Calley Means, a former senior adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., widely suggested Monday that Susie Wiles could “inflict physical harm” on him after accusing the former White House chief of staff of undermining President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.
Means, who resigned from his post last month, has since accused Wiles and lobbying firm Ballard Partners of successfully defeating several of MAHA’s policy goals, including promoting an executive order declaring glyphosate-based herbicides — which Means says can cause cancer — are essential to national security.
“People who know Susie well have warned me that she has the capacity to inflict physical harm,” Means wrote on X.
In another article, Means described Wiles as “ruthless.”
“Anyone who went around her, she sought to destroy,” he said.
Wiles, who was replaced last week by Trump aide Stephen Miller as White House chief of staff, was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year.
It’s unclear exactly what kind of “physical harm” Means thinks the 69-year-old grandmother might be capable of.
In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Means further claimed that Wiles promoted an “evil” culture within the White House, including allegedly blocking an investigation into the amount of sugar in children’s diets because she needed “the sugar people’s money to win the midterm elections.”
“Calley Means’ accusations are outrageous, defamatory and patently false,” a spokesperson for Wiles told Axios. “Susie has dedicated her career to fighting for President Trump and the American people, and will not allow these lies to go unanswered. »
Means also claimed to have received “unbalanced threats” from former White House official James Blair, whom he accused of lobbying against MAHA’s efforts to ban fruit-flavored vapes, including arguing that pro-vaping policies were “a central midterm issue” for Republicans.
“(You) can’t find a single candidate that I’ve asked to talk about vaping policy, because the idea that I championed as a central issue in the midterms is a complete and utter lie,” Blair responded on X.
Meanwhile, the founder of Ballard Partners released a statement denying that the company lobbied the White House on fruit-flavored vapes or glyphosate.
“Usually, I do not respond to comments about our company. I am making an exception today because Calley Means has made specific claims about Ballard Partners that are false, and the record should be corrected,” Brian Ballard said in a statement.
“On flavored vapes: No one at Ballard Partners advocated with Susie Wiles or anyone on the White House staff for allowing fruit-flavored vapes,” he said. “Our work with White House staff on this issue has been against illegal and unregulated vapes from China, some of which have been found to contain fentanyl, reaching American communities and American children.”
“On glyphosate: No one at Ballard Partners has lobbied or communicated with Susie Wiles or anyone in the West Wing, including her deputy chiefs of staff, regarding the administration’s executive order on glyphosate,” Ballard said.
The lobbyist added that his office’s “interactions with Susie Wiles as chief of staff have been limited and have been the exception, not the rule.”
Wiles worked at Ballard Partners.
The lobbying firm also tweeted an interview Means did on a Ballard Partners podcast in May, months after Trump signed the glyphosate executive order.
Robert Malone, a former member of Kennedy’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory committee, noted that a “pretty significant omission” in Means’ scorched-earth criticism is the fact that RFK Jr.’s daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, is a lobbyist at Ballard Partners.
“Yes, the SAME Ballard Partners that Means criticizes for its political influence,” Malone wrote on X. “The same company that Susie Wiles used to work at.”
“Means wants Americans to scrutinize the family ties of powerful government officials. That’s fair enough,” he continued. “But why does this scrutiny apparently stop at Kennedy’s own family?”
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