The Chuck ToddCast is back! If you're looking for smart, no-nonsense political conversation, you've come to the right place. The Chuck ToddCast goes beyond the headlines, featuring conversations with top reporters, insiders, and newsmakers from D.C. to the heartland. No scripts, no spin—just real discussions about what’s shaping our politics and why it matters.
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The Paul Finebaum Interview: Alabama’s Past, Present & Uncertain Future
Tuesday, September 8, 2026 • Duration 58:04
Chuck Todd and J.A. Adande sit down with ESPN’s Paul Finebaum and dive into Alabama football.
Finebaum shares his perspective on Bear Bryant’s complicated legacy and the integration of Alabama football, explains why Nick Saban succeeded where so many post-Bryant coaches failed, and reveals how Saban established total control over the program from the moment he arrived in Tuscaloosa.
Plus, Finebaum offers a warning about Alabama’s future.
Super Tuesdays - Can Trump’s Midterm Convention Prevent A Democratic Blue Tsunami?
Tuesday, September 8, 2026 • Duration 01:14:47
Eight Tuesdays out, Chuck Todd and Chris Cillizza open on the first midterm convention in modern American history — two nights at Dallas's American Airlines Center with 109 speakers, Trump appearing both nights, and House members getting billed $25,000 to attend. The guys are skeptical of nearly all of it: the event lands on NFL kickoff night, it butts up against the 25th anniversary of September 11th, and Politico found 45 of 70 Republican candidates and members skipping it. Their sharper point is that the whole thing is a microcosm of the party's bind — you cannot win without the MAGA base, and you cannot win with only the MAGA base — which is why swing-state nominees like Jon Husted and Mike Rogers will show up and try very hard to deliver a forgettable speech. Chuck argues nationalizing the election isn't crazy on its own terms, since the other side is going to run against Trump anyway, but doubts Trump can hit any register besides red meat, and doubts even more that he can find a second gear for the September 11th anniversary the following day.
From there they dig into Texas, where MAGA Inc's first $10 million buy is running a half-negative, half-positive ad about taxes — a signal, Chuck says, that they know the target is suburban Romney Republicans, not the base. He walks through Greg Abbott's steadily declining margins, the four-to-eight-point scandal penalty that history says attaches to a candidate like Paxton, and lands somewhere that surprises Chris: he now likes Talarico's odds better than Sherrod Brown's in Ohio. They check the prediction markets, unpack the Missouri Supreme Court ruling that blocked the Republican-drawn map and effectively hands Emanuel Cleaver his seat back, and take apart Trump's request that the Supreme Court impose a national check on mail voting — a policy every Republican strategist will tell you privately hurts their own side. Then a long, unsparing conversation about the Wall Street Journal's reporting on John Fetterman and what it means for control of the Senate on January 3rd, a real case for a third Senate conference built around Murkowski and a possible independent, and a closing riff on Nick Saban, Pat McAfee, and why the Protect College Sports Act is doomed without collective bargaining.
Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Eight Tuesdays out — and why they actually prepare for these now
03:00 The first midterm convention since the early '80s
04:00 $25,000 a head, and Tim Burchett's surprise invoice
05:00 It lands on the opening night of the NFL season
07:00 The Trump trap — you can't afford to say no
08:00 Nationalizing the election isn't the crazy part
11:00 The convention as a microcosm of the GOP's whole problem
13:00 "Trumpapalooza" — so what's the actual message?
14:00 Conventions aren't for swing voters, and never have been
16:00 Husted, Rogers & the art of the deliberately forgettable speech
19:00 Trump as TV producer — and the 9/11 anniversary the next day
20:00 Will he turn the 25th anniversary into a political speech?
23:00 MAGA Inc's first $10M buy lands in Texas
26:00 They tried calling Talarico weird. It didn't take.
27:00 Trump throws Paxton under the bus in the Oval
29:00 Abbott's slipping margins and the blue tsunami scenario
31:00 South Texas Latinos appear to be shifting back
33:00 Clinton lost Texas by less than she lost Iowa in 2016
34:00 Blue-collar trade unions and the industrial Midwest problem
38:00 Trump asks the Supreme Court for a national mail-voting check
39:00 The rural voters his own rule would punish hardest
42:00 Democrats at 85-88% to take the House
43:00 The Missouri ruling
46:00 Why this is anti-voter, full stop
47:00 The Senate sits at 52-48 Republican. A year ago it was 71-29.
49:00 Alaska, and Dan Sullivan's troubling primary numbers
51:00 The Wall Street Journal's Fetterman story
54:00 The practical stakes: who controls the Senate on January 3rd
55:00 Does Fetterman leave the party?
58:00 He's already built the intellectual case for walking
1:00:00 January 3rd is the whole ballgame
1:02:00 Osborn, Bodner, Banks and the independent wave
1:03:00 The real case for a third Senate conference
1:05:00 Saban and McAfee push the Protect College Sports Act
1:07:00 No labor at the table means it dies in court
1:08:00 Ashley Moody's quiet ACC poison pill
1:12:00 The Nats chase the blown-save record. Sell the team.
1:13:00 Dynastic: Finebaum on why Alabama may not run it back
Full Episode - Voters Hate The Trump Economy… And It’s Only Getting Worse + A Republican Governor Says What He Really Thinks
Monday, August 31, 2026 • Duration 02:36:53
Chuck Todd argues the entire 2026 election is collapsing into a single issue — prices — and that every other story is just a contributing factor. The problem for Republicans is that the economy is going to get worse, not better: price pressure is building across the food supply, the Iran war has disrupted fuel and fertilizer, JP Morgan is warning food inflation could hit 5% by 2027, and Kevin Warsh is going to be forced to raise rates, which will infuriate a president who Chuck argues is focused mainly on his own financial interests and could produce genuinely 1970s-like conditions. Chuck brings back reporting from a visit to the Black Locust Livestock cattle ranch to explain why beef prices can't be fixed by turning a dial: raising cattle is a years-long process, the American herd is historically small, only four companies process the country's beef and capacity is shrinking, and importing more is a short-term patch that damages domestic supply long term. It's the pattern of the whole administration — solving a price problem today by making it worse tomorrow, while the cost of producing food rises because of decisions Trump himself made. Underneath it all sits the number that explains the mood of the country: corporate pre-tax profits are at their highest share since just after World War II while workers take home the smallest share since the 1950s. There is no economic boom for most Americans, Washington keeps misreading the anger, and Trump's own voters are getting hit hardest at the pump.
The war, Chuck argues, isn't just making life expensive — it's making America vulnerable. Defense leaders are warning Hegseth the Iran campaign is unsustainable: barely a quarter of the Navy's destroyer fleet is ready to deploy, advanced munitions stocks are largely burned through, and equipment and personnel are worn out, meaning fighting this war has left the country less capable of fighting the next one. China is the clear winner of Trump's second term, and Chuck’s real worry is Putin testing NATO while looking at an American president desperate for any win. Then there's Venezuela, where Trump has announced the U.S. has seized the country's oil reserves — a move Chuck calls British-empire-style imperialism and highway robbery at gunpoint, asking the obvious question: if Putin did this to a neighbor, what would we call it? The standard shouldn't change because we're the ones doing it, the windfall ought to benefit Venezuelans, and it's worth asking who's actually negotiating this and who stands to profit. It's exactly why two-thirds of South America resents the United States, and why Trump's imperial turn will only compound a credibility problem that's already severe. Chuck closes somewhere more personal: his old high school, Miami's Killian, is down from 3,000 students to 400. The kids didn't disappear — school choice killed the ambition to attend. Big public high schools once defined their communities and forced people to know each other; we traded that for choice and specialization without ever asking what a public school is actually for. We didn't try to fix public education, Chuck argues. We empowered people to escape it — and in doing so gutted one of the real sources of American strength.
Interview Only w/ Chuck Klosterman - How Will America Remember Football in 200 Years?
Thursday, June 11, 2026 • Duration 01:27:10
Cultural critic Chuck Klosterman — author of But What If We're Wrong?, The Nineties, and now a new book simply titled Football — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a fascinating, genre-bending conversation that's part memoir, part sports analysis, and part thought experiment about how a singular American obsession will be remembered centuries from now. Klosterman frames the book as a "living obituary" for football, working from his signature premise that over enough time, almost everything fades until a single simplified narrative is all that survives — and that football, despite being the one true common denominator of the modern American experience (it overtook baseball as the most popular sport by the 1970s, even though people at the time didn't realize it), will almost certainly not remain central to the culture a few decades from now. He and Chuck explore how perception dramatically changes over time , how the internet has fundamentally altered our relationship with time itself, and why arguments against the internet today sound exactly like the arguments people once made against television. Klosterman, who only half-jokingly says his "beat" these days is simply reality, argues that we now consume social media on the working assumption that what we're seeing isn't real — a profound shift in how humans relate to information.
The conversation winds through some genuinely original territory about why football works the way it does and what its eventual decline might look like. Klosterman argues football is a fundamentally cerebral sport with intense but widely dispersed moments of action (the Wall Street Journal famously found only 11 minutes of actual action in a three-hour broadcast), that its sheer complexity and total absence of free-flowing movement is exactly why it's never exported well, and that it nearly became a literal embodiment of American exceptionalism. He and Todd dig into whether the NFL can over-expand into a 12-month product, why football is the one American sport that could plausibly survive on pay-per-view, and how the league walks a razor's edge between the maximum physicality fans crave and the safety changes that are slowly, quietly trying to remove hitting from the game — even as the ever-present risk of injury is precisely what raises the stakes and makes it so engaging. There's a wonderful tangent on COVID and 9/11 as the two great timeline-dividing events of the modern era (one slow and shared globally, one sudden and strange), including Chuck's own reflection that the pandemic was unexpectedly a bonding experience with his kids. Klosterman closes by previewing his next book — an alternate history of rock and roll — and delivering a characteristically provocative argument that rock effectively ended as a meaningful art form in the 1990s, that having access to all the music ever recorded has paradoxically led people to listen to the same 600 songs, and that he genuinely regrets ever getting rid of his CD collection, because the day may come when streaming services are broken up and no longer contain all the music in the world.
Chuck’s Commentary - Graham Platner Won His Primary… But Can He Beat Susan Collins? + Voters Are Future Focused & Demanding Change
Wednesday, June 10, 2026 • Duration 01:21:12
Chuck Todd opens with the resolution of a story he's been tracking for weeks: Graham Platner cruised to victory in Maine, comfortably clearing 70% even with Janet Mills' name still on the ballot — which he says means the scandals that had Platner in "save my campaign" mode turned out to be far less than a five-alarm fire. The deeper lesson, Chuck argues, is uncomfortable but revealing: for a significant share of Democratic primary voters, high character has become a luxury item, because the base is so exhausted by losing and capitulating to the establishment that it will forgive a flawed candidate who actually seems willing to fight. He notes that Maine has gotten meaningfully bluer since Susan Collins was last on the ballot (Harris underperformed nationally but actually drew more raw votes in Maine than Biden did), that a generic Democrat should win this seat by six or seven points, and that the only real question left is how many squeamish Democrats sit the race out rather than pull the lever for Platner. He runs through the rest of the night — Lindsey Graham narrowly avoided a runoff in South Carolina, the GOP gubernatorial race there is headed to a runoff that knocked out both Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman — and pulls back to identify the defining theme of the entire 2026 cycle: everyone, in both parties, is running on a message of change, with no candidate anywhere running on restoration the way Biden did in 2020. The messaging this cycle is relentlessly future-focused, the exact opposite of Trump's nostalgia, and Chuck reiterates his running observation that the worst possible first name to have in politics right now is "congressman" — because Washington experience carries zero value to voters this cycle. The split-screen between the parties remains stark: Republican voters still reward confrontation while Democratic primary voters are gravitating toward electability and consensus, Democratic turnout is rising while GOP turnout is flat or falling, and the throughline that's held for a decade is only intensifying — voters are demanding major change, and they'll punish anyone who doesn't offer it.
Finally, Chuck updates his ToddCast Top 5 list of senate seats most likely to flip parties and answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment.
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Full Episode - Graham Platner Won His Primary… But Can He Beat Susan Collins? + Can An Independent Break The GOP Stranglehold In Tennessee?
Wednesday, June 10, 2026 • Duration 02:18:27
Chuck Todd opens with the resolution of a story he's been tracking for weeks: Graham Platner cruised to victory in Maine, comfortably clearing 70% even with Janet Mills' name still on the ballot — which he says means the scandals that had Platner in "save my campaign" mode turned out to be far less than a five-alarm fire. The deeper lesson, Chuck argues, is uncomfortable but revealing: for a significant share of Democratic primary voters, high character has become a luxury item, because the base is so exhausted by losing and capitulating to the establishment that it will forgive a flawed candidate who actually seems willing to fight. He notes that Maine has gotten meaningfully bluer since Susan Collins was last on the ballot (Harris underperformed nationally but actually drew more raw votes in Maine than Biden did), that a generic Democrat should win this seat by six or seven points, and that the only real question left is how many squeamish Democrats sit the race out rather than pull the lever for Platner. He runs through the rest of the night — Lindsey Graham narrowly avoided a runoff in South Carolina, the GOP gubernatorial race there is headed to a runoff that knocked out both Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman — and pulls back to identify the defining theme of the entire 2026 cycle: everyone, in both parties, is running on a message of change, with no candidate anywhere running on restoration the way Biden did in 2020. The messaging this cycle is relentlessly future-focused, the exact opposite of Trump's nostalgia, and Chuck reiterates his running observation that the worst possible first name to have in politics right now is "congressman" — because Washington experience carries zero value to voters this cycle. The split-screen between the parties remains stark: Republican voters still reward confrontation while Democratic primary voters are gravitating toward electability and consensus, Democratic turnout is rising while GOP turnout is flat or falling, and the throughline that's held for a decade is only intensifying — voters are demanding major change, and they'll punish anyone who doesn't offer it.
Then, Lauren Pinkston — the independent candidate for governor of Tennessee — joins the Chuck Toddcast to make the case that the deepest problem in her state isn't left versus right, it's the near-total absence of two-party competition that has allowed one-party rule to calcify into something genuinely unhealthy. Pinkston, who was raised in an evangelical environment where she was taught that voting Democrat meant going to hell, offers a fascinating personal and political journey: she lived in communist Laos where people were persecuted for their faith, which gave her a firsthand understanding of why the Founders deliberately kept Christianity out of the Constitution, and she's now running explicitly against the kind of Christian nationalism that teaches America was divinely ordained. She argues Citizens United is a major reason Tennessee became so uncompetitive, walks through the mechanical difficulties of mounting a serious independent campaign, and contends that Marsha Blackburn isn't nearly as strong a candidate as she thinks she is.
Interview Only w/ Lauren Pinkston - Can An Independent Break The GOP Stranglehold In Tennessee?
Wednesday, June 10, 2026 • Duration 55:37
Lauren Pinkston — the independent candidate for governor of Tennessee — joins the Chuck Toddcast to make the case that the deepest problem in her state isn't left versus right, it's the near-total absence of two-party competition that has allowed one-party rule to calcify into something genuinely unhealthy. Pinkston, who was raised in an evangelical environment where she was taught that voting Democrat meant going to hell, offers a fascinating personal and political journey: she lived in communist Laos where people were persecuted for their faith, which gave her a firsthand understanding of why the Founders deliberately kept Christianity out of the Constitution, and she's now running explicitly against the kind of Christian nationalism that teaches America was divinely ordained. She argues Citizens United is a major reason Tennessee became so uncompetitive, walks through the mechanical difficulties of mounting a serious independent campaign, and contends that Marsha Blackburn isn't nearly as strong a candidate as she thinks she is.
The conversation digs into Pinkston's actual governing vision and her theory of how an independent can build a winning coalition in one of the reddest states in the country. She wants to reform education and make teaching a genuinely fun profession again, and she's passionate about the way Nashville soaks up all the state's political investment while Memphis gets neglected — pointing out that crime in Memphis is at a 20-year low yet the city still can't attract investment, and that St. Jude is struggling to recruit talent because of H1-B visa denials. Pinkston is candid about the structural obstacles: Tennessee's constitution doesn't even allow for ballot measures, the GOP holds a stranglehold on the statehouse, and Republican leadership has been kicking moderate candidates off the ballot entirely. But she argues there's a real opening — Republicans in the state are looking for an offramp that isn't a Democrat, and even staunch Democrats are frustrated with their own party. Pinkston is energized about working with the Working Families Party and the Forward Party to build toward a more moderate, genuinely competitive two-party system, argues this is the strongest group of independent candidates to run in years, and wonders aloud whether being "too educated" has perversely become a negative quality in a candidate. She closes with a sharp observation that cuts to the heart of the whole project: Americans demand more than two options for literally everything in their lives except politics, politicians increasingly rely on performance over substance, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
Chuck’s Commentary - Trump’s Decline Is Obvious…But Republicans Refuse To Acknowledge It + The 60 Minutes Story Isn’t About Scott Pelley… It’s About The Ellisons
Monday, June 8, 2026 • Duration 01:42:13
Chuck Todd opens with an uncomfortable truth Republicans are doing everything possible to avoid acknowledging: Trump turns 80 next week, his physical and mental decline is increasingly visible to anyone paying attention, and the GOP is now repeating exactly the same mistake Democrats made by ignoring Joe Biden's obvious deterioration. The cruelest irony: Trump literally built his entire 2024 campaign on the premise that his opponent was too old and too sleepy to do the job, but Biden's catastrophic debate finally broke the Democratic silence in a way the GOP shows no signs of replicating. Chuck argues Trump's behavior isn't unusual for an 80-year-old — it's deeply unusual for an American president. He warns that Senate Republicans made an enormous mistake by not killing the weaponization fund, that every GOP incumbent up for reelection is now vulnerable to extremely effective attack ads, and that acting DNI Bill Pulte is almost certainly holding that position illegally — the courts will probably step in to declare him ineligible.
He previews Tuesday's primaries in Maine and South Carolina, where Lindsey Graham looks genuinely vulnerable, and notes that if Graham gets forced into a runoff, history says he's in real trouble. He's watching how much protest vote Janet Mills picks up in Maine, and on Graham Platner — who has been saying that the war "messed him up" — Chuck offers a pointed observation: just because behavior is explainable doesn't always make it excusable.He closes with a sharp analysis of the Scott Pelley firing at 60 Minutes, arguing the real story isn't Pelley at all — it's the Ellisons, who are using 60 Minutes as a bargaining chip with Trump to get their Paramount merger approved. He believes 60 Minutes is a symbol with massive brand equity, and Trump wants to bring it to heel or topple it altogether.
Finally, Chuck hops into the ToddCast Time Machine to revisit the infamous quote “Have you no sense of decency” from the Army/McCarthy hearings, why McCarthy was one of the first American politicians to master the attention economy, and why that famous quote precipitated the decline of McCarthy’s influence. He also answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment.
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Full Episode - Trump’s Decline Is Obvious…But Republicans Refuse To Acknowledge It + America’s AI Liability Crisis & Constitutional Breaking Points
Monday, June 8, 2026 • Duration 02:53:37
Chuck Todd opens with an uncomfortable truth Republicans are doing everything possible to avoid acknowledging: Trump turns 80 next week, his physical and mental decline is increasingly visible to anyone paying attention, and the GOP is now repeating exactly the same mistake Democrats made by ignoring Joe Biden's obvious deterioration. The cruelest irony: Trump literally built his entire 2024 campaign on the premise that his opponent was too old and too sleepy to do the job, but Biden's catastrophic debate finally broke the Democratic silence in a way the GOP shows no signs of replicating. Chuck argues Trump's behavior isn't unusual for an 80-year-old — it's deeply unusual for an American president. He warns that Senate Republicans made an enormous mistake by not killing the weaponization fund, that every GOP incumbent up for reelection is now vulnerable to extremely effective attack ads, and that acting DNI Bill Pulte is almost certainly holding that position illegally — the courts will probably step in to declare him ineligible.
He previews Tuesday's primaries in Maine and South Carolina, where Lindsey Graham looks genuinely vulnerable, and notes that if Graham gets forced into a runoff, history says he's in real trouble. He's watching how much protest vote Janet Mills picks up in Maine, and on Graham Platner — who has been saying that the war "messed him up" — Chuck offers a pointed observation: just because behavior is explainable doesn't always make it excusable.He closes with a sharp analysis of the Scott Pelley firing at 60 Minutes, arguing the real story isn't Pelley at all — it's the Ellisons, who are using 60 Minutes as a bargaining chip with Trump to get their Paramount merger approved. He believes 60 Minutes is a symbol with massive brand equity, and Trump wants to bring it to heel or topple it altogether.
Then, David French — New York Times columnist, veteran constitutional attorney, and one of the sharpest legal thinkers writing today — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a riveting conversation about how the legal system is straining to handle a world being remade by AI, an out-of-control executive branch, and the slow erosion of America's basic constitutional architecture. French opens with the chilling case the Florida Attorney General has now brought against OpenAI in connection with the Florida State University shooter, who asked ChatGPT how to disengage his weapon's safety just three minutes before opening fire. French argues that if ChatGPT had been a human person, it would unquestionably have been charged as a co-conspirator — humans get prosecuted for encouraging suicide all the time — and that when ChatGPT is speaking, OpenAI is legally speaking, full stop. He walks through the murky liability questions the law is now scrambling to answer: Google Search has never been held to the same standard as ChatGPT, but ChatGPT actively generates new speech rather than just pointing users to existing content, and French argues that litigation needs to function as a meaningful deterrent rather than mere compensation — though ultimately Congress is going to have to actually legislate AI regulation rather than leave the entire field to civil lawsuits.
Interview Only w/ David French - America’s AI Liability Crisis & Constitutional Breaking Points
Monday, June 8, 2026 • Duration 01:12:45
David French — New York Times columnist, veteran constitutional attorney, and one of the sharpest legal thinkers writing today — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a riveting conversation about how the legal system is straining to handle a world being remade by AI, an out-of-control executive branch, and the slow erosion of America's basic constitutional architecture. French opens with the chilling case the Florida Attorney General has now brought against OpenAI in connection with the Florida State University shooter, who asked ChatGPT how to disengage his weapon's safety just three minutes before opening fire. French argues that if ChatGPT had been a human person, it would unquestionably have been charged as a co-conspirator — humans get prosecuted for encouraging suicide all the time — and that when ChatGPT is speaking, OpenAI is legally speaking, full stop. He walks through the murky liability questions the law is now scrambling to answer: Google Search has never been held to the same standard as ChatGPT, but ChatGPT actively generates new speech rather than just pointing users to existing content, and French argues that litigation needs to function as a meaningful deterrent rather than mere compensation — though ultimately Congress is going to have to actually legislate AI regulation rather than leave the entire field to civil lawsuits.
The conversation turns to what French sees as a more immediate constitutional crisis: Trump's blanket immunity for tax violations and the "anti-weaponization" slush fund scheme, both of which French argues are flatly indefensible on legal grounds. He explains the deeper problem — Trump suing his own government creates a fiction of an adversarial proceeding when there isn't actually one, and Trump cares far more about the liability shield than the slush fund itself, because he's trying to remove himself from the operation of the law in essentially the same way a king would. The pardon power only covers federal crimes, not civil offenses, and Congress has clear authority to stop this if it had the will. French offers several concrete reforms: require congressional approval for legal settlements above a certain dollar threshold, force members of Congress to obtain a certification in the Constitution itself, and that political parties should perform comprehensive background checks for their candidates, On the question of whether the Founders intended a Christian nation, French is unequivocal: they didn't, and Madison rebuked Christian nationalism explicitly. The deeper structural problem behind the DOJ's loss of credibility is the unitary executive theory itself — Article II of the Constitution is dangerously vague, the executive was never meant to be a co-equal branch (Congress was supposed to be most powerful), and the only durable fix may require constitutional reform to formally remove the DOJ from executive control. French closes on a hopeful note: after every dark period in American history, the country has entered a major era of reform — and he believes one is coming again.
Then, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine joins the Chuck Toddcast in his final months in office and, freed from ever facing voters again, says exactly what he thinks. The headline is his reversal on capital punishment: DeWine helped write Ohio's death penalty statute as a state senator in 1981 and defended it as attorney general, but in June he called on the legislature to abolish it, saying the moral justification he once had simply no longer exists. He walks Chuck through the practical case — roughly 20 years on average from sentencing to execution, a process that structurally cannot be sped up — and the harder question a Republican has to answer about whether you can be both pro-life and pro-death penalty. That flows into a broader argument about criminal justice that DeWine says has been driven by emotion rather than logic: truly violent offenders are a small percentage of the prison population and those are the people who need to be removed from society, but it's in society's direct self-interest to educate and rehabilitate everyone else. He's equally out of step with his party on immigration, arguing America needs legal immigrants, that we've been educating them and then failing to keep them, that Ohio's economic gains have come from immigrants, and that they're critical to caring for an aging population. On Springfield, DeWine is direct: the Haitian population created real challenges for the community, but they work hard, and it is not in America's interest to deport people who are here and working.
The conversation turns to the economy and the state's political future. DeWine calls the Canada trade war a genuine problem for Ohio — Canada is a major customer — and argues the country needs a real balance between domestic manufacturing and importing rather than a grudge match. On the data center boom reshaping Ohio politics, he says tech companies have an obligation to invest in the communities they move into, notes the technology has improved and no longer requires as much water, and makes the case that nuclear power is what will actually have to underwrite the buildout. He and Chuck get into whether there's a genuine divide between the two factions of the Ohio GOP, and DeWine offers a thoughtful answer about how the nationalization of politics has flattened the local distinctions that once existed inside both parties — and how that nationalization is now in everyone's face every single day. He takes ownership of the COVID shutdown decisions (the buck stopped with him), assesses whether Ohio is genuinely back to purple status with both the governor and Senate races going down to the wire, weighs in on whether the state is in good hands with either Vivek Ramaswamy or Amy Acton — and, of course, whether this is finally Joe Burrow's year.
Finally, Chuck hops into the ToddCast Time Machine to revisit the assassination of President William McKinley and the striking parallels between modern America, and America in 1901. He also answers listeners’ questions in the Ask Chuck segment.
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Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
04:30 With return of college football, comes a ton of political advertising
05:00 Football attracts a wide array of potential voters
06:30 Pro-Paxton ad in Texas made China the central theme, blamed Talarico
07:30 GOP has controlled Texas for decades, blaming Talarico is ridiculous
10:00 Dems dismiss the ad as ridiculous, but some people will believe it
12:15 Massachusetts primaries coming up on Tuesday, Sept 1st
14:15 The electorate will be voting on one issue… prices & affordability
15:00 Every other issue is a contributing factor to the price issues
15:45 The problem for Republicans is the economy will get worse, not better
16:30 Price pressures are building across the food supply
16:45 Iran war is causing major issues with the fuel & fertilizer supply
18:00 JP Morgan warns food inflation could reach 5% by 2027
18:30 Kevin Warsh will be forced to raise rates, Trump will be furious
19:00 Trump is only worried about his own personal financial interest
19:45 Fed raising rates to combat inflation will create 1970’s like conditions
20:15 Went to the Black Locust Livestock cattle ranch for Noosphere interview
21:45 Beef prices can’t just be adjusted with the turn of a dial
22:15 Raising cattle is a long term process & our beef herd is historically small
23:00 Trump knows beef prices are hurting him & wanted to import more
24:15 Importing is a short term solution, hurts the long term domestic supply
25:00 Only 4 companies process American beef & we’re losing capacity
25:30 How we can lower beef prices and boost domestic production
26:30 Trump tries to solve price issues in the short term, makes it worse long term
27:00 The price to produce food is rising because of decisions Trump made
27:45 Corporate pre-tax profits are at highest share since aftermath of WW2
28:15 Workers are getting lowest take home share of profits since 1950s
29:00 This is why voters across the spectrum are so pissed off at the system
29:30 There’s no economic boom for most Americans
30:15 Washington continues to misunderstand the anger of the voters
30:45 Trump voters are getting hardest hit by higher gas prices
32:30 Iran war isn’t just making things expensive, it’s making us more vulnerable
33:00 Defense leaders warning Hegseth the Iran war is unsustainable
33:45 Hegseth has put America in more danger than it’s been in since Cold War
34:15 Barely 1/4th of the Navy’s destroyer fleet is ready to deploy
34:45 We’ve burned through most of our advanced munitions
35:15 We’ve worn out our military equipment and personnel
36:00 Fighting this war has made us less capable of fighting the next war
36:30 China has been the biggest winner of Trump’s second term
37:00 What are we no longer willing to do because of the Iran war?
38:00 We’ve spent all this money on the military… and we’re tapped out?
38:30 We should be incredibly concerned about Putin testing NATO
39:15 Putin sees an American president desperate for a win
40:00 Trump announced that we’ve seized Venezuela’s oil reserves
40:45 This feels like British empire style imperialism
42:00 If Putin had done this to another country… what would we call it?
42:30 The standards shouldn’t be different because WE are doing it
43:30 Who is doing this negotiation and who stands to benefit?
44:30 Shouldn’t the windfall from Venezuelan oil benefit Venezuelans?
45:00 Trump is taking Venezuela’s oil at gunpoint, it’s highway robbery
46:00 This is why 2/3rd’s of South America hates the United States
46:30 Trump wants to make America and empire… and the world will hate us
48:00 This compounds America’s credibility problem globally
49:00 The world is only going to hate America & Americans more due to Trump
51:00 Chuck’s high school, Killian is down to 400 students from 3,000
51:45 The kids didn’t disappear, school choice killed ambition to attend there
53:00 Big successful public high schools defined their communities
54:30 Connection between community and schools has broken down
55:00 School choice creates communities not based in their neighborhood
56:00 We haven’t asked “What do we want a public school to do for a community?”
56:45 A public school is central to creating a local community
57:30 We trade choice and specialization, for a community that isn’t forced to interact
59:00 Killian’s community is still a good one, but the character changed
1:00:15 What exactly is public education for? Is it purely for kids' education?
1:01:00 The public school system was a source of our power… and we’ve gutted it
1:01:30 We didn’t try to fix public ed, we tried to empower people to escape it
1:03:45 We created more choices, but did we make education better?
1:05:45 We lost a place where we were forced to get to know each other
1:10:15 Governor Mike DeWine joins the Chuck ToddCast
1:11:30 More comfortable speaking out since not running for office
1:12:45 Mike’s argument against the death penalty
1:13:15 It takes 20 years on average from adjudication to execution
1:13:45 Death penalty process is not able to be sped up
1:15:15 We need to have legal immigrants admitted to America
1:16:30 We were educating immigrants, then not having them stay
1:17:15 Ohio’s economic increases have come from immigrants
1:17:45 Immigrants are critical to caring for our aging population
1:18:30 Can you be pro-life and pro-death penalty?
1:20:15 Putting an emphasis on rehabilitating prisoners
1:21:30 It’s in the self-interest of society to educate inmates
1:22:45 Emotion rather than logic & nuance drives the crime debate
1:23:45 Truly violent criminals are a very small percentage of the population
1:24:15 Violent criminals are the ones you have to get out of society
1:25:30 America goes through pro-immigration and anti-immigration phases
1:26:15 We need people who want to work
1:26:45 Haitians in Springfield created challenges, but they work hard
1:27:45 It’s not in our interest to deport people who are here and working
1:29:00 Haiti is a major challenge
1:32:00 Canada trade war is a problem, they’re a major customer for Ohio
1:33:45 Need a balance between manufacturing here and importing
1:36:00 Is there a divide in Ohio GOP between the two factions?
1:38:45 There used to be major distinctions within the parties
1:39:45 Nationalization of politics has stymied local distinctions within parties
1:40:45 The nationalization is now in everyone’s face everyday
1:43:15 Tech companies need to invest in communities where they put data centers
1:44:00 The data center tech is getting better, don’t have to use as much water
1:45:00 Need to invest in nuclear power in order to power the data center boom
1:45:45 Is Ohio in good hands with Ramaswamy or Acton as governor?
1:47:30 Shutdown decisions during COVID were the governor's choice. Buck stops with him
1:48:30 Is Ohio back to purple state status?
1:49:45 The governor and senate races will go down to the wire
1:50:15 Will this finally be Joe Burrow’s year?
1:52:00 ToddCast Time Machine - The Assassination of William McKinley
1:52:30 Of all presidential assassinations, Americans know the least about this one
1:53:00 The assassin was Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist who felt system was unjust
1:53:45 After McKinley died, Teddy Roosevelt became president
1:54:15 Czolgosz actually produced some of the political change he wanted
1:55:00 Modern America echoes America in 1901
1:56:00 Czolgosz saw political assassinations create change in Europe
1:57:45 Other anarchists thought Czolgosz was too committed, maybe a plant
1:58:15 Emma Goldman argues that societal conditions explain the assassination
1:59:00 When people conclude politics won’t solve problems, they look to alternatives
1:59:45 The assassination happened at a fair showing celebrating technological advances
2:00:30 The United States was emerging as a world power, but there were two Americas
2:01:00 One America saw dynamism, the other saw exploitation
2:01:30 The setting of the assassination was almost poetic
2:02:15 Doctors treating McKinley were too afraid to use new X-ray technology
2:03:15 Lincoln’s son was actually nearby during the assassination
2:03:45 Roosevelt was installed as VP by party bosses to get rid of him
2:04:30 Roosevelt sworn in at age 42, and understood the conditions for political radicalism
2:05:00 Roosevelt argues for the “Square Deal” and goes after concentrated corporate power
2:06:00 The uncomfortable truth: Does assassination provide the sought political change?
2:06:45 Lincoln and JFK’s assassination both changed the political timeline
2:08:00 Czolgosz was convicted and executed weeks after McKinley’s death
2:08:30 Congress passes the Anarchist Exclusion Act, Goldman is deported
2:10:00 The forces that produced Czolgosz weren’t confined to America
2:10:30 Roosevelt’s policies helped prevent a Russian-style revolution
2:11:00 Roosevelt argues capitalism has to be regulated and restrained
2:12:15 America in 2026 isn’t America 1901, but it does rhyme
2:13:15 Ask Chuck
2:13:30 What do you make of James Talarico’s status in Texas?
2:19:30 Thoughts on Project 2025, is it a threat and is Trump following it?
2:21:45 Do you think the Trump administration will still act on Cuba?
2:24:00 Why not make the Attorney General an elected position?
2:27:45 Do you see your political independence as a protest against duopoly?
2:32:00 Takeaways from first week of college football
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Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Chuck Klosterman joins the Chuck ToddCast
01:00 Football is partially memoir, part description of football
03:30 The process of writing the book
05:00 It was like Chuck was “trying to build his brain in public”
07:15 The thought exercise of how football will be remembered in 200 years
08:00 Over time, some things stick and others fade away until one thing is left
08:45 It’s easier to understand a singular narrative
09:30 If something remains in the zeitgeist after 60 years, it has true staying power
12:00 Arguments against the internet sound like arguments against TV
13:45 What do you consider “your beat” these days? Reality.
15:00 Consuming social media with assumption what you’re seeing isn’t real
16:15 Book is a living obituary for football. Eventually, it won’t be central to culture
17:00 By the 1970’s football was the most popular sport, people thought it was baseball
18:15 Football is the one common denominator of the American experience
19:15 In a few decades, football will likely no longer be central to our society
20:30 The perception of Woodrow Wilson changed well after his death
22:00 Perception can dramatically change over time
22:45 How much time should pass before writing about a historical event?
24:15 The internet has changed our relationship with time
25:30 Diving the timeline into pre and post 9/11 and pre/post Covid
26:45 The COVID experience was slow, 9/11 happened suddenly
28:00 People forget how weird the two weeks after 9/11 were
29:30 Covid was a bizarre experience, everyone focused on same thing
30:15 Covid truly the first global event, shared by everyone
31:30 Covid was actually a bonding experience for Chuck Todd with his kids
33:30 History may look back at Covid very differently than we do now
38:15 Will football end as the cultural glue when television ends?
38:45 Cost of TV advertising is not worth the ROI for many companies
39:30 NFL + college football are of the mindset that they can only expand
40:30 Football is our only sport that could survive on a PPV basis
42:15 The majority of people who love football didn’t play it
43:00 Sports show how capitalism operates in a way that’s dangerous
45:45 Complexity has made American football hard to export
46:45 There’s no freedom of movement in football. It’s all planned
48:00 Why hasn’t Rugby caught on in America?
48:45 Football almost became an embodiment of American exceptionalism
49:45 WSJ studied football and found there’s only 11 mins of action in 3 hours
51:45 Football is a mostly cerebral sport with intense, dispersed moments of action
52:45 How important is it that football is in fall and winter?
53:30 People can now escape nature, but nature is very determinative in football
56:30 Most people don’t experience physicality and football demands it
57:30 Is it possible for the NFL to overexpand? Could it become a 12 month experience?
59:30 Owners want to host a Super Bowl, all stadiums will likely have a roof in 20 years
1:01:45 Football will have value as a distraction, but it needs meaning to stay powerful
1:03:00 Attending football games has gotten increasingly expensive
1:04:30 Safety changes have changed the nature of the game
1:05:00 The dream may be to slowly remove the hitting from the game
1:05:30 Fans used to revel in the hard hits, now they’re turning away
1:06:15 The risk of injury raises the stakes, makes it more engaging
1:08:15 NFL walks the line between max physicality and not turning fans off
1:11:00 What is your next book? Alternate history of Rock n Roll
1:13:45 Rock as a meaningful artform ended in the 90s
1:16:00 People have access to all the music in the world, listen to same 600 songs
1:18:30 Regret getting rid of the CD collection
1:19:15 Eventually streaming services could get broken up, not have all music
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Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
03:15 Graham Platner cruised to victory will Janet Mills still on the ballot
04:15 Platner comfortably cleared 70%, it’s not a five alarm fire
05:45 Will there be more scandals from Platner? If so, what type?
06:30 For some primary voters, high character is a luxury item
08:15 The Democratic base is tired of losing & capitulating to establishment
08:45 A Platner election victory could change perception of the Democrats
10:30 Maine has gotten bluer since the last time Collins was on the ballot
11:30 Harris underperformed nationally, but had more raw vote in Maine than Biden
13:30 How many Dems will sit out the race rather than vote for Platner?
15:00 A generic Dem should win this race by 6-7 points
16:00 Lindsey Graham manages to avoid a runoff
16:45 South Carolina GOP gubernatorial race headed to runoff
17:15 Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman didn’t make the runoff
18:30 Everybody running in 2026 is running on a message of change
19:30 There’s no message of restoration similar to Biden’s campaign
20:30 Messaging is more future focused, the opposite of Trump
21:30 The worst first name to have in politics is congressman
24:45 Washington experience won’t carry value to voters this cycle
26:00 GOP voters still seemingly reward confrontation
27:00 Dem primary voters looking to electability/consensus candidates
28:45 Dem turnout on the rise, GOP turnout stagnant or down
29:30 For the past decade, voters are demanding major change
35:15 ToddCast Top 5 senate seats most likely to flip
36:30 More senate seats are creeping to “in play” status
38:45 #1 North Carolina
40:30 #2 Ohio
43:30 #3 Michigan
47:00 #4 Iowa
50:00 #5 Maine
55:00 Ask Chuck
55:15 Could politicians' investments be limited by law to index funds?
57:00 Correction on Jeri Ryan’s Star Trek series
58:30 If candidates like Platner and El-Sayed lose, could progressives change course?
1:04:30 Will Trump’s disciples try to be too much like him once he leaves politics?
1:08:15 Are you seeing a real shift in coverage from CBS News?
1:13:30 Thoughts on Brendan Soresby being reinstated after gambling on himself
The conversation digs into Pinkston's actual governing vision and her theory of how an independent can build a winning coalition in one of the reddest states in the country. She wants to reform education and make teaching a genuinely fun profession again, and she's passionate about the way Nashville soaks up all the state's political investment while Memphis gets neglected — pointing out that crime in Memphis is at a 20-year low yet the city still can't attract investment, and that St. Jude is struggling to recruit talent because of H1-B visa denials. Pinkston is candid about the structural obstacles: Tennessee's constitution doesn't even allow for ballot measures, the GOP holds a stranglehold on the statehouse, and Republican leadership has been kicking moderate candidates off the ballot entirely. But she argues there's a real opening — Republicans in the state are looking for an offramp that isn't a Democrat, and even staunch Democrats are frustrated with their own party. Pinkston is energized about working with the Working Families Party and the Forward Party to build toward a more moderate, genuinely competitive two-party system, argues this is the strongest group of independent candidates to run in years, and wonders aloud whether being "too educated" has perversely become a negative quality in a candidate. She closes with a sharp observation that cuts to the heart of the whole project: Americans demand more than two options for literally everything in their lives except politics, politicians increasingly rely on performance over substance, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
Finally, Chuck updates his ToddCast Top 5 list of senate seats most likely to flip parties and answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment.
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Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
03:15 Graham Platner cruised to victory will Janet Mills still on the ballot
04:15 Platner comfortably cleared 70%, it’s not a five alarm fire
05:45 Will there be more scandals from Platner? If so, what type?
06:30 For some primary voters, high character is a luxury item
08:15 The Democratic base is tired of losing & capitulating to establishment
08:45 A Platner election victory could change perception of the Democrats
10:30 Maine has gotten bluer since the last time Collins was on the ballot
11:30 Harris underperformed nationally, but had more raw vote in Maine than Biden
13:30 How many Dems will sit out the race rather than vote for Platner?
15:00 A generic Dem should win this race by 6-7 points
16:00 Lindsey Graham manages to avoid a runoff
16:45 South Carolina GOP gubernatorial race headed to runoff
17:15 Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman didn’t make the runoff
18:30 Everybody running in 2026 is running on a message of change
19:30 There’s no message of restoration similar to Biden’s campaign
20:30 Messaging is more future focused, the opposite of Trump
21:30 The worst first name to have in politics is congressman
24:45 Washington experience won’t carry value to voters this cycle
26:00 GOP voters still seemingly reward confrontation
27:00 Dem primary voters looking to electability/consensus candidates
28:45 Dem turnout on the rise, GOP turnout stagnant or down
29:30 For a decade, voters are demanding major change
36:45 Lauren Pinkston joins the Chuck ToddCast
37:45 Why run for governor as an independent?
39:00 There’s a lack of two party competition in Tennessee
40:45 Some of the barriers for an insurgent candidacy have been removed
42:45 Citizen’s United was a big reason for TN becoming uncompetitive
43:30 Lauren was raised to feel that voting Dem meant going to hell
45:30 Politics has courted the evangelical vote & leaders for decades
46:15 Jimmy Carter’s pure faith made it harder for him to govern
47:00 Churches teach nationalism & that America was ordained by god
48:00 Founders specifically didn’t put christianity & religion into the constitution
49:00 Lauren lived in communist Laos, where people were persecuted for their faith
50:00 The mechanical difficulties of running as an independent
51:15 Businesses afraid to support a non-Republican candidate in TN
52:45 Democratic opponent has been receiving calls to drop out
54:00 Any chance Marsha Blackburn isn’t the GOP nominee?
54:45 Blackburn isn’t as strong of a candidate as she thinks she is
55:15 Three leading candidates are white women with colors in their name
56:45 What big ideas are you proposing that you hope stick with voters?
57:15 Want to reform education and make it a fun field for teachers to work
58:45 Nashville gets all the political support and Memphis gets neglected
59:30 Crime is at a 20 year low in Memphis, but it still doesn’t get investment
1:00:30 St. Jude struggling to recruit due to denial of H1-B visas
1:01:00 How would you govern with a Republican stranglehold on the statehouse?
1:01:45 State constitution doesn’t even allow for ballot measures
1:02:30 Need to invest in Chief Information Officers are the county level
1:04:00 Attracting support from disaffected Democrats and Republicans
1:06:30 There’s a deep history of good governance out of east Tennessee
1:07:45 Need leaders and not party puppets
1:08:45 GOP leadership in the state has kicked moderate candidates off the ballot
1:09:45 Republicans in the state are looking for an offramp that isn’t a Democrat
1:10:15 What does your winning coalition look like?
1:12:30 Can you succeed without winning?
1:13:00 Want to give people an onramp to political engagement
1:14:15 Excited about working with WFP and Forward Party
1:14:45 Want to create a more moderate two party system
1:16:30 Strongest group of independent candidates running in years
1:17:30 Possible that being too educated will be a negative quality in a candidate
1:19:00 Voter turnout is pretty low in both Nashville and Memphis
1:20:45 Even the most staunch Democrats are frustrated with their party
1:22:00 It will be hard to get either opponent to agree to a debate
1:24:00 People demand more than two options for everything except politics
1:26:00 Politicians rely more on performance now than substance
1:27:45 People will die if governing isn’t taken seriously
1:29:15 Lack of competition in one party states isn’t good for democracy
1:30:30 Independents have better chance to win in one party states
1:32:30 ToddCast Top 5 senate seats most likely to flip
1:33:45 More senate seats are creeping to “in play” status
1:36:00 #1 North Carolina
1:37:45 #2 Ohio
1:40:45 #3 Michigan
1:44:15 #4 Iowa
1:47:15 #5 Maine
1:52:15 Ask Chuck
1:52:30 Could politicians' investments be limited by law to index funds?
1:54:15 Correction on Jeri Ryan’s Star Trek series
1:55:45 If candidates like Platner and El-Sayed lose, could progressives change course?
2:01:45 Will Trump’s disciples try to be too much like him once he leaves politics?
2:05:30 Are you seeing a real shift in coverage from CBS News?
2:10:45 Thoughts on Brendan Soresby being reinstated after gambling on himself
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Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Lauren Pinkston joins the Chuck ToddCast
01:00 Why run for governor as an independent?
02:15 There’s a lack of two party competition in Tennessee
04:00 Some of the barriers for an insurgent candidacy have been removed
06:00 Citizen’s United was a big reason for TN becoming uncompetitive
06:45 Lauren was raised to feel that voting Dem meant going to hell
08:45 Politics has courted the evangelical vote & leaders for decades
09:30 Jimmy Carter’s pure faith made it harder for him to govern
10:15 Churches teach nationalism & that America was ordained by god
11:15 Founders specifically didn’t put christianity & religion into the constitution
12:15 Lauren lived in communist Laos, where people were persecuted for their faith
13:15 The mechanical difficulties of running as an independent
14:30 Businesses afraid to support a non-Republican candidate in TN
16:00 Democratic opponent has been receiving calls to drop out
17:15 Any chance Marsha Blackburn isn’t the GOP nominee?
18:00 Blackburn isn’t as strong of a candidate as she thinks she is
18:30 Three leading candidates are white women with colors in their name
20:00 What big ideas are you proposing that you hope stick with voters?
20:30 Want to reform education and make it a fun field for teachers to work
22:00 Nashville gets all the political support and Memphis gets neglected
22:45 Crime is at a 20 year low in Memphis, but it still doesn’t get investment
23:45 St. Jude struggling to recruit due to denial of H1-B visas
24:15 How would you govern with a Republican stranglehold on the statehouse?
25:00 State constitution doesn’t even allow for ballot measures
25:45 Need to invest in Chief Information Officers are the county level
27:15 Attracting support from disaffected Democrats and Republicans
29:45 There’s a deep history of good governance out of east Tennessee
31:00 Need leaders and not party puppets
32:00 GOP leadership in the state has kicked moderate candidates off the ballot
33:00 Republicans in the state are looking for an offramp that isn’t a Democrat
33:30 What does your winning coalition look like?
35:45 Can you succeed without winning?
36:15 Want to give people an onramp to political engagement
37:30 Excited about working with WFP and Forward Party
38:00 Want to create a more moderate two party system
39:45 Strongest group of independent candidates running in years
40:45 Possible that being too educated will be a negative quality in a candidate
42:15 Voter turnout is pretty low in both Nashville and Memphis
44:00 Even the most staunch Democrats are frustrated with their party
45:15 It will be hard to get either opponent to agree to a debate
47:15 People demand more than two options for everything except politics
49:15 Politicians rely more on performance now than substance
51:00 People will die if governing isn’t taken seriously
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Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
05:30 Trump turns 80 in a week. Plans on celebrating himself with UFC fight
06:30 You can tell that Trump is not doing well physically/mentally
07:30 Republicans ignoring Trump’s decline like Dems did with Biden
10:00 Trump won’t do events where he has to stand, he sits now
11:30 Trump’s staff has been padding his schedule with private meetings
12:30 Trump built his campaign on premise his opponent was too old & sleepy
13:15 Biden’s debate broke the Dems silence, GOP hasn’t done same with Trump
14:30 Trump has influence and pull over his party that Biden didn’t
15:15 Trump’s behavior isn’t unusual for an 80 year, is unusual for a POTUS
16:00 Reinforces public perception that parties will say/defend anything for power
19:00 This will add to the credibility problems for the Republican party
19:30 Senate Republicans made huge mistake not killing the weaponization fund
20:15 Every Republican up for reelection is now vulnerable to easy attack ads
21:15 It’s probably illegal for Bill Pulte to hold the acting DNI position
23:00 Courts will likely step in to declare Pulte ineligible for position
25:30 Major primaries coming up on Tuesday including ME & SC
26:45 Lindsey Graham is vulnerable in South Carolina
27:45 Christian conservative right has always been skeptical of Graham
28:45 Outsiders have been ousting incumbents across the country
30:15 Since the Tea Party, GOP base has gone against the establishment
32:30 The anti-war vote will have qualms with Trump & Graham
33:15 Graham’s career is defined by being a political weathervane
35:00 If Graham is forced into a runoff, history says he’s in trouble
35:30 Will be interesting to see how much protest vote Janet Mills gets in ME
36:15 Platner says war messed him up… does he have the temperament for the job?
37:45 Just because behavior is explainable, doesn’t always make it excusable
38:15 Platner is in “save his campaign” mode
39:30 Bad actors will exploit California’s slow ballot counting process
40:30 Counting process requires people have faith in it, slowness hurts credibility
42:00 California has a duty to make citizens confident in the election
44:00 Thoughts on changes at 60 Minutes and Scott Pelley’s firing
44:30 Too much focus on Pelley and not enough on the Ellisons
45:00 Publicly traded media companies have all folded to & appeased Trump
47:30 Companies have a responsibility to shareholders, bad for news integrity
48:30 60 Minutes is a symbol, and Trump wants to bring it to heel/topple it
49:30 We don’t know the politics of the Ellisons, but they want their merger approved
50:30 Ellison’s know one 60 Minutes piece Trump dislikes could blow up merger
51:45 Bari Weiss is being used… is she comfortable being used?
53:00 Scott Pelley has the money to speak out and fight back
54:00 Journalists that stayed hoping to weather the storm & wait for new management
55:15 60 Minutes has incredible brand equity and is being gutted for the merger
56:45 The story is the Ellisons using 60 Minutes as a bargaining chip
1:02:15 ToddCast Time Machine - June 9th, 1954
1:02:45 “Have you no sense of decency?” quote becomes famous
1:03:30 Quote came during the Army/McCarthy hearings
1:04:00 The famous line didn’t end McCarthyism
1:04:45 The myth is that McCarthy created the Red Scare… he did not
1:05:30 The Cold War was not a distant abstraction, people were worried
1:06:00 McCarthy didn’t create the wave… he was surfing it
1:07:15 Mass media was growing in America and sped up the information wars
1:08:00 McCarthy understood media and how to create anticipation
1:09:30 McCarthy mastered the politics of attention, his and Trump’s mentor was Roy Cohn
1:11:30 The fear of communism still existed, but public confidence in McCarthy eroded
1:12:30 Television exposed McCarthy in a way quotes and newspapers couldn’t
1:14:00 Army/McCarthy hearings started as a personnel dispute for Roy Cohn ally
1:15:30 There were multiple institutions moving against McCarthy
1:16:30 Army chief counsel Joseph Welch spoke the infamous line
1:17:00 Welch gave words to a conclusion Americans were reaching on their own
1:19:45 Ask Chuck
1:20:00 When will congress actually hold cabinet members accountable?
1:26:45 Thoughts on DHS pulling CBP from sanctuary city airports?
1:30:45 Navigating the tension between voting for and against a candidate?
1:36:45 Thoughts on Democrats proposing a national gerrymandering ban?
The conversation turns to what French sees as a more immediate constitutional crisis: Trump's blanket immunity for tax violations and the "anti-weaponization" slush fund scheme, both of which French argues are flatly indefensible on legal grounds. He explains the deeper problem — Trump suing his own government creates a fiction of an adversarial proceeding when there isn't actually one, and Trump cares far more about the liability shield than the slush fund itself, because he's trying to remove himself from the operation of the law in essentially the same way a king would. The pardon power only covers federal crimes, not civil offenses, and Congress has clear authority to stop this if it had the will. French offers several concrete reforms: require congressional approval for legal settlements above a certain dollar threshold, force members of Congress to obtain a certification in the Constitution itself, and that political parties should perform comprehensive background checks for their candidates, On the question of whether the Founders intended a Christian nation, French is unequivocal: they didn't, and Madison rebuked Christian nationalism explicitly. The deeper structural problem behind the DOJ's loss of credibility is the unitary executive theory itself — Article II of the Constitution is dangerously vague, the executive was never meant to be a co-equal branch (Congress was supposed to be most powerful), and the only durable fix may require constitutional reform to formally remove the DOJ from executive control. French closes on a hopeful note: after every dark period in American history, the country has entered a major era of reform — and he believes one is coming again.
Finally, Chuck hops into the ToddCast Time Machine to revisit the infamous quote “Have you no sense of decency” from the Army/McCarthy hearings, why McCarthy was one of the first American politicians to master the attention economy, and why that famous quote precipitated the decline of McCarthy’s influence. He also answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment.
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Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
05:30 Trump turns 80 in a week. Plans on celebrating himself with UFC fight
06:30 You can tell that Trump is not doing well physically/mentally
07:30 Republicans ignoring Trump’s decline like Dems did with Biden
10:00 Trump won’t do events where he has to stand, he sits now
11:30 Trump’s staff has been padding his schedule with private meetings
12:30 Trump built his campaign on premise his opponent was too old & sleepy
13:15 Biden’s debate broke the Dems silence, GOP hasn’t done same with Trump
14:30 Trump has influence and pull over his party that Biden didn’t
15:15 Trump’s behavior isn’t unusual for an 80 year, is unusual for a POTUS
16:00 Reinforces public perception that parties will say/defend anything for power
19:00 This will add to the credibility problems for the Republican party
19:30 Senate Republicans made huge mistake not killing the weaponization fund
20:15 Every Republican up for reelection is now vulnerable to easy attack ads
21:15 It’s probably illegal for Bill Pulte to hold the acting DNI position
23:00 Courts will likely step in to declare Pulte ineligible for position
25:30 Major primaries coming up on Tuesday including ME & SC
26:45 Lindsey Graham is vulnerable in South Carolina
27:45 Christian conservative right has always been skeptical of Graham
28:45 Outsiders have been ousting incumbents across the country
30:15 Since the Tea Party, GOP base has gone against the establishment
32:30 The anti-war vote will have qualms with Trump & Graham
33:15 Graham’s career is defined by being a political weathervane
35:00 If Graham is forced into a runoff, history says he’s in trouble
35:30 Will be interesting to see how much protest vote Janet Mills gets in ME
36:15 Platner says war messed him up… does he have the temperament for the job?
37:45 Just because behavior is explainable, doesn’t always make it excusable
38:15 Platner is in “save his campaign” mode
39:30 Bad actors will exploit California’s slow ballot counting process
40:30 Counting process requires people have faith in it, slowness hurts credibility
42:00 California has a duty to make citizens confident in the election
44:00 Thoughts on changes at 60 Minutes and Scott Pelley’s firing
44:30 Too much focus on Pelley and not enough on the Ellisons
45:00 Publicly traded media companies have all folded to & appeased Trump
47:30 Companies have a responsibility to shareholders, bad for news integrity
48:30 60 Minutes is a symbol, and Trump wants to bring it to heel/topple it
49:30 We don’t know the politics of the Ellisons, but they want their merger approved
50:30 Ellison’s know one 60 Minutes piece Trump dislikes could blow up merger
51:45 Bari Weiss is being used… is she comfortable being used?
53:00 Scott Pelley has the money to speak out and fight back
54:00 Journalists that stayed hoping to weather the storm & wait for new management
55:15 60 Minutes has incredible brand equity and is being gutted for the merger
56:45 The story is the Ellisons using 60 Minutes as a bargaining chip
1:04:00 David French joins the Chuck ToddCast
1:05:30 Insurance companies & gambling companies have opposite incentives
1:08:00 States liberalized sports gambling and the public hasn’t liked it
1:09:45 Trying to regulate after the fact can be difficult
1:11:00 Common law concepts are starting to come into regulating AI
1:11:30 Florida AG has brought criminal case against OpenAI over FSU shooter
1:13:00 There has to always be human liability in AI cases
1:15:00 If ChatGPT was a human in FSU case, it would have be charged as co-conspirator
1:16:00 Shooter asked ChatGPT how to disengage the safety 3 mins before shooting
1:18:00 In Canadian school shooting, ChatGPT’s participation was overt
1:20:30 Determining liability is murky. Google search isn’t held to same standard as ChatGPT
1:22:00 Humans can be prosecuted for encouraging someone to commit suicide
1:23:15 There are circumstances where criminal liability could apply to AI
1:23:45 When ChatGPT is speaking, OpenAI is speaking
1:25:00 Litigation needs to be a deterrent, not just compensation for victims
1:27:30 We need to pass laws regulating AI, not just pressure via civil lawsuits
1:28:45 How is blanket immunity for Trump tax violations remotely legal?
1:29:45 Congress’s job to stop weaponization fund & Trump IRS immunity
1:30:45 Legal system rests on an adversarial relationship in court cases
1:31:45 There’s no adversarial proceeding when Trump sues his own government
1:32:30 Trump cares more about liability shield than the slush fund
1:33:30 Pardon power only applies to federal crimes, not civil offenses. Can be sued
1:34:15 Trump is trying to remove himself from the operation of the law like a king
1:35:00 How can congress stop Trump’s DOJ from issuing these settlements?
1:36:45 Congress should have to approve settlements above a certain amount of $
1:38:30 Member of congress should have to get a certification in the constitution
1:39:45 Parties should force candidates to pass a comprehensive background check
1:41:00 Why aren’t state funded partisan primaries a violation of equal protection?
1:44:15 Partisan primaries are killing the political system
1:45:00 States can say that they’ll only fund open primaries
1:46:15 Campaign finance reforms and PACs have weakened party control
1:48:00 Did the founders intend for America to be a christian nation?
1:49:00 Founders were biblically literate, but not particularly devout
1:49:30 Founders intentionally did not create a christian nation
1:50:30 Madison argued against paying clergy with tax dollars
1:51:15 Madison rebuked christian nationalism and immigration restriction
1:53:45 DOJ has lost credibility, how can we separate the DOJ from the executive?
1:54:30 Problems with DOJ are downstream from the unitary executive theory
1:55:30 Article II of the constitution is vague and inexplicit
1:56:45 After dark period, America enters periods of reform, which we badly need
1:58:45 Never supposed to be co-equal branches. Congress should have most power
1:59:30 Have to remove executive’s ability to claw power to the top
2:00:30 Would likely need constitutional reform to pull DOJ out of executive branch
2:03:00 Past congressional leaders wouldn’t voluntarily cede power
2:04:45 In late 80’s - early 90’s, congress was incentivized to compromise
2:05:30 Changes to college basketball in one-and-done and NIL era
2:07:00 Transfer portal has created a new form of one-and-done
2:08:45 NBA can only improve regular season by reducing the 82 games
2:10:15 Regular season NBA games are more intense than 30 years ago
2:13:45 ToddCast Time Machine - June 9th, 1954
2:14:15 “Have you no sense of decency?” quote becomes famous
2:15:00 Quote came during the Army/McCarthy hearings
2:15:30 The famous line didn’t end McCarthyism
2:16:15 The myth is that McCarthy created the Red Scare… he did not
2:17:00 The Cold War was not a distant abstraction, people were worried
2:17:30 McCarthy didn’t create the wave… he was surfing it
2:18:45 Mass media was growing in America and sped up the information wars
2:19:30 McCarthy understood media and how to create anticipation
2:21:00 McCarthy mastered the politics of attention, his and Trump’s mentor was Roy Cohn
2:23:00 The fear of communism still existed, but public confidence in McCarthy eroded
2:24:00 Television exposed McCarthy in a way quotes and newspapers couldn’t
2:25:30 Army/McCarthy hearings started as a personnel dispute for Roy Cohn ally
2:27:00 There were multiple institutions moving against McCarthy
2:28:00 Army chief counsel Joseph Welch spoke the infamous line
2:28:30 Welch gave words to a conclusion Americans were reaching on their own
2:31:15 Ask Chuck
2:31:30 When will congress actually hold cabinet members accountable?
2:38:15 Thoughts on DHS pulling CBP from sanctuary city airports?
2:42:15 Navigating the tension between voting for and against a candidate?
2:48:15 Thoughts on Democrats proposing a national gerrymandering ban?
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Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 David French joins the Chuck ToddCast
01:30 Insurance companies & gambling companies have opposite incentives
04:00 States liberalized sports gambling and the public hasn’t liked it
05:45 Trying to regulate after the fact can be difficult
07:00 Common law concepts are starting to come into regulating AI
07:30 Florida AG has brought criminal case against OpenAI over FSU shooter
09:00 There has to always be human liability in AI cases
11:00 If ChatGPT was a human in FSU case, it would have be charged as co-conspirator
12:00 Shooter asked ChatGPT how to disengage the safety 3 mins before shooting
14:00 In Canadian school shooting, ChatGPT’s participation was overt
16:30 Determining liability is murky. Google search isn’t held to same standard as ChatGPT
18:00 Humans can be prosecuted for encouraging someone to commit suicide
19:15 There are circumstances where criminal liability could apply to AI
19:45 When ChatGPT is speaking, OpenAI is speaking
21:00 Litigation needs to be a deterrent, not just compensation for victims
23:30 We need to pass laws regulating AI, not just pressure via civil lawsuits
24:45 How is blanket immunity for Trump tax violations remotely legal?
25:45 Congress’s job to stop weaponization fund & Trump IRS immunity
26:45 Legal system rests on an adversarial relationship in court cases
27:45 There’s no adversarial proceeding when Trump sues his own government
28:30 Trump cares more about liability shield than the slush fund
29:30 Pardon power only applies to federal crimes, not civil offenses. Can be sued
30:15 Trump is trying to remove himself from the operation of the law like a king
31:00 How can congress stop Trump’s DOJ from issuing these settlements?
32:45 Congress should have to approve settlements above a certain amount of $
34:30 Member of congress should have to get a certification in the constitution
35:45 Parties should force candidates to pass a comprehensive background check
37:00 Why aren’t state funded partisan primaries a violation of equal protection?
40:15 Partisan primaries are killing the political system
41:00 States can say that they’ll only fund open primaries
42:15 Campaign finance reforms and PACs have weakened party control
44:00 Did the founders intend for America to be a christian nation?
45:00 Founders were biblically literate, but not particularly devout
45:30 Founders intentionally did not create a christian nation
46:30 Madison argued against paying clergy with tax dollars
47:15 Madison rebuked christian nationalism and immigration restriction
49:45 DOJ has lost credibility, how can we separate the DOJ from the executive?
50:30 Problems with DOJ are downstream from the unitary executive theory
51:30 Article II of the constitution is vague and inexplicit
52:45 After dark period, America enters periods of reform, which we badly need
54:45 Never supposed to be co-equal branches. Congress should have most power
55:30 Have to remove executive’s ability to claw power to the top
56:30 Would likely need constitutional reform to pull DOJ out of executive branch
59:00 Past congressional leaders wouldn’t voluntarily cede power
1:00:45 In late 80’s - early 90’s, congress was incentivized to compromise
1:01:30 Changes to college basketball in one-and-done and NIL era
1:03:00 Transfer portal has created a new form of one-and-done
1:04:45 NBA can only improve regular season by reducing the 82 games
1:06:15 Regular season NBA games are more intense than 30 years ago
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