White House staff treated Trump like a ‘baby’: Calley Means

Calley Means, former aide to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Sunday said in an interview that White House staffers treated President Trump like a “baby.”

Means, who resigned from his position last month, said on CBS News’s “ Face the Nation ” that the president “has been subverted” by top aides and strategists. Means had claimed on “ The Joe Rogan Experience ” that White House staffers were also hindering Kennedy’s MAHA agenda by blocking popular policy items.

“I think [Trump] had severe poor advice from people, I think, who treated him like a baby in many respects and used him,” Means told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan, who pressed him on this point.

Means added that these staffers “would block access to” information from Trump “all the time.”

“I would be not surprised at all, you know, if they had very short conversations on these issues, you know, where the president is extremely busy and the president said, ‘OK, whatever,’ and then they use ––” he said, before Brennan interjected, “Or he’s not interested.”

“Yes, then they used that,” Means replied. “Like it’s all –– it is all like the president wants this.”

The topic emerged after Brennan, at the start of the interview, noted Means’s recent remarks about the administration blocking health policies “that you were trying to get passed.” Means said this was specifically about allies of former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles “relentlessly pushing HHS to find a pathway for” fruit-flavored electronic cigarettes.

“They would flag something –– ‘Oh this is an important issue,'” he said. “[Trump] would say something and then they would jam it down saying it’s a president’s priority for their priorities. I don’t think President Trump ran, you know, as a primary purpose to help these industries.”

He later said Trump “has a generational coalition with” Kennedy and “wants to go hard on the issue of improving health for children.”

Means, in his interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” had accused Wiles of having a “stranglehold” on policy decisions, and he said she blocked an HHS food initiative out of fear it would hurt political donations from the sugar industry.

Trump political adviser James Blair told The Washington Post in a statement that Means’s claims and the “implication of corruption towards me and all the others referenced by Calley is scurrilous, false and defamatory.”

“I couldn’t tell you who donors are to what organizations other than minimal passing knowledge, because I am not a fundraiser and have no role in fundraising,” he told the outlet.

Brennan asked Means on Sunday if it was his “intention” to have Wiles removed from her post before he left the administration.

Means concurred, having cheered Stephen Miller as Wiles’s replacement and saying that the new chief of staff “wants to get transformative things done” with Kennedy and Trump “that are not partisan but structural.” He noted Miller could work with other health-focused Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-Mich.).