A public brawl between two of President Donald Trump’s former insiders spilled across social media this weekend. It included accusations of harassment, a lawsuit warning and a jab about Balkan cash, all days after Republicans lost both chambers of Congress.
On one side is Calley Means, a former deputy to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a leading voice of the Make America Healthy Again movement. On the other is James Blair, Trump’s former White House deputy chief of staff, who left in April to oversee the GOP’s midterm effort.
The fight began after Means went on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday. According to The Atlantic, he accused outgoing chief of staff Susie Wiles of blocking the MAHA agenda by siding with pesticide, tobacco and food-industry interests. Means also claimed fruit-flavored vapes had become a top health priority at the White House, and he pinned that on Blair.
Blair hit back hard.
“So much of this is just false Calley. So much of it,” Blair wrote. “I certainly didn’t have a stranglehold on policy. Very little of it really.” He said he had pushed the FDA to speed up its nicotine application process. “I never argued vapes were a core midterm issue,” he wrote, calling that claim “a complete and total lie.”
Means offered to hash it out on a podcast. Blair declined.
“No, I’m not going sit and publicly second guess the administration. I still support the President and work for him,” Blair wrote. “You decided to bail for maximum media impact and attack staff from the outside. It’s a weak move, and not my game.”
Means fired back: “I’m supporting the President, James. You sold him out for some cash from Republika Srpska.”
That was a reference to New York Times reporting last month that Blair and fellow Trump adviser Chris LaCivita had done paid consulting work tied to the pro-Russian leadership of Republika Srpska, the Serb-run region of Bosnia. Trump said at the time that he would cut ties with advisers who had conflicts.
“Nope, that’s false too,” Blair replied. “And just part of your continued attempted hit job. Get over yourself.”
Then Means brought Wiles into it.
“This is a formal request for Susie Wiles and James Blair to stop harassing me with texts and calls,” Means wrote in a post that drew more than 2 million views. “If there is a factual inaccuracy in what I said, send it to me in writing and I will vigorously correct and apologize for any misstatements. I will note that everything I said is substantiated by other senior officials.”
“If you want to file a lawsuit and get into discovery of whether it’s provably true that Ballard and Continental had an undue influence on the White House policy process, do it,” he added, naming two lobbying firms.
Blair didn’t back down.
“Again not true. Called Calley last night. He didn’t answer or return my call. He messaged me this morning,” Blair wrote. “After a few messages and telling him I’d consider suing him if he defamed me, I told him was done responding to him privately.”
“Calley, your poor me act is tiring and embarrassing for a grown man who launched a smear campaign,” he continued. “You thought I was gonna lay down and take it? I do this for a living. I’ve been called worse things by better people than you. And I haven’t even gotten started.”
Wiles has not responded publicly to Means’s claim.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) defended Blair. She credited him with helping her win her first campaign and wrote that “the idea that he works against or isn’t MAHA is just not true.”
Political observers were stunned by the timing.
“This is the debate after a near-extinction level midterm?” wrote Politico’s Jonathan Martin.
Blair answered that MAHA “is a good political issue” but argued it “wasn’t even in the top 15 issues on the majority of voters minds” this election.
Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin replied with a popcorn emoji. Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall replied with a laughing emoji.
Columnist Molly Jong-Fast also chimed in on the conversation, writing, "Love to see them just tweeting it out. The next two years are going to be trump 1.0 all over again but somehow dumber because the rule of trumpism is that everything always gets dumber."