A former senior White House adviser and top aide to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is accusing several Trump administration officials, including the recently resigned White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, of prioritizing industry interests over the health of voters as part of the White House’s midterm elections strategy.
“Underneath Trump’s nose, 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 Margaret Brennan in an interview that aired Sunday.
Means helped found the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and helped form the winning alliance between Mr. Trump and Kennedy in 2024 before serving as Kennedy’s top aide. Means helped lead the Department of Health and Human Services’ efforts to revise the country’s dietary guidelines and remove soda and candy from SNAP benefits before resigning last month.
He told CBS News that Wiles and “a very close-knit crew” of other White House advisers “were taking money from the industries we ran on fighting against.”
Means went public Friday with very specific allegations of corruption against Wiles and a call for President Trump to “clear his house” in an interview he taped Thursday for “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
He claimed Wiles and her deputy, James Blair, relentlessly pushed HHS to find a pathway to approve fruit-flavored vapes. In early May, the Food and Drug Administration approved some fruit-flavored e-cigarettes.
Blair denied Means’ characterization of his role in the vape debate in a statement to CBS News.
“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. Calley is intentionally misrepresenting my role and my responsibility because he opposes the issue entirely. Even though the president himself has made his position on smoking and smoking alternatives known very publicly and has provided clear direction. Calley just doesn’t like it.”
Two sources familiar with the process told CBS News that Blair was tasked by Mr. Trump with driving then-FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary to more quickly respond to applications from the nicotine industry, but also acknowledged that the president sought to make flavored vapes more available.
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 said in a social media post was intended to get people off smoking. Mr. Trump won backing from e-cigarette companies, shop owners and vaping enthusiasts.
In May, Makary was pressed to resign his post as FDA commissioner amid reports that he had been pressured by the White House to approve the fruit-flavored vapes.
“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 said in a statement to CBS News. “The Kratom/7-OH lobby ran the same playbook to undermine my efforts to make this new ‘gas station heroin’ illegal. As FDA commissioner, I always rejected political corruption just as voters across the political spectrum did last week.”
Multiple sources confirmed to CBS News the New York Times’ reporting in May that tobacco lobbyists had been at the president’s Florida golf course with him at lunch and pushed him on the way e-cigarettes were being regulated by the FDA. Means claimed Wiles set up the meeting.
Wiles submitted her resignation to Mr. Trump on Thursday night, a U.S. official and a senior White House adviser told CBS News. Her resignation was tied to Republicans’ midterm defeats, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The departure became public shortly after Mr. Trump taped an interview with 60 Minutes midday Friday.
When asked if it was his intention to get Wiles removed from her position, Means responded, “Yes. I think President Trump has been subverted by people that are beholden to special interests and not what President Trump ran on, and what voters voted for.” It is not clear at this time whether the public remarks factored into the president’s decision to expedite Wiles’ departure.
In a statement to CBS News, Wiles denied Means’ allegations that she arranged for tobacco industry representatives to meet with the president at his golf course to discuss vape policy.
Earlier this year, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to boost production of glyphosate, a herbicide that is included in the weedkiller Roundup and which has been found to be linked to cancer. 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. In a statement on social media at the time of the president’s order, Kennedy said: “Our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals.”
Kennedy testified to Congress in March that he was “very clear with the president about my own displeasure with the executive order.” Kennedy said in that testimony the executive order on glyphosate “came from the Pentagon,” and “the president felt it was necessary for national security reasons.”
In June, the Supreme Court sided with Monsanto, ruling that it cannot be held liable for failing to warn consumers about alleged cancer risks in Roundup. On “Face the Nation,” Means accused White House adviser Heidi Overton of working with the Department of Justice to write a brief to the Supreme Court, urging them to take the case prior to Mr. Trump’s executive order.
A senior White House official told CBS News that the solicitor general wrote the brief for the Supreme Court at the request of the court. The official also said that Dr. Overton did weigh in on the brief in the final stages but just made changes to “tone.” The Trump administration argued in court filings that federal standards supersede state-level liability claims, which was the same position taken by glyphosate-maker Monsanto, now known as Bayer.
There is an ongoing EPA review of glyphosate, expected to conclude in early 2027. Means alleged the prior EPA review of glyphosate was “thrown out because it had ghostwritten research showing Bayer bribed EPA officials.”
Means resigned last month and said he is leaving “with tremendous respect for President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
Food stocks rallied on the day of his departure. Means told “Face the Nation” that he was frustrated with his stalled efforts to create a federal definition of ultra-processed food, which he argues is poisoning American children.
“There was relentless lobbying against this because the industry and they said this in meetings with me and other people, they just don’t want a definition because they don’t want Americans to have more transparency into what they’re eating because there’s a shift away from ultra-processed food right now.”
Means said on “Face the Nation” that he is confident of Mr. Trump’s stance on the “issue of improving health for children,” but claimed that the president’s advisers gave him poor advice and “treated him like a baby in many respects and used him.”
“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.'”
Mr. Trump’s top adviser Stephen Miller, who is set to take over the White House chief of staff role on Monday, wasn’t among them, according to Means.
“Stephen Miller wants to get transformative things done with Bobby Kennedy and President Trump that are not partisan, 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. And I think there is a major opportunity to come together and get some big things done, which, quite frankly, we have to do.”
In August, Mr. Trump nominated policy aide Dr. Heidi Overton to be the next FDA commissioner. Kennedy has endorsed Overton’s nomination.
However, Means told CBS News that Overton “was the biggest block to MAHA policies I encountered in the government,” alleging she “did whatever” Wiles “told her to do.”
Means alleged that in one particular meeting, Overton told Makary — whom Means described as Overton’s “mentor” — that she “couldn’t help” him on other policies unless he approved “a drug that he thought scientifically should not be approved,” Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine, mFLUSIVA.
In August, the FDA approved mFLUSIVA for adults ages 50 and older. It was the first influenza vaccine using mRNA technology to receive FDA approval.
The approval came despite repeated criticism of mRNA technology by Kennedy, who in 2025 canceled 22 vaccine development projects that use mRNA technology. The FDA had earlier this year said it would refuse to consider Moderna’s application. But it reversed course about a week later. Clinical trials found mFLUSIVA to be slightly more effective than the standard flu shot.
“It’s just a factual statement that after Marty left, partly due to the vaping issue, she drove the creation of the relaxed vaping strategy,” Means said, adding that he does not believe Overton has the “character or integrity” to be FDA commissioner.
A spokesman for Overton responded to Means’ criticism of her qualifications and told CBS News that “two former FDA commissioners think otherwise.”
Calley Means is the brother of Dr. Casey Means, also a close ally of Kennedy. CBS News previously reported that both played a key role in coordinating Kennedy’s endorsement of Mr. Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. Casey Means was briefly Mr. Trump’s pick for surgeon general, but her name was withdrawn in April because her bid stalled in the Senate.
For more, the full transcript of Margaret Brennan’s interview with Calley Means is available at CBSNews.com.
