MAHA Consultant Calley Means: Susie Wiles Was Running a Buckraking Operation Out of the White House and Letting Big Pharma and Big Ag Write Policy If They Just Hired Her Lobbyist Daughter

There may be reasons Susie Wiles was fired.

Apparently her old lobbying firm, Ballard Partners, racked up $186 million since she was installed as chief of staff.

Ballard Partners' more than $88 million in lobbying revenue last year was, at the time, the most any firm had reported since the Lobbying Disclosure Act took effect in 1996, even after adjusting for inflation, a CBS News analysis of Senate lobbying disclosures found. Through the first three quarters of 2026, the firm has already surpassed that, reporting more than $98 million.

The fortunes of Washington lobbying firms tend to rise and fall with changes in administrations, as companies hire them to try to influence policy. But after an election that saw government corruption polling as a top issue for voters, questions about who has profited from political connections are intensifying. Ballard Partners is now among those ensnared in the MAGA feud.

Over the weekend, I listened to the Joe Rogan interview with former MAHA advisor Calley Means. Means alleges that Susie Wiles and her "Talahassee lobbyist staffers" were running a very corrupt cash-for-policy operation out of the White House.

Note that Means stresses that he does not believe Trump knew about most of this. I mostly believe that -- Trump is a delegator and doesn't seem to get involved in anything except his three biggest issues.

For example, Means claims that it is an open secret that if you want her to push a policy, you hire her daughter, who works for one of the biggest lobbying firms, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then you get what you paid for.

He also claims that Means hid from Trump the truth about polling so Trump didn't know he was in political trouble. He claims she and her corrupt allies just pushed minor issues that moved few votes, like No Tax on Tips, as the clocked ticked down to midterms doomday.

I recommend listening to the first half. The second half is just repetitive and listless.

Google AI:

* The Allegations: Means accused Wiles and a close-knit group of White House officials of bowing to corporate lobbyists, prioritizing midterm campaign donations over public health, and blocking components of the "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) agenda championed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

* Specific Claims: Means alleged that Wiles resisted initiatives to improve children's diets due to sugar-industry pressures, pushed for approvals of fruit-flavored e-cigarettes tied to tobacco donations, caved to kratom industry lobbying, and protected corporate interests regarding glyphosate/Roundup litigation.

Another claim: That she blocked what Means calls a "no-brainer," a reform to school lunch programs which would limit donuts and sugar soda and establish a minimum level of protein for meals.

He says she did this because of Big Sugar and Pepsi paid her to do it.

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.

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.

As the blame game escalates after Republicans' stunning losses in the elections this week, Ms. Wiles is becoming a target of finger-pointing, with some former officials and MAGA supporters calling for her resignation.

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."

Some of what Means claimed struck me as false or just stupid but the overall charge that Wiles was running a buckraking operation, with her daughter as a bagwoman, sounded plausible. Means is either telling the truth or he just made the case for a huge defamation case against him. We'll see if Wiles lodges such a lawsuit.

He claims that Wiles was behind pushing for liability immunity for Bayer for its glycosphate herbicide. She pushed this as a "national security issue," with the implausible claim that we had to grant Bayer immunity to keep the production of phosphorous (an ingredient in the herbicide) reliable for... making explosives.

That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. How do you make phosphorous available for bombs by making sure it's being used by the ton for herbicide?

Then again, Means' argument was itself stupid -- despite the fact that the government does not consider glycosphate cancer-causing, he wants everyone to be able to sue Bayer for producing glycosphate. He claims this is a "free market issue."

But any jury will reward a plaintiff with an injury millions and millions just to be nice, whether they find any connection between the deep-pocketed corporation or not. Surely Means is not so stupid as to not know this -- but he sure pretends he doesn't.

He's also one of those cranks who is determined to end vaping for adults -- but For The Children, you understand.

He does point out that the farm states of Kentucky and Iowa have the highest cancer rates in the world, particularly for Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and glycosphate is linked to Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. But the industry, and the government, blocks a scientific review of the claimed connection.

There must be some reason that two states in the developed west have such aberrantly high levels of cancer, and we should know why.

I don't know where I am on the policy-- I would like a review as well, and would grant immunity if the review found no cancer link to glycosphate -- but I sure don't like how the sausage being made here, with Big Pharam and Big Ag just delivering millions of dollars to Wiles and her friends and family in exchange for policy outcomes. (Allegedly -- we'll see.)

Give it a listen, make up your own minds.

I find this interesting: Stephen Miller, the man replacing Wiles, says he's going to start denying "big business" carte blanche as to its claimed needs.

That sure sounds like Miller thinks Wiles was delivering policy outcomes to deep-pocketed industries and corporations.

Though this makes it sound like Miller is chiefly interested in rejecting industries' claims that they need illegal workers:

The replacement of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles with her hardline deputy Stephen Miller shuts the door through which many CEOs softened Trump administration policies or sought favors, and sets the stage for more direct confrontation with business in the second half of Trump's term.

Even CEOs skeptical of Trump's chaotic style and his hostility to trade and immigration found that they could, with the help of Wiles and now-former tech czar David Sacks, talk Trump out of his aides' most aggressive immigration moves, from worksite raids to canceling TSA PreCheck.

Means also disclosed what we on the right have known for years, that the leftwing bureaucrats circulate How to Subvert the President manuals in order to defy the orders of the duly-elected president.

"He's [Kennedy] got a 90,000-person agency. He's surrounded by demons who want him out and want him destroyed," former Kennedy adviser Calley Means told Joe Rogan. "And Trump's sitting at 2 million people."

"So, his staff is all completely compromised?" Rogan asked.

"Yeah, for the most ... especially the whole infrastructure," Means, who resigned from the White House on Oct. 22, claimed.

He mentioned a manual titled something like "How to Subvert the President" being circulated among leftwing bureaucrats.

Why this was allowed, I don't know.

BTW: If you missed Buck Throckmorton's story about Ron DeSantis attacking the GOP's age-old and apparently incurable Terminal Corporatism, do give it a read.

"Young people have a very positive view of socialism compared to capitalism. The question is, why is that?"

"Some of it is the education in our universities. But I think a big part of that is, what they're comparing is not free enterprise versus socialism. What they're comparing is how government gets involved in business, and you have crony capitalism."

"The best kind of indirect supporters of socialism are some of these corporatist Republicans who propagate these crony policies."

"If it's cronyism versus socialism, there's going to be enough people who are going to choose socialism."

You may have heard that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick kept blocking attempts to limit the sale of Nvidia chips to China.

The firm that Howard Lutnick used to lead, which has now been handed off to his 20-something Nepo Baby Sons, Howard Lutnick's son's owns $362 million in Nvidia stock?

In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent President Donald Trump and top Cabinet members a classified memorandum detailing the relationship between the Huangs and the intelligence indicating that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy. The White House directed the Commerce Department to put Alice Huang's Megaspeed on the entity list of companies that pose national security concerns.

Lutnick refused this request in May; he refused a second attempted crackdown order from Trump in August; and on Nov. 5, Lutnick reportedly stonewalled Trump again. And evidently, this wasn’t because Lutnick knew too little. Rather, the Commerce Department spent months last year conducting an investigation into Megaspeed and specifically whether it was illicitly smuggling Nvidia chips into China, only for Lutnick’s direct underling, Jeff Kessler, to invite Nvidia to reach out to Commerce about the case, bringing the department;s inquiry to an effective end.

I am sure it is just a coincidence that Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm that Lutnick led for 35 years before passing it off to his 20-something-year-old sons Brandon and Kyle, has a $362.3 million stake in Nvidia, which makes up 7% of Cantor's entire portfolio.

On a scale of "Not Surprised At All" to "Totally Surprised, Dumfounded Actually, Just Totally Blown Away," how surprised are you to learn this?

The practice of securing political power and then putting out your otherwise-unemployable children into positions where they can act as your bag-men is not limited to the Biden Crime Family.

There's some more good news: Now Stephen Miller is locking the lobbyists out. No White House staffer can even speak to a lobbyist without his express permission.

Story here:

Stephen Miller is about to upend the way lobbyists work with the White House.

According to a memo from the chief of staff office first obtained by POLITICO, White House staff must receive prior approval from the Office of White House Counsel if they want to meet with a lobbyist.

"No President in history has fought more relentlessly, selflessly or courageously for the American People than President Trump. Following his example, White House staff are expected to dedicate their time unwaveringly to the working people of the nation," the memo from Miller's office said.

The prior approval covers meetings on the White House complex with registered lobbyists related to government policy. The Office of Public Liaison will continue to serve as the primary point of contact for engagement with external stakeholders, the memo said.

The memo likely won't shock lobbyists on K Street where Miller has few friends.

He eschews relationship-based favors. He doesn't sway easily on issues. He's ideologically driven and fiercely loyal to President Donald Trump. That makes his elevation to chief of staff difficult for lobbyists seeking to influence the administration in its last two years, a dozen GOP lobbyists told POLITICO.

"The thing with Stephen is, he's not someone that a lobbyist goes in and has to crack or try to win over," said Hunter Morgen, a lobbyist at Ballard Partners who worked with Miller at the White House during the first Trump administration. "He doesn't operate based on relationships. He operates based on policy outcomes that will advance the president's agenda."

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:06 PM

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