The Chuck ToddCast

Three weeks out, Chuck Todd reads a Pew survey that gives Republicans nothing: Trump at 30% approval — his lowest of the second term and on par with where he sat after January 6th — Democrats up 44-36 on the generic ballot, and 44% of voters describing their vote as a vote against Trump. The enthusiasm gap is the number Todd keeps returning to, and his argument is that we may still be underestimating the size of this wave. He walks through why the close Senate races map almost perfectly onto the states Trump lost in the 2016 primaries, why Roger Marshall’s campaign reportedly has no paid staff, and why bad environments expose bad candidates. Plus Hegseth’s execution livestream, Trump’s Truth Social meltdown over the Nobel, and what a genuine blue wave would mean for both.
Then, AEI senior fellow James Pethokoukis — author of the Faster, Please! newsletter — joins the Chuck ToddCast to argue that America’s AI anxiety is the predictable product of two decades of shocks landing on an economy that’s been weak by historical standards. His central political point cuts against his own side of the argument: telling voters their fear is irrational is the worst possible strategy, and Silicon Valley is terrible at communicating with the public. He’s no more comfortable with Trump’s self-regulation approach, noting Congress has failed to pass even a privacy bill of rights and won’t touch AI in the next two years. His cautionary tale is nuclear power, where public aversion cost the country clean energy at scale while far more people died from fossil fuel pollution — and his warning is that AI companies shouldn’t be treated as weapons against China.
Finally, Chuck hops into the ToddCast Time Machine to revisit the creation of the Bull Moose Party and it’s impact on both major parties, answers questions in the Ask Chuck segment and recaps the weekend in college football.
Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/chuck. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.
For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial (980) 734-3985 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to askchapter.org/chuck / *Paid Partnership

Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide.

Timeline:
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
08:15 How bad a night are Republicans actually looking at?
10:15 Inside the Pew numbers: 30% approval, D+8 generic
12:15 The enthusiasm gap and why the wave may be bigger than we think
19:00 Trump has lost the voters he added in 2024
23:00 Republicans can’t separate themselves from Trump’s decisions
25:30 GOP money promoting left-wing third party candidates
28:00 Kansas as a toss-up, and the 2016 primary map
34:15 Roger Marshall, no paid staff, and how bad environments expose bad candidates
39:30 Hegseth, the execution livestream, and a low opinion of their own voters
47:00 Rubio in Greece, power vs. accomplishment, and the DOJ memo
56:15 Trump’s Nobel meltdown and selling out Lindsey Graham’s legacy
1:06:30 James Pethokoukis joins The Chuck ToddCast
1:08:30 Why an economic growth guy got interested in AI
1:11:30 Shock after shock, and whether the information diet amplifies despair
1:14:00 Why focusing only on AI’s downside is destructive
1:18:30 Self-regulation, congressional failure, and the next two years
1:25:30 What risk level should we demand from AI companies?
1:26:45 The nuclear power cautionary tale
1:31:45 Rapid adoption, delayed productivity, and absurd forecasts
1:38:30 Silicon Valley’s communication problem
1:43:00 Accountability, visibility, and young companies
1:50:30 Where does a free-market conservative go now?
1:56:30 Competition, monopolies, and the China race narrative
2:06:00 ToddCast Time Machine - October 14th, 1912
2:06:30 Teddy Roosevelt shot, insists on giving speech anyway
2:10:00 Roosevelt wants more government power to oppose corporate power
2:13:00 Taft & Roosevelt’s falling out
2:16:45 The Bull Moose Party is born
2:17:30 The differences between Roosevelt and Trump
2:19:30 Roosevelt’s proposals became future progressivism & the New Deal
2:23:00 Republicans moved away from Roosevelt’s philosophy, Dems embraced it
2:25:30 Parts of Bull Moose live on in both modern parties
2:27:30 Ask Chuck
2:27:45 If Dems take house, who becomes speaker and who SHOULD get the job?
2:32:30 How would a better than expected showing for Republicans materialize?
2:35:30 Constitutional amendment to remove presidential immunity?
2:38:00 Who picks up the tab for all of Trump’s campaigning travel?
2:40:00 Could Annie Andrews' increased visibility cause Graham to make missteps?
2:45:00 College football recap
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

AEI senior fellow James Pethokoukis — author of the Faster, Please! newsletter — joins the Chuck ToddCast to argue that America’s AI anxiety is the predictable product of two decades of shocks landing on an economy that’s been weak by historical standards. His central political point cuts against his own side of the argument: telling voters their fear is irrational is the worst possible strategy, and Silicon Valley is terrible at communicating with the public. He’s no more comfortable with Trump’s self-regulation approach, noting Congress has failed to pass even a privacy bill of rights and won’t touch AI in the next two years. His cautionary tale is nuclear power, where public aversion cost the country clean energy at scale while far more people died from fossil fuel pollution — and his warning is that AI companies shouldn’t be treated as weapons against China.
Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/chuck. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.
For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial (980) 734-3985 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to askchapter.org/chuck / *Paid Partnership

Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide.

Timeline:
00:00 James Pethokoukis joins The Chuck ToddCast
02:00 Why an economic growth guy got interested in AI
05:00 Shock after shock, and whether the information diet amplifies despair
07:30 Why focusing only on AI’s downside is destructive
12:00 Self-regulation, congressional failure, and the next two years
19:00 What risk level should we demand from AI companies?
20:15 The nuclear power cautionary tale
25:15 Rapid adoption, delayed productivity, and absurd forecasts
32:00 Silicon Valley’s communication problem
36:30 Accountability, visibility, and young companies
44:00 Where does a free-market conservative go now?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three weeks out, Chuck Todd reads a Pew survey that gives Republicans nothing: Trump at 30% approval — his lowest of the second term and on par with where he sat after January 6th — Democrats up 44-36 on the generic ballot, and 44% of voters describing their vote as a vote against Trump. The enthusiasm gap is the number Todd keeps returning to, and his argument is that we may still be underestimating the size of this wave. He walks through why the close Senate races map almost perfectly onto the states Trump lost in the 2016 primaries, why Roger Marshall’s campaign reportedly has no paid staff, and why bad environments expose bad candidates. Plus Hegseth’s execution livestream, Trump’s Truth Social meltdown over the Nobel, and what a genuine blue wave would mean for both.
Finally, Chuck hops into the ToddCast Time Machine to revisit the creation of the Bull Moose Party and its impact on both major parties, answers questions in the Ask Chuck segment and recaps the weekend in college football.
Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/chuck. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.
For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial (980) 734-3985 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to askchapter.org/chuck / *Paid Partnership

Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide.

Timeline:
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
08:15 How bad a night are Republicans actually looking at?
10:15 Inside the Pew numbers: 30% approval, D+8 generic
12:15 The enthusiasm gap and why the wave may be bigger than we think
19:00 Trump has lost the voters he added in 2024
23:00 Republicans can’t separate themselves from Trump’s decisions
25:30 GOP money promoting left-wing third party candidates
28:00 Kansas as a toss-up, and the 2016 primary map
34:15 Roger Marshall, no paid staff, and how bad environments expose bad candidates
39:30 Hegseth, the execution livestream, and a low opinion of their own voters
47:00 Rubio in Greece, power vs. accomplishment, and the DOJ memo
56:15 Trump’s Nobel meltdown and selling out Lindsey Graham’s legacy
1:04:15 ToddCast Time Machine - October 14th, 1912
1:04:45 Teddy Roosevelt shot, insists on giving speech anyway
1:08:15 Roosevelt wants more government power to oppose corporate power
1:11:15 Taft & Roosevelt’s falling out
1:15:00 The Bull Moose Party is born
1:15:45 The differences between Roosevelt and Trump
1:17:45 Roosevelt’s proposals became future progressivism & the New Deal
1:21:15 Republicans moved away from Roosevelt’s philosophy, Dems embraced it
1:23:45 Parts of Bull Moose live on in both modern parties
1:25:45 Ask Chuck
1:26:00 If Dems take house, who becomes speaker and who SHOULD get the job?
1:30:45 How would a better than expected showing for Republicans materialize?
1:33:45 Constitutional amendment to remove presidential immunity?
1:36:15 Who picks up the tab for all of Trump’s campaigning travel?
1:38:15 Could Annie Andrews' increased visibility cause Graham to make missteps?
1:43:15 College football recap
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chuck Todd opens with the Wall Street Journal's brutal profile of Scott Bessent — built on 30-plus interviews describing outbursts, a thrown briefing book he denies, and seven Senate-confirmed officials out the door when previous administrations lost zero to two. The 3-3-3 plan never materialized, the debt cleared $40 trillion, and Trump keeps giving him more. Chuck's read: the whole Cabinet has become mini-Trumps. He then gets into whoever's drip-releasing the Paxton tapes, Pritzker's $1 million check to Gina Hinojosa, and Mike Rogers breaking with Trump on Canada far too late. Finally, Chuck runs the historical numbers on whether Democrats can actually win six-plus Senate seats — with Iowa and Kansas as the real test of the wave theory and whether we’re not seeing a political realignment occurring in real time that could result in Democrats winning 270+ house seats.

Finally, he answers listeners’ questions in the Ask Chuck segment and previews the upcoming weekend in college football.

18+ only. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves significant risk and is not appropriate for everyone. Please carefully consider if it is appropriate for you in light of your personal financial circumstances. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. See kalshi.com/regulatory for more information. Sign up today to get $25 in bonuses when you trade $25: CHUCKTODD
http://kalshi.com/r/CHUCKTODD
Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/chuck. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.

Timeline:
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
08:15 The WSJ profile of Scott Bessent and the Treasury exodus
13:00 The 3-3-3 plan that never happened — and a Cabinet of mini-Trumps
17:45 The Paxton tapes and a Texas GOP turning purple
25:30 Pritzker's million-dollar check and the DGA finally spending
28:00 Mike Rogers breaks with Trump — too late
31:30 Voting to check Trump, and a base that blames the candidates
34:15 Getting bullish on the Senate, and what D+16 would mean
42:00 Three possibilities for what we're actually seeing
46:30 The history of winning six or more Senate seats
54:00 Texas, Nebraska, South Carolina — and Iowa and Kansas as the real test
1:02:00 What a Texas-Iowa-Kansas sweep would mean
1:11:00 Ask Chuck
1:11:15 Top 3 no guts, no glory races this election cycle
1:13:15 Loved the interview with Marcia Chatelain
1:14:00 Would allowing blind votes in congress be a good idea?
1:15:30 Is there ever a line of Trump’s that Stephen Miller could cross?
1:18:45 What’s your read on McMaster appointing Darline Graham?
1:23:15 College football preview
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chuck Todd opens with the Wall Street Journal's brutal profile of Scott Bessent — built on 30-plus interviews describing outbursts, a thrown briefing book he denies, and seven Senate-confirmed officials out the door when previous administrations lost zero to two. The 3-3-3 plan never materialized, the debt cleared $40 trillion, and Trump keeps giving him more. Chuck's read: the whole Cabinet has become mini-Trumps. He then gets into whoever's drip-releasing the Paxton tapes, Pritzker's $1 million check to Gina Hinojosa, and Mike Rogers breaking with Trump on Canada far too late. Finally, Chuck runs the historical numbers on whether Democrats can actually win six-plus Senate seats — with Iowa and Kansas as the real test of the wave theory and whether we’re not seeing a political realignment occurring in real time that could result in Democrats winning 270+ house seats.

Then, Dmitri Mehlhorn — Democratic strategist, Atoll Society co-founder, and author of the new novel Archipelago of Light — joins the Chuck ToddCast to walk through the war games he runs simulating a contested 2028 election. Three teams: Institutionalists, Nationalists, and Capitalists. The Nationalists win a lot of them, and the mechanics are grimly instructive — they pump up progressives to generate backlash, offer carrots and sticks to capital, and find that every norm broken makes the next break easier. Mehlhorn argues the midterms are the rehearsal: get voters accustomed to challenging results now, delegitimize the process before 2028, and exploit a speaker's latitude not to seat delegations if things are close. His core warning is that our biggest failure has been a failure of imagination — and that taking power back has to be the singular issue in 2028.

Finally, he answers listeners’ questions in the Ask Chuck segment and previews the upcoming weekend in college football.

18+ only. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves significant risk and is not appropriate for everyone. Please carefully consider if it is appropriate for you in light of your personal financial circumstances. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. See kalshi.com/regulatory for more information. Sign up today to get $25 in bonuses when you trade $25: CHUCKTODD
http://kalshi.com/r/CHUCKTODD
Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/chuck. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.
Timeline:
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
08:15 The WSJ profile of Scott Bessent and the Treasury exodus
13:00 The 3-3-3 plan that never happened — and a Cabinet of mini-Trumps
17:45 The Paxton tapes and a Texas GOP turning purple
25:30 Pritzker's million-dollar check and the DGA finally spending
28:00 Mike Rogers breaks with Trump — too late
31:30 Voting to check Trump, and a base that blames the candidates
34:15 Getting bullish on the Senate, and what D+16 would mean
42:00 Three possibilities for what we're actually seeing
46:30 The history of winning six or more Senate seats
54:00 Texas, Nebraska, South Carolina — and Iowa and Kansas as the real test
1:02:00 What a Texas-Iowa-Kansas sweep would mean
1:13:15 Dmitri Mehlhorn joins The Chuck ToddCast
1:14:15 The simulation, the three factions, and how it works
1:17:15 Why the Nationalists keep winning
1:22:00 The predictable playbook of authoritarians
1:25:30 What happens if 2028 is disputed
1:33:45 Building the game with AI and historical autocrats
1:36:30 The midterms as practice for 2028
1:42:30 The next 75 days and seating the winners
1:45:15 Texas, Hungary, and what actually deters authoritarians
1:55:30 The urban/rural divide and echoes of pre-WWI
2:00:00 Is the constitutional period already over?
2:07:45 Alarmism vs. vigilance — and what gives him hope
2:18:00 Ask Chuck
2:18:15 Top 3 no guts, no glory races this election cycle
2:20:15 Loved the interview with Marcia Chatelain
2:21:00 Would allowing blind votes in congress be a good idea?
2:22:30 Is there ever a line of Trump’s that Stephen Miller could cross?
2:24:45 What’s your read on McMaster appointing Darline Graham?
2:30:15 College football preview
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.