RFK Jr. and DJT Hiring Policies Would Scare the Hair Off a Sweater
The Second Professional Generation of Grift - The Means Kids
In America, wealth doesn't just open doors—it erases rap sheets. This inconvenient truth explains the improbable career trajectories of Donald Trump and his Health and Human Services Secretary, RFK Jr., two men who share a crucial bond: neither would have a professional pulse if not for the golden passports of inherited privilege.
Trump's résumé reads like a masterclass in disqualification—allegations of academic cheating, sexual predatory behavior, criminal and civil convictions, and business failures that would silence a carnival barker. RFK Jr.'s greatest hits include drug binges, serial philandering, and sticky fingers when it came to other people's intellectual property. In any workplace operating under normal rules of consequence, these records would be career death sentences. But when you're born into the right zip code, apparently, even spectacular failure becomes a launching pad for power.
What's tantalizingly revealing is how both men collect questionable characters like some people collect vintage clothes. Trump's decades-long bromance with Roy Cohn, RFK Jr.'s fierce defense of his cousin Skakel, and both men's cozy relationships with Jeffrey Epstein aren't accidents of association—they're character studies. These aren't moths accidentally drawn to dangerous flames; they're creatures who've found their natural habitat in the moral twilight zone, where the compromised protect the compromised.
This comfort with corruption illuminates their hiring philosophy: loyalty trumps competence every time. Trump stuffs his administration with family members whose main qualification is sharing his DNA, while RFK Jr.'s own relatives have staged a mass exodus from what they recognize as a public health massacre in progress. Both men follow the same playbook—create enough chaos on the front lawn that no one notices the questionable characters slipping through the back door.
Enter Calley Means, the mastermind fraud at the heart of RFK Jr.'s "Make America Healthy Again" circus, whose story reads like a tutorial in manufactured credibility. Means has spun himself as a reformed pharmaceutical and food industry insider, armed with devastating secrets about corporate corruption. It's a compelling narrative with one tiny flaw: it's almost entirely fiction.
Federal lobbying records—those nettlesome, verifiable documents—show no registration for Means as a lobbyist. His former colleagues from Mercury Public Affairs and Edelman paint a rather different picture of his corporate insider days: think less "Deep Throat" and more "deep filing cabinet." His actual role was glorified office manager—scheduling meetings, filing expense reports, and keeping the supply closet stocked. Steve Schmidt, Means' former mentor, delivers the kind of character assassination that leaves no survivors: "Calley Means is not a whistleblower. He is an opportunist, peddling junk science to make millions." Schmidt recalls Means couldn't even master basic administrative tasks, including the apparently Herculean challenge of filing $150,000 in expense reports.
But why let facts interfere with a good origin story? Means' most viral tale involves witnessing Coca-Cola executives puppeteering the NAACP to brand opponents as racists—a juicy bit of corporate skullduggery that would be damning if it weren't complete fantasy. During his Mercury tenure from 2009 to 2011, the firm didn't represent Coca-Cola or the American Beverage Association. Plot twist: they were working for the other team, supporting soda taxes through the California Endowment. At Edelman, the company repped Pepsi, not Coke, making Means' detailed Coca-Cola confessions about as credible as a three-dollar bill.
The family grift extends to sister Casey, whose transformation from anxious, dropout, medical resident to wellness guru follows the same script of reinvention. Their co-authored book paints her residency departure as a principled stand against medical establishment corruption. The prosaic truth, according to her department chairman, is that she quit because surgery was "too stressful” and she couldn't handle the pressure. Colleagues describe someone fearful of harming patients—hardly the steely-eyed reformer of her public persona.
This elaborate fiction serves a purpose more lucrative than mere ego massage. Means' company Truemed stands to make a killing from the very health policies he champions from his government perch. The business model is elegantly circular: help customers use tax-free HSA dollars for wellness products while simultaneously advocating for expanded HSA legislation as a government employee. When the IRS had the audacity to warn against companies "misrepresenting nutrition, wellness and general health expenses," Means spun it as pharmaceutical conspiracy rather than legitimate regulatory oversight—because in his universe, any challenge to the profit stream becomes evidence of systemic corruption.
The "End Chronic Disease" coalition reads like a who's who of Truemed investors hawking overpriced wellness theater—infrared saunas, protein powders, and ketone drinks that would all benefit from expanded HSA legislation. Representative Jake Auchincloss nailed the endgame: "They are going to turn our entire health care system into one big GNC store." It's not health reform; it's systematic monetization of medical anxiety.
Under Kennedy and Means' stewardship, public health policy has become a playground for dangerous quackery. Hundreds of NIH studies on cancer and diabetes have been axed. Programs protecting children from lead exposure and testing milk for contaminants have vanished. During a measles outbreak that killed unvaccinated children, Kennedy doubled down on vaccine conspiracy theories. His vitamin A recommendations sent kids to the hospital with toxic overexposure. When their MAHA Commission report cited non-existent studies, Means dismissed critics as "quibbling with footnotes"—a response that perfectly captures how propaganda trumps accuracy in their alternate reality.
The Trump-Kennedy-Means triumvirate follows the authoritarian's greatest hits: create chaos to overwhelm attention, install loyalists while everyone's distracted, attack legitimate expertise as corrupt, then monetize the resulting dysfunction. It's not just policy disagreement—it's a systematic assault on evidence-based governance with a business plan attached.
The consequences aren't abstract. Children will die from preventable diseases. Families will drain savings on snake oil. Public trust in legitimate medical science will crater further. The vulnerable will suffer most while the privileged profit—because that's how the game has always worked in America, where inherited wealth can transform spectacular failure into revolutionary leadership.
The real tragedy isn't that unqualified grifters have captured health policy—it's that their victims, ordinary Americans desperate for wellness and accountability, become unwitting co-conspirators in their own exploitation. The MAHA movement promises health freedom while delivering corporate profits, wrapped in the gauzy rhetoric of reform. It's the natural evolution of a system where wealth erases accountability, fabricated expertise replaces genuine knowledge, and the desperate hopes of ordinary citizens become raw material for elaborate cons orchestrated by those who never would have succeeded without the twin shields of privilege and power.
In the end, Calley Means is the perfect American success story—if your definition of success includes transforming administrative incompetence into policy influence through the alchemy of shameless self-invention. It's a uniquely American tale: when you can't make it on merit, make it on mythology. The rest of us just pay the price.
Josh Powell is a healthcare writer, consultant, and former CEO of a leading multidisciplinary surgical center in New York. Most recently, he served as Project Manager for Columbia University's NIH-funded HEALing Communities Study, addressing the opioid epidemic through evidence-based interventions.
His book, "AIDS and HIV Related Diseases," published by Hachette Book Group, established him as an authoritative voice in healthcare. Powell's insights have appeared in prestigious publications including Politico and The New England Journal of Medicine. As a recognized expert, he has been featured on major media outlets including CBS, NBC, NPR, and PBS.
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