MAHA-supporting fitness guru Jillian Michaels has condemned Donald Trump’s “devastating” executive order shielding a controversial weedkiller with links to cancer.
Trump, 79, signed the order last Thursday, tasking his agriculture secretary with guaranteeing a domestic supply of glyphosate-based herbicides and extending legal protections to manufacturers under the Defense Production Act. The order came one day after Roundup-maker Monsanto proposed a $7.25 billion settlement with claimants who alleged the glyphosate-containing weedkiller had given them cancer.
During a fiery appearance Monday on NewsNation’s The Hill, Michaels, 51—a personal trainer best known as a coach on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser”—let rip.
“This is actually devastating,” she raged. “It is not a conspiracy theory that glyphosate is linked to cancer. There are hundreds of studies that have illustrated now it increases risk significantly for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
Michaels also alleged that Monsanto had worked to suppress evidence of harm: “We also know through whistleblowers and numerous lawsuits, of which there have been over 170,000, that the chemical company knew this and tried to bury the information, tried to go after the independent researchers, created ghost studies to try to tell a different story,” she said.
The attack comes from within Trump’s own coalition. Michaels is a prominent backer of the Republican-aligned Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, which opposes widespread pesticide use and is closely associated with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 72.
Kennedy had himself previously spoken critically of glyphosate, yet broke ranks with MAHA by endorsing the executive order. He argued it would repatriate chemical manufacturing and “end our near-total reliance on adversarial nations,” The Hill reported.
The order argues that limiting access to glyphosate herbicides would inflict “economic losses for growers” and leave the country unable to meet food production demands.
Michaels rejected that, telling the network: “I don’t buy that we have a bevy of ultra processed crops, corn, soy, wheat; there’s unfortunately no shortage.”
She then went further, alleging the order reflected industry pressure in the wake of the settlement. “I think that somebody powerful called up someone else powerful after paying out $7.25 billion and essentially saying this is an existential threat we need to call in this favor, and they did, and it’s exceptionally upsetting,” she said.
Michaels also cautioned that glyphosate exposure was not limited to farmland. “This doesn’t just affect farmers, this is omnipresent,” she said. “They would probably find it in yours and my urine right now if they tested for it.”
The Daily Beast contacted the White House, the USDA, and HHS for comment.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told the Daily Beast: “Crop protection is an important tool in the toolbox for our farmers to continue to produce a safe, abundant, and affordable food supply. If our farmers are reliant on other countries—especially our foreign adversaries—for critical inputs, we will not be able to feed ourselves.”
