CLIVE, Iowa –Republican Iowa gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn took aim at the establishment media during a Make Iowa Healthy Again rally on Wednesday, accusing the press of contributing to public forgetfulness about the past and what is at stake ahead of the midterm elections, while Steak ‘n Shake Chief MAHA Officer Michael Boes challenged media portrayals of the Trump administration’s efforts to improve Americans’ health.
MAHA PAC hosted the October 28 “Get Out the Vote Rally” in Clive, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines, ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. Speakers included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Lahn, Steak ‘n Shake Chief MAHA Officer Michael Boes, and Republican candidates, elected officials, and health, consumer, and agricultural advocates.
Former HHS senior adviser and current Steak ‘n Shake Chief MAHA Officer Michael Boes told attendees, “I want to tell a little story about what the media will never portray.”
“So when I went into the admin, I watched Secretary Kennedy fight for the health of Americans and the health of American children every single day. We are taking on the most powerful special interests that you can imagine, with our backs against the wall,” Boes said.
“And on top of that, President Trump, despite whatever you read in the media, he empowered us every single day. It was incredible. I mean, we flipped the damn food pyramid. It was pretty remarkable.”
“Even with the fake news here, I’m going to say this,” Republican Iowa gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn told the crowd, before acknowledging some exceptions. “There’s a couple of good ones.”
“The fight to pull the COVID vaccine off the market is a pro-life issue,” he declared, prompting an enthusiastic response from attendees who rose to their feet, cheered, chanted his name, and waved Make Iowa Healthy Again and Make America Healthy Again signs.
“I don’t believe that the ideas in this movement are radical,” Lahn added.
Lahn went on to describe an exchange he had with a reporter earlier that day.
“I was asked by one of the reporters here today, ‘Is this going to be a talk about culture, or is this going to be a talk about health and MAHA?'” Lahn recalled. “I said, ‘You don’t get it. They’re the same thing.'”
“The fight to have clean water in our state. It’s a pro-life issue. It’s a fight to make sure people can live long, healthy lives,” he continued.
“You know, for a very long time, we’ve had this fight to protect the lives of the unborn, and we’ve largely forgotten about this fight,” Lahn said. “An unborn child could be anything, do anything, solve anything, love anyone.”
“But on the other end of this, when we are protecting lives and making sure people can live long, healthy lives, we’re protecting human wisdom,” he continued. “You cannot know where you want to go if you forget where you’ve been.”
“There’s no way to put this group in a box that doesn’t exist,” Lahn said. “And I think, for a long time, what other people want to do is try to make every movement like this something that’s strictly political. But it’s not. It’s way deeper than that. It’s way deeper than politics. It’s about the next generation.”
Toward the conclusion of his speech, Lahn recalled attending a funeral where a woman’s son warned that “one of the greatest sins is the sin of forgetting.”
“Forgetting where you came from, forget the responsibility that you have,” Lahn continued. “And I think we can do the same thing here. And I think the media likes to help us have amnesia about what’s at stake and where we’ve been.”
“I had two groups in the primary that endorsed them. One was this group I’m standing with right now, and one was the group that was started by my longtime friend named Charlie Kirk,” Lahn said. “13 months ago, my friend’s life was taken from us. It was just 13 months ago.”
“People ask me all the time, ‘How can we help?'” he continued. “I’m gonna tell you right now how you can help. We have six days until the election. We have six days to make sure the people that might be thinking, sitting out this midterm, decide to get into the race.”
“And let me just tell you this, we need to remind them what’s at stake in our culture,” Lahn said.
“Look, everybody wants prices to come down. The president wants prices to come down. We all do. We want to end wars. We all want to do that.”
“But there’s some things that are so much deeper. And let me tell you, the left has known this for a very long time. They have known that they’re in a battle for the institutions of our culture. We are waking up to that battle,” he continued.
“And I believe on November 3rd of this year, in the state of Iowa, we are going to send a message that Iowa is not for sale. That we are here for the next generation, and we are going to prioritize them over these groups that seek to exploit and extract from the state of Iowa,” Lahn concluded. “And I’m asking you for your vote and your support.”
Lahn’s emphasis on health and culture echoed his remarks during a recent gubernatorial debate against Democrat Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand, when he warned of an “attack on many of the institutions of Western culture,” including businesses, government, churches, and families. Lahn advocated protecting girls’ sports, keeping age-inappropriate books addressing transgender topics out of elementary schools, safeguarding unborn children, and supporting victims of human trafficking, declaring, “We protect the most vulnerable in our society.” His remarks contrasted with Sand’s opposition to a February 2025 bill defining sex as “either male or female as observed or clinically verified at birth,” which Sand characterized as “legalizing discrimination.” Lahn’s message also followed Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s October 7 address in Greece, where he urged Western nations to rediscover “the virtues, the courage, and the strength to confront the dangers that we face in our time.”
Wednesday’s rally drew a substantial crowd, with Breitbart News reporter Jasmyn Jordan observing “at least 500 people in the front of the room and many in the back.”