Joe Rogan and a podcast guest recently praised Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. just after complaining about the harms of glyphosate, the controversial herbicide that was recently bolstered in an executive order that Kennedy supported to the ire of the Make America Healthy Again community. 

During the February 20 episode of his podcast, Rogan and his guest Matt McCusker, comedian and podcast host, suggested that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, is responsible for rising rates of gluten intolerance. The two then touted some of Kennedy’s actions as health secretary so far.  

They did not mention Kennedy’s support for a recent executive order that would protect domestic production of glyphosate and give it some immunity under the Defense Production Act that could shield its parent company from being sued for certain damages. George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety, told The New Lede that the order “is a transparent attempt to influence the Supreme Court to grant glyphosate-maker Monsanto/Bayer and other pesticide behemoths immunity from liability for the harms caused by their products.” McCusker mentioned that he could not have wheat due to an allergy, and Rogan replied, “A lot of people don't think it's actually the gluten. They think it's actually how they finish the crops with glyphosate, which  kind of makes sense because, like, why are all these gluten intolerant — nobody heard about those in the ‘70s. There was no one gluten intolerant.” 

Evidence directly linking glyphosate to gluten intolerance, which causes a sensitivity to a protein that’s found in some types of grains, or celiac disease, which causes an autoimmune response to gluten, is limited and hotly disputed by the scientific community. But the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer has labeled the ingredient as a Group 2a carcinogen. A long-term, peer-reviewed study with contributions from research institutions in the U.S. and Europe reinforced the IARC’s findings in 2025.

Eliminating the agriculture industry’s dependence on glyphosate has been a goal of environmental organizations, as well as several groups and influencers who identify with the MAHA movement,  which is closely associated with Kennedy. Kennedy himself is a long-time critic of glyphosate, and his promise to “ban that practice” during his presidential campaign helped build a voter base that would later throw their support behind the Trump administration. 

But Kennedy is now facing backlash for reversing course and supporting a White House executive order that calls glyphosate a “cornerstone of this Nation’s agricultural productivity and rural economy.” Using the National Defense Production Act, Trump is allowing Roundup maker Bayer to prioritize production of the herbicide “over performance of any other contracts or orders” because it is “central to American economic and national security.”

Kennedy said that the order “puts America first where it matters most – our defense readiness and our food supply.” He also wrote on social media: “I support President Trump’s Executive Order to bring agricultural chemical production back to the United States and end our near-total reliance on adversarial nations.”

Rogan and McCusker didn’t mention this important development that has sparked MAHA outrage, even though Rogan has praised the movement and platformed its leaders. Instead, they attacked Kennedy’s critics, saying that “they’d rather commit suicide, they’d rather poison themselves, than admit that he’s right” about some of his other initiatives like changing the food pyramid and attempting to ban Red Dye 40. 

Many allege they have already been poisoned by the herbicide Kennedy is now defending. Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018, has faced hundreds of thousands of lawsuits from people who say that long-term exposure to glyphosate “caused them to develop non‑Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) and other serious illnesses,” according to the law firm Wisner and Baum, which represented cancer patients in some of these lawsuits.

The recent executive order is consistent with the Trump administration’s efforts to ease regulations on chemicals and maintain the support of the industry, which has significant influence in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. In December, MAHA influencers spearheaded a petition calling for Trump to oust EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin after the agency approved pesticides that contain several different pesticides that are classified by many as PFAS, or cancer-linked “forever chemicals.”