Calley Means, who resigned as a top federal health official two weeks ago after clashing with the White House, on Friday accused President Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, of bowing to “unrelenting” pressure from industry lobbyists while prioritizing political fund-raising over Americans’ health.
In a two-hour interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan, Mr. Means said that Ms. Wiles withheld support from his efforts to make children’s diets healthier, citing the need for sugar industry money. He said her team demanded 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 said they gave in to heavy lobbying from the kratom industry to relax proposed restrictions on products often referred to as “gas station heroin.”
“Susie said to me many times: ‘We need money for the midterms, Calley. We need money for the midterms,’” Mr. Means said.
In recent days, Ms. Wiles has become a target of criticism and finger-pointing in an escalating blame game after Republicans’ stunning losses in the midterm elections. In a post on Truth Social on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump announced that Ms. Wiles would leave her post on Monday and Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, would replace her.
“Susie Wiles, who has done an outstanding job, will be moving over to the Trump Political Operation. I want to thank her for her service as Chief of Staff — She has done a great job!”
Ms. Wiles and the White House were not immediately available to comment. The White House and the Department of Health and Human Services have responded to past allegations of lobbying influence on the administration’s health care policies by saying the administration consistently acted in the best interest of the American people.
Mr. Means, a close ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who helped build the Make America Healthy Again movement, avoided criticizing Mr. Kennedy or Mr. Trump. He directed his ire almost entirely at Ms. Wiles, a former lobbyist and political consultant, who he asserted had “spent her career taking money,” including from the pharmaceutical and pesticide industries and from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a former client.
Mr. Means framed Ms. Wiles and her top deputies as welcoming lobbyists into the White House while sidelining Mr. Kennedy and infantilizing Mr. Trump. Mr. Means made a larger argument about the corrosive role of corporate money in politics, but also suggested that the president should “exorcise” Ms. Wiles and her aides “from the White House.”
Ms. Wiles’s policy interests also aligned with those benefiting her family, Mr. Means said, claiming that any corporation that hired her daughter, Katie Wiles, a lobbyist for Continental Strategy, “was getting a high priority.”
“So if you’re a special interest and you want to get something done, the secret’s out,” Mr. Means said. “You pay Susie’s daughter, and it was openly discussed when they had a client.”
Mr. Means’s tirade against Ms. Wiles, while depicting Mr. Kennedy as a “hero,” comes as Democrats are beginning to consider their new powers to investigate what they view as the most destructive actions of the Trump administration. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who will lead the influential Senate Finance Committee, has already announced an investigation into Mr. Kennedy’s role in “corruption favoring” of the tobacco and kratom industries.
In the podcast interview, Mr. Means said the administration fumbled a series of issues that had been crucial to the MAHA coalition that had helped propel Mr. Trump to the presidency.
The missteps included an executive order aimed at supporting the production of glyphosate, the herbicide tied to cancer that many MAHA supporters want to see restricted. The order was issued in February, as the Supreme Court was about to hear oral arguments in a case that would determine whether Bayer, the maker of glyphosate, could receive immunity from lawsuits alleging the weedkiller caused cancer.
Mr. Means asserted that military leaders did not believe the order was necessary to protect national security, as the White House said. He described how one of Ms. Wiles’s deputies dropped the executive order on a table and said it was nonnegotiable.
“I read it, I said, ‘This is a political disaster,’” Mr. Means recalled. The aide was insistent. “Please inform Bobby. And this is not up for discussion.” He pointedly told Mr. Means that the health secretary should not call the president, adding, “Susie then called Bobby’s office and said, ‘We’re not discussing this.’”
The executive order was announced the next day, infuriating MAHA leaders.
Mr. Means also claimed that Dr. Heidi Overton, then a White House health official whom Mr. Trump has since nominated to lead the Food and Drug Administration, had helped Justice Department officials create legal arguments urging the Supreme Court to review the glyphosate case and supporting Bayer’s position.
The Supreme Court sided with Bayer in a decision that gave the company broad liability protection and infuriated many in the MAHA movement.
Mr. Means joined the White House after working on Mr. Kennedy’s campaign and helping to broker the partnership between the secretary and Mr. Trump; he later went to work directly for Mr. Kennedy. He is primarily interested in the secretary’s food agenda and has not been involved in more controversial policy-making on vaccines.
But in the interview, he accused Ms. Wiles of pressuring Mr. Kennedy to downplay vaccine safety while relying on the work of a pollster, Tony Fabrizio, who receives funding from the pharmaceutical industry.
Mr. Means also described how some of his efforts to draft policies to make the food supply healthier were thwarted, such as one aimed at pushing the food industry to address whether the amount of sugar in children’s diets was appropriate.
“And that’s where Susie told me we can’t do that,” Mr. Means said. “‘I need the sugar industry money.’”
Mr. Means also said that Dr. Marty Makary, the former F.D.A. commissioner, was “pounded” in numerous meetings to approve flavored e-cigarettes, which James Blair, a former deputy of Ms. Wiles, framed as “a core midterm issue.”
Dr. Makary left the agency in May over the disputes on the matter. Mr. Means said that Dr. Overton did what Dr. Makary would not: “She wrote up a policy to relax standards on fruit-flavored vapes.”
Mr. Means said that his “last straw” came after months of delays on his effort to arrive at a definition of ultraprocessed foods, which could eventually lead to regulation. He said that he and Mr. Kennedy went to Ms. Wiles, who denied any special interest influence on the matter.
“Lied to us to our face,” he said, recounting that he later heard her say we need to “do something” about MAHA.
Mr. Means said he believed Democrats were also guilty of ceding to similar influences and said the solution could come from a presidential candidate running on the issue of amending the Constitution to take money out of politics.
“Americans need to understand that if they are getting whipped up and excited about policy promises through our existing structure, they are being duped and gaslighted and lied to,” he said. “We need to have systemic reform.”
