Trump Proclaims that Poison Is Good, and RFK Jr. Suddenly Changes Decades of Opinion on Glyphosate

Congratulations are absolutely in order to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today, because he has surpassed—utterly eclipsed—his previous accomplishments to date in the fields of shameless hypocrisy and potentially deadly toadying. And here I thought that nothing would be able to top the embarrassment of leading the nation’s health apparatus through the 2025-2026 measles outbreak, which will soon strip the U.S. of its measles elimination status after 25 years, even as 2026’s numbers look to smash the disease’s spread in 2025. Little did I know that the actions of the unpredictable lunatic currently serving as the Commander in Chief would cause RFK Jr. to go back on decades of his own opinion, in order to proclaim that the substance he was previously calling carcinogenic poison is now actually totally great. If there were some kind of awards ceremony for charlatanism, RFK Jr.’s sudden about-face today on glyphosate would be statuette worthy.

What is glyphosate? It is, in short, a weed killer. It’s the active ingredient in Roundup, the commercial weed killer that has been targeted by thousands of lawsuits alleging that exposure to Roundup/glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a deadly cancer. And guess who previously represented plaintiffs in court cases against the evils of glyphosate? That would be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in his previous existence as a prominent environmental attorney. In 2018, RFK Jr. helped his plaintiff win a historic $289 million jury verdict against Roundup maker Monsanto. And RFK Jr. has been staunch in his description of glyphosate as a carcinogen and poison in the years since. In fact, while running for President in 2024, he vowed that his FDA would ban the herbicide. We got the receipts right here.

Cue Donald Trump, who seems to have an incredible, innate sense for the thing he could do that would bring the most sheer embarrassment and shame to everyone around him. This week, he issued an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act, typically used as a legal means by the government to compel companies to make certain supplies or commercial/industrial materials that are categorized as necessary for national security. In the order, Trump decided to declare both glyphosate and phosphorus used in making the herbicides as “critical to the national defense.” The order empowers the agriculture secretary and defense secretary to compel the continued production of glyphosate, because “lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity, adding pressure to the domestic food system.” Or in other words, Donald Trump took the side of Big Poison, directly shunning the devotees of his own Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, Kennedy included, to instead get in bed with big pharma billionaires at Bayer-Monsanto, which just announced this week that it had reached a tentative agreement to pay plaintiffs in Roundup lawsuits $7.25 billion. Trump’s executive order would presumably serve to shield companies making and using the weed killer from any further liability or prosecution, even as a case to determine whether federal law shields pesticide manufacturers from lawsuits is about to head to the U.S. Supreme Court within the week. Leave it to Trump to settle a Supreme Court case for them.

Clearly, this was RFK Jr.’s time to shine as a health crusader. The President of the United States just turned on his MAHA movement, embracing cancer and poison. Surely this would cause an enraged Kennedy to call out and disavow his master, right? …Right?

Of course not. Kennedy immediately rolled over, putting out a statement last night that he would pull an instantaneous about-face and support whatever Donald Trump told him to say. Kennedy’s exact words: “Donald Trump’s executive order puts America first where it matters most—our defense readiness and our food supply. We must safeguard America’s national security first, because all of our priorities depend on it.”

Ah, so cancer no longer matters when the words “national security” come out, gotcha. I must have been confused because Kennedy was on video, literally a month ago, reaffirming that glyphosate was deadly. Perhaps his gray matter has all subsequently been replaced by curds and whey after all the whole milk he’s been chugging in the hot tub with Kid Rock?

Waiting for a video of a shirtless RFK Jr. drinking a glass of glyphosate

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— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) Feb 19, 2026 at 11:51 AM

In a just world, this would be the instantaneous end of the MAHA movement. Its leader, the man who said that glyphosate “pollutes our bodies the same way that they pollute the soil,” suddenly jumps in bed with the President, who is almost certainly just following wherever the campaign contributions have led him. And indeed, some of the other prominent MAHA world players are BIG MAD at both Trump and RFK Jr. right now. The quotes from Environmental Working Group President and co-founder Ken Cook, in a rage-laden press release, are particularly funny. To quote Mr. Cook:

“If anyone still wondered whether ‘Make America Healthy Again’ was a genuine commitment to protecting public health or a scam concocted by President Trump and RFK Jr. to rally health-conscious voters in 2024, today’s decision answers that question. I can’t envision a bigger middle finger to every MAHA mom than this. By granting immunity to the makers of the nation’s most widely used pesticide, President Trump just gave Bayer a license to poison people. Full stop. It’s a shocking betrayal to protect all of us but especially the people who live and work near farm fields where glyphosate is used.”

But wait, Cook wasn’t done—he also had ammo for RFK Jr., indirectly calling for him to step down as the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Elevating glyphosate to a national security priority is the exact opposite of what MAHA voters were promised,” Cook said. “If Secretary Kennedy remains at HHS after this, it will be impossible to argue that his past warnings about glyphosate were anything more than campaign rhetoric designed to win trust—and votes. MAHA supporters were promised reform, and instead, they’ve been treated by MAGA like a convenient group of useful idiots ever since Kennedy joined Trump on the campaign trail.”

You said it, not us, Mr. Cook. How do all the useful idiots out there feel about Trump boosting the thing that RFK Jr. until yesterday said was poison? Was RFK Jr. lying to you before, or is he lying to you now? It has to be one of the two. I think we’re all looking forward to seeing where the MAGA groupthink will lead on this one.