Transcript of #290 Zach Lahn - Inside America’s Cancer-Causing Chemical Problem

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Well, I got a, I got a little question for you before we get going that doesn't really relate to what we're talking to, but I just want to knock it out. The USDA says the average US farmer is 58.1 years old. And in Iowa, the average producer is 57.6. Vice's tractor hacking coverage on farmers fighting repair restrictions went viral, with a related Vice YouTube video surfacing at about 13 million views. I had no idea people were that concerned about this. This sounds like— I had a conversation about this exact thing with Secretary Driscoll about right to repair for our military. I didn't even know this was going on in the farming communities. Here's some, here's some points. Producers under 35 nationally, 296,480. 9% of all producers. That's not— that's not good. Just context for the audience. That's— that's the up-and-coming generation.

Yeah.

Iowa producers under 35, 15,782. The FTC sued Deere in 2025 over repair restriction allegations, and Reuters reported a judge let that antitrust suit proceed. Deere has denied any wrongdoing. What do you say to the next generation of farmers watching their parents work 16-hour days to buy farm equipment and they still feel like they don't control what they actually own? Are you dealing with this on your farm?

You know, we don't use— I use more legacy equipment, older equipment, partially for this exact reason. But what I'd say to producers, especially young ones, is I think what they need to understand is this is being done on purpose. They're doing this on purpose. And what I mean by that is that, you know, my whole life, every politician I've ever met has said we have to support farmers, we have to support farmers, and everything's gotten worse for the actual producer. And so if you actually look at the past 10 years, And what the agribusiness lobby has spent in Washington, D.C., it's about $1.5 billion in the past 10 years lobbying Congress. The top 5 companies during that same time have made about $150 billion in profit. In the same time, we've lost 100,000 farms, family farms. So who are they lobbying for? It's not the farmer. It's not the producer. This is something that sometimes is difficult to bring up because, you know, right now Bobby Kennedy is really fighting against like Big Food, for instance. And I've been told by people that taking on the fight that I'm taking on with big agriculture is much more difficult.

And there's a reason for that. And the reason is Big agriculture has created a caricature of farming, and they're pretending to be the people that are defending the heritage of our farmers. But actually, they're the ones extracting every dollar of wealth out of our farms that they possibly can and bragging about farm consolidation.

It's like, what is farm consolidation? You know, is that buying a bunch of family farms and putting them together? It's a big conglomerate.

Yeah, it's that, you know, the producers, the farms are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so what that actually means— and we've done the opposite on my farm, and I'd love to talk to you about that— but what that actually means is every time one of these farms goes away or disappears, there's life that we lose in our rural communities. And our rural communities in Iowa, in the Midwest, they're on life support. But these companies want to work with bigger and bigger producers. And we know that. We know why they want to do that. It's easier. They have less cost when they're dealing with less customers. They can control people easier. And so the statistics that you're talking about, about young farmers, you know, the World Economic Forum talked about that. You'll own nothing and you'll be happy. This is a part of it. 25% of Iowa's farmland, at least 25%. Is now owned by people who don't live in the state, out-of-state funds and investors. A quarter of my state is owned by people who will never go to a Friday night football game in our small town, who aren't shopping on our main streets.

Like, this is in line with Blackstone buying single-family homes. The same thing is happening to our agriculture community. The thing that's so difficult for what I'm trying to undertake right now is to get to the farmers to help them understand that this is happening on purpose. They don't want more family farms. And matter of fact, if you go to the WF, they don't want sovereignty for our country. And so what's one of the ways you can strip away sovereignty is to have them have an insecure food base in the state. You can't feed yourself, how are you sovereign? And it's gotten, you know, Sean, it's gotten very bad to this point. You know, I'll be in these debates with people about the use of agrochemicals and things like that. And when I'm in them, they keep talking about this idea that, well, we need this to produce food. We need glyphosate, for instance, to produce food. And what they're not discussing is that in my state of Iowa, 0.03% of our acres are used to produce anything that will end up on your plate in its original form.

Could you say that again? How much?

0.03% of our acres out of 24 million acres. It's roughly 9,000 acres in Iowa is used to produce any produce food that will end up on your plate in its original form. So it's primarily—

holy shit, it's all chemicals.

It's like, so they have— they're producing ethanol. They're in— like, we can talk about these things, but they're producing feed that will then be shipped out of state for, for animals and shipped out of our country for animals. Iowa has the best farmland in the world, I would say, and we import 95% of our food. So there's a big movement of people that want to see, you know, homesteading and smaller farms crop up. But when you have out-of-state investors that are coming in and buying up land and jacking up the price of land, there's not one young person that can afford to get on land.

Yeah.

And so your statistics, I look at it from even a different perspective. I look at it from this perspective that that aging population of farmers, they're on break-even margins now because they're being extorted by big agriculture companies. That continue to raise their prices even as commodity prices stay the same or drop because they've formed monopolies now. Donald Trump and Brooke Rollins are talking about this, talking about breaking these monopolies up. And a few other politicians have talked about it. But there used to be a heritage in my state where grandpa would run the farm, and then when he got older, he would step away. Often he would move to a different house and then son would farm and raise the family. That's what happened with my family. But the idea of supporting two incomes, two families now in Iowa, it's basically gone for the average farmer. Damn. So we're heading towards a cliff. And, you know, just a little bit of where I come from on this is that My family came to Iowa in 1850, around then. Actually, my great-great-grandfather was one of the famed Hawkeyes on horseback in the Civil War. He was, they participated, actually fought in the Battle of Nashville, Tristan Giersen's Raid.

These were people that were brought in in Iowa's 2nd Cavalry to go counter the opposing cavalries that were wreaking havoc. And he was in a state that wasn't a part of this battle. It was in America, but it wasn't— what was going on around the country was not happening in Iowa. At the end of the Civil War, more Iowans fought in the Civil War than any other state per capita.

No kidding.

Yes. And there's deep reasons for that. And it's about where they came from and what they were leaving. And that In Germany, when they came over, they had just left this feudal system. They were trying to have an uprising. They were defeated. They were exiled. Iowa came online right in 1846, heavy agrarian culture. So you have these people that were fleeing a country primarily because they wanted to control their destiny. They wanted to own their land. They wanted to have the ability to build their communities. And then you see what happens with the expansion, the potential expansion of slavery, and all these very wealthy people on the East Coast that were slave owners wanting to make the Midwest slave states so they could control it. I firmly believe that part of the reason that Iowa stood up the way that they did was because they fled that situation in their own country and they didn't want it happening where they were. So he came over and then about 20 years later, my great-great-grandfather came over on a ship from Hamburg by himself at 14. And he was in the stowage of the ship and he made his way to Iowa.

And then in 1900, they built— he and his uncle built our family homestead. Wow. In Belle Plaine. And that place was a place of deep stories for decades and decades, from the Great Depression to World War II, to my great-great-uncle fighting in World War I, going overseas, fighting in World War I, and coming back to run the local newspaper while his brother kept everything steady with the farm. And then my grandpa mowing a runway in the bean field and buying a 1942 Taylorcraft and learning how to fly and starting a career in aviation. And his brother flew off aircraft carriers in the Pacific in the '40s. Like, these are our stories of our history and our culture and our people. And in 2005, my family farm was sold. My great-grandmother passed away and my grandma had called me at the time and I was in college and asked me if I wanted anything to do with the farm. I didn't know what that would be, but I was out in Colorado at the time. I was like, no, I'm out, I'm gone. But if you fast forward a number of years, I stopped in just to see the farm when I was going to visit family over in Eastern Iowa.

And I just told them, if you're ever going to sell this place, please let me know. And then they called me a couple of years later and they said, hey, we're going to sell. Would you like to buy? And before I could even think about it, I said, yes, 100%. I want to buy this. So in 2014, I bought the family farm back. And then over the past 11 years, I've spent restoring that farm board by board using old pictures that I got from my great-grandmother's photo collection. And During that time, I remember a story that people often ask me, why did I do that? And what comes to me is that I really want my children to understand their story. I want them to understand their history, like who built them, and that these generations before them toiled and suffered and jumped in to go to the Civil War when they didn't have to. And like to protect what we have. And I wanted them to understand that deep story and connect to it. It was never because I wanted to run for office. I actually don't even want to be a politician. But I remember after I bought the farm, I was down in the basement.

I had signed the papers, came to the farmhouse, was down in the basement. I was leaning against a wooden post in the basement. This is— this has actually happened. And I just said to myself, what am I doing? Like, this place needs so much work. It's going to take forever. Like, it was a stretch to buy it in the first place, to get the loan. And I'm leaning on this post and I turn and on the post are the initials VL. It's my grandpa. And I just said to myself, this is why I'm doing it. Because these things truly matter. That we don't forget where we came from. And so bringing this into what you just talked about, that's what's at stake. That's what's being taken from us. And so me deciding to run for governor was a choice of wanting to throw everything I have in to protect the culture that helped build my state, build my people, and say it's worth preserving. Like, this is worth preserving. It's provided for the greatest alleviation and suffering ever known to mankind. Our culture has great prosperity. And if you look back at the principles of what they came to do, it wasn't that they came here to get rich.

They came here for the basics of freedom, and now much of that is being taken away. And so that's why I'm in this race. I often ask myself, is there room for people in politics who still actually care?

That's the question of the fucking day, man.

It's a question I, I, I that comes up often. And here's what I love. I'm not out there talking about my opponents in a negative way at all. I won't do it. That's not why I'm here. I'm not out trying to make people afraid that Iowa is going to become the next Minnesota if we like don't do X, Y, or Z. I'm here.

What's wrong with Minnesota?

If you're a daycare provider, nothing.

Oh, shit.

You know, I just believe that my job, what God's calling me to do in this time in my life, is to tell a better story about what we could be as a state, to bring people together about that. And I will tell you, when I'm out on the campaign trail, and I'm new to all this, like, I don't, like, I've never done this before. I don't have a script that I'm going off of. I have a couple key points that I'm really, I'm really passionate about. But what I try to do is just tell the truth to people and not worry about what these big companies, lobbyists, or special interests are going to think about me. And just believe, like, to the point I mentioned earlier, that God's going to protect me in this whole endeavor and that he's got a plan for this.

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Hi, I'm Sarah Adams, the host of Vigilance Elite's The Watch Floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state. Explain to you why it matters and then aim to leave you feeling better informed than you were before you hit play. Terrorists, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime. Not everything is urgent. But this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know. I don't know if I could do it any other way. I'm— I think everywhere we look, we see the opposite in politics, like what's expedient, what will get people to donate to me. You know, I had somebody once mention to me that you need to imagine every voter is walking around with little buttons on them, and your job is to figure out what those buttons are, what they like, and push as many as you can so they'll like you. I say, guys, geez, this is not at all what people are asking for. They want— I believe they want people that are willing to take on the big systemic issues. That they're facing.

It's getting to the fucking point where I'll just take anybody with a spine. You got a spine? You have a fucking pull? Like, it's— it's— I just feel so lied to.

It's—

it's— I mean, we talked about it when— when, you know, when our mutual friend Rich connected us. Yeah, Rich called me about you, and I was like, I don't know, man.

I don't— I don't know if I want to interview another fucking guy running for office.

And we chatted a little bit and I was like, all right, I'll give— I'll give Zach a call. And we chatted and I really liked what you had to say. I mean, we talked about it. I was just like, man, I just sat in front of I don't know how many politicians now and they just fucking lie, lie, lie.

Yeah.

I mean, it's so much hope. So much hope for this administration. And I don't know about everybody else, but my hope went right down the fucking shitter in less than a year. And, you know, when I know we're going to talk about this, but, you know, the fucking Maha movement, I was all about that shit. I'm scared to death of cancer. I just found out about microwaves the other day. Now we're shitcanning our fucking microwave.

My wife threw ours out years ago.

But, but you know what I mean? I'm all excited, like, oh, they're going to clean up the food, they're going to get rid of these pesticides, they're going to get rid of all this shit. What did I see the other day? We fucking— they ran, they fucking ran hard on this stuff, man. Hard on this. All the, all the health, uh, influencers and the doctors with big names, they're all fucking rallying around the Maha movement. Oh, let's throw a big fucking party. Less than a year in. Well, I don't, I don't know if anything has changed other than I saw that they, they— Trump signed an executive order and fucking RFK backed him. And said we're going to give immunity to— was it Bayer? Is it Bayer?

Whatever it is, producers of glyphosate-based herbicides. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you, Trump. Thank you, RFK. Good fucking job. Way to fucking stick to your constituents. You know, shit gives me chills, man. It's just every fucking thing that came out of these guys' mouth is a fucking lie. It just makes me— it makes me think, what is— what is the fucking point of voting? Is there a point?

I think— I, I think there are far too many people that are coming to that same conclusion, that are just saying, why am I doing this? You know, I—

doesn't mean you give up, but I can tell you one thing, fucking vote isn't going to fix this shit.

Yeah, we're reaching a tipping point, and I think more and more people— oh, look, you look at why somebody like Nick Fuentes is getting a giant audience. Why do you think that is? What happened with the Hunter Biden laptop? Why hasn't Anthony Fauci been arrested yet? What about, like, all of these politicians that have been in on a lot of this, you know, this global ring of pedophilia? Like, and then you wonder, why are young people checking out? Was because they just see it all as a lie. I deal with this all the time in what I'm doing right now, because as somebody who actually wants to make a difference and change things, and the beauty of the Constitution and the 10th Amendment says that I can do that in my state. Like, I have zero interest in being in Washington, D.C. whatsoever. I think it's my personal view, and people will, you know, Republicans will come after me for saying this, is that it's beyond repair. It's— and let me give you an example why. Gosh, I'm getting a bit upset here, but let's go back to farming. Over the past 10 years, the agriculture companies have spent $1.5 billion lobbying Washington, D.C. $1.5 billion.

During that same time, their profits have went up $150 billion. And at the same time, we've lost 100,000 family farms. Okay, so I mentioned that earlier, but what does that mean? It means that there's a capture of these agencies that's so deep that lobbyists are able to put in place whatever policies that they want to, basically. And we've seen this now, like with these immunity—

we've been with all kinds of shit. We see it with other countries. We see it with the glyphosate stuff. We see it with pharmaceuticals, see it with oil and gas. We see it with fucking everywhere, everywhere but the actual American people. That's— they give a fuck about everything else but the American people.

Well, and that's when I go back to this idea that, you know, farmers in my state are starting to understand that these companies are not their friends. They're like, look, they're charging foreign farmers— these 3 big companies in our country are charging foreign farmers less for the same amount of product than they charge our farmers. Just like they were doing in pharmaceuticals. So they're saying, if you yield more crop, we're going to take more money because we can. And there's a complete monopoly here. Nobody wants to address it, but there is. And so the hard part for me is that as I'm talking about these things, there's a divergence. Farmers understand these companies are extorting them. But the part that gets me is that there's such a complex of working organisms in D.C. and in lobbyists and capital— in the capitals that have gaslit these people to make them believe that these products are safe for their health. Safe products don't need immunity from liability, full stop. If you want to see an example of that, look at the vaccine situation we have in our country right now. The 1986 vaccine immunity has probably caused the greatest amount of suffering of any piece of legislation that we've, we've had.

And so what happens? Well, we see it's that $1.5 billion of lobbying that these companies do.

I'm surprised it's not more than that.

Oh, well, that's just for one industry in one sector. I mean, right now in DC, I read that Bayer has spent 9— uh, Bayer has 2 lobbyists per member of Congress right now pushing for this immunity. The average amount they spend per member of Congress is more than the members of Congress make in a year. This is the capture. And what I'll go back to is talking about what they've been doing with this immunity. And so when you look at what they're actually doing, I say this, like right now we have these companies pushing at the state capitals, we have them pushing at the Supreme Court, we have them putting things into the farm bill, which, by the way, I don't think you should be able to enter something into a bill in Washington, D.C. without your name being next to it of who actually put this in. It's like we need a blockchain service that says like, here's who put this ridiculous idea in that's gonna help this one special interest. So we know exactly who to talk to about that and who to go after about that. And then you have the executive order.

So this, what I said, this is how big agriculture wages war. That's what they're doing because they continue to lose in court in just, Just to summarize that, when you talk about this gaslighting of people, say what, what, what these paid people from these companies continue to say about this is that, oh, these juries aren't scientists. I tell people Bayer and Monsanto can afford the best attorneys in the world. They have no shortage of cash. They have every bit of influence in the jury selection process as the plaintiffs do. And these juries are hearing about 100 hours of evidence in each of these major trials, and they're still losing. And so why is that? Because we have internal documents, for one thing, that show exactly what they knew and that they knew it. There's actually things in these documents that are so egregious like this. Right now in Europe, the type of agricultural Roundup that we use is banned. Yeah, people don't talk about this. And when the industry people talk about, they say it's a lie. But what they— they say glyphosate isn't banned in the EU. That's true, glyphosate isn't banned in the EU.

But the formulation of Roundup that we use in the United States is banned in the EU because it's so toxic. So what did Monsanto do in, I think, 2015 when this was coming out in the EU? They reformulated their Roundup into a formulation that by some measures is 20 times less toxic than what we use in the United States.

Geez.

And then there's emails.

Now, has their food production gone down?

I'm just curious. No. And, you know, not only has their food production not gone down, but also they have far more stringent levels of what's even allowed as residue on their products. That's why you hear so many people saying they can go to Europe and eat bread or eat pasta or things like this and they don't feel sick afterwards. But in these emails from what's called the Monsanto Files, which are—

Oh, shit. More email files.

More email files.

Here we go.

Here we go. In these emails, What you see is a captured agency. The EPA is captured. But you also see a lot of internal emails between Monsanto executives and people at Monsanto and each other. So for instance, when the EU was saying, this formulation that you use in the United States, we are not gonna allow you to use, it's with something called POEAs, polyoxylethylated tallowanines. It's actually the product within glyphosate, within Roundup. That they formulate to have it break down the skin, basically, of the plant to allow it to enter the plant easier. Well, it does that on human skin too. It actually operates on fat. And so, and this is, this is, I'll get into this in a little bit, but this is part of what they don't want people to talk about, is that they'll always say glyphosate is safe, and they will not talk about glyphosate-based herbicides, which are known to be far more toxic because the product can actually get in your bloodstream quicker and more efficiently. So one of the emails that was shared between the Monsanto EU representative and the US company, after they reformulated it to make it safer for the EU, the email went out that said, why would we continue to make a harmful product when we can make a safer one?

And they didn't change a thing. They know how to make these products safer. We have their internal communications to know that they're lying to us. But instead of owning up and putting a warning on the label, which is what they would have to do to stem the tide of a lot of this, they're going after state houses and trying to get immunity. They're putting it in the Farm Bill to get immunity. They're now pushing the Supreme Court to get immunity. And they now have an executive order which, just to dispel any confusion, does not exclude immunity at all, meaning there's nothing in that executive order that says that it does not apply to product liability.

I mean, we just saw it. I mean, we were just talking about it before they— before we sat down here. I mean, we was Rusty Grills, a state congressman or something here in Tennessee. I got a call by—

shit, I can't—

I'm drawing a blank here, but he ran for Congress. He almost fucking won. Nobody's ever heard of him. And he shot me a text and told me about this bill that was getting ready to get signed into law.

Yeah.

The Rusty Grills— you saw the clip. Yeah. I think. And, you know, so I call— I got that the day they were signing. I'm like, well, shit, I got like 30 minutes. He's like, well, you got an hour. I was like, okay. I was like, just give me the details and I'll get something out. And he gave me the details and I wanted to, you know, you saw a little selfie video. Bill got yanked 30 minutes after that.

That's what I saw. I saw your video.

But then everybody's texting me saying, oh, this— don't worry, it's going to come up again. Oh, it'll come up again.

But it's, it's—

these people aren't fucking— they are paying attention. They know what we want, especially, especially the federal government. I mean, country's been pretty loud about a lot of things, and they're just, they're just willfully ignoring everything we want. And doing whatever the hell they please. It's, it's fucking insane. It's insane. Let me, let me give you an introduction here real quick, Zach. Oh, should have done this at the beginning. Zach Lane, a 6th generation Iowan. You're a regenerative farmer and businessman running to become the next governor of Iowa, independent of party leadership. Son of a Christian pastor, raised with a strong foundation in faith, family, and service. Founder of Homeplace Ventures, investing in agriculture, real estate, and technology with a focus on local ownership. Husband to Annie, you're raising 7 children together, and most importantly, you're a Christian.

Yeah.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I think as I hear you read that, you know, something that comes to me is that, as you said, most important as a Christian. That might be where in the deepest part of me this really gets me is that my dad was a 30-year conservationist. He's a pastor, conservationist. And as I was growing up, the lessons that he was teaching me about stewarding creation, about taking responsibility and doing the right thing with your land, and with your property. That all ties back to, as Jordan Peterson would say, beauty is a pathway to God, to the divine. It all connects in. And so when I take a look at what's happening around the state of Iowa, with our farmland being owned by people who don't live here, which you can't steward land properly if you don't live in the state. You can't take care of it the way that you would. And you look at single-family homes being bought by trillion-dollar Wall Street hedge funds, or you look at agriculture companies extorting farmers and putting monopolistic practices in place. This comes back to something of faith for me, meaning there is such thing as right and wrong.

There are things that we are called to do And you know, of all the laws that were given in the Old Testament, Jesus boiled them down to two. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. And he actually, when he was pressed on this by the Pharisees, who's your neighbor? He kind of came back and said, no, the question is, to whom are you being neighborly? Because it's not a law of like, oh, this person, that person. Like who's within proximity of where I live. It's actually much deeper that we are tasked with working to make life better for the people around us and the people in our communities, in our state. And this key question that the Amish have asked for a very long time before they make a big decision, which is, what will this change do to my community before they make the decision? Has not been asked by politicians in a very long time. And so when I'm thinking about running, that's what it comes back to for me is this idea of when I'm gone, what are my kids going to be able to look back?

You know, before I came on to this podcast, my prayer is very simple. I want to put something into the world that my children can look back on and be proud that their dad was fighting for something that really mattered.

100% get that.

And so when I look at what's going on in Iowa and I tie it back to our heritage as a people, and I just wonder, are my kids going to even want to live here with everything that's going on?

A lot of people looking at dual citizenship right now. So I'm fucking one of them.

Don't come to Iowa. You be a dual citizen of Iowa.

I'll give you I would love to, but I don't want to get fucking cancer.

I know, I know.

You know, and let's take it. We're going to come right back to farming. But you brought something up just a minute ago that I want to hit on. And so I want to tie— I want to talk about Christianity, the federal government, and state governments. Just a few minutes ago, you had said that you think that— I believe you said that you think that something along the lines of the federal government is unrepairable. And that you would get pushback from Republicans for saying that. Do you, do you believe that?

Do I believe it's irreparable?

Yeah.

Yeah, I, you know, I do too. This is what I'm— that's what I, I think.

It's completely fucking gone. Look, it's gone.

You know, here's the thing. There's this idea of the American experiment, and that is real and true and good. But if you look at the deviation we've had from that. I think the most— one of the common questions that comes up for me is what do I think is the most pressing issue facing the country today? And I keep coming back to this: our country is run by unelected people and we don't know who they are. And so if you're in a republic—

figuring out who they are—

if you're in a republic And your elected officials aren't making the decisions for you, that you have big business, that you have special interest lobbyists, that you have undue influence from foreign governments. Like, if that's the situation you're in, like, my tendency is to say, let's hunker down and make Iowa amazing and let's get ready for whatever comes next, because I want my state to be one that's prosperous. To be one that has great education, clean water, that like people have opportunity in my state. But no, I have no interest in running for office to be in Washington, D.C. And you know what? I think there are good people really trying to do the right thing. You asked my personal opinion and I'm not a politician, so I'm just going to tell you it. I like— to me, it's beyond repair.

I think so too. So much so that less than 5 congressmen, less than 5 people in federal politics altogether I think are, are like true to, to their constituents, true to their word, and, and they know what— they know what honor means. And, you know, they have actual real values. And I've tried to convince every single one of them to come back to the state and come back and run our fucking state, because this is the only thing we have left, is the states. Yeah, we don't have a federal government. That shit has run away. Every fucking institution— the CIA, the FBI, all of them. All of them. I mean, I just had a guy on here, goes by AJ, got blasted with a microwave weapon. Have you heard about Havana Syndrome?

Yeah, I've heard about it.

You know what the CIA told him? That they have to make a decision between their people and the institution. Taking care of their people or the institution. They'll pick the institution, and they will willingly lie to Congress to cover this shit up. That's our fucking— now, how can we trust anything at all, anything that comes out of an institution that's openly— that says, I guess not openly, behind closed doors, that they will willingly lie to Congress? And that's just one institution.

Well, institutional capture has been done on purpose and been going on for a very long time. And now we're seeing like, look, I think the people that would sympathize with what you and I are saying the most is the average voter. I think so too. Like you talk about the average voter and what hope they believe that we have in Washington, D.C. And like this was something I had to think deeply about because I wasn't planning to run for the seat. You know, the seat hasn't been open in 20 years in Iowa. The longest serving governor in the history of America is from Iowa. What I had to look at was, with the issues I'm talking to you about, that I'm watching every day in my state, was I willing to not do this knowing that the next governor could be there till I die? There's no term limits, and the institutional capture is very real. I'm not the establishment candidate, but I'm also not somebody who's like here to I would say, what I am here to do is give my people a voice to say what you and I are talking about, they're talking about, we hear it.

And they'd have to kill me to change the way I view these things, to get me to do something different that would be adverse to what the state and the people need. It's like, I told somebody the other day, I heard this term is called, somebody used the term economic nationalism. It was basically this idea that like the economy and the government of the country should be there to focus on making life better for the people in the country. And I think like, did we ever think that there was anything else? Did like, I mean, we see something else, but like this is what it's supposed to be. The state of Iowa its economy, its government, all the efforts it's undertaking should be solely focused on making life better for the people that are living there. And let me give you one of the most egregious examples about this in my own state. Right now, there's 3 big companies that control 85% of the agriculture input market. When I was growing up in Iowa, there were over 300 companies. They've bought up and bought up and consolidated and consolidated. This way farmers have the illusion of choice.

One of those companies is a company called Syngenta. Syngenta is 100% owned by the state of China. 100%. And we can get into what they produce and all of these things and that, but let me just say this first. Since being Chinese-owned, the state government of Iowa has given a Chinese company $7.5 million in refundable tax credits paid for by the taxpayers. Propping up a Chinese company.

See, oh man, this is, this is where I was going too. Sorry. We see all this waste, fraud, and abuse, you know, and they always want to fucking raise the taxes. Let's raise taxes so we can send it to Israel, we can send it to Ukraine, we can send it to fucking whoever, you know. We can, we can, we can pay China's fucking, you know, whatever bill. Tax, you know, the taxpayers will pay it. You know what, that's another— it's, it's, it's like, I don't even—

why can't—

I mean, we, we need strong— we need strong governors and state legislators. And you know what, what would it take for a state to go, fuck you, federal government, we're not paying taxes, we're going to raise our state taxes, we don't need your fucking funding, We don't need any of your bullshit. None of it. Fuck you. We're going to raise our state taxes. And if you send in any fucking IRS agents, we're going to have them arrested and put in fucking jail in the state. I mean, is that even a possibility? Because the government is just— it is all waste, fraud, and abuse. Greed, pedophilia. That's what it is. It is what it is. Like, you can't hide this shit anymore. You know, and so why aren't more, you know, why aren't more people standing up and taking control? It just—

You know, one of the things, let me say this first, is that what you're talking— people talk to me running for governor about this idea of like foreign aid. And I say, my state doesn't have clean drinking water.

Exactly.

Why would I ever want to send $1 to any foreign country when we have the fastest rate of new cancer in the history of civilization? We don't have clean drinking water. Like, no, this is what I'm talking about. This is where we expect our dollars to stay in our state to benefit our people. And the idea that we'd use refundable tax credits to support a Chinese company when, by the way, we have homegrown Iowa companies that compete with them, that compete. One of these guys testified in front of a congressional hearing, which let me just say this, like, This goes to your example. How many times have we seen a congressional hearing about this or this thing come up and it's like Congress is talking about it and absolutely nothing happens?

Too worried about aliens right now. Aliens and fucking UFOs.

Like, what's the next thing?

Shitting me?

In this—

aliens, fucking aliens.

That's what they're talking about. When you see that come out, it's just like anybody that's awake is just like, I'm sorry, what? Like, We are done being distracted from the things that actually matter. We're smarter than this. But in this hearing on what's going on in the agriculture input markets, one entrepreneur, third-generation Iowa seedsman, creating independent seeds, who's competing against these companies, is talking about what these companies do. Just a little background here. We have GMO seeds, and so those genetics have patents on them, and the patents last about 20 years. And once the patent runs out, they're supposed to go into a seed library so an independent seed maker can pull that seed off the shelf and they can use it to make their own version. And usually, often, most often, like generic drugs, cheaper. What this third-generation seedsman testified about in front of Congress is that when these big companies— there's two companies control all of the seed genetics in our country— when one of those big companies puts that, that on the shelf in the seed library, before they do it, they scramble the name of it into random letters and numbers so he can't figure out what it is, and he has to continue going to them to— for royalties and pay royalties to get seeds.

Holy shit.

And so, and where's the justice system on this? This is what people— we come back to. And so yes, as governor, I've already said very, very openly, I plan to sue the federal government every chance I get. And just to be very clear, I actually think Donald Trump would like that. You know, the Chevron Doctrine was overturned saying that, like, that if Congress didn't specifically put a regulation in place, that states— we can sue now if regulators have made up their own rules, which they've made up millions and probably billions of pages of these rules. But we have got to get back to the point where we're looking to say, how are we going to liberate ourselves from exactly what you're talking about? The first step I would do is sue. But this also just goes back to why I'm not running for Congress. It's like, I agree with what you're saying about we need to go deep into our state. We need to have good governors who are willing to stand up and just put it all on the line. I've had people already ask me, Sean, Not that, you know, people just ask these questions.

Are you thinking about doing anything bigger than this? No, I'm not. I don't want to do anything different than this. Matter of fact, this isn't something I woke up in the morning and said, I really like to go do this and put my family through all this. What I said was, if I don't do this, if I don't bring this up, if I don't put my own money into this and say to these donors, I don't want your funds, How much longer is the state that I love, that I grew up in, that my family like helped to pioneer, how much longer is that going to even be recognizable to me?

Probably not very long.

Not very long. But I believe that with the right governor— and here's the thing, we have things we could change in the state of Iowa that a governor could change right now to make some of the hot-button issues that the voters are talking about go away or get much better. And even on the Republican side, we're not doing it. I mean, there's been great advancements and we've passed school choice legislation, we've lowered taxes and all these things. But what I often say to people is like, this is not about taxes or regulations. This is about our culture and identity as Iowans and as Americans. The free market doesn't take into account culture. It doesn't fix cultural issues. Oftentimes it makes them worse. People ask me, what do you mean by that? It's like, what's the free market solution for the declining church attendance in our country? We have to make those decisions. And that's— that is actually the sole reason I am running, is to say we have to get the culture right in our state. If we don't get the culture right, Like, we're going to end up like Washington, D.C., because the same people that are buying off politicians and looking for influence in Washington, D.C. are coming to the states.

They're coming less and less because more and more power is being concentrated in D.C. But that's why we have to start suing and we have to start saying we're going to be bringing this back into the control of our state. So to me, it goes back to culture. It goes back to who are we? What do we want to stand for as a people? And do the traditions and the heritage of our state and our ancestors matter to us? Because I can tell you, they would have revolted for far less than what's going on right now.

Oh yeah.

And they did for far less. You know, I was talking to somebody about the conditions of farming in Iowa. And he was telling me a story that I ended up looking up, and it was about, you know, in the '30s, about how bad farming conditions were. And there was farmers from basically 80% of the counties in our state that started protesting to such a level that the sheriffs had to bring out submachine guns. And I would actually say that the conditions we have right now are worse. We're to the point where you'll have people talk about farming as if it's just a hobby, meaning like you have to have an off-farm job to support your family, but you're still farming. And I've even seen agricultural establishment people bragging about that. It's like, hey, they just— they do it for free. They just love it. I'm thinking, you don't understand this. Like, this is a key part of our heritage, and we're being poisoned with our food. We import 95% of what we eat in the state, and basically none of our land is to actually grow anything that we eat. The entire chessboard is backwards.

Yeah. Let's talk about the collapse of the family farms.

Yeah.

You want to?

Yeah, love to.

What are they turning them into? Data centers? The big thing right now, a lot of, a lot of real estate investors are looking for land next to power grids so that they could build a huge data center.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, we'll sit out to a big data center.

Let me answer your first question is what, what's happening to family farms? Most of the time they're being bulldozed and farmed over. So the place like my house, I was afraid that was going to happen to my family's home. And that's why I couldn't say no when the opportunity came to buy it for me. Because what used to be these small farmsteads dotting all these places and known by the last name of the people that lived there for 100 years are just being bulldozed, farmed over, and forgotten. But when you talk about bigger efforts, you talked about, you know, data centers. There's many examples of how this is happening across the country and what's happening in Iowa too. You know, if you go to the south of Cedar Rapids, so if you're in Cedar Rapids, you head south towards the airport, you will drive past what used to be farmland that had been farmland for generations and generations that now looks like a military installation is being put in. I've never seen so many pieces of heavy equipment in my life. I've never seen something built so quickly in my life. And what it is, is two companies, Google and QTS, have bought 1,400 acres of farmland and they're building data centers there.

Now I'm not going to get into like debate about like whether we should have data centers or not. I think we're being a bit premature on this, especially with Elon Musk talking about putting them in space. But there's a broader issue here of we're not thinking through at all what AI is going to do to us as a people or our communities. So like I could come to that discussion in a different way, but just from a policy perspective or just a principle perspective on this, The city of Cedar Rapids gave one of those data centers $529 million in tax rebates.

What?

Half a billion dollars in tax rebates to come to Cedar Rapids to put this data center in. And let me just say this, in the contract, they're contractually obligated to create jobs as part of this to receive these tax breaks. For $529 million, they're contractually obligated to create 30 jobs. $17 million a job.

It's a big paycheck.

Huge. And what I say is like, look, you want to build a data center in Iowa? I'm going to charge you far more in property tax and I'm going to use it to lower the property taxes of the people in the communities that you're around. We won't be taken advantage of anymore is what I'm trying to say. Whether it's agriculture companies that have to sue to break up their monopolies, or just say something as common as, look, $100 billion multinational tech companies are searching across the country to find land to build data centers and get approval from governments. They're the ones that should be on the opposite end of this negotiation. We, they, we should be saying to them, what are you going to offer us? Because 30 jobs and $529 million in tax breaks doesn't pencil.

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So when we go back to this idea, Sean, you know, Something I give Trump a lot of credit for is pioneering the idea of America First. You know, before Trump came into the scene, nobody's even really talking about China in a major way from the political standpoint. Everything was good. Like, the free trade we have with them is good, even though it's hollowed out an entire region of people who then ended up getting addicted to opioids and dying off at faster rates. They're all saying how our partnership with China is great. And then Trump came in and said, they're taking advantage of us. We're suckers. He was right. 100% right. So when I talk to people about what it means to be Iowa first, like, this is part of my campaign. It's like, like, I want to put Iowa first. It's not just a slogan. It's saying, like, if you're a multinational, if you're owned by a foreign government, you're getting $0 from my state. Period. Those dollars will go towards homegrown Iowa entrepreneurs to build their life, to build their company and compete with you and hopefully make it so you have a hard time keeping up.

That's what it should be. That's the idea of putting Iowa first. It's the same thing about these data centers. It's like we, we have two amazing assets in our state. We have our children and we have our farmland. We have some of the best in the world. To give them over to $100 billion multinational tech companies and then pay them basically to do it, it doesn't make sense. And here's going back to what you said earlier. Voters know this. When I talk to them about Syngenta getting refundable tax credits from the state, I don't care how many high-quality jobs they say they're creating. The voters don't want this. They don't want to support a Chinese company and they want to support Iowa companies. So this goes back to just— we've taken our eye off the ball. Our politicians aren't paying attention to the right things. And I believe they're not asking the right questions about what will these changes do to our community. And they do not care about the culture of our state and our people.

That's what I was going to say. I don't know if they're not paying attention, but they definitely don't care. Yeah, they just don't give a shit. Yeah, because there's no repercussions. Yeah, there's no consequences. None. They'll get reelected.

What's Congress have, like a 95% reelection rate, something like that?

5% approval rating and 95% election, uh, reelection rate. Yeah, like, I mean, if, if you think the, uh You know, if you think the, the, the elections are, are, are good, I mean, that's—

we're doing—

we're fucking ourselves over here.

Yeah, well, you know what I mean? And you know, when they have— they know they have donation limits to run for those seats, right? Well, that just puts them in such an advantage. I actually think the limits put them in an advantage in some ways because, you know, And I'm not saying take it, take donations, or not have donations. We don't have any in my race, which is part of the reason I can go elsewhere. Because as you could probably imagine, my message within the big agriculture community of donors isn't exactly popular.

Yeah, I'll bet.

And so I'm going elsewhere to raise funds from people who want to see the agriculture, the culture of agriculture in our state restored. Regenerative farming, safer practices, less cancer. But if you look at Congress, you know, finding those people— if you're an upstart candidate who are going to be willing to give you the $7,000 apiece, I mean, you have to put a lot of that money together to be able to wage any sort of battle against one of these entrenched people. And so in every, every part of the deck is stacked against the person that's trying to unseat somebody. Every part of it. So when I look at Iowa and I look at what are we doing with our state, how can we make a major difference in our state? It comes to the most entrenched interests for me, the people that are paying the money so politicians will look the other way. And I've just been very clear. People ask me all the time, are you accepting funds? No, I'm not. I won't. And, you know, I think for people that are principled, what I'd like to say is like, well, yeah, but I'm never— I'm not going to— I'm never going to take my eye off the ball.

But I just think the average voter is so weary of seeing this group or that group support them, and then they just realize, well, that was just the precursor to me knowing that I'm just going to get screwed over. And that when it comes down the time of addressing the fastest rate of new cancer in the in the country, in the world, or making sure that a big agriculture company stops losing in court, which side are they going to line up on? And so I just can't do it from a principled standpoint of saying, like, I can't look at you or in the mirror or my kids and say, well, no, that's not going to have any effect, because these people They know what they're doing.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's move into glyphosate. But first, but first, I got a question for you. This is from, from a patron. We have a Patreon account. It's turned it into a community. They get the opportunity to ask every guest a question. It's from Oliver. Why do you think so many politicians are more interested in money and special interests rather than their constituents? In America's progress? Furthermore, what can we do to help remedy this issue in the future?

I think we pretty much covered that. You know, but Oliver's question is a very big, big question because there's many things. I mean, of course, money and special interests. But I think it comes down, you know, Being on this show with you right now is a very different medium than what politics usually is, because people can actually see how I address these issues in a long-form discussion. And I hope they can see my spirit and they can see, like, my heart. Politics isn't set up for that. And so I think that if we had more of this, of being able to understand where somebody comes from, what drives them and motivates them, there'd be less of that. And that's probably what I go back to. What's motivating them truly? Like, what's the why that when everything goes wrong and a donor pulls out or whatever, that's just going to keep them saying, I don't care, I'm doing the right thing, man?

I don't know. I love— I, I'm with you, but I've interviewed probably half of the fucking administration. Before they got elected. Yeah, I was told all kinds of shit on air in front of millions of people. I don't know if any of it's done. In fact, some of it has just gone the complete opposite way, like, like the Maha shit that we were just talking about, which we'll get into at the end of the glyphosate section. But you know, but I, on the other hand, I agree with what you're saying because it's hard to hide and But they did. They found a fucking way, man. They found a way to hide.

That's fair. You know, I think as I look at this as somebody who's new in these things and as I pay attention and watch the short reels and the quick news clips that come up from politicians, and you realize that like when you know, when you're in it, when you're deep in it, you understand, well, hold on, you just took this vote, but you're saying this thing or you're speaking to this group. And, you know, so many times politicians will just either they don't go face their constituents or they come in, they talk, and they leave immediately without having to talk to them. That happens so much. So that's maybe more of my long-form point is just that, you know, if you're unwilling to have the deep, long discussions and own up to things that you've messed up on, even because I don't think any of us would say, Look, if you've learned and you admit that, that you're beyond repair, but none of these people are saying they did anything wrong. They're not saying they took a wrong vote, not saying they should do this differently. But to Oliver's question, I think that's the question of our democracy in many ways.

It's like, okay, well, why do they do this? Look at all the institutional capture. Look at all the money that they're being offered. Look at the perks that they're getting. We've incentivized the wrong things. Accountability needs to be what's incentivized. I don't know exactly how to do that, but it's something that's on my mind.

I think we need people that will stand up to politicians too, and I understand why you wouldn't. And but there are people that can. And I think that people think that politicians have a lot more power than they actually do. Yeah. In fact, I just got a cease and desist from a congressman not long ago, and who said he was going to fucking sue me. And so I did a rebuttal video. I talked to my attorney. Turns out we could actually sue his ass, and maybe we should.

Yeah.

But I don't like getting into litigation and all this shit, but I wanted to prove a point. I'm not going to let a fucking congressman or any politician push me around. No fucking way. Could you imagine letting another man push you around in front of your fucking kids? Nuh-uh, buddy. And more people need to take that stance and be like, fuck you, cease and desist. You don't want me to talk?

Fuck off.

You won't silence me, and I dare you to fucking sue me. Do it. I fucking dare you.

That's what you said about—

you know what I mean? And what happened? Not a damn thing. I'm still here. I'm still doing the same show, still talking about the same fucking things. And I did that because I wanted to set an example and show people these fuckers aren't as powerful as you think they are. They're just pieces of shit. That's all they are. Treat them like— like, it just— man, I'm getting, I'm getting, I'm getting angry. I'm losing my words. But it just—

but that—

I'm serious, you know what I mean? And it did, it proved. It's like, look at that.

No, call— calling the bluff in that. And it's like, why pull that ripcord if you're not going to try to follow all the way through with it, or if you don't know what you're doing? And I think going back to like citizens and voters, it's like, again, people should be up in arms about what's going on. You know, I've talked to voters about what Elon Musk uncovered with all of the Doge stuff, and then that our representatives are voting to put it right back in the budget. It's like, like—

Were they all rah-rah about it?

They were all there. And, you know, this is like a conundrum I have because I would say I don't, I don't, I'm not like that. Like, I don't, I don't get how you could rah-rah for somebody. Like, I have like this fear of feeling like an imposter all the time about things. Like, I don't want to get into a subject I don't know a lot about. I don't want to, you know, get out over my skis on things. And so when I see people doing things like this where they're like, oh, we're so in favor of cutting all this waste in Doge, and then when it comes time to it and the party leadership says, no, you need to have it in there, it's like, I don't know what— I don't know how you could do that. Like, that isn't a part of my genetic pool.

They sold their soul.

Yeah. So I don't— I don't get it. And even as you were talking about, I'm thinking about it. I'm just like, how do you get it?

Like, we have a federal government that's sending $87 million a week in cash to the Taliban. Yeah, that's where that flag came from. The guy that broke that, he was an Afghan-American and worked in Army intelligence, recovered that in Kabul from the Taliban fucking burning it.

Yeah.

And then came here on the show, gave it to me, and told everybody that we're funding— that was like 2 or 3 years ago. Yeah, still funding them.

You know, I was reading something—

fought them for over 20 years. Me personally spent 14 years of my life in and out of those countries only to fund them as soon as— before it was over. You know, that's our federal government. That's where we are. A lot of people don't realize how much outdated banking is costing them. Monthly fees, overdraft charges, and minimum balances that punish you for not having enough. That's how traditional banks have worked for years. Chime is built differently. It's fee-free, mobile-first banking designed for everyday people, not just the 1%. Looking at what Chime offers, I think about how much easier it would have made things earlier in my life. With Chime, you can get paid up to 2 days early with direct deposit and use MyPay to access up to $500 of your own paycheck when you need it without the usual penalties. And the new Chime card is a standout. It lets you build credit history using your own money while earning 1.5% cash back on eligible purchases when you have qualifying direct deposits. No annual fees, no interest, no gimmicks. Add in a savings APY that's 7 times higher than traditional banks and 24/7 customer support from real people.

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You know, my great-grandpa when his brother was off in World War I and then, and then that ended. And then during World War II, my great-grandpa was a bit older. He would actually sign up locally to teach veterans how to farm when they came back from World War II. And that just got me interested in like, what was it like back then for veterans coming home? Because they saw some just terrible things. And I couldn't believe the extent of the programs that were in place to help them. Well, let's just talk about farm, learn how to farm, apprentice paid, buy a farm. We created thousands of farmers after World War II with our troops that came home. And then I look at what's happened to my friends that came home and they're just dropped in. And then we see like some of the highest suicide rates I think it's under farmers now.

Yeah, I think farmers has the highest rate now.

But I talk to people in Iowa all the time. It's like, look, in that time that we've lost 10,000 family farms in Iowa over the past 20 years— we lost 10,000 of them— the suicide rate amongst our farmers went up 50%. And let me tell you, I don't know of any other politician in Iowa that's talking about it but me. None. 50— went up 50% in the last 20 years.

Holy shit.

And so my message to the people of Iowa is do not get distracted away from the things that actually matter, that really matter. Your neighbors dying in that way, your veterans dying in that way, all while we're being distracted by this, you know, tweak in a regulation or here we're going to get a little bit lower tax rates. You know, I tell people we have the fastest rate of new cancer in the history of human civilization, and our kids are leaving our state faster than 46 other states. If your kids are leaving and your people are dying, you're not winning. That's not winning. And so I look at my campaign, the 4 things, and those 2 things are 2 of the top things that I'm focused on. And what dumbfounds me is that I'm not joined by a chorus of people that are just like— of politicians that are just like, Yes, finally, we've been waiting for somebody else to talk about this because they're not talking about it. You know, when I found out that Iowa's kids are leaving the state at a rate faster than 46 other states, I found that out because I was curious as to what our rate was.

And I started looking it up. I found out in 2025, an extensive study was done on this. And I had— I have actually had politicians in the state reach out to me and say, where did you get that information? I'm like, it's publicly available and it maybe is the number one stat you could possibly track as an elected official. Are the people that are growing up here wanting to stay or leave? And I'm having to bring this up in this way, which I'm happy to do, but it's like we need people to focus on the big issues. And that's the reason I'm running.

I mean, They don't know because they're spending all their time hanging out with lobbyists.

That's—

yeah, it's the truth. It's funny, but like, it's, it's real. They don't give a fuck. Like, all they care about is hanging out with lobbyists so they can enrich themselves. This is— that's, that's it.

This is why I go— I, I— something as simple as like knowing who put something into a piece of legislation, because I know it's not the legislators. I know this stuff's not coming from them. This stuff is written far too specifically. It's coming from industry. And that's the cozy relationship. I guess something that surprised me being in this, maybe more than anything— I don't know if more than anything, but it's a big surprise— is how little research you have to do to become a very informed politician, like at the top 1%. How much you have to care to get away from the talking points of one party or the other and do your own research. Some of the things we're going to talk about with glyphosate, you know, I can't believe that they're just not on billboards everywhere. I mean, it's so egregious of what's happened. And but when I— let me go into this a little bit. When, when I first was talking about these pesticides, I've been following glyphosate for years. Part of the reason was my dad was a 28-year crop consultant in Iowa, and so his job was to go into a field, inspect for pests, weeds, bugs, fungus, things like that, and then write a report and send it to the farmer to say, here's what you should apply, what chemicals you should apply, because that's just what they, what they do, what they did.

And then you fast forward to about 5, 6 years ago, my dad gets diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the exact type of cancer that's implicated in all of these Roundup lawsuits.

Holy shit, man.

And so I'm looking at this from the standpoint of like— and I think you could probably tell already talking to me, like, I, I hope I care about this stuff. Like, I really do. And so when I'm thinking about my own dad, it's like, How, how much did that shorten his lifespan? He's in remission, but how many fewer days do I get with my dad? And the amount of funerals that I see for people that are dying in their 60s when their parents lived to be 80, there's a generational wisdom that's being completely lost. And so when you talk about all these things that like are going on in the world, and in D.C. and the government, where our money's going, all these things. It's like there's not something more important than human life. And when we're willing to turn our head away from that to protect industry, I mean, like, it's time for revolt, basically. And that's like, you know, with my campaign, that's like, you know, like I said, I've been told many times, I actually was told sitting Gosh, I was meeting with a high— well, with an elected official in Washington, D.C. once.

This is 6, 8 months ago. And in that meeting, I thought he was kind of on the same page with me on some of these things. And I think he is to some extent. But people usually don't hear somebody talk about it with like the passion or the interests that I have. I got done talking about what's going on in my state from a cancer standpoint, and he literally said, if you say these things on the campaign trail, they will effing kill you. And I laughed. I just laughed. But I looked around at the people with him. They were laughing. And I look, that could be figurative, of course, likely. But they know, they know the power these lobbies have. And so when you look at what's at stake is the life of my people, you know, like when you go into a gas station in Iowa, and you see a collection jar for a kid with leukemia, or maybe 2 or 3 now. And all the while, you'll hear a politician say something like, in Iowa, they say this all the time. Well, we need to figure out what's causing it. We don't know what's causing it.

What's causing the cancer rate.

Can't figure it out.

Can't figure it out. And one thing that he mentioned, and I kept hearing this, and again, like, it was being spouted off without any research done to it. And I thought, well, what's the situation here? Is it— they kept saying, um, well, yeah, we have one of the highest levels of radon in the country. And what I looked into this, I was like, well, what's the truth to this? And it's like, well, first off, Radon was, was deposited here by glaciers. Glacial activity ground this down and spread it out across the state. That's where it came from. So thousands of years we've had this. In the past 30 years, we've had a hockey stick-like graph on cancer rates in our state. And so this is part of what I'm fighting against. And I have to continue to say this. This is not about farmers, meaning like I'm not against farmers. I am one of them. I love them. They're my neighbors and family. And they're getting cancer. This is about large agriculture conglomerates lying to their customers and to the people about the safety of their products and getting away with it.

I mean, cancer isn't even an organic disease, so it would have to be caused by something that's not organic to Earth. Glyphosate. Gee, I wonder. Let's—

So oftentimes this, this conversation goes like to glyphosate. But I will just say to farmers that are my friends as well, like, you will— they all know these companies are extorting them financially. They know it. They watch what's happening. They watch that they're getting charged more than what these same companies charge a foreign farmer in a foreign country. They know that every time there's an increase in commodity prices, their input costs are going to go up. That farm bankruptcies increased by 70% in Iowa last year, and John Deere raised their prices by 5%. And they know that truth, that they're just being extracted from. What I'm trying to bring a voice to is this idea that they're also lying to you. And they know they're lying to you. We have their documents that say and show that they're lying to you.

How are they lying? What specifically are they lying about?

The safety of the products that they, that they don't— I mean, that they don't believe it causes cancer. So let me take a step back here and just talk about agrochemicals for a minute. You know, something that would be very interesting to know about glyphosate is from the traditional metrics that have been tracked for pesticides. And, you know, people talk about pesticides. Pesticides is a blanket term, and that's— it includes herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, like different products that kill pests. And pests are defined not just as like a bug, but weeds and bugs and fungus, things like that. Glyphosate, from an acute toxicity standpoint of like, if you get it on you, is going to hurt you, is one of the safest we have. Like one of the safest.

Are you serious?

Yes. From acute toxicity. When you look at other chemicals and I've talked about a chemical a lot that's called paraquat. Paraquat, you've probably heard of this. You know, in the '70s and '80s, it was used to burn down marijuana fields in the war on drugs. Also, you can, if anybody is interested in learning more about paraquat, you can read about the Japanese paraquat poisonings where somebody is putting a very small amount into bottles at vending machines and the people would drink it and die 48, 52 hours later.

Holy shit.

Paraquat. Is so toxic that it is actually used in research settings to induce Parkinson's in rats and mice. It actually interacts with oxygen within the plant to create something that's called superoxide, basically a highly unstable form of oxygen. And then I'm going to simplify this, but basically it burns it from the inside out. It is a product that if you apply onto a plant, in a matter of hours It's destroyed. It is unbelievably toxic. I say that to just bring up this point. When we talk about this issue, we're going to get into the issue of agency capture of our government because Paraquat was actually originally formulated by Syngenta, the Chinese— now Chinese-owned company. Syngenta Sells this product still in the country of China, bans it. They won't even allow it to be sold in the country of the— that owns the company. 50 countries ban this product. If you want to spray this product as a farmer, as an applicator, here's all you need to do. You have to take an applicator's class. Which is an online class that lasts between 30 and 60 minutes, and you can go buy and use this product.

There have been stories about people in medical journals that have gotten through spraying for crops, have gotten enough on their skin that they literally just died from topical exposure.

Yeah.

And it does the same thing in our body. What it does is it enters in and it, it actually accumulates in the lungs. It reacts with oxygen, and then it starts to create what's called superoxide. And it will— I'm using a simple term— burn you from the inside out. It'll just start to kill you. And long-term exposure at lower doses gives you a 2.5 times more likelihood of getting Parkinson's. Because the neurons in your brain, the dopamine neurons that operate with— they operate with a lot of oxygen. It starts to kill those because it's looking for oxygen. We know all this data. This is like I said, they use it in, in laboratories to create Parkinson's, and it's still legal to be sprayed. It's still used on hundreds of thousands of acres in Iowa alone. So we talk about the safety of products and whether or not our agencies are there to, like, protect us. They are not. They've been captured. And I have sympathy for farmers because they're in this cycle where they're using products and they're trying to fight weeds and all of these things, and they are operating on razor-thin margins where the opportunity to try some other method of farming is almost nonexistent.

And so many of these people just feel stuck with that. Damn. So Paraquat is one of the most poisonous substances, literally. You know, one, if you had a spoon and you just had enough to cover the tip of the spoon and you, and you ingested it, you'd die. And we have tremendous amounts of evidence on this. And so when I get to glyphosate, you know, often I'll see people on X or somewhere saying like, if you think glyphosate's bad, what about this? What about paracord? I'm like, I understand that. But when you get to glyphosate, there's so much that's being obscured about the truth of it and what's happening with it. Just to the basic point of the two separate types, that is traditional glyphosate, the molecule that's pure, and the formulated glyphosate-based herbicides. These are the ones that are up to 50 times more toxic. The EPA does not require the registrant testing on these, just on the molecule, on the traditional glyphosate. So when the EU banned our version of glyphosate, They did it because the formulation was so toxic. It actually— pure glyphosate has trouble getting into your bloodstream without the surfactants that I mentioned earlier.

But when you formulate it specifically to penetrate the dermis of a plant, it'll do the same thing to your skin. 30% of what's on your skin will enter your bloodstream. 10% of your cardiac output goes into your bone marrow. And in bone marrow, it disrupts the cell replication cycle. But here's something that I, I haven't yet talked about, and I— what— that I want your listeners to understand is that many people who avoid products that could have glyphosate in them, residues of glyphosate, that eat organic diets and all these things, they'll still show up that they have glyphosate in their urine. And the reason glyphosate is, is so talked about and so dangerous is because it's the most widely used herbicide in the history of the world. It's used everywhere, everywhere, not just on ag applications. Consumers buy it at Home Depot. Glyphosate is a chelator. It's looking to bind. It's actually one of the most powerful chelators, meaning I won't, I won't go deep into that, but it's looking to bind to things. What does it bind most closely to? What does it grab onto? Calcium. So there's actually papers coming out now that are, that are saying, they're theorizing that the reason this is happening— by the way, 1983, Monsanto did a study, a rat study, that they did not ever publish publicly, but the EPA had and the EPA referenced.

So we know basically what's in it. And in that study in 1983, they were testing where does glyphosate stay the longest. What tissues? And where it stayed the longest was bone. And what the— what the thought is now is that the reason is glyphosate is actually going into your bone marrow. It's attaching to calcium in your bones and it's creating basically a repository of glyphosate on a slow release cycle. And so when you're releasing it into the bone marrow on a slow release cycle like that and you're disrupting the cell replication cycle, because this is how cancer starts, is that you damage the DNA and we know glyphosate is genotoxic. We know this, that it's creating like a bank of glyphosate in there. And that's why people who have stopped eating this stuff for a long time will have that continue to come out in their urine. And so what's happening with this is that we know that it causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. We have a ton of data and evidence that it's genotoxic and that the cancer that's going to come out of this is non-Hodgkin's lymphoma primarily. But when the EPA doesn't even require you to test— now, for the people out there that are going to challenge me on this, they don't require you to do the long-form chronic toxicity tests on the glyphosate-based herbicides, the ones that are formulated that are way more toxic.

They require that just on the product. And this is how so much of this is obscured. You can pull out study after study that will show that this product pure isn't— it doesn't have a high-risk profile, which, by the way, most of those are industry studies. We know this. Like the EPA or the EU banned this version of glyphosate. The industry submitted 1,500 studies, many of them they wouldn't even allow publicly to be released. But they're all industry studies. And so the big difference between the EU's determination on the safety and the EPA's was 3 primary things. Number 1, the EU used— the EU used glyphosate-based herbicides, the more toxic version that everybody's actually using. Nobody's spraying pure glyphosate. Number 2, they looked at dose-dependent exposure. So not just like, what's the overall cancer rate? And then there was one other category that they looked at that differentiated greatly. It's slipping my mind right now. But what the EU came to was that, yes, this is, this is a probable carcinogen, and they have far lower levels that are allowed in their bread, far lower levels allowed in their food. So the agencies have been captured.

And now we are facing a situation where in Iowa there's between 6 and 9 agriculture chemicals within the wells in our state, where it's everywhere.

Is it even possible to get rid of it?

Yeah, it is. You know, you know, here's the— here's— I had somebody once tell me recently, he's like, hey, you need to be more positive because I I mean, out of the wells.

Yeah, well, can you get it out of there? Can it be—

you know, I haven't done the research on wells. In soil, yes. So like glyphosate will stay in soil for a very long time. However, there are products, there are very natural products. It's broken down by bifidobacteria. Very interesting. Just on, on the— or not bifidobacteria, lactobacillus bacteria breaks it down. And so we have amazing scientists and researchers that are helping to develop better products, but we have such a captured agency structure that oftentimes they're not able to get to market. Many times farmers have been lied to to say that, like, people that think glyphosate is bad are, you know, liberals hate farmers and all these things when we're the exact opposite. So as far as, you know, I don't know that, but I do know we can get it out of the ground. There's some really interesting studies that have been done on that, and you can get 80 to 90% of it within 7 months using certain natural products. You know, if I could close on, on the glyphosate piece on one thing, it would be just to help people understand in this debate that's going on right now all over about what is happening with residual levels in our food.

You know, Ron DeSantis just recently had that his Surgeon General released the findings of glyphosate in bread. And when you talk to people that are in the industry and there's so many of these paid people that are on social media, on X, that are just like out there to put out this information defending Monsanto, defending Bayer, defending glyphosate, defending what they are saying is like agriculture when it's— when that's not what they're doing. They're not defending agriculture. Because they're also exploiting our farmers. You know, when you— what they often talk about is that, yes, but the exposure levels are so low, they're way below the tolerance levels that are allowed. And this is something that really infuriated me as I dug deep into this. When you look at tolerance levels that are allowed in food products, You think that when you hear this, it's like, okay, well, if in wheat 5 parts per million are allowed in wheat, you think, okay, well, that must be a level that's been deemed to be like safe, because if you have more than that, you can actually be illegal to sell the product. You can't sell it. It's, it's been considered adulterated.

Hmm. And so I was looking into this and what I found out was this. That level can be changed by the industry if they petition the EPA. So for instance, in the 1990s, the allowable level of glyphosate on oats was 0.1 parts per million. When the industry started moving to desiccation, spraying this product to kill the plant at the end of the growing cycle, when they started to change the desiccation, they lobbied the EPA to change how much is allowed on oats. And remember, if you had over 0.1 parts per million in the '90s, it was illegal to sell the product of oats. They lobbied and got a 20,000% increase.

Holy shit.

200 times what was previously allowed was now allowed. And here's why: because that's what they needed to be able to use the product to spray at the end of the growing cycle. So they went and said, what do we need this to be allowed at? How much glyphosate is actually on the product after we do this desiccation process? And that's what we need to petition the EPA to get. And Monsanto did that and they got it. And so the upper level of this, you see the common question would be like, okay, well, what's the limit? Well, they use what's a reference dose modeling. Basically, The limit is when it gets to a point where they've determined that if it goes higher and there's a buffer there, if it goes higher, it'll start causing organ damage.

Holy shit, man.

So there's a blank check to just say, hey, now it's 5 parts per million allowed on wheat. But if we have a new practice that's going to increase that, we'll just petition the government and get them to go to 10 parts per million. Even though they just told us that if you're above 5, it's illegal to sell because it's not safe, it's captured. And so the industry is running the show. And the more people dig into this, the more you're going to realize that we are being lied to and misled. And part of my mission in this is not just to become a governor, it's to give a voice to these issues, to people who are talking about them. And have other people that aren't paying attention to this realize, just like the medical establishment captured us during COVID just like many— so many of the other lies we've seen our government do, we have big business running the show at the detriment of the health of our people.

I mean, before we end on glyphosate, what do you think about this executive order, 18th of February invoking the Defense Production Act to boost domestic glyphosate production critical to national security. Love how they threw that in there. Section 3 of the order confers all immunity provided for in Section 707 of the act to domestic producers. The act states no person shall be held liable for any act resulting from compliance with the order. Bayer is the only domestic producer. EWG President Ken Cook, in quotes, "Trump just gave Bayer a license to poison people." RFK Jr., who won a $289 million verdict against Monsanto, is an attorney, endorsed the order, claiming it's about national security. Here's some maps for you. We're going to put these up on screen. This is a map of the highest concentrated states of glyphosate. Guess what number 1 is?

Not anything I'm proud of.

Iowa. Here is another map. We're going to put this on screen too. This is a concentration of cancer. What states have the highest concentration of cancer? Guess what state that is, Sean?

You're saying things that are going to get me very upset.

Iowa. So, okay, so there's those. Now, since, since we're all fucking concerned about national security here, in 2025 alone, 618,000 people died of cancer in the United States. Now, isn't that a fucking national security concern? RFK, President Trump, isn't that a fucking national security concern? I mean, I don't know what fucking scientists you guys are talking to, but here's the evidence. I know it's fucking mind-blowing, right? It's that simple. We just fucking solved the problem. But, you know, but national security. What the fuck? Like, what's more, 618,000 people died in 2025. And we're going on about a fentanyl crisis.

Yeah.

Where 100,000 people died. This is over 6 fucking times worse than the fentanyl crisis. And I'm all about stopping the fentanyl crisis. Let's get fucking real here.

Yeah.

What, so what is the national security concern? Do you know?

I don't know the national se— I mean, look, if you wanna talk about specifically the national security concern, the only thing that would ever make sense to me in this is that we're about to go to war. That would be it, is that we're about to go to war and that they say that if we disrupt this and the import of it, that we're going to disrupt the food production of the country. But I've heard nothing about that. Let me just say, you know, I hate the politics of these things because when that came out, I was sitting at my house and it just popped up and I said, what is this? Because you have to understand, Like, I've been fighting these things. Like, I've read the Monsanto cases when they're in court, hundreds and hundreds of pages, because I actually care about it. I want to know the arguments. I want to know how does a jury keep finding them guilty. And I do know how they keep finding them guilty, and they are guilty. I've been talking to people in my own state about not passing these pesticide immunity bills, even people that have as their constituency the companies and just saying like, look, here's what's happening.

They're lying to us and I can prove this. I know how they're lying. And I've been— I have came out as a part of my campaign to not put my head in the sand and deny the truth that's in front of me of what's going on. So that's the backdrop of which I read this. And, you know, the most common thing I'm reading about it is that it doesn't provide product liability immunity. That's a complete lie. There's nothing in the executive order, the Defense Production Act, or 707 that excludes product liability. If the order from the USDA, which by the way, this is going to be managed by the USDA, is to maintain full production and availability of the product that they're ordered to do this, they'll use the same type of defenses that were used by Monsanto, by the way, when they created Agent Orange and poisoned so many people. The government in that case, now this was defense, I get that in the sense of we're at war, but we invoked the Defense Production Act. But in that case, when they were using Agent Orange and there's so many harms from it, 'cause it was a very nasty, nasty chemical, the government ended up paying $50 billion to people hurt by it while the companies paid about $180 million.

My bigger fear about this is that what we've just done is we have offloaded liability onto the taxpayer. And so right when this came out, and this is again about me not being a politician, I voiced opposition to it. And it's not a popular thing to do, but when it comes to taking a stand for the right thing, you have to do it. And that could have negative repercussions for me, for sure. But none would be as bad as what you're saying about me going along with this. Jordan Peterson said something I thought was very deep. He said, when you have something to say, silence is a lie. And that's really difficult in politics. Because I think in something like this, the easiest thing for me to do would be to not immediately put out a tweet saying that— my tweet basically said this: there's no potential ban on glyphosate, there's no pending ban on glyphosate, there's no pending shortage of glyphosate. There are only pending lawsuits of Americans who have been harmed by this product. This must be reversed. And so when I look at this, And I hear all these people saying it doesn't provide them.

Absolutely, it'll provide immunity. The word is used right in it. That's on purpose. When they go to court after they invoke the Defense Production Act, when Bayer goes to court on new cases, 'cause they're still not putting a cancer warning on the label, if they just put a cancer warning on the label, future cases would be null and void because the entire thing is about failure to warn. That's all they have to do is admit culpability. And what will that do? It'll create a cascade effect of people that jump into lawsuits because, well, now you're admitting it. And so they can't, to save face, instead of doing the right thing, when they go to court in the future, they will hold a piece of paper that says, which has precedent, that courts will grant immunity citing the DPA. They'll hold that and say, we were ordered to do this. We didn't have a choice. The safety of the product is assumed in the order, basically. So, you know, my, my belief, and, you know, without going too far into this, is that I believe— and I might be naive on this, look, you hold me accountable— but I want Donald Trump to know the truth about this.

I want him to understand that there's lobbyists that are doing something, trying to get him to do something, doing something that will end up harming the people that he cares about and loves. I mean, there's a big talk about his— how much he loves Iowa. And I think that, look, I would love to get an audience with the guy. And just say, this is what's happening in our state, and these are what these lobbying groups are doing. But I came out right after that was released that same night before I— I mean, I had to do a lot more research on it to understand how bad it really was. But I came out and said, this has to be reversed. And that, as I told you before, you don't need immunity for a safe product. The idea that the courts are coming to the wrong decision is completely wrong. Bayer's paid out tens of billions of dollars They've settled over 100,000 cases, and they have the best attorneys in the world. They know what they're doing. They understand this. Immunity is the wrong way. Like, immunity for me— like, you want the Vaccine Immunity Act caused tremendous issues.

This will cause tremendous issues from a health standpoint as well.

I mean, we just pulled the map up.

This is what we're living in.

It's not a fucking coincidence.

No. You guys—

concentration of glyphosate, highest concentration of cancer.

Yep. Yep. That's why I'm running—

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With my code SRS, you can grab Dream for 50% off. Try it today. All right, Zach, we're having a little discussion out there about 30 seconds ago about how nobody in Iowa is talking about the cancer crisis, glyphosate. Or what was the other one? Polyquat?

Paraquat.

Paraquat. Nobody's talking about it. None of the senators, none of the congressmen, none of the people running for— you're the only one talking about it.

Yeah.

You know, and, and I'm just going to summarize it. We don't have to rehash it all, but I said, yeah, that's because nobody— they can't talk about it. We just got done talking about the lobbies. They can't talk about it.

Yeah.

And, and they don't give a shit. And it's— I think that's where people are in disbelief that the human being that they elected into power doesn't give a shit about them. I don't think that's computing in people's brains, that they don't care. They don't care about you. They care about who's lobbying them, who's telling them what to do. Getting real, they justify it in their mind. Yeah, you know, they've— they've— they— as all human beings do, every time we're doing something we shouldn't be doing, you always go through, well, you know, it's— it's me— it's the mental gymnastics that people will do to justify shit that they shouldn't be doing in their head is fucking amazing.

Yeah.

You know, and we've all done it, but this is just— it's another level of evil, you know, that they're just choosing—

just choosing to believe the lie. I guess a choice to believe the lie, because if you're going to choose to believe a lobbyist on something this important and not be willing to go as deep as I have or other people, you know, this is one thing that I've loved about Bobby Kennedy is that, you know, there's this thought all the time about, you know, if you're elected, if you're in a position of authority, what you should be doing is getting experts around you. And delegating to these experts. But the experts brought us the COVID response that we had. And what you have to be willing to do is say, I'm not delegating the most important things. I need to be— I need to have the proper amount of knowledge to make the right decision on these issues. So, so when Bobby's talking about vaccines. He understands the situation. You're not going to bring some expert in that is completely counter to him when he knows the truth about what's happening. But when you say this, that the politicians aren't talking about this, it's true. It's very true. I mean, right now, on a political sense, I'm yelling into a void.

But on a voter sense, I can't go to a room. You know, we've had a couple, uh, town halls of the past week. One was over 150 people showed up, another one was close to 80, in these, in, you know, small, smaller restaurants, packed house. And when I get to the fourth point about what my campaign's about, which is stopping the cancer crisis in my state, and I talk about what's going on with big companies lying to us about the safety of their products 80, 90% of the heads in the audience are nodding. These are Republicans. The voters know what's going on. The problem is there hasn't been—

why do you say it's just Republicans?

What do you mean?

You don't think Democrats give a shit about cancer?

I just mean in this room it's Republicans. So no, this— no, just to clear, in this— in my rooms, I'm talking to Republicans in the primary. And so traditionally Republicans are the ones that are not going against what some of these big companies are saying. But I'm saying the voters, they know, they know what's going on. And yes, the beauty of, of, of what I am running on and the hope that I am running on, whether it's keeping our kids in the state or saving our family farms or making our education system number one or saving the cancer— solving the cancer crisis— is that these are bipartisan issues. I have people comment on X and things like this. That are, you know, criticizing Iowa Democrats for saying, how do we let a Republican beat us to the punch on this? How do we do that? And it's both sides on the political side, on the elected side of politicians. Both sides have been silent on this completely. And then they'll give excuses like alcohol rates, or they'll give excuses like radon, or they'll say it's— we need to have a greater tax on cigarettes. It's like this is— this is— this is happening right now in Iowa.

And I'm like saying to people, cigarettes have an inelastic demand curve, meaning when you tax cigarettes, you're just taking more money because they're addictive product and they're going to continue using them. Meanwhile, Nevada has one of the highest smoking rates in the United States and one of the lowest cancer rates. This is about, again, coming back to being willing to tell the truth. Even if it means somebody tells me that they're going to destroy me. It means they're going to come out and attack me or my family or whatever it is. This is what I knew I was getting into. It's why this conversation is so important, because the voters are talking about this. The people are talking about it. You know, right now in Iowa, we have the world's largest nitrate removal system on our water supply in Des Moines, meaning from The runoff that comes off of farm fields— I could talk deeply about what's happening there— but the nitrogen that's ending up from fertilizer in our streams and rivers is getting to our major population center. And it's so much that we have the largest one in the world to remove nitrates.

And often it can't keep up, meaning they have to like put notices in that you can't water your lawn because you're stressing the system too much because we can't filter these chemicals out fast enough.

Are you serious?

Yes, this is— they have them last summer in Iowa, you know. Wow.

I mean, in what is—

what are—

what is the state placed population-wise? It's not a densely populated state. It's not like it's over— it's not like Florida where they're worried about flushing the fucking toilets because so many people are moving there and they're just destroying all the farmland there and turning it into condos and apartments. It's crazy, you know. But there— but Iowa isn't like that. You don't have a house 5 feet from another house, 5 feet from another house, you know what I mean? It's, it's, it's spread out.

It is.

It's very lowly dense. What do you know what it is? I'll bet it's in the lowest, but it's very low population density in Iowa.

I mean, our population's 3, just around 3 million, um, and I don't know what the density though is, but it's very, it's very sparsely populated.

So that's what I'm saying. And they have the largest water treatment plant to take what? Nitrate?

What did you just say? Nitrate. Nitrogen fertilizer out.

Like, look at that shit, man.

You know, it's not even that many people using the fucking water.

You have the biggest one in the world.

Yeah.

And they can't keep up. That's insane.

They can't keep up.

That's how many fucking chemicals are getting dumped in.

We actually had this winter So what happens is— now, look, again, when I look at this, I don't look at it from the standpoint of like farmers are purposefully doing these things. A lot of times I look at these associations that know better and they know what's going on and they give cover. But like in Iowa, what's happened to cause this? Is that one of the technologies that farmers have used most recently to increase yield has been field tiling. So 3 feet under the ground or so, there's a perforated pipe. It takes— basically what happens when you have a really wet season, a lot of rain will come down, the water table will rise. When the water table rises, these— it moves into waterways, areas that water goes into, and these tiles, these pipes, bring the water out and daylight it, dump it directly into a stream. And so over the past 20 years, we've started what's called pattern tiling, which is like we are putting these corrugated tubes all over the fields, 10 and 20-foot separation, and it's to make sure that the land is farmable. So it's draining water. What's happening there is that when you have a really wet season, the water table rises and you have anhydrous ammonia, you have nitrogen that's been applied to the field and it rains, well, it can't soak down into the soil to purify.

So it goes directly into these tiles and the tiles drain directly into the streams and the streams drain directly into what in Iowa is the Raccoon River is one of them. The Raccoon River is either the most or the second most polluted tributary in the United States. States. Wow.

Wow.

And so when I look at this, I, I just say people are probably swimming, tubing, all kinds of shit. We have so many lakes that, that you— that there's notices on signs that you may— you can't swim in them.

Are you— because of the, because of the chemicals?

There's so, there's, there's so many products in there.

Holy shit.

You could— your listeners can go on and Google this and you'll find stories of like a woman— this is last year, maybe 2 years ago— who didn't know that jumped in and her skin got all red like it was just, you know, burning. Well, we have lakes in Iowa with such high levels of nitrates and products that swimming is barred in them. In Iowa, the Eden of the United States. What people— this is what I go back to. I think when people look at Iowa, they think of like the Norman Rockwell painting of like the cows on the hill and you have this and the beautiful stream and, you know, When General Albert Lee was coming through Iowa, when they're first on their trek to going up, they're actually going up the Des Moines River. When he was coming through Iowa, he actually said that in all of his travels, and mind you, he'd been all over the country at this point, he'd never seen a place as beautiful as this. That's what we came from. Now Iowa is the most terraformed place, I believe, on the face of the earth. Meaning we've done more to our landscape.

So when I talk about the water quality issue, it's a hot button issue. But I've talked to developers in Des Moines who have said, I can't even sell a house if I don't pre-install a reverse osmosis system in here. And I think when I talk about this in the campaign, I just get back to this. I believe that Iowa families are just looking for something that they can count on. Clean water is one of them. Having a safe community is another one. An education system that's not bottom half. Like, these are the common things that people are just looking for. And it's not too much to ask that your government focuses on giving you— your government focuses on making sure things that you should just be able to count on are there. Here's one thing I'll tell you about the, the nitrate removal system. So it'll remove— I don't even know the exact number of how many pounds of, of nitrogen. Up until recently, after they removed it, they just dumped it back in the river.

Get the fuck out of here. You know, I'm serious.

I'm serious. They now have some biological methods to where it'll break down the products, but the way to get rid of it was to put it back in the river. So again, we have to have clean water in our state. We have to have good education. Our farmers have to be able to make money and not be extorted. And I believe that one of my goals, I've said to people, is that Look, over 20 years we've lost 10,000 family farms. There's no term limits on the governor of Iowa. And I made it very clear, like, this is not what I want to do for my life, but I want to make it so there's 10,000 new family farms in the state, or that by the end of my second term, the majority of the food served in Iowa schools actually comes from our state. Common sense things that if we had our eye on the ball, We'd say this is just good to do. We should employ our people supporting our kids to grow their food. But it hasn't. 95% is imported and it's garbage. Like, we know what— how many other people are running in the primary?

There's 5 people running in it.

5 people?

Yeah.

Because as of this recording today, Polly Market. Are you familiar with Polly Market? They give you a 25% chance of winning Iowa governor Republican primary on June 2nd.

We're just getting started.

That's pretty good. I think it was 6%, then you went on Tucker and it went up.

And you know, this is all about getting a message out.

Why do you think Polly Market jumped that much?

I mean, Nobody knows who I am.

What's resonating with you?

I think the number one thing is nobody knows who I am. I've never ran for office. So one of the people on there, the only reason that they're as high as they are is because they have and they've been elected and they have name recognition. But I know that the message that we're putting forward about putting Iowa first, about saving our family farms, the things I just mentioned, I know those things resonate. I don't need a poll to tell me they resonate. I hear it from my neighbors. Like, so often when I'm talking to them, they're talking about issues in private that politicians aren't talking about in public. They just— they're not talking about them. You go to the cafe and you lean in and you hear what the farmers are talking about. It's the things I'm talking about. The problem is they felt like they haven't had anybody, I believe— I'm not going to speak for them, but this is how I felt— that there's nobody out there that's willing to give them a voice. This one to say we shouldn't give a Chinese company millions of dollars of tax breaks paid for by Iowans, that we shouldn't have a data center getting $529 million in property tax abatement, that we shouldn't allow our farmers to be exploited or let hedge funds buy our homes, that Iowa— being an Iowan and living in Iowa means something significant.

And what it means is not about an economy. It means something about culture and who we are as a people. You know, one of the things that I've had to wrestle with in this whole process is coming away from this idea of like libertarian economic thinking, which was very pervasive when I was a kid, when I was growing up, and that the only thing we should care about is what the market says is good. The market will just determine it. And I don't like— I don't know how you could look back on what's happened to our country, to our culture, to the hollowing out of our communities. I mean, look, even something as simple as in these small towns, we've always had these country food stores. Well, they're going out of business. And what's coming in? Dollar General. And who is the largest shareholder of Dollar General? BlackRock. So the money that used to circulate within my small community because the owner of of the grocery store stayed there. And actually, I'm very thankful we do have a Country Foods, but Dollar General set up shop 200 yards away.

The Dow was at 50,000. I don't know what you're complaining about, Zach. The Dow was at 50,000.

Well, my— our communities are not there. Our communities are struggling, like really struggling. And there's the idea that I talked about in the economic thinking. I call it a religion of economic thinking. I think people have been captured by this religion that says like, whatever the market says is best is best. And I'm talking mostly politicians and people in think tanks and all of these things that don't spend time in the community. And I've said something I think people think is kind of radical. It's that, look, I'm going to choose community values over shareholder value every day. Because that's what my great-great-grandfather was here for. That's why he came here. He didn't come here to make some company. And I'm not against business, but the extractive nature of what's happened in business in my state is undeniable. And it's making our state unrecognizable. Just when you look at the 24 million acres of ground that's in crops and us losing 10,000 family farms over 20 years. Like, that's life. That's stories. One of my favorite stories that I talk about this, and I'm bringing this up now because I just mentioned the idea of stories.

Teddy Roosevelt famously said that, "I intend to be a preaching president, to talk about the values of what it means to be an American." And he did. I mean, we got "Man in the Arena" from him. Something that I have to find myself reading a lot just to remind myself. Okay, it's been a lot, lot harder things. When I go out and I talk to people or I'm at an event, I'll start to tell my family history a little bit that I've mentioned to you. There's not one person in the room, usually, that if I didn't go back one or two generations with them in their family story, that we just don't have an almost identical story. Of people who came over here looking to provide a better life and pass something on to their kids. And in our case, that was farmland in a major way. And to create something that they didn't have for themselves and to build their church. We have a shared story. And my hope is to be able to be somebody who's preaching about that. That the fact that more Iowans served in the Civil War per capita than any other state is something to be dang proud of, that we should just like— that should be taught in every single history class in Iowa, that the people who came here before you were courageous, they wanted to build something for you, and they were never going to meet you, and you should be proud of your heritage.

One of my favorite stories on our farm— I'm a pilot, my dad's a pilot, Both my grandpas were pilots. And my grandpa in the 1940s, he bought a Taylorcraft airplane for $700 and great-grandpa mowed a runway in the bean field. And he learned to fly there. And that became his whole profession and career, as I mentioned. And, you know, that took him off the farm. He was the first generation to leave the farm. And he went off and, you know, he worked at Iowa companies as a pilot. He was very good at what he did. He was very proud of what he did. And I think that back then, that was kind of the idea, that take a step away from the farm, try something new. And I'm very thankful for what he did because he provided a life for me and my family and my grandma, who's 93 years old today, who's still living. On his pension and on like what he created for her. So when I look at me coming back full circle, I think about my grandpa like all the time at the farm whose initials were carved in that post.

And just to say, why am I doing this? I'm trying to do something that I hope would make him proud. They'd say, see what's going on in our country, see what's going on in our world. And say, you know, we've got to get back to these roots. So that's my mission.

I think that's a great mission. I think your message is going to resonate with a lot of people. I know it is. Everybody I talk to is worried about this. It doesn't— I mean, I don't even give a shit Republican, Democrat anymore. Like I said, I just want somebody with a spine that's going to stand up for the people. You know, it sounds like you're— you might be that guy. And then—

well, don't endorse me yet. Wait to see what I do.

Oh, I'm not endorsing.

I'm just kidding.

I'm not.

I just heard you talk about the other ones. Let me— let me go out and prove myself. I'm just thankful for you. Let me have this conversation and hopefully bring a voice to people that have felt like they didn't have one.

Best of luck to you.

Thanks, sir.

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