite Kennedy’s long-standing legal opposition to the company Monsanto, President Trump signed an executive order earlier this year to increase the production of glyphosate, the primary ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup. Blair denied Means’ characterization of his role in the vape debate in a statement to. WHO has deemed glyphosate to be “probably carcinogenic to humans. For decades as a private attorney, Kennedy had spearheaded a legal challenge to the chemical giant Monsanto for its use of the herbicide. According to kennedy, In that testimony the executive order on glyphosate “came from the Pentagon,” and “the president felt it was necessary for national security reasons.
Kennedy previously testified before Congress that he communicated his strong opposition to the glyphosate order, characterizing it as a policy pushed by external interests. Complications were further exacerbated when the Supreme Court ruled in June that Monsanto could not be held liable for failure to warn users about potential cancer risks. Means alleged that White House adviser Dr. Janie Overton was involved in crafting the administration’s legal brief for the Court, a claim supported by officials who confirmed she provided input at the request of the Solicitor General.
Means has also publicly questioned the professional qualifications of Dr. Overton, particularly regarding her role in overseeing vaping strategy following the departure of leadership at the FDA.
A spokesperson for Overton noted that her qualifications are supported by former heads of the agency, while Means remains skeptical of her integrity in the role.
As the Environmental Protection Agency prepares for an expected 2027 review of glyphosate, Means has raised concerns about the legitimacy of previous research, citing allegations of bias and external influence in historical pesticide studies. Expected to conclude in early 2027, there is an ongoing EPA review of glyphosate.
