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

24:59Zach Lahn:I'm surprised it's not more than that. Well, that's just for one industry in one sector. I mean, right now in DC, I read that Bayer has spent nine... Bayer has two 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.

25:45Zach Lahn: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, DC 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 going to 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. And just to summarize that, when you talk about this gaslighting of people, what these paid people from these companies continue to say about this is that, oh, these juries aren't scientists.

26:34Zach Lahn:What I tell people is, 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.

27:25Zach Lahn:People don't talk about this, and when the industry people talk about it, 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. Jeez. And then there's emails... Now, has their food production gone down?

28:01Zach Lahn:I'm just curious. No, and 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 over to Europe and eat bread or eat pasta or things like this, and they don't feel sick afterwards. Mm-hmm. 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.

28:43Zach Lahn:So for instance, when the EU was saying this formulation that you use in the United States, we are not going to allow you to use. It's with something called POEAs, polyoxyloethylated talloanines. 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.

29:21Zach Lahn: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.

30:16Zach Lahn:They're putting 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 we sat down here. I mean, was it Rusty Groves, 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.

31:01And he shot me a text and told me about this bill that was getting ready to get signed into law. Yeah. The Rusty Grylls. You saw the clip. Yeah. I think. And so I got that the day they were signed. I'm like, well, shit, I got like 30 minutes. She'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.

31:38Zach Lahn:That's what I saw. I saw your video. But then everybody's texting me saying, oh, don't worry. It's going to come up again. It'll come up again. But it's, these people aren't fucking, they are paying attention. They know what we want, especially the federal government. I mean, country's been pretty loud about a lot of things, and they're just willfully ignoring everything we want and doing whatever the hell they please. It's fucking insane. It's insane. Let me give you an introduction here real quick, Zach. Oh. Should have done this at the beginning. Zach Lane, a sixth generation Iowan. You're a regenerative farmer and businessman.

32:22Running 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 seven children together. And most importantly, you're a Christian.

32:45Zach Lahn:Yeah. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I think as I hear you read that, something that comes to me is that, as you said, most important is 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.

33:46Zach Lahn: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 like 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?

34:34Zach Lahn: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?

35:24Zach Lahn:You know, before I came onto 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. I 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 mean dual citizen of Iowa, I'll give you like, I would love to, but I don't want to get fucking cancer.

36:07I know. I know. You know, and, and, 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'm going to talk about Christianity, the federal government, and state governments. You, 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, is unrepairable. Mm-hmm. And that you would get pushback from Republicans for saying that. Do you, do you believe that?

36:35Zach Lahn:Do I believe it's unrepairable? Yeah. Yeah. I, you know... I do too. This is what, I, this is what, I... I think it's completely fucking gone. Look, 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's run by unelected people, and we don't know who they are. And so, if you're in a republic... I think we're figuring out who they are.

37:21Zach Lahn: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 intern 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 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?

37:58Zach Lahn: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. To me, it's beyond repair. I think so too. So much so that less than five congressmen, less than five people in federal politics altogether, I think, are true to their constituents, true to their word. And 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.

38:40We 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?

38:53Zach Lahn:Yeah, I've heard about Havana Syndrome. You know what the CIA told them? 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 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.

39:39Zach Lahn: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. 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?

40:20Zach Lahn:There's no term limits. And the institutional capture is very real. I'm not the establishment candidate. Mm-hmm. But I'm also not somebody who's, like, here to... 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.

41:13Zach Lahn:And I think like, did we ever think that there was anything else? 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 three 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 is why farmers have the illusion of choice.

41:54Zach Lahn: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, this is where I was going to. 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.

42:41We can send it to fucking whoever. You know, we can pay China's fucking, you know, whatever bill. You know, the taxpayers will pay it. You know, that's another. It's like, I don't even. Why can't. I mean, we need strong. We need strong governors and state legislators. And, you know, 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.

43:26I mean, is that even is that even is that a possibility? Because the government is just it is it is all waste, fraud and abuse, greed, pedophilia. It's 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—

43:50Zach Lahn:You know, one of the things—let me say this first, is that what you're—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.

44:32Zach Lahn: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? Are you 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? We are done being distracted from the things that actually matter.

45:10Zach Lahn: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.

45:54Zach Lahn:What this third generation seed's been 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 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 for royalties and pay royalties to get seeds. Holy shit. And so... Where's the justice system on this? This is what 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.

46:35Zach Lahn: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, 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.

47:10Zach Lahn: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 helped to pioneer, how much longer is that going to even be recognizable to me?

47:53Probably not very long.

47:55Zach Lahn:Not very long. But I believe that with the right governor... 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.

48:37Zach Lahn: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 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.

49:13Zach Lahn: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.

49:23Zach Lahn: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.

50:18Zach Lahn: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 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 actually grow anything that we eat.

51:03Zach Lahn:the entire chessboard is backwards. Let's talk about the collapse of the family farms. Yeah. You want to? Yeah. I'd love to. What are they turning them into? Data centers? That's a big thing right now. A lot of real estate investors are looking for land next to power grid so that they could build a huge data center. Yeah, oh yeah. At least out to a big data center. Let me answer your first question. is what's happening to these 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.

51:45Zach Lahn:Because what used to be these small farm sets dotting all these places and known by the last name of the people who lived there for 100 years are just being bulldozed, farmed over, and forgotten. But when you talk about bigger efforts, you talked about 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.

52:36Zach Lahn: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, 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.

53:32What?

53:33Zach Lahn: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 taking advantage of anymore is what I'm trying to say.

54:14Zach Lahn:Whether it's agricultural companies having 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 should be saying to them, what are you going to offer us? Because 30 jobs and$529 million in tax breaks doesn't pencil. Wow.

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57:22Zach Lahn: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 under 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.

57:59Zach Lahn: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, 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.

58:35Zach Lahn:It's like, 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.

59:22Zach Lahn: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 % re-election rate, something like that. 5 % approval rating and 95 % re-election rate.

59:57Yeah. Like, I mean, if you think the, you know, if you think the elections are good, I mean, that's...

1:00:10We're fucking ourselves over here. Yeah, well, you know... You know,

1:00:15Zach Lahn:when 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 donation limits, or not have donation limits. 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. I'll bet. And so I'm going elsewhere to raise funds from people who want to see the culture of agriculture in our state restored, regenerative farming, safer practices, less cancer.

1:00:56Zach Lahn: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 a piece, 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, 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 interest for me, the people that are paying the money so politicians will look the other way.

1:01:40Zach Lahn: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 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?

1:02:24Zach Lahn: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 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?

1:03:07Furthermore, what can we do to help remedy this issue in the future?

1:03:13Zach Lahn:I think we... We pretty much covered that. You know, but Oliver's question is a very 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.

1:04:00Zach Lahn: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. No, 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 the Maha shit that we were just talking about, which we'll get into at the end of the glyphosate section.

1:04:46But on the other hand, I agree with what you're saying because it's hard to hide, but they found a fucking way, man. They found a way to hide.

1:04:56Zach Lahn:That's fair. 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 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 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.

1:05:31It's 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,

1:05:42Zach Lahn: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 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.

1:06:48And so I did a rebuttal video. I talked to my attorney. Turns out we could actually sue his ass, and maybe we should. 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.

1:07:29That's what you said about how this— You know what I mean? Yeah. 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, calling the bluff in that.

1:08:01Zach Lahn:And it's like, why pull that ripcord if you're not gonna try to follow 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... Were they all rah-rah-tah-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.

1:08:35Zach Lahn: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, we're so in favor of cutting all this waste and 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 how you could do that. That isn't a part of my genetic pool. They sold their soul.

1:09:16Yeah.

1:09:18Zach Lahn:And so I don't get it. And even as we're talking about it, I'm thinking about it. I'm just like, how do you get it? 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 two or three years ago. Yeah. Still funding them. You know, I was reading something. Fought them for over 20 years.

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1:11:10Zach Lahn:You talk about getting upset. You know, I think back to growing up in the 2000s, when we, you know, my friends and people went off to Iraq in Afghanistan. And thinking about the$10 trillion we've spent on all of that. And meanwhile, we don't even have programs for our veterans when they come home. You know, my great grandpa, when his brother was off in World War I, 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?

1:11:53Because they saw some just terrible things. And I couldn't believe the extent of the programs that were in place to help them...

1:12:04Zach Lahn: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. That's what 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%.

1:12:44Zach Lahn:And let me tell you, I don't know of any other politician in Iowa that's talking about it with me. None. 50 % went up 50 %? 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.

1:13:24Zach Lahn: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 at the four things, And those two things are two 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.

1:13:59Zach Lahn:And I started looking it up. I found out in 2025, an extensive study was done on this. And 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.

1:14:42That's, yeah. It's the truth. It's funny, but like, it's real. They don't give a fuck. Like, all they care about is hanging out with lobbyists so they can enrich themselves. That's it.

1:14:55Zach Lahn:This is why I go, 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 it's more than anything, but it's a big surprise,

1:15:21Zach Lahn: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. But when I, let me go into this a little bit, 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 do, what they did.

1:16:21Zach Lahn:And then you fast forward to about five, six 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, well, I hope I care about this stuff. Like, I really do. And so when I'm thinking about my own dad, He's like, 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.

1:17:12Zach Lahn:And so, when you talk about all these things that like are going on in the world and in DC and the government, where our money's going and 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 was six, eight months ago.

1:17:57Zach Lahn: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 and then none of them were laughing. And I, look, that could be figurative, of course, likely. But they know. They know the power these lobbies have.

1:18:37Zach Lahn: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 two or three now and all the while you'll hear a politician say something like in iowa this they say this all time well we need to figure out what's causing it we don't know what's causing it what's causing cancer rate. Can't figure it out, huh? Can't figure it out. And one thing they 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?

1:19:14They kept saying, well, yeah, we have one of the highest levels

1:19:18Zach Lahn:of radon in the country. And I looked into this, I was like, well, what's the truth to this?

1:19:31And

1:19:31Zach Lahn: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.

1:20:08I 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...

1:20:24Zach Lahn:So... Oftentimes, this conversation goes to glyphosate, but I will just say to farmers that are my friends as well, 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 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 five. And they know that truth that they're just being extracted from.

1:21:10Zach Lahn: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 don't believe it causes cancer. So let me take a step back here and just talk about agrochemicals for a minute. Something that would be very interesting to know about glyphosate is from the traditional metrics that have been tracked for pesticides. And people talk about pesticides. Pesticides is a blanket term, and it includes herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, like different products that kill pests.

1:22:00Zach Lahn:And pests are defined not just as like a bug, but weeds and bugs and fungus, things like that.

1:22:10Zach Lahn:Glyphosate, from an acute toxicity standpoint of like, if you get it on you, it's going to hurt you, is one of the safest we have. Like, one of the safest. Are you serious? Yes. from acute toxicity.

1:22:26Zach Lahn: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 and the war on drugs. Also, you can, if anybody is interested in learning more about paraquat, you can read about the Japanese paraquat poisonings, or somebody who's 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.

1:23:09Zach Lahn: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 ply 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 Paraquad was actually originally formulated by Syngenta, the Chinese, now Chinese-owned company.

1:23:53Syngenta sells this product still, and the country of China bans it.

1:23:59Zach Lahn:They won't even allow it to be sold in the country 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 applicators 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. And it does the same thing in our body. What it does is it enters in, and it actually accumulates in the lungs.

1:24:49It reacts with oxygen, and then it starts to create what's called superoxide.

1:24:57Zach Lahn: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 two and a half times more likelihood of getting Parkinson's. Because the neurons in your brain, the dopamine neurons that operate with a lot of oxygen, it starts to kill those because it's looking for oxygen. We know all this data. Like I said, they use it 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 when we talk about the safety of products and whether or not our agencies are there to protect us, they are not.

1:25:46Zach Lahn: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 non-existent. 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 ingested it, you'd die. Wow. And we have tremendous amounts of evidence on this.

1:26:34and so when I get to glyphosate you know often I'll see people on x or somewhere saying like

1:26:40Zach Lahn:if you think glyphosate's bad what about this what about paraquart 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.

1:27:30Zach Lahn: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 haven't yet talked about and that 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.

1:28:12Zach Lahn:And the reason glyphosate 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.

1:28:30Zach Lahn: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 In 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?

1:29:10Zach Lahn:What tissues? And where it stayed the longest was bone. And what the thought is now is that the reason it is, 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've damaged 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 continuing to come out in their urine.

1:29:59Zach Lahn: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, doesn't have a high risk profile, which by the way, most of those are industry studies.

1:30:50Zach Lahn:We know this. Like the EPA or in 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 three primary things. Number one, the EU used glyphosate-based herbicides, the more toxic version that everybody's actually using. Nobody's spraying pure glyphosate. Number two, 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.

1:31:39Zach Lahn:It's slipping my mind right now. But what the EU came to was that, yes, 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 six and nine agriculture chemicals within the wells in our state, where it's everywhere.

1:32:08Is it even possible to get rid of it?

1:32:10Zach Lahn:Yeah, it is. You know, here's the... 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 bifidotype bacteria. Very interesting. Just on, on the, or not bifidotype, 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.

1:32:56Zach Lahn:Many times farmers have been lied to to say that people that think glyphosate is bad or liberals hate farmers and all these things when we're the exact opposite. So as far as getting out of wells, 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 80 to 90 % of it within seven months using certain natural products. You know, if I could close 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.

1:33:35Zach Lahn:You know, Ron DeSantis just recently had that. His surgeon general released the findings of glyphosate in bread.

1:33:48Zach Lahn: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 that's not what they're doing. They're not defending agriculture because they're also exploiting our farmers. You know, 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.

1:34:25Zach Lahn:When you look at tolerance levels that are allowed in food products, you think that when When you hear this, it's like, okay, well, if in wheat, five parts per million are allowed in wheat, you think, okay, well, that must be a level that's been deemed to be safe. Because if you have more than that, you can actually be illegal to sell the product. You can't sell it. It's been considered adulterated. 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.

1:35:15Zach Lahn: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?

1:35:58Zach Lahn: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 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 five parts per million is 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 five, it's illegal to sell, because it's not safe.

1:36:50Zach Lahn:It's captured. And so the industry's 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 so many of the other lives 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?

1:37:3818th 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, full stop. RFK Jr., who won a$289 million verdict against Monsanto, is an attorney, endorsed the order claiming it's about national security.

1:38:30Here'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 one is?

1:38:44Zach Lahn: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 but 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.

1:39:59This is over six fucking times worse than the fentanyl crisis. And I'm all about stopping the fentanyl crisis. Let's get fucking real here. What, so what is the national security concern? Do you know?

1:40:14Zach Lahn:I don't know the national, I mean, look, if you want to 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, 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, I've been fighting these things.

1:40:50Mm-hmm.

1:40:51Zach Lahn: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 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.

1:41:32Zach Lahn:So that's the backdrop of which I read this. And 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.

1:42:22Zach Lahn:But in that case, when they were using Agent Orange, and there's so many harms from it, because 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. in. 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.

1:43:06But none would be as bad as what you're saying about me going along with this. You know, Jordan Peterson said something I thought was very deep.

1:43:19Zach Lahn: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 immunity, absolutely it'll provide immunity.

1:43:57Zach Lahn: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, because 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. Now, 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.

1:44:44Zach Lahn: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 belief, you know, without going too far into this, is that I believe, and I might be naive on this, look, 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. There's a big talk about 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.

1:45:45Zach Lahn: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.

1:46:25Like immunity for me, like you want...

1:46:30Zach Lahn: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 can actually - Highest concentration of glyphosate, highest concentration of cancer. Yep. Yep. That's why I'm running short. Any questions? Yep. I mean - Man. Wanna take a break? Sure. Let's take a break.

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1:49:06All right, Zach, we were 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 it. You're the only one talking about it. Yeah, you know. And I'm just going to summarize it. We don't have to rehash it all. But I said, yeah, that's because they can't talk about it. We just got done talking about the lobbies. They can't talk about it. Yeah. And they don't give a shit.

1:49:42And 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. 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 reelected. They justify it in their mind. You know, 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 the mental gymnastics that people will do to justify shit that they shouldn't be doing in their head is fucking amazing.

1:50:25Zach Lahn:Yeah. You know, and we've all done it. But this is just, it's another level of evil, you know, that they're justifying. Just choosing to believe the lie. Like, that's a choice to believe the lie. Mm-hmm. 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... This is one thing that I've loved about Bobby Kennedy is that there's this thought all the time about, 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.

1:51:10And what you have to be willing to do

1:51:13Zach Lahn: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, 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 the political sense, I'm yelling into a void. But on a voter sense, I can't go to a room. We've had a couple town halls of the past week.

1:52:00Zach Lahn:One was over 150 people showed up. Another one was close to 80 in these 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, 89 % 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.

1:52:38Zach Lahn:Oh, okay. So, no, just to... 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 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 solving the cancer crisis, is that these are bipartisan issues. I have people comment on X and things like this that are criticizing Iowa Democrats for saying, how do we let a Republican beat us to the punch on this?

1:53:23Zach Lahn: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, we need to have a greater tax on cigarettes. It's like, this is literally, 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 an 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.

1:54:06Zach Lahn: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.

1:54:49Zach Lahn: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 that. They happened last summer in Iowa. You know, wow. I mean, 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.

1:55:31It's crazy, you know? But Iowa isn't like that. You don't have a house five feet from another house, five feet from another house. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's spread out. It is. It's very lowly dense. Do you know what it is? I'll bet it's in the lowest, probably the 90 percentile. It's very low population density in Iowa. I mean, our population's just around 3 million.

1:55:54Zach Lahn:And I don't know what the density, though, is. But 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 say? Nitrates. Nitrates out. Nitrogen fertilizer out. Like, look at that shit, man. You know, it's not even that many people using the fucking water. Do you have the biggest one in the world? Yep. 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.

1:56:38Zach Lahn:A lot of times I look at the 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 three 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.

1:57:25Zach Lahn: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 an hydrosamonid, 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, the Raccoon River is one of them.

1:58:09Zach Lahn:The Raccoon River is either the most or the second most polluted tributary in the United States. Wow. Wow. And so, when I look at this, I just say... People are probably swimming, tubing, all kinds of shit. We have so many lakes that there's notices on signs that you can't swim in them. Are you... Because of the chemicals? Because there's so many products in there. Holy shit. Your listeners can go on and Google this, and you'll find stories of, like, a woman... This is last year, maybe two years ago, who didn't know that jumped in, and her skin got all red. Like, it was just, you know, burning.

1:58:44But we have lakes in Iowa

1:58:47Zach Lahn:with such high levels of nitrates and products that swimming is barred in them. in Iowa. The Eden of the United States. 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... They're actually going up the Des Moines River. When he was coming through Iowa, he actually said that 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.

1:59:28Zach Lahn: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.

1:59:40Zach Lahn:So when I talk about the water quality issue, it's a hot button issue.

1:59:47Zach Lahn:but I've talked to developers in Des Moines who've 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 on 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.

2:00:30Zach Lahn:Here's one thing I'll tell you about the nitrate removal system. So, it'll remove... I don't even know the exact number of how many pounds of nitrogen. Up until recently, after they removed it, they just dumped it back in the river. Get the fuck out of here. No way. 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.

2:01:06So, again, we have to have clean water in our state.

2:01:10Zach Lahn: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've made it very clear, like, this is not what I want to do for my life. Mm-hmm. 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.

2:01:53Zach Lahn: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 five people running in it. Five people? Yeah. Because as of this recording today, Polymarket, are you familiar with Polymarket? They give you a 25 % chance of winning Iowa, the governor Republican primary on June 2nd. We're just getting started. That's pretty good. I think it was 6%. Then he went on Tucker and it went... Went up. And, you know, this is all about getting a message out like this. Why do you think Polymarket jumped that much?

2:02:40I mean, what's resonating with you?

2:02:43Zach Lahn: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.

2:03:09Zach Lahn:So often when I'm talking to them, they're talking about issues in private that politicians aren't talking about in public. 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, and 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. That's willing 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.

2:03:49Zach Lahn: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 the state of 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.

2:04:28And I don't like, I don't know how you could look back on what's happened to our country,

2:04:33Zach Lahn: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 where they're going out of business and what's coming in? Dollar General. And who is the largest shareholder Dollar General? BlackRock. So, the money that used to circulate within my small community, because the owner of the grocery store say they're... 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...

2:05:07The Dow was at 50 ,000.

2:05:11Zach Lahn:Well, my... Our communities are not there. Our communities are struggling, like, really struggling.

2:05:20Zach Lahn: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 and 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 is 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.

2:05:52Zach Lahn: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.

2:06:17Zach Lahn: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 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 and 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.

2:07:12Zach Lahn: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 Moore Island served in the Civil War per capita in the United States is something to be dang proud of. That we should just like, but 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 that you should be proud of your heritage.

2:07:53Zach Lahn:One of my favorite stories on our farm, I'm a pilot. My dad's a pilot. Both Both my grandpas were pilots. And my grandpa in 1940s, he bought a Taylor Craft 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 career, as I mentioned. And 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.

2:08:47Zach Lahn:And I'm very thankful for what he did because he provided a life for me and my family and 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. That he'd say, see what's going on in our country, see what's going on in our world, and say, we've got to get back to these roots. So, that's my mission. I think that's a great mission, Zed.

2:09:30I 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 got to stand up for the people. You know, it sounds like you might be that guy.

2:09:54Zach Lahn:Well, don't endorse me yet. Wait to see what I do. Oh, I'm not endorsing anything. Just kidding. I'm not endorsing anything. I just heard you talk about the other ones. Let me go out and prove myself. I'm just thankful for you letting me have this conversation and hopefully bring a voice to people that have felt like they didn't have one.

2:10:17Zach Lahn:best of luck to you thanks sir cheers

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