This Ex-White House Adviser Said Trump's Staff Treats Him "Like A Baby," And Yeahhhh, Trump Is NOT Going To Like This

Posted on Nov 10, 2026 UTC

Calley Means, an ex-Donald Trump White House adviser, declared that staffers are treating the president less like an 80-year-old and more like an infant.

“I think he had severe poor advice from people, I think, who treated him like a baby in many respects,” Means told CBS’ Margaret Brennan on Sunday’s Face the Nation.

“The president’s staff treated him like a baby?” Brennan asked. “Of course!” Means responded. “They would block access to — and information to him all the time.”

Means — who also served as a top adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again agenda — resigned from his post a little over two weeks ago.

He made similar comments in an explosive interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday, claiming that those around the president have treated him “horribly” and like a “baby,” calling the shots for him on policy decisions right under his nose.

Specifically, he went after now-former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in the episode, which dropped just hours before Trump announced he was replacing her with Stephen Miller.

He used Rogan’s podcast to accuse her and other key officials of corruption, claiming that Wiles was the “most powerful” chief of staff in US history and had taken a “stranglehold” on any policy decision. 

CALLEY MEANS: I think he had severe poor advice from people who treated him like a baby

BRENNAN: The president's staff treats him like a baby?

MEANS: Of course! pic.twitter.com/JFhG1Msl1V
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 8, 2026

Face the Nation / x.com / Via youtube.com

Means’ comments arrived when Brennan asked him about tobacco lobbyists’ reported lunch with Trump at his golf club in Jupiter, Florida, earlier this year where, per The New York Times, they “expressed dissatisfaction” with the Food and Drug Administration regulations on the industry.

A $5 million donation from the industry — the same that has backed his White House ballroom — to a Trump-friendly PAC preceded the meet-up.

Sources told the Times that Trump tried calling then-FDA head Dr. Marty Makary at the lunch and failed to get a hold of him before getting in touch with Kennedy and Mehmet Oz — the former TV doctor and current Medicare and Medicaid administrator — to complain about how the agency regulated e-cigarettes.

The FDA, just days after the call, opened the door to the sale of flavored e-cigarettes. Makary resigned shortly thereafter, apparently over the policy fight.

Means argued he “wouldn’t be surprised” if staffers are having “very short conversations” with Trump on issues like e-cigs that the president is otherwise too busy to pay closer attention to.

“And they used that,” he said. “It was all like, ‘The president wants this.’”

Watch more of Brennan’s interview with Means on “Face the Nation.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

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