Nov 10 2026 - 10:45am
As Republicans licked their wounds from the midterm rout, businessman and former Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official Calley Means took the time to appear on The Joe Rogan Experience. During the interview, he accused Donald Trump’s White House of enabling devastating corruption that has thwarted the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda. Means is a controversial figure, but his assessment is backed up by public records that will prove a drag on the credibility of “drain the swamp”.
Means, a close ally to Robert F. Kennedy Jr, name-checked former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles among others, accusing them of prioritizing lobbyists’ interests over those of voters. Ballard Partners, one of the firms he mentioned, is disputing his account, as is James Blair, a deputy of Wiles whose name came up on Rogan’s show.
My own sources agree with Means’s assertion that the “swamp” is putting up a bitter fight against MAHA, and that Wiles played a crucial role. The particulars will be battled out in the court of public opinion, and perhaps even the court of law, but the records are also pretty clear.
It’s a tale as old as time here in the Beltway. When Trump came back into office with Wiles installed as his chief of staff, her former lobbying firm flourished. Ballard Partners did nearly $90 million worth of business in 2025, as opposed to $20 million the year before. According to Politico, that amounted to a staggering 350% increase. The firm signed 200 new clients after Trump’s re-election, including heavy-hitters such as Palantir, Harvard, and Chevron USA. Bayer, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, signed with Ballard shortly after the election.
This was almost certainly because Trump’s embrace of the MAHA movement meant the controversial herbicide glyphosate could well be on the chopping block. RFK Jr had long been focused on glyphosate. Bayer landed meetings with Wiles and other senior White House officials, which is easy to do when your highly-paid lobbyists used to work with the chief of staff. That’s why you pay those lobbyists millions of dollars — for their rolodex and goodwill with power players. Sure enough, Trump quietly signed an executive order boosting domestic production of glyphosate on national security grounds. Means alleges that Wiles orchestrated it.
He also contends that lobbyists bulldozed MAHA on fruit-flavored vapes and school lunches. Axios reporter Marc Caputo notes on X that Ballard isn’t just connected to the White House through Wiles, but also through Trump himself, as his firm represented the President’s interests in Florida.
This is why Means and MAHA have a bigger problem than Wiles, who was replaced with a K Street pariah in Stephen Miller late last week. Trump hired Wiles and trusted her. She’s returning to his political operation in a senior role. And he has personally changed his position on cryptocurrency, TikTok, and marijuana after being lobbied by deep-pocketed special interests. He likes to be courted.
MAHA fit neatly into the MAGA coalition because the movement was built on deep skepticism of the political system and a sense that elites in Big Business were prioritizing money over regular Americans. The marriage Means reportedly orchestrated between Kennedy and Trump was mostly one of convenience — Kennedy had long been a critic of Trump, and Trump hadn’t previously expressed much passion about public health. But after Covid, MAGA voters were primed for MAHA. Trump understood that making nice with Kennedy could unlock political capital. Indeed, in his interview with Means, Rogan said RFK Jr’s work was one of the “main things” that excited him about Trump 2.0.
The President, though, is ultimately a pragmatist, and there is nothing pragmatic about uprooting corruption in Washington. Deal-brokers and back-slappers can’t undo a system set up to reward deal-brokering and back-slapping. It requires sacrificing deep-pocketed outside interests and prioritizing the needs of causes without major lobbies.
Right now, Kennedy and Means’s best case scenario is that MAGA is tied to Trump but MAHA can outlive his electoral career. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is already proactively making strategic inroads with MAHA. Whether Democrats come to once again represent Kennedy’s interests is yet to be seen. Trump, though, will remain at the center of the tug of war he set up between populist causes and their enemies on K Street until he leaves office
