Ex-RFK Jr. aide accuses Wiles and White House advisers of selling out health policy

Calley Means, once a senior White House adviser and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s top aide, took to CBS News' Face the Nation on Sunday and torched a crew of Trump officials he says put industry cash ahead of voters' health. He named Susie Wiles, the chief of staff who quit Thursday night. Means told CBS News that Wiles and a tight circle of advisers were taking money from the same industries the campaign promised to fight.

The sharpest charge is about vaping. Means claims Wiles and her deputy, James Blair, leaned on HHS to find a way to approve fruit-flavored e-cigarettes, which the FDA cleared in early May. Blair fired back at CBS News, saying he never pushed flavored vaping and was only tasked with making FDA follow federal law that gives nicotine applicants a yes or no within six months. Two sources familiar with the process said Blair was told by President Trump to press then-FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary to move faster on nicotine industry applications, while also acknowledging Trump wanted flavored vapes more available.

Makary, who was pushed to resign in May, told CBS News that big tobacco used its administration connections to pressure him repeatedly. He said he refused. He also said the kratom lobby ran the same playbook against his push to outlaw the substance.

Wiles' exit is tangled up in all of it. Three sources said her resignation was tied to Republican midterm defeats, and it surfaced shortly after Trump taped a 60 Minutes interview Friday. Asked if he wanted her out, Means said yes, arguing the president had been subverted by people beholden to special interests. Wiles denied Means' claim that she set up a meeting where tobacco lobbyists lunched with Trump at his Florida golf course, though multiple sources confirmed the New York Times' reporting on that lunch.

Means also went after the administration's glyphosate moves. Trump signed an executive order boosting production of the herbicide, which the WHO calls probably carcinogenic, and Kennedy testified in March that he told the president he was displeased, saying the order came from the Pentagon. In June the Supreme Court sided with Monsanto, now Bayer, shielding it from failure-to-warn claims. Means accused adviser Heidi Overton of working with the Justice Department on a brief urging the court to take the case; a senior White House official said the solicitor general wrote it at the court's request and Overton only touched up tone.

Means resigned last month, saying he leaves with tremendous respect for Trump and Kennedy, but frustrated that his push for a federal definition of ultra-processed food stalled under relentless industry lobbying. Food stocks rallied the day he left. He also claimed the president's advisers blocked his access to information and, in his words, treated him like a baby and used him.