Many right-wing and MAHA media figures have expressed shock and disappointment at the Trump administration’s embrace of glyphosate — the active ingredient in the weed-killer Roundup — but some have defended his characterization of the herbicide as essential to national security and the country's food system.    

During the 2024 campaign cycle, the MAHA coalition became a key component of President Donald Trump’s base. Many promises were made to win over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA supporters on the campaign trail, including Trump’s claim that “we’re going to get toxic chemicals out of our environment, and we're going to get them out of our food supply.”

But the Trump administration’s relationship with the agrochemical industry and its multipronged effort to protect industry giant Bayer have angered and mobilized key MAHA figures. Trump issued an executive order in February declaring glyphosate critical to national security, and in March the administration filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to rule in favor of Roundup developer Monsanto in the much-anticipated case Monsanto vs. Durnell. Some of the MAHA figures have organized a rally for April 27, when the Supreme Court is set to hear the case. 

If the court rules in favor of Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2018), it could potentially protect the chemical industry by allowing companies to “escape liability simply because the EPA approved their labels at some point in the past, even if the company concealed how harmful their pesticides were to people.” 

• Conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones said that by “blocking RFK Jr. trying to get rid of the poison shots all of a sudden, giving total liability protection to deadly glyphosate, Roundup,” Trump is “commiting political suicide” and “turning against all the major pillars of the movement.” 
  [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 4/17/26]
   
• In an interview with conspiracy theorist Sherri Tenpenny, Mary Holland, president of Kennedy-founded Children’s Health Defense, said, “We really believe that the Environmental Protection Agency has been derelict in what they've done” about “the use of glyphosate," [Rumble, The Tenpenny Files, 
  4/15/26; The Columbus Dispatch, 5/6/24]
   
• Podcaster and MAHA supporter Tom Renz called the glyphosate executive order “mindblowing” and “one of the most just absolutely absurd things you could do,” claiming that both Congress and Trump support “legislation to essentially provide immunity, the same sort of immunity vaccine manufacturers have, for pesticide manufacturers, chemical manufacturers.” [Rumble, TimcastIRL, 4/14/26; Politico, 2/23/26]
   
• On Turning Point USA’s Culture Apothecary, Dave Asprey, whom podcaster Alex Clark calls the “godfather of biohacking,” criticized the Trump EPA’s lack of regulation. Asprey said that “regulating chemicals in food” is “necessary, because if you don’t have that you get what’s going on at the EPA. … Like that stuff is insane, what they’re going with glyphosate. [YouTube, Culture Apothecary,  4/9/26; 4/9/26; The New York Times, 4/20/26]
   
• On Redacted News, Dr. Robert Malone, whom Kennedy appointed to help lead a federal vaccine advisory panel in 2025, said the Trump administration “had a major setback on glyphosate policies” and when asked to grade MAHA’s success during Trump’s second term said, “I guess the grade would have to be a C.” [Rumble, Redacted News, 4/3/26; Media Matters, 1/23/26]
   
• Podcast host Shawn Ryan expressed his frustration with Trump’s executive order, saying, “Thank you, Trump. Thank you, RFK. Good fucking job. Way to fucking stick to your constituents.” “Every fucking thing that came out of these guys' mouth is a fucking lie,” Ryan continued. “It just makes me think, what is the fucking point of voting?” He reiterated his frustration during the March 26 episode, questioning the administration's “national security” rationale for the order, saying the administration gave the producers of glyphosate “immunity.” [YouTube, The Shawn Ryan Show, 3/23/26, 3/26/26; Media Matters, 3/30/26]
   
• Former Infowars host David Knight attacked “the logic of Donald Gump, this idiot who is running our country,” because the administration said “glyphosate, this poison, is a defense emergency” but “fertilizer to grow food is not.” Knight said, “The Trump administration said glyphosate is essential. And we're going to compel the production of glyphosate. And we're going to give them legal immunity from the cancer that it causes. … And so glyphosate, this poison, is a defense emergency, right? But fertilizer to grow food is not. That's the logic of Donald Gump, this idiot who is running our country right now, running it like a king, like a dictator.” [Rumble, The David Knight Show, 3/19/26; Infowars, accessed 4/23/26]  
   
• Ty Bollinger, who AP News said is “part of an ecosystem” of influencers who “stoke fear and distrust of COVID-19 vaccines,” claimed on the Health Ranger 
  podcast that “despite what President Trump has said about glyphosate being, you know, a matter of national security or whatever absurd thing he declared, you know, a couple of weeks ago, a week ago — glyphosate causes cancer, right? We know that from the lawsuits, the multitude of lawsuits about glyphosate.” [Rumble, Health Ranger, 3/17/26; AP News, 5/13/21; PBS, 7/31/23] 
   
• Conspiracy theorist Candace Owens called Trump a “traitor” for signing the executive order because “we know” that glyphosate “causes cancer,” adding, “Toxic pesticides are apparently back on the table.” Owens: “Have no fear, the traitor is here. Because on February 26, Trump signed an executive order invoking the Defense Protection Act to boost the production of glyphosate, which is what's found in Monsanto, right? That is the cancer-causing agent that is in the weed killer. We know it causes cancer. MAHA moms fought so that would not be a thing anymore. Toxic pesticides are apparently back on the table.” [YouTube, Candace, 3/9/26; Media Matters, 3/9/26]
   
• Filling in for conspiracy theorist Stew Peters, Frankie Stockes, who hosts 
  The Based Report, said Trump protects “Big Ag” and “their chemicals that kill Americans.” Stockes said that by “keeping glyphosate around” Trump is allowing companies to “employ legions of illegal invaders” whom he will also “give amnesty because Big Ag gives him money.” [Rumble, Stew Peters Show, 2/21/26]
   
• Stockes also called the executive order “the MAHA betrayal” and claimed that while Trump said glyphosate “is a chemical that must be protected” it is actually “poison” that “will kill you.” Stockes: “Donald Trump has issued an order declaring glyphosate to be an important national defense priority. He says this is a chemical that must be protected. Glyphosate, of course, it's the herbicide commonly used in the weed killer Roundup. People spray this stuff all over their yards. It's probably been sprayed all over your neighborhood. And this stuff is poison. This will kill you. This will give you cancer." [Rumble, The Stew Peters Show, 2/21/26]
   
• Streamer David Freiheit called the executive order “something of a slap in the face.” Freiheit said he agreed with the statement that “you can't create immunity by way of executive order and that it's effectively unenforceable. But from a moral spiritual perspective, it is something of a slap in the face to people." [Rumble, Viva Frei, 2/20/26; Media Matters, 2/27/26]

• Dave Asprey told Alex Clark that even though he’s “been pounding the anti-glyphosate drum forever” and “it’s bad news for humans and bad news for the environment,” he supports the glyphosate executive order. Asprey then went on a bizarre tangent in which he said he supported the order because “a force, probably China,” is “trying to starve us” by “bombing our egg, dairy, and meat production facilities," adding that “there are examples in a small country probably in Africa somewhere where they outright banned glyphosate and other pesticides and they had a famine.” [YouTube, Culture Apothecary, 4/9/26]
   
• In recent episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, host Joe Rogan gave Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. an enormous platform to defend Trump’s executive order, despite himself referring to glyphosate as “poison.” On March 31, Rogan indirectly suggested that the order was necessary because “we need poison so that we can make food.” He added that “glyphosate is toxic, it's terrible, it's just completely awful for your body yet the use of it is ubiquitous in agriculture, industrial agriculture.” Rogan said that Kennedy “was very crestfallen” about the order after he had made an appearance on Rogan’s show in February. Kennedy has defended it as a necessary response to a “national security vulnerability” and claimed that “we have addicted our farmers to these pesticides.” [YouTube, The Joe Rogan Experience, 3/31/26, Media Matters for America, 3/16/26]
   
• While Tim Pool has criticized glyphosate, others on TimCastIRL, such as guest Clinton Ohlers and host Ian Crossland, defended the executive order. Ohlers praised an explainer about “what went on with Trump's executive order on glyphosate” that advised MAHA not to “get bent out of shape over this.” Crossland said that “with glyphosate, if we just flat out removed it from the supply overnight, we'd probably have a sea of famine, perhaps starvation.” [Rumble, TimCastIRL, 3/6/26, 3/12/25]
   
• Infowars host Harrison Smith said that while Trump’s executive order “pissed off a lot of people that voted for him,” the order was necessary because “whether we like it or not, glyphosate has … been made into a necessary component of our system.” Smith explained that “RFK Jr. sort of justified” the order “a little bit in a statement and said, you know, I'm not happy about it. But we explained this at the time … whether we like it or not, glyphosate has become deliberately, it's been made into a necessary component of our system. Not to say that we can't reform the system. It's just that it takes a lot of work. And you're talking about gigantic systems of millions of people that feed hundreds of millions of people. You got to secure it first and then try to remake it. So I get why he was making the justification.” [Infowars, War Room, 2/27/26]