Calley Means, Special Government Employee for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., delivered a scorched-earth takedown of legacy media and Big Pharma-aligned lobbyists during POLITICO’s 2025 Health Care Summit.
While Politico’s White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns attempted to grill Means over bold and long-overdue cuts to HHS bureaucracy, Means turned the tables—calling out the corruption, failure, and collusion that has plagued America’s so-called health authorities for decades.
The scene unfolded as Burns pressed Means on the Trump administration’s bold move to slash a quarter of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) 82,000-strong workforce.
These cuts, targeting what conservatives see as wasteful offices obsessed with vaccine dogma, drug research boondoggles, and woke pet projects like AI and rural mental health, have left the left clutching their pearls.
Burns, parroting the left’s predictable talking points, fretted about “drug safety” and “pandemic preparedness,” as if more government bureaucrats are the answer to America’s woes.
“I’d say to the reporters in the room and the lobbyists in the room, I mean, obviously make your case, but I truly ask for, as you’re making it, a little bit of humility about what the voters were trying to say by putting Bobby Kennedy Jr. in this position of power. I would ask for a little bit of humility to ask why Bobby Kennedy, along with President Trump, are the two most popular political figures in America by far,” Means said.
“What the voters are trying to say, and I think they were right, is that the system is really on the wrong track,” he added.
And then he dropped the hammer. “The NIH oversaw, and this is just consensus at this point, the literal creation of a pandemic,” Means said, pointing to the agency’s role in funding gain-of-function research that many conservatives believe unleashed COVID-19 on the world.
He didn’t stop there, laying out a damning indictment of the NIH, FDA, and CMS—agencies he says have presided over a “devastation” of American health.
Calley Means:
“The NIH, whose goal is to promote American health, has overseen a devastation, just an abject devastation in American health over the past 20 years, with disease rates skyrocketing in America, leading the world in almost every single chronic disease, with rates of nearly every single chronic disease being at an all-time high among kids. There’s been very little innovation with small pharma, with innovative therapeutics at the FDA.It costs a billion dollars to get through the process. CMS is an agency that has a much larger budget than the Defense Department, that’s controlled by the American Medical Association, which is a pharmaceutical lobbying group, and it’s almost predominantly sick care.
So there are real problems. And when you turn on CNBC, it’s a nonstop infomercial for pharma. It’s a Skyrizi commercial, followed by Scott Gottlieb saying how Bobby’s killing people, followed by breathless coverage of the measles outbreak and no mention of the mental health crisis.
It is insane. It is insane for you to insinuate that the thing standing between us and better health is more government bureaucrats.”
At one point, Means openly challenged the room of so-called experts to defend any metric that proves our health institutions are improving lives.
Dasha Burns:
It’s not all bureaucrats. It’s a lot of scientists, it’s researchers, it’s people who are making sure that our system is safe.Calley Means:
Those scientists fundamentally have overseen, just demonstrably, a record of utter failure. It would be insane. Is that funny?From the crowd:
Not true.Calley Means:
Is that not true? I’d love to hear how… So what metrics would you guys point to for how the scientific community, how the four times more per capita on health care spending that we spend in America versus other countries has produced innovation?Has there been one single chronic disease medication in modern American history that has lowered rates of the chronic disease? Is it appropriate that the American Academy of Pediatrics right now, which is 90% funded by pharma, is pushing Ozempic on six-year-olds? That is what the medical authorities are doing.
WATCH:
MUST WATCH: Calley Means GOES OFF on Politico and a Room Full of Anti-MAHA Lobbyists
“When you turn on CNBC, it’s just a nonstop infomercial for pharma. It’s a Skyrizi commercial followed by Scott Gottlieb saying how Bobby’s k*lling people followed by a breathless coverage… pic.twitter.com/bAJmdflnSJ
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) April 2, 2025
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