A former aide to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told podcaster Joe Rogan that key advisers to President Donald Trump took special-interest money while shaping policy.
Calley Means told Rogan that pollster Tony Fabrizio, whom he called one of the most powerful people in the country, decides whether policies are politically viable, even though, Means said, his website lists clients such as Pepsi and pharmaceutical companies. He said Fabrizio brushed off his push for school lunch reform and a definition of ultra-processed food, telling him MAHA was “not really a big part of our strategy.”
Means described James Blair as the head of political operations, a Florida friend of Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and a longtime consultant who, he said, took money from the sugar industry. Blair left the White House to run the midterm effort. Means said Blair, Fabrizio and Wiles built the strategy around redistricting, and that policy was subordinated to midterm fundraising, with some ideas blocked over “special interest configurations.”
Means said Chris LaCivita, who ran the Trump campaign with Wiles and has stayed outside the administration, is a consultant paid heavily by special interests. He also named Walker Barrett, Wiles’s Florida neighbor and former congressional staffer, and Richard Walters, a fundraiser who came from a lobbying firm that lobbied for pesticides and pharma, as powerful deputies.
Means said he doesn’t think Trump knows most of this, called it a structural Washington problem across both parties, and cited Democratic leaders’ former staffers moving to lobbying. He said staffers are now trying to blame the president, though he added that Trump bears ultimate responsibility.