MARGARET Brennan face nation
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Former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has come under fire after a former aide to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alleged in an interview Sunday that Wiles' lobbying firm, Ballard Partners, controlled the White House. Now, CBS News is reporting her firm cashed in $186 million during Trump's first two years in office.
Calley Means told "Face the Nation" on Sunday that the White House prioritized specific industries and corporations, like the sugar industry and big tobacco, while ignoring the president's "Make America Healthy Again" agenda.
Means alleged Wiles blocked efforts to address issues like children’s sugar consumption because she needed donations from the industry for Republicans in the 2026 midterms. Meanwhile, her lobbying firm also pushed the pesticide glyphosate and worked on the approval of fruit-flavored vapes that capture new, young smokers.
The firm's huge profits "did not happen by accident," Means alleged.
Means, who resigned in October, also said Kennedy's anti-tobacco agenda ultimately stalled. Wiles and "her deputies were still relentlessly pushing HHS to find a pathway for fruit-flavored vapes," he said.
Big tobacco scored big in May "with new guidance that could let major tobacco companies sell flavored vapes," the CBS report said.
Brian Ballard, Wiles' partner, was a huge fundraiser for Trump. He explained in a statement Sunday that the firm's interactions with Wiles as chief of staff "have been limited and have been the exception, not the rule."
"Ballard Partners' more than $88 million in lobbying revenue last year was, at the time, the most any firm had reported since the Lobbying Disclosure Act took effect in 1996, even after adjusting for inflation," the CBS report said, citing an analysis of Senate lobbying disclosures. "Through the first three quarters of 2026, the firm has already surpassed that, reporting more than $98 million."
The money lobbying firms earn can change depending on the administration in power. Ballard Partners' close relationship to Trump through Wiles and Ballard would likely attract companies trying to win government contracts or influence regulations.
For a short time, Ballard was banned from the White House over its cryptocurrency lobbying, which reportedly irked officials. After helping raise $50 million for Trump's 2024 campaign, Ballard signed up "hundreds of clients, though its relationship with the administration," CBS News reported.
Axios reported that Ballard was ultimately able to clean up the relationships by May 2025, allowing him access to the White House again.
Top Wiles aide James Blair, was another target of Means, who said that the former deputy chief of staff was "relentless on helping the fruit-flavored vape industry."
Blair denied this online and to CBS, saying he did nothing of the sort and that his goal was to fast-track the FDA's rulings on "nicotine product applications."
"Calley is intentionally misrepresenting my role and my responsibility because he opposes the issue entirely," Blair added.
Trump's longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio was another Means attacked publicly, saying that he was helping pharmaceutical companies. Fabrizio called the allegations "ridiculous" and "demonstrably false."
One major problem for the Trump administration is that a key issue that helped usher in the so-called "blue tsunami" in the 2026 election came from those who addressed Washington corruption in their campaigns. Americans identified it as one of the top three most important issues in the six months leading up to the election.
"The Democrats are going to start investigations as soon as they're sworn in, and White House fighting about who was making money will just elevate the topic," commented Marc Short, who served as former Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff.
The feud has certainly drawn the attention of Congress. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calf.), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he will look into all of the claims around Wiles and others.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said that Means was nothing more than a "disgruntled former administration official." He made it clear that he has no intention of investigating Wiles or other administration employees. He told CNN's Dana Bash over the weekend that Means' allegations were merely "something that someone says on a podcast."
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Margaret Brennan (born March 26, 1980) [1] is an American journalist who is the current moderator of Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan on CBS News, the network's chief foreign affairs correspondent, and a fill-in and substitute anchor for CBS Evening News. [2][3][4] Brennan was
NOTE LEGACY MEDIA CNN NBC ~ OBAMA TRAITOR BS
As Trump struggles to deflect from reporting on his Epstein ties, MAGA media set their sights on the press
It’s getting really bad out there
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 07/23/25 MMA
Six months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, an unhinged MAGA media is infested with calls for the arrest of former President Barack Obama — and one prominent right-wing commentator is even floating legal consequences for journalists who debunk their twisted rationale.
On July 18, amid a Trump administration effort to stave off a MAGA revolt over its handling of disclosures related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents she claimed proved the existence of “a treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration following the 2016 election against Trump, claiming she had asked the Justice Department to investigate further. The president piled on in remarks to the press on July 22, claiming that “we caught Barack Hussein Obama” and accusing him of “treason.”
This argument is based on either malice or stupidity. Gabbard is conflating the findings of a December 2016 document showing that the intelligence community did not assess that the Russian government had hacked election systems and changed vote totals to benefit Trump with those of a January 2017 assessment that the Russian government had sought to influence the campaign to benefit Trump by, among other things, hacking Democratic email servers and releasing the contents.
Based on that faulty premise, Gabbard accused Obama and his advisers of subverting the intelligence community for political aims. But the December 2016 assessment is consistent with what the Obama administration was saying publicly at the time, while the findings of the January 2017 assessment were reiterated in Trump administration reports by the Justice Department as well as a Senate committee helmed at the time by current Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Indeed, that committee reviewed the January 2017 intelligence community analysis and concluded it was an “impressive accomplishment” that “reflects proper analytic tradecraft” and “provides a proper representation of the intelligence” and that the analysts who produced it faced “no politically motivated pressure.”
Members of the right-wing media ecosystem, with few exceptions, do not care about these facts, and they are using incredibly demagogic language to rile up their audiences as they call for political retribution.
Benny Johnson is floating a “military tribunal” for Obama; Mike Davis says the former president should “lawyer up”; Charlie Kirk wants “perp walks”; Liz Wheeler is demanding that the charges be not “perjury” but “treason”; Jesse Watters is asking a U.S. senator whether Obama should “go to prison.” They have apparently learned nothing from overpromising on Epstein only for the Trump administration to under-deliver when the facts couldn’t match the MAGA narrative.
Indeed, according to Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist and a Fox contributor, even typing the preceding paragraphs casting doubt on the validity of Gabbard’s argument should expose me to legal exposure. In a July 22 thread, she described Gabbard’s “revelations” as “the biggest scandal in our history” and condemned media outlets for “ignoring” and “downplaying” it.
“Every time the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Times, Margaret Brennan, The Atlantic, etc., lie and say this story is not a big deal, they are perpetuating their seditious conspiracy,” she added. “Creative minds should think about what legal exposure they have for their role in this.”
Hemingway went on to describe those outlets and journalists as “co-conspirators” in the alleged plot. She did not identify the legal consequences she believes they should face. Nor is it clear what this legal argument would mean for conservatives like her Fox colleague Andrew McCarthy or Eli Lake, who criticized Gabbard’s conclusions, or the right-wing outlets which published their assessments, Rich Lowry’s National Review and Bari Weiss’ The Free Press.
It should go without saying that the idea of “creative minds” dreaming up ways to punish journalists for producing reporting which contradicts the views of the president, his administration, and its propagandists is an affront to the First Amendment and basic principles of free speech and a free press.
Unfortunately, right-wing dreams of frog-marching journalists may not be far-fetched
We warned in December, after Trump campaigned on threats to jail reporters and pull the licenses of critical news outlets and won, that a coalition of elite right-wing figures were “using wealth, lawfare, and government power to silence the press and carry out their political agenda unimpeded.” And the last six months have demonstrated the president’s determination to use his power to bend the press to his will.
Trump has sought to put financial pressure on news outlets in order to chill speech critical of him. He filed lawsuits that experts found frivolous over reporting he disliked from ABC News and CBS News, then successfully leveraged the threat or use of corrupt regulatory actions to secure eight-figure settlements. He is currently pursuing similar lawsuits against the Pulitzer Prize Board, The Des Moines Register, and the corporate parents of The Wall Street Journal. The president has threatened additional lawsuits against The New York Times and CNN and called for the firings of their reporters.
Corporate owners of media outlets appear to be buckling to this pressure. “Executives at major media outlets are reportedly instructing their newsrooms to temper their coverage of President Trump and his administration amid growing fears of political retribution,” Axios reported in May. Indeed, Trump has gloated to reporters about the effectiveness of his strategy.
Beyond personal lawsuits, Trump has floated federal criminal investigations into news outlets over their reporting. That is no idle threat given his pattern of launching Justice Department probes into his political enemies via executive order and given the reality that the top ranks of federal law enforcement are stocked with people who are comfortable functioning as an extension of his personal desires.
Indeed, federal law enforcement officials appear more than willing to participate in Trump’s assault on the free press. His attorney general terminated rules which restricted prosecutors from seeking records and testimony from journalists as part of leak investigations. Several noncitizens have faced detention by the Department of Homeland Security over their public writing. And a former lawyer for January 6 defendants is running a DOJ “Weaponization Working Group” whose purpose appears to be weaponizing the government against Trump’s foes.
Trump’s diverse right-wing coalition and the fractured media ecosystem he unified during his campaign may be breaking apart over his handling of the Epstein case. But he seems to recognize that one thing that brings them together is their shared hatred of Democrats like Obama and the free press, and he’s been acting accordingly. And that means that just an eighth of the way through his second presidency, we’re already in very dangerous territory.
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Trump’s latest attempt to defuse the Epstein revolt: Point supporters at common enemies
07/21/25 2:38 PM EDT
12/23/24 9:59 AM EST
05/28/25
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