Chuck Todd: Is the Economy the Biggest Political Threat to Trump?

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast - Episode Summary Title: Chuck Todd: Is the Economy the Biggest Political Threat to Trump? Host: Tim Miller Guest: Chuck Todd, Former Moderator of Meet the Press and Head of Politics at Newsphere Release Date: August 5, 2025

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1. Introduction

[01:47] Tim Miller kicks off the episode by welcoming Chuck Todd, highlighting Todd's extensive experience in political journalism, including his tenure as the moderator of Meet the Press and his current role with Chuck Toddcast and Newsphere.

2. Current Political Landscape

[02:07] Tim Miller brings up a recent event in Nebraska featuring Congressman Mike Flood, noting the unexpectedly high turnout at Flood’s town hall.
Quote:
[02:47] Chuck Todd: "And more than anything, I truly believe this bill protects Medicaid for the future."

3. August's Political Significance

The discussion delves into the historical importance of August in politics, comparing the current August to August 2009 when Barack Obama was pushing for healthcare reforms. Quote:
[03:09] Chuck Todd: "But one thing that is true is that August has always mattered more than we'd like to admit."

4. The Economy as a Political Threat to Trump

The core of the conversation centers on whether the economy poses a significant threat to Donald Trump’s political standing.
[05:10] Chuck Todd argues that Trump's inability to manage the economy effectively—particularly tariffs and inflation—is undermining his support base.
Quote:
[09:26] Chuck Todd: "What is a tariff other than a tax hike on consumer goods... It has been nothing but negative impact on the economy."

5. Trump's Information Ecosystem and Staff Influence

Todd discusses how Trump’s staff isolates him from reality, relying on distorted polls and misinformation to maintain his base. Quote:
[14:40] Chuck Todd: "He is getting a filtered version of events. There's a lot of people around him manipulating him for their own benefit."

6. Comparison to Biden's Administration

Drawing parallels to Joe Biden’s administration, Todd notes how both presidents have entourages that shield them from unfavorable realities. Quote:
[14:39] Chuck Todd: "There's clearly a core group of Trump staffers that are putting Trump in a cocoon."

7. Voter Registration and Party Strategies

The discussion shifts to the effectiveness of the Republican Party versus the Democratic Party in voter registration efforts.
[30:07] Chuck Todd: "The Democratic party surrendered in all these states. They made no effort."

8. Demographic Shifts and Party Realignment

Todd highlights how Stacey Abrams’ efforts in Georgia transformed it into a swing state, contrasting it with the DNC’s general failure to engage in similar voter registration drives in other states. Quote:
[30:16] Chuck Todd: "The DNC has been an utter and complete failure for over a decade now."

9. Internal Divisions Within the Democratic Party

The conversation explores the lack of unified economic and cultural visions within the Democratic Party, contributing to their struggles in states like Iowa and Nebraska. Quote:
[33:51] Chuck Todd: "There isn't full agreement on an economic vision and there's also not one on culture."

10. Media Trust and the Decline of Local Journalism

Todd and Miller discuss the erosion of trust in national media, emphasizing the critical role of local journalism in maintaining information ecosystems. Quote:
[52:16] Chuck Todd: "Our information ecosystem's broken... Imagine if we took our drinking water pipes and our sewer system and put them all in the same pipe..."

11. Rebuilding Media Trust Through Community Engagement

Todd proposes rebuilding trust by focusing on service journalism that addresses local needs, such as covering youth sports, local weather, and community events to restore the foundational trust once held by local media. Quote:
[53:35] Chuck Todd: "You build trust in a community by covering the stuff they want to see, and it begins with their kids."

12. Polarization and Media’s Role

The hosts reflect on how media coverage, especially of figures like Trump, has contributed to societal polarization, making it challenging to regain lost trust. Quote:
[55:40] Chuck Todd: "Trump won because he correctly convinced the country that most politicians are lying to you. I can't tell you how many Trump voters I talked to going, yeah, I know he's a bullshit artist, but so are they."

13. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Miller and Todd touch on the ongoing cultural and political battles, emphasizing the need for both parties to engage more effectively with their bases and address internal divisions to regain public trust.

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Notable Quotes

• [05:10] Chuck Todd: "What is a tariff other than a tax hike on consumer goods... It has been nothing but negative impact on the economy."
• [14:40] Chuck Todd: "He is getting a filtered version of events. There's a lot of people around him manipulating him for their own benefit."
• [30:07] Chuck Todd: "The Democratic party surrendered in all these states. They made no effort."
• [33:51] Chuck Todd: "There isn't full agreement on an economic vision and there's also not one on culture."
• [52:16] Chuck Todd: "Our information ecosystem's broken... Imagine if we took our drinking water pipes and our sewer system and put them all in the same pipe..."
• [53:35] Chuck Todd: "You build trust in a community by covering the stuff they want to see, and it begins with their kids."
• [55:40] Chuck Todd: "Trump won because he correctly convinced the country that most politicians are lying to you. I can't tell you how many Trump voters I talked to going, yeah, I know he's a bullshit artist, but so are they."

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Key Takeaways

• Economic Performance as a Central Issue: The economy remains the primary threat to Trump’s political viability, with mismanagement of tariffs and inflation eroding his support.
• Isolation from Reality: Trump's staff shields him from unfavorable data and realities, relying on distorted polling to maintain his base.
• Party Strategy Imbalances: Republicans excel in voter registration efforts, particularly in battleground states, while Democrats falter due to lack of effective grassroots engagement.
• Internal Divisions: Democratic Party struggles with unifying on economic and cultural policies, hindering their electoral competitiveness.
• Media Trust Decline: The erosion of trust in national media stems from decreased reliance on local journalism, necessitating a rebuild of community-focused reporting to restore credibility.
• Polarization Challenges: Persistent polarization exacerbated by media practices makes reconciling differing viewpoints increasingly difficult.

Conclusion

In this insightful episode, Tim Miller and Chuck Todd dissect the multifaceted challenges facing Donald Trump, particularly focusing on the economy as a pivotal threat to his political future. They explore the broader implications for party strategies, voter engagement, and media trust, offering a comprehensive analysis for listeners seeking to understand the current political climate.

Transcript

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[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show. Former moderator of Meet the Press. You might have heard of that show. He's also the host of the Chuck Toddcast. Nice pun. And head of politics at Newsphere, a new subscription news platform showcasing the work of independent journalists, it's Chuck Todd. What's up man?

[Chuck Todd]

Mr. Miller, good to see you, buddy.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, it's been a minute.

[Chuck Todd]

It has.

[Tim Miller]

I've got a bunch of stuff I want to talk to you about. I want to do media stuff at the end. There's a lot of media gossip, but we have real news first. I'm interested in your kind of historic perspective on August. We're in this August. This is August 5th. And what we're seeing. We had this event yesterday in Nebraska, one with Mike Flood, who's kind of a no name congressman really. The only thing I knew about him was he ran against Carol Blood in the last election.

[Chuck Todd]

So you liked Flood versus Blood?

[Tim Miller]

I did. I got a kick out of it.

[Chuck Todd]

He got into that.

[Tim Miller]

That's about the only thing I knew about him until yesterday. And people on the ground were reporting that it was like presidential campaign level turnout for his town hall. And I just want to play one little audio clip from it.

[Chuck Todd]

And more than anything, I truly believe this bill protects Medicaid for the future.

[Unknown Speaker]

I believe.

[Tim Miller]

Not a happy audience. What do you make of what we're seeing right now compared to 2010 or other big sort of inflection points such as this?

[Chuck Todd]

Well, it's funny you bring up August. I've been vacillating about whether is this the summer swoon that you and I have experienced for plenty of presidents over the years where there's something about the summers that sometimes people aren't fully engaged. So you like communication staffs. Half of them are vacationing. So there's always been this theory as to why politicians find so much trouble in the late July, early August.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Is it just because people have vacation on the brain? Nobody's quite working at 100%. There's all sorts of thesis on this. But the one thing that is true is that August has always mattered more than we'd like to admit.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

These August do set toned in tenors. You go back to the August town Halls of 2009 and I remember traveling the country with Obama at that time and he was trying to sell health care. In fact, I asked the infamous question to Chuck Grassley. Chuck Grassley, back in the days when he would do cable tv, he was on. I was in Phoenix, Arizona on remote sort of covering Obama, but I was sort of co hosting whatever MSNBC I was dealing with at the time. And I remember asking Grassley, hey, if you got everything you wanted out of this bill, but the majority of the Republican Senate wasn't going to support this bill, could you support it? And he said no. I always appreciate Grassley that he sort of says what he thinks, which is why he's not the best communicator, never has been. Why he was never front and center.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

Sure.

[Chuck Todd]

But is probably explains why he always wins reelection is that he has, you know, whether you love him or hate him, the truth usually comes out of him in some form or another. And it's not lost on me that he's one of the few that are pushing back on Trump on tariffs, for instance.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

Unless he gets tricked by a Russian email.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, there's that. I'm not going to sit here and.

[Tim Miller]

Say that he was being honest. He was being honest about the fact that he thought that it was implicating Hillary. He just was wrong about the email.

[Chuck Todd]

Yes. But I go back and those August town halls absolutely impacted him, changed his politics. It. So this stuff matters. You know, I look at the Nebraska one, and I'm mindful that that's Lincoln. And if you, you know, outside of Lincoln, the rest of that district's Nebraska.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

You know, and so it is an interesting decision by the congressman to hold it in Lincoln where you're going to get a more, probably a more antagonistic crowd and a more. And a more engaged crowd. And I think that's the other thing I take away right now. The party out of power. Right now, the voters that feel out of power. I don't want to necessarily say the party out of power because we're in this weird circumstance where Democrats have not gotten more popular as Trump's gotten more unpopular, but it has not meant that there isn't an opposition that's fired up to vote.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Both things can be true at the same time. A whole bunch of people are going to get out to vote in the midterms. Democrats may benefit from it, but it doesn't mean they like the Democratic Party better than they do right now.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

I certainly think that there are some signs I want to get to the polls next that, like, there's weakening popularity among the Trump agenda, among Trump himself, among these Republicans. It's hard for me to see, no matter how rowdy and raucous August gets, like, Republican members of Congress, behavior changing. Right. Like, I think that is, like, the one thing that, you know, conceivably. Right. You get to a point where Trump's numbers are so low that they feel like they don't have to go along with him on everything anymore. They feel like the greater threat to them is the midterm than, you know, a primary. Even though that is true for some minority subset of the conference, you're not really seeing that. I don't know. Do you think that there's any chance that, you know, these guys come back in September after their extended Epstein break and decide, maybe, maybe my behavior should. Should change a little bit if I want to survive?

[Chuck Todd]

So that I don't. But let me give you a scenario that I'm curious how it plays out.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Chuck Todd]

I'm pretty convinced the courts are going to take away Trump's power on tariffs. Okay.

[Tim Miller]

The Supreme Court.

[Chuck Todd]

Yes. I just think it's open and shut. That this emergency is. That it's a. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe this Supreme Court will capitulate. But I'M These have been such decisive arguments. Right. You already had one court just overwhelmingly say, no, this is unconstitutional. Things are not going well in the appeals process. We saw that last week. So let me paint this scenario that I think is going to be a fascinating test to whether we're right or wrong about this, whether any Republicans feel that they have to start showing some distance from Trump. So let's paint the scenario that the courts say, nope. The basis he's using for the authority to implement these tariffs is unconstitutional. And an emergency act that was passed in 1977 is not, you know, is not something you can use. We know what Trump's going to want. Okay. So Congress can then give him this authority if they so choose.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

He's got the majorities. So that means these Republicans have to vote for a tax hike.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

What is a tariff other than a tax hide on consumer goods? Now, the timing of this I'm unsure of.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

We can't sit here. You know, we think the courts will be dealing with this in a fairly timely manner. So let's say it's early January. 06. Let's say this. This happens late December this year.

[Tim Miller]

26. I know we're getting old, but, you know, you're two decades off there.

[Chuck Todd]

Sorry about that. So let's say it's 20. January 20th. 26th. Sorry about that.

[Tim Miller]

I do it all the time, Chuck.

[Chuck Todd]

It's a.

[Tim Miller]

All right. I don't know how old I am. I lied about my age unintentionally the other day.

[Chuck Todd]

How uncomfortable is that vote in an election year to essentially raise taxes, especially after we've seen the impact of.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

So far, it's been nothing but negative impact on the economy. There has been no positive other than, you know, the press releases that they tout about, look at all this new revenue coming into the government. But ultimately this has been bad for the economy. Job slowdown.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

All the things that at that mainstream left and right. Economists predicted about this is starting to come true. What is that vote? Because I'll say this, I don't think Epstein takes Trump down. You know, we already know. No. Impeachment takes him down.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

What's going to take him down? Poor stewardship of the economy.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

He was elected for one reason. He won this election for one reason. People didn't like the economy under Biden and Harris, pure and simple. If the public sours on his ability to manage the economy, that's when I think it all crumbles.

[Tim Miller]

So let's talk about that. So he's on CNBC this morning a couple hours before we're talking. It's interesting. Joe Kernan is the squawk box guy that's interviewing him. Usually pretty favorable to Trump, I think we can say.

[Chuck Todd]

But he don't like tariffs.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, no. And so he was checking Trump on a couple of items. Trump was trying to do revisionist history on this BLS firing and saying that they were rigging the numbers during 2024 and the revisions were favorable to Biden. And Kernan was like, yeah, but your dates are wrong. Trump was pretending like it happened before the election versus after. And all this happened in August. Kernan corrected him on that. He was pushing him on the tariffs a little bit. He also was pushing him just on his poll numbers. Trump was saying that his poll numbers are actually in the 70s and that all the ones showing him in the high 30s are fake. And you look at the numbers and on the issue of tariffs, inflation, there's some of the reason polls, and he's down in the low 30s on those issues. So I wonder, you know, kind of what you make about, like, is that, is that an acute threat right now? Do you see any tea leaves in Joe Kernan starting to challenge him on this point?

[Chuck Todd]

Yeah, no, I mean, that's my point. I think that's the core look. I actually think we're in a mirror image of Biden's loan term, right? Think about where Joe Biden was politically, and he was actually above 50% on July 15, right? Afghanistan withdrawal happens, he drops below 45 and he never recovers. And I've looked back on that. I think there's two things we can take away from that moment. One is that the country never did sort of buy into Biden, right? They were firing Trump. There was never a long leash with voters for Biden. So, you know, the minute he failed them, they walked away because they were never really bought into them. He was this, the not Trump candidate. But what made Afghanistan more damaging to Biden was that if there was one issue that the public assumed he was not going to screw up, it was foreign affairs. It was a core competency and just.

[Tim Miller]

Competence broadly, just like the jolts are back in charge kind of thing.

[Chuck Todd]

And here was, whoa. We didn't think this was going to be an issue. We had some doubts about, you know, your economic policy. We may have had doubts about other things.

[Unknown Speaker]

We.

[Chuck Todd]

But we didn't think you'd screw this up. And then when you screw up a core strength with the voters, then suddenly they don't necessarily Buy into anything. So how does this translate to Trump? Well, Trump was elected for one reason, to manage the economy. He created the mythology that the first three years of his term was a great economy, when he was essentially inherited a recovered economy from Obama. But he's not the first president to inherit a recovering economy and benefit from it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Bill Clinton got that in his first term. This is, you know, this is how it works.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

We, the economy you inherit becomes your economy. Your economy is the one you give to the next president. So Covid was forgiven for him for a variety of reasons, at least on the economic impact of COVID Right. So a lot of these last voters, the voters that made the difference, the voters that, that decided to move those seven swing states to the Republicans to Trump, were voting because they didn't like this economy. So what's happened since? Things have gotten worse, not better. Everything he does with the economy makes it worse. And it was the core competency that voters thought, well, the one thing he did right was that. And when you take that away, I think that's the piece that's holding up the entire Trump Tower.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

And now when you start doubting that, everything else you assume isn't any good either. And that's why I think this is that important of a moment for him politically. And it's possible, you know, this presidencies end a lot sooner than the term itself ends.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Chuck Todd]

And you know, George W. Bush's presidency ended somewhere at the end of 05. The combination of Katrina, Terri Schiavo and the Iraq war.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

The three of them together.

[Tim Miller]

And Harriet Myers didn't help.

[Chuck Todd]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Chuck Todd]

But it just sort of was too much. And that was it. He was president, he presided for another two years, but he didn't really influence the conversation. And this is the precarious moment, Trump's.

[Tim Miller]

End, maybe his best two years, though. But. Okay, all right. That's all right.

[Chuck Todd]

All right. But you see, you get my point on this. And that's why I think this, you know, it ain't Epstein that's going to take him down. It's not being able to provide an economy with cheaper eggs.

[Tim Miller]

I think another threat that he has is do they accept the reality of the situation? And I think that as concerning as the firing of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics was just on this kind of authoritarian creep standpoint, I think there also should be a concern that's like, they don't want to accept the reality of where the economy is and about what Trump's policies are doing to the economy. And it's hard to fix something if you won't accept that there's a problem.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, isn't this the same issue?

[Tim Miller]

I don't know. What do you think?

[Chuck Todd]

In the same way you had a core group of Biden staffers that were protecting Biden from the reality of his situation, there's clearly a core group of Trump staffers that are putting Trump in a cocoon. He only sees the news that makes him feel better. The McLaughlin brothers can produce all sorts of crappy polls to make him feel better.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Chuck Todd]

And that's what they've done. You know, this is this same firm that told Eric Cantor he was going to win with ease. You know, the point is, is that you could produce all sorts of numbers for your client to make your client feel better. That doesn't mean it's reality. And I do think we have to be asking ourselves, you know, he is not getting reality to him.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

He is getting a filtered version of events. And there's a lot of people around him manipulating him for their own benefit. We know this. And I think it's, in some ways, if you were, if you were concerned about what was happening in the Biden White House, and I certainly was, you should be as equally concerned about what's happening in this Trump White House. The reality is not penetrating that, that tight circle because they're so afraid of him that they feed him all sorts of bullshit, puffed up news. This is why he comes out there and says, well, I'm in the 70s. My guess is they gave him a poll of Republicans.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, right. And I have concerns about the Biden White House. At least the people around him, I felt like were decently competent. The people around Trump are insane for the most part, maybe with the exception of on some of this economic stuff.

[Chuck Todd]

I don't think Susie Wiles is insane. I think she's pretty competent. But I also think she made her own bet on this one.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, Susie's not insane. That is true. Well, I know Susie quite well. I just maintain this and maybe this is just my blinders. I maintain a skepticism that she has like any ability to stop the worst people around her.

[Chuck Todd]

I don't think she does.

[Tim Miller]

And obviously his own instincts and so.

[Chuck Todd]

You know, but nobody ever has.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure.

[Chuck Todd]

I did a long book project that I just never came to fruition about sort of the history of Trump in the business world and how he learned politics. And there's a pattern. He basically, he goes through a cycle of AIDS every six years. If you actually look at it going back to 1970. And like his little circle, whoever his circle is, at some point they're like, they're tired of it, right. They walk away or he get. Fires them. And it's usually it's, it's a combination of the two. Nobody ever has a nice thing to say about Trump after they leave his circle. And I mean, look at it now.

[Tim Miller]

Must be a coincidence, right?

[Chuck Todd]

I mean, this has been his experience in politics, right. Look at the people that were around him in 2012. None of them are there today. Look at the people that are around him in 2016. Only Stephen Miller remains. Right.

[Tim Miller]

Corey's traveling with Kristi Noem.

[Chuck Todd]

And then there's Corey.

[Tim Miller]

Corey is traveling with Kristi Noem quite a bit. I keep seeing him in those, in those pictures. That's interesting.

[Chuck Todd]

I think that is interesting, isn't it?

[Tim Miller]

I wonder what's happening there. I don't know. Benihana, Some red flags from the arrest warrant at Benihana, the Christiana event there. Yeah, no, you're right. The point being that eventually anybody, even potentially somebody that have more influence would have limits in their ability to control them.

[Chuck Todd]

I mean, it is shocking to me that it didn't matter to the public that every single. How many Cabinet secretaries made it clear in one form or another from the first term that he shouldn't have a second term.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, well, they're all pretty weak about it now. You're getting under one of my hobby horses, Chuck. I don't know. I understand some of them did that breakthrough to the working class latitude voters who switched from Biden to Trump. No, but why didn't it break through? Well, because they didn't try, you know, going on background to the Atlantic. Love Jeffrey Goldberg. Love the Atlantic. Going on background to the Atlantic is not sufficient for warning the country about the threats of Donald Trump. If you wanted to actually do that, you needed to kind of do something that got out there that people realized.

[Chuck Todd]

Do you know the ad that never ran that I thought would run was the montage of former aides. Meet the Trump officials who say Donald Trump's not qualified to be president. Here's Jim Mattis.

[Tim Miller]

We could have used one of them as a Zell Miller at the convention. Anyway, now we're getting into my. Yeah, things will get my blood pressure up, but thanks for nothing, John Kelly. Thank you for your service, John Kelly. But thanks for nothing on the Trump.

[Chuck Todd]

You know what they say, by the way. You know what they say. And this happened. And I've heard. I know you've Heard these stories, the way maga, the way that the Trump supporters harass Republicans who criticize Trump. You know, I had a conversation with a retired senator about two years ago who left in 18 or 20, and I said, are you going to speak out more? He says, oh, God, no. And I said, why? He says. He goes, they've harassed my family. They've harassed my wife. They've. He goes, I just. That's why I'm leaving. They didn't sign up for this. I signed up for this.

[Tim Miller]

I'm sorry, I don't. I don't have any sympathy for any of these other people. Whatever that senator is, who. Everyone's gotten shit. Like, welcome to the fucking game, okay? Like, who doesn't get harassed these days? Like, everybody's getting her ass.

[Chuck Todd]

This is the question I have for. For Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy. Yeah, yeah, those yes votes worth it on Hagseth and Kennedy, really, on Emil Bo, you know, was that worth it?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I don't understand. I did a rant on toast couple weeks ago and somebody said that, you know, he can get on the crossways with Trump and pick his spots, but he can't do things that make the other his colleagues feel like he is the turd in the punch bowl because that might limit future earnings or whatever. And again, I'm just like, all of these. Everybody we're talking to is doing quite fine, like, financially and interpersonally. And I understand that people have legitimate safety concerns about their family, but, like, I mean, the MAGA people are really bad, like an annoying, and they are at times threatening and menacing. I get that. But like, I. Not to be glib about it, have any of these people actually had any real safety concerns from that at this time? There's been a lot of chat about it and there's been a lot of, like, one off MAGA guys, like going to Walmarts, killing people and stuff. But Trump's been shot at twice.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, you know, look, I. I'm with you. I mean, I had the FBI at my house. I had the pipe bomber targeting me. I was on his goddamn van, a picture of me. And, you know, I've decided not to stay quiet.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

You know what I mean?

[Tim Miller]

Like, I've been a PR executive at Edelman.

[Chuck Todd]

There's a lot of money to be made in and just being silent and on corporate boards.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

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[Chuck Todd]

Maybe. I'm not going to sit here and rule that out. I still think the economy, I still think the basic. Between his promise to legitimize crypto, which I think was a big motivator to some of the manosphere, for what it's worth, plus the perception that, well, the one thing the guy seems to know what to do is how to make people money. Maybe he's going to take a little bit for himself, but maybe I'll make money with him. And if nobody's making money, that's where I think when you make a transactional decision with a politician, you better hope the politician fulfills their end of the transaction. And in that sense, he's not. I do think the fear Trump has with Epstein is the idea that he's one of them, not one of us, or whatever. Or he's one of us, not one of them, whatever that is.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

He built his entire political Persona on the idea that he was. He was the rich guy that was going to take it to the elites that he wasn't a member of this club.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Even though we all knew, my God, the guy was begging to be a member of this club. Now, it's true, many elites didn't like having Trump around, and yet somehow they just sort of tolerated him being around. And then when they invite. And then, of course, Trump wanted people to think he was a member of the elite. So he invited people, all these people to his wedding. And for whatever reason, the Clinton said, sure, we're going to go there, because it's better to not piss him off than to go ahead and show up to the spectacle, I guess.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

There's always been this weird way that people manage him. There's a great story, by the way, that David Axelrod told me and I included in my Obama book from over 10 years ago. Trump called early on saying, I have some ideas on how to improve the state dinner.

[Tim Miller]

We're seeing it all. We have some Tiffany chicks 100% get rid of the Rose Garden.

[Chuck Todd]

The irony is that Trump, this may have been the sole motivation of why he ran for president, was to eventually to do what he's doing to the White House. But he called the Obama White House early on. This is before he was doing birtherism. He wanted to be in the circle and nobody ever called him back. And Axe admitted he goes, I wonder to this day if we had called him back and humored him and essentially taken a meeting with him to get his ideas on state dinners, that if it totally. It creates an entirely different relationship with Trump.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

But you and I both know the last thing the Obama White House was going to do was placate a guy like Donald Trump. Right. They just. This is before, again, pre birtherism.

[Tim Miller]

Come on, Axe. One phone call, you know, suffer for us.

[Chuck Todd]

I know.

[Tim Miller]

Little did they know. No.

[Chuck Todd]

Who could have predicted, you know, obviously little do you know that, you know, a butterfly flaps its wing.

[Tim Miller]

So I guess there's a little bit of a parallel to that. I was just talking with somebody yesterday about how like I think Kamala should maybe not actually, I don't know. But like RFK was also maybe manageable on this front.

[Chuck Todd]

Oh that if you let him in and let and hurt his ideas and just say, okay, you know, we'll consider, we'll have this person in an advisory group. Yeah, maybe.

[Tim Miller]

And we all care about, you know, we can all get together on food dyes. Not sure about the vaccine stuff, but you know that you gave them that.

[Chuck Todd]

You would throw them a bone, like give them the food dye bone over there. That's an interesting look. It all seems obvious now, right?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, sure.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

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[Tim Miller]

All right, let's talk about the Dems other failings besides David Axelrod being the butterfly that flapped his wings. Oh, he's in trouble. You're in trouble now, Chuck, for re bringing that back up.

[Chuck Todd]

Oh, Axe, no, Axe knows. I mean, I think he wrote about a version of it in his his book too, for what it's worth.

[Tim Miller]

So the Dem problems. I noticed you tweeted about this the other day. Every time one of these states reports the new voter registration number, it's awful for Dems and it's been like this for years now.

[Chuck Todd]

Over decade.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And there was like, I used to kind of dismiss it. It's like, well, this is kind of silly. I mean, you know, this is silly. Some of this is just, you know, part of the realignment. People have been traditionally Dems and our Republicans are now going to register and you know, et cetera, et cetera. Over time though, it becomes the weight of that starts to, I think, really become obvious.

[Chuck Todd]

Tim, it's two to one in Iowa now.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Tim Miller]

There you go.

[Chuck Todd]

It's two to one.

[Tim Miller]

I was the state I saw. And then you were tweeting about Nebraska.

[Chuck Todd]

Right, but it's two to one. It wasn't two to one ten years ago.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, right.

[Chuck Todd]

It's like the Democratic party surrendered in all these states. Did the same thing in Florida. They've made no effort. And by the way, here's the irony. There was one state where there was a real effort to register voters in the last 10 years. And it was by Stacey Abrams in Georgia. And what are the results? It turned a red state into a swing state.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I don't know about the chicken and the egg part of there and part of that is the Georgia demographics. A lot of high college educated state, a lot of black voters. But sure, yes.

[Chuck Todd]

But the point they should try.

[Tim Miller]

They should try. We agree they should try.

[Chuck Todd]

The point is, is that the first step to getting somebody to vote for you is to make them eligible to vote.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure.

[Chuck Todd]

And when you get somebody to agree to register in your team, well, it's suddenly that much easier to get them to turn out, that much easier to identify them, that much easier to. Like this was the part. So Trump loses the popular vote in 16. And you know what became the obsession of the Republican Party was voter registration in Pennsylvania in all of the battleground states. And they made massive progress in all of them, every single one of them. It wasn't enough to hold off the forces in 2020, but it started to pay dividends by 2024. And it certainly took certain states off the board. Iowa and Florida being the. And arguably to a lesser extent Ohio being the three best examples.

[Tim Miller]

It's interesting, you go to the, to like the actual effort to do vot administration drives. This goes back to comms versus political. I was always pretty skeptical of some of them. I think a lot of work and a lot of effort went into the grassroots side that got. Oftentimes it's kind of like the sand at the beach. You have this huge wave which is narrative and comms coming in. And meanwhile they're kind of shoveling, trying to add a little bit to the shoreline. But sure, I think the Democrats should try harder on registration. It also is just a really bad reflection of brand. Right. And like, like in Iowa, some of this stuff's happening naturally. It's not people that haven't been registered before registering as Republicans. It's people de registering.

[Chuck Todd]

Oh, no, this is, you know it. But it is an active effort to get, you know, the Republicans are doing what they can to target independent registers. Republicans or target, you know, but that's actually the one place they go to persuasion.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Is in their voter registration. You're right. It's not the sexiest. Look, the DNC has been an utter and complete failure for over a decade now. Its job is to do these things.

[Tim Miller]

For all the reasons that the people that get mad at the DNC on Twitter are wrong about.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Their job is the blocking and tackling.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

The basic job, not just maintaining A voter file but adding to it.

[Tim Miller]

So I guess my question for you is I want to get into the gerrymandering fight here. But just real quick, one more thing on Den Brandt like I had Dan Osborne on on Friday, interesting effort. I kind of break this stuff down into a couple of areas like is the Democrats brand problem communications that like everything's kind of fine under the hood and they're just bad at talking about it. Is their problem cultural issues like where they're just too out of step with the people of Iowa, Nebraska now on a degree of cultural issues they have to change. Is it economic issues? Is it the fact that they don't feel like they're fighting for working people even though maybe you could argue that technically they have whatever their polic policies are better for them, that perception isn't that and that they need to re emphasize that. Is it something else? I don't know. Like what? It's something pretty serious if you're to a point where you know Iowa's two to one registered Republicans. It was a state Obama one.

[Chuck Todd]

So one thesis I have is that the problem the Democratic Party has versus the Republican is that there isn't full agreement on an economic vision and there's also not one on culture.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure.

[Chuck Todd]

Versus the Republicans. They may be disagreeing on economic policy, they may even disagree on foreign policy, but there is agreement on culture. I hate the current era that we're living in that that our politics in some ways are driven more by culture than by policy. But that is the place we are in right now. And I think that the Democrats closest to the center and the Democrats closest to the base are not on the same page culturally as much as versus Republicans closer to the center and Republicans closer to the base.

[Tim Miller]

I actually kind of disagree with that because I was just talking to somebody this other day, I think and the Democrats obviously have huge gaps on economics. And that's where I think the fight is going to be in the party internally. I think they're too aligned on culture to the left actually. I don't know if you look at like Zoran.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, no, I think they're defined by the progressive left's culture, but I don't think the party's as unified by it.

[Tim Miller]

If you had Zoron and Mikey, Sheryl and Abigail Spamberger and you gave them a list of cultural issues, however you want to describe, there's that. And it's just like a yes or no test.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

Zoran's going to talk about it differently. He's going to use more annoying words. You know, he's going to use more like whatever liberal arts kind of language. Like, if it's just. What do you think about the trans issue? What do you think about immigration? What do you think about guns?

[Chuck Todd]

Oh, I think there'd be real disagreement.

[Tim Miller]

On trans between Mikey Sheryl Abigail Spinberger and Zellran.

[Unknown Speaker]

Mm.

[Tim Miller]

I'm not sure there would be, but I don't know. Maybe we'd see. I think that the Democrats don't. I kind of think the Democrats don't have enough disagreement on culture, honestly. It's maybe the problem.

[Chuck Todd]

I actually think they need a good fight. I mean, there's two things I've thought about. If you look back at 1989, right. Which was the last time Democrats had felt like they were in this kind of wilderness.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure.

[Chuck Todd]

The big difference is they got blown out in 88. So there was a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Versus they didn't get blown out in 24.

[Tim Miller]

They did lose to George H.W. bush in 88 versus Donald Trump in 2024. So it was close. But it's radicalizing in a different way, maybe for somebody who had been indicted to defeat them.

[Chuck Todd]

But I think there's too many Democrats who think, oh, but for this, but for that. But, you know, when you lose by a collection of 250,000 votes in seven states, right. You think, geez, but four. So there's not an incentive to make massive changes because you. You're just trying to get across the finish line. Geez, I just need to sign one more wide receiver. Or I just need to sign one. You know, whatever it is, right? Like, oh, we're. We're so close, you know, little bullpen help, whatever it is. Like, pick your sports better.

[Tim Miller]

Broncos are going through this now, Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Pick your sports metaphor. And the beauty of 88 is there was a.

[Unknown Speaker]

It was a wipeout, right?

[Chuck Todd]

And there was a big ideological fight, arguably. And it was. Some of it was cultural. Some of it was sort of modern versus the past. Some of it was labor versus business. But, you know, it was. Bill Clinton versus Jesse Jackson was essentially the two avatars of that, and it was ugly for a while. Bill Clinton and Ron Brown was the DNC chair. They exchanged words. Ron Brown was nasty about Bill Clinton, you know, the DLC and that whole business, but it was a healthy exercise.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

The Republicans had a huge fight in 16, and you. And I may not like the direction of where the Republican Party chose to go, but arguably that fight led to more successful elections for that party over the next 10 years than they had the previous 10.

[Tim Miller]

And it might have worked it the other way. By the way, I think Ed Marco won probably similarly. Like, the fight was important. It was clarifying.

[Chuck Todd]

But there's always been a thesis that, say, the party that's divided, that that's bad for them. But in some ways, having the fight, you know, and having a winner and a loser sort of is clarifying. And I don't think the Democrats. I go back and it's like when I kept using this metaphor with Jake Tapper. You know, my original sin was Barack Obama's decision to endorse Hillary Clinton. Like, that is what led the party down this path. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had an argument. He won the argument, and then he turned around and endorsed her and put his finger on the scale. And essentially, to some parts of his party.

[Unknown Speaker]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Chuck Todd]

They were like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, the reason we picked you over her is we didn't want that wing of the party in charge.

[Tim Miller]

That's fun.

[Chuck Todd]

And I take.

[Tim Miller]

I went back earlier, which was Al Gore not taking enough of Bill Clinton self. So the original. He went all the way back to there and then had Al Gore win. Then maybe there was no Iraq and there's no backlash. Enough backlash to bring Trump.

[Chuck Todd]

Maybe if Monica Lewinsky's internship doesn't come to fruition, the whole thing is.

[Tim Miller]

Well, Bill had some other problems. That's pretty good. We could do a whole podcast on, you know, alternate histories. Maybe we should do that sometime.

[Chuck Todd]

I do it. I do it every year. I do what ifs. I've gone through this. I did a what if Al Gore had won in 2000?

[Tim Miller]

Invite me on the what ifs podcast. I'll buy.

[Chuck Todd]

Give me one to do. Give me a one and I will. You will be my guest for it. I even did one. What if John Lennon had lived? Because the question would be, would the Beatles look more like the Rolling Stones today if all the members were still alive and they had gotten back together?

[Tim Miller]

What a fat Chris Christie had run before Bridgegate. Fat, angry Chris Christie.

[Chuck Todd]

I did that one.

[Tim Miller]

You did that one already.

[Chuck Todd]

Because Chris Christie was the more responsible version of Donald Trump.

[Tim Miller]

Trump, yeah, right.

[Chuck Todd]

And had he not had Bridgegate, he probably is President of the United States in 16.

[Unknown Speaker]

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[Tim Miller]

All right, I have important topics to get to. We're running out of time already. This always happens with you. Just really quick. We have a disagreement on the gerrymandering fight. I saw you said you thought it was a bad look for the Texas Democrats to flee. I don't know.

[Chuck Todd]

Flee to Illinois.

[Tim Miller]

Oh, to flee to Illinois in particular.

[Chuck Todd]

I think Illinois was the worst.

[Tim Miller]

I agree with yes.

[Chuck Todd]

But I think part of the other.

[Tim Miller]

Democratic brand problem is that they don't seem like they're fucking tough enough and they're not fighting and it's pissing people off and like, I don't know. What do you think about the gerrymandering fight? Like they gotta fight like they can't be like, oh, we're the democracy party so we gotta behave good.

[Chuck Todd]

Yeah. No, no, no. The Texans should fight now. I think it was bad optics to go to the. Literally the Democratic state that is known to Gerry Banner the most on the Democratic side.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure. Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Why did they go there? Cause Pritzker's paying the bills.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

So I just think the. Optically they pick the wrong state to flee to.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Tim Miller]

You weren't doing the Michelle Obama. The Democrats have to go high.

[Chuck Todd]

No.

[Tim Miller]

When they go low, the Democrats go high and talk about our norms and protecting the democracy while Republicans steal the House.

[Chuck Todd]

Here's my frustration though, Tim. Is any party gonna stand up for fairness?

[Tim Miller]

No.

[Chuck Todd]

So the Republican Party wants to be unfair and is the answer to be more unfair to voters in California?

[Tim Miller]

I think so.

[Chuck Todd]

In order to respond to the Texans.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, I don't think they have any other choice.

[Chuck Todd]

This is my concern. The unintended consequence of this is if you're fighting to protect the democracy by breaking democratic norms, are you protecting the democracy or are you helping to break it?

[Tim Miller]

I think that this was a really strong argument to be made in 2023, but it's 2025 now and it's kind of.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, then it is over.

[Tim Miller]

He's in there. He's breaking it.

[Chuck Todd]

Then it's over.

[Tim Miller]

He's broken the Justice Department, he's broken that the Congress. He's break. He's about to break the Fed. He's broken the Bureau of Labor Statistics. All of that is true.

[Chuck Todd]

That campaign, like, you know, that's my.

[Tim Miller]

But they lost the campaign. Joe Biden lost.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, go back.

[Tim Miller]

And Merrick Garland lost. Like that strategy failed.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, I'm. Look, there's a lot of reasons that entire administration failed.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Number one was Joe Biden himself. He never should have run. But that's a whole other. I'm not going to get. Go down that road. But Jesus.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

That his family was in crisis. I can't believe he ran. I. To this day, now that we see everything that was going on.

[Tim Miller]

Insane.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Chuck Todd]

It's crazy that he chose to run for president, but let's set that aside. I take. I understand the argument to fight fire with fire. I'm just saying all you're doing is setting bad precedents down the road. And you know, I'm a believer in the law of unintended consequences. And you go down this road, it's going to be hard to go back. And I think the fight. You should take the fight to Texas. Here's the irony. I think this remap is going to do nothing for him. I think this is the wrong cycle to REMAP like If you were really trying to maximize Republican districts, you'd have done this before Presidential why Trump voters don't show up for midterms. You know, you look at the map they put out there, I think they pick up one on their best day in a midterm. It may go better for them in a presidential. But they're assuming that this Latino vote has shifted permanently. Well, that, to me seems to be a bit like being high on your own supply here.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Like, I don't accept that premise that you're gonna see Latino voters stick the way they think they're gonna stick. I think actually they're the swing vote of America, and I think you're gonna see working class Hispanics vacillate quite a bit over the next couple of election cycles.

[Tim Miller]

Chuck, I'm happy you brought us to the Latino question, because I do have some audio. We don't usually play Donald Trump's audio, but this is just too good. From CNBC this morning, him talking, he's doing some outreach to Latino vote. He has a lot of praise for them. I wanna listen to it.

[H]

But we're taking care of our farmers. We can't let our farmers not have anybody. You know, these are very. These people that they're. You can't replace them very easily. You know, people that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They're just not doing that work. And they've tried, we've tried, everybody tried. They don't do it. These people do it naturally. Naturally. I said, what happens if they get it to a farmer the other day? What happens if they get a bad back? He said, they don't get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die. I said, that's interesting, isn't it?

[Tim Miller]

You know, there you go. That should work with the Hispanic voters. Supermen, they just want to pick oranges all day and they don't get hurt.

[Chuck Todd]

Was it Steve King? What was the Steve King line about cantaloupes? Cantaloupe thighs.

[Tim Miller]

Cantaloupe thighs. Cantaloupe calves.

[Chuck Todd]

Yeah. And you're telling me the Latino vote's gonna stick with MAGA with that?

[Unknown Speaker]

Right?

[Chuck Todd]

Like, I just. So I guess what I would argue is that I think that this goes back to the question you had about the national party and voter registration. You know, for 20 years we've been fed this line, that, boy, Texas is close. Texas, you know all this. But you know what it takes to turn a state into a swing state. It's called effort. And you can't just show up in one cycle, throw some money at Beto o' Rourke and hope that it's going to come in. It is a building process.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

You got to come in there and keep going whatever you want. Georgia was a 15 year project before it finally became a swing state come 2020. But it was, you know, it wasn't as if they just showed up in 2019 and said, hey, we're going to contest Georgia.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

It was an actual effort that had been built upon. Built upon. And what I think the national party needs to get smarter about is this is an opportunity. Texas Republicans care more about listening to Donald Trump's orders than they do helping flood victims. Texas Republicans care more about appeasing Donald Trump than they care about, you know, run a campaign, go down there and make Abbott answer for this in his campaign. Make it a centerpiece like do something proactive. Yes. Go ahead and disrupt the special session. Don't give them a quorum.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Like to me, those are small d Democratic tactics that are, that are like within sort of within the realm.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

You bear elected to fight for you, you know, so to me it's that. But the idea that the best way to fight them is to go to California and get them to, to do a more unfair map or to essentially unwind their constitution in order to do it, I don't think sets a very good precedent in the future for this democracy.

[Unknown Speaker]

You're great at protecting your own personal information. You probably even use things like two factor authentication, strong passwords and a vpn. But as much as you try to be in control of how your information is protected, there are lots of places that also have it and they might not be as careful as you are. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second for identity threats. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed or your money back. Plus, all LifeLock plans are backed by the million dollar protection package, meaning LifeLock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan. If you lose money due to identity theft, you might not be able to control how others handle your personal information, but you can help protect it. With LifeLock, save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code IHEART or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off terms apply.

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[Tim Miller]

All right, we did politics counterfactuals. Let's do some media ones. Was there anything that could have been done? This question about how the media has lost trust, how the mainstream media has, you know, no longer has the influence it was has. You know, you sat in the seat that Tim Russert sat in. He had is at this height of power and now it's like, who even watches the Sunday shows? Like people in old folks homes only. Was that decline reversible or no? Was that just inexorable?

[Chuck Todd]

Well, I think that everything, you know, you know, Life magazine used to be influential.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, sure.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

And then we got a technology that allowed us to have moving pictures.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

So I do think that like, you know, there was a time Life magazine was mainstream media.

[Tim Miller]

Sure.

[Chuck Todd]

And so I do think some of this is technologically driven. But I will say this, the lesson I've taken away from the lost trust of national media. National media never had the direct trust. We got our trust indirectly from local journalists. I believe that a man named Craig decided classifieds ought to be free, yada, yada yada. Donald Trump became president. I go back to my Jenga model or a foundation of a house. There's always a few pillars that matter more in holding up a foundation. And I think local was a more important pillar. And the decline of local got rid of our character references. You know, you trusted media locally because you knew somebody or you knew somebody who knew somebody who was involved in that paper, in that news organization, whatever, because that's just how communities work. Tom Brokaw was a correspondent in Atlanta during the civil rights era and he would say nobody liked him down in Georgia.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Everybody hated the national media, but they trusted the local media. It was one of those when the local media confirmed what national media was reporting, it gave national media trust. So our information ecosystem's broken, as I like to say, what we've done. Imagine if we took our drinking water pipes and our sewer system and put them all in the same pipe and said, you in your home, you have to filter out the shit to find clean drinking water. Well, that's what we've done with our information pipes.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

There's good stuff in the information ecosystem, and there's a lot of in the information ecosystem right now. The tech companies make you and I filter it out. There's two ways to deal with a dirty pipe and dirty water. You can try to create a separate pipe and do that. That's probably too late, or you flush the system with just cleaner information. And I think if we can rebuild local community news by extension, then you create basically new national news organizations that are locally sourced.

[Tim Miller]

You're trying to rebuild local community news through what? Through sports? Is that your idea?

[Chuck Todd]

I think sports is one of the few places that bring red and blue together. I think youth sports right now is a huge, just a huge boost.

[Tim Miller]

So you're getting people to pay to get their middle school to watch their.

[Chuck Todd]

Kids streaming, whatever it is.

[Tim Miller]

Okay. We need not just high school stats, and we're going to stream that. And you're going to give them some investigative journalism in the middle of it.

[Chuck Todd]

Here's what you do. You build trust in a community by covering the stuff they want to see, and it begins with their kids. And then you start building out from there. You give them micro forecasting of weather. You give them an influencer that helps them save money. You basically do the things that people used to get from a newspaper.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, right.

[Chuck Todd]

The coupons saved you money, the circulars saved you money. So hire an influencer that tells you, hey, this week Trader Joe's has got cheaper chicken than Aldi's does. If you want to take your family out, there's a buy one, get one free at, you know, you pick your, you know, James Bistro this week.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure.

[Chuck Todd]

And you sort of rebuild that. And then when you build that kind of trust, where you're doing service journalism, you're helping people live their lives locally, then they're going to believe you when you tell them their city councilman's corrupt.

[Tim Miller]

The Trump question of this, and this is like the hardest part to deal with, the media gets just so much shit over how they dealt with Trump. And I think there are a lot of legit criticisms. My problem is that, you know, look, If Mitt Romney's 47% gaffe was put in the middle of a Donald Trump speech. It wouldn't have made the news in any of the last cycles. Like, people wouldn't have even talked about it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, it was overheard, by the way. This is the beauty. If anything Trump said was found on a Nixon tape, it would be more news than it is if it's set up, I guess.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. So, anyway, the point is, I guess I don't know how you guys are supposed to deal with that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right?

[Tim Miller]

Like, Trump lied all the time. And so it's like, okay, well, we lost the trust of the Trump voters because we're always talking about his lies, but Trump's lying all the time. And so, you know, then you get into a situation, you're like, well, I'm going to try to. I'm going to pick on this thing, this lie that a Democratic person told. And so. So how do you deal with that? Besides, just. To me, it's like, well, in the other standard, the entire newscast would have been talking about Trump's lies. It's not really a realistic thing to do. And that wouldn't have done anything to help your trust with the MAGA voters. I felt like it was a really challenging pickle the whole time. And a lot of times, sometimes people tried to do fake stuff to deal with it.

[Chuck Todd]

But here's the fundamental thing that I think we all have to sort of accept, which is simply Trump won because he correctly convinced the country that most politicians are lying to you. I'm just more authentic about it. And, you know, I can't tell you how many Trump voters I talked to going, yeah, I know he's a bullshit artist, but so are they. At least he's honest about it.

[Tim Miller]

Sure.

[Chuck Todd]

And I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, but that is the relationship he created with his voters.

[Tim Miller]

And that handcuffed you, Right? Because if you did a whole show, you did a whole Meet the Press, you had him on, and the whole throw is you lying about this, you're lying about this, you're lying about this. Which you should have done, I guess. But, like, that wouldn't have changed any of those people's view.

[Chuck Todd]

All it did was make me more polarizing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Chuck Todd]

You know, which I. Look, I didn't care. I will say this. I think one of the problems with journalists is too many of them care about their own popularity. And once I stopped caring about that, and it's not easy, I'm not gonna. We're all human beings, right? It's easier Said than done. But, you know, if you want to be a journalist, you shouldn't care about popularity.

[Tim Miller]

All right, we're over. But I do have to ask you, do you have any thoughts about Sydney Sweeney's rank?

[Chuck Todd]

Can I make a confession that I had no idea this didn't penetrate any of my social media feeds. I didn't hear about it until I read the Washington Post version of the story.

[Tim Miller]

And I thought, old man Todd, no.

[Chuck Todd]

And I felt this, like I always. I call myself a political anthropologist and I thought, oh, I'm missing. I'm missing some part of this conversation. And you know, I. Every time.

[Tim Miller]

I count your blessings, man. Actually, this should be a gift of being off tv.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, that's what I say. But I will say this. The right's ability to manufacture cultural divides that I don't think really exist. But here's something I don't understand, Tim, and maybe you'd get this better. The right can take any voice from the left that you and I have never heard of and turned them into. The Democratic Party believes X. Yeah. The left finds a Nick Fuentes and it does not stick to the entirety of the Republican Party. Why is that?

[Tim Miller]

I can answer this. Because it feels like the Democrats control the culture. And that's maybe not fair or right or whatever, but we've gone through a period of like 40 years of Democratic cultural hedge, or left, maybe not Democrat left, cultural hegemony, movies and stuff, movement. People have felt like. Like this. All this change is happening. It's been pushed by these people on the left. And so, like, I don't know. I think it's. It's rewired people's brains. I yell about this all the time, but I don't think like the Medius on Jubilee thing where he debates the 20 neo Nazis, no matter how much I yell about it from having hung out at tpusa, I think that there's a group of people you can't get to believe that these 20 little neo Nazis are like, actually have cultural cachet among the youth and they're growing in power. And you should take it seriously because we haven't dealt with that, like, in a long time. And so I, I. People just don't believe it, that it's a threat. Some people do. Like, you know, obviously we're generalizing, but I don't know. And also Fox. So that part, like the Democrats cultural system.

[Chuck Todd]

No, it is the power.

[Tim Miller]

Fox's ability to the news is what?

[Chuck Todd]

The only mainstream media that exists is Fox.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, Fox. And you know. I don't know.

[Chuck Todd]

Everything else is dispersed now, right? Yeah, everything else is more. Is more fragmented. Fox is the only mainstream outlet left that has cultural impact.

[Tim Miller]

Woof. All right, well, that's a great place to leave it. I was trying to leave it with a little joke about Sydney Sweeney, but you've brought us back down. I don't have anything. It is in the spirit of the Bullock podcast to end us on a in a dark place. Chuck Todd.

[Chuck Todd]

I was just gonna say I feel bad about this. I. My mother said this to me about my own podcast. She goes, man, it was really dark. Even your rant about the gnats was dark. And I'm like, yeah, I know. It's not a good time.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, we'll have you back hopefully. I don't know, maybe around LSU Championship season. Do a little football talk. Chuck time. We'll be seeing you soon, brother.

[Chuck Todd]

Yeah, LSU and Miami, both of them.

[Tim Miller]

We're back.

[Chuck Todd]

Both of their head coaches are on the hot seat if they don't get into that playoff.

[Tim Miller]

Well, good luck. I think we're going to be in there. We'll be seeing you soon, brother.

[Unknown Speaker]

All right, Br.

[Chuck Todd]

See you, man.

[Tim Miller]

Thanks a bunch to Chuck Todd. We'll be seeing you back here tomorrow for another edition of the Bull Work podcast. It'll be a good one. Peace.

[Unknown Speaker]

How dare you. I was shutting down the world and it scared you can't hold a girl down as this bad shave nice and my nails and my hair do not the type that trip of nostalgia too nice but my silence is loud her spend enough on my finances doubter I'm not the type to abuse all my power realness in a village I come from all my dolls go to sleep with a monster you can throw shapes around who you want but no I'm the missing piece to the puzzle can't never forget when the stay flooded didn't believe in my hustle could have drowned but I stayed with a mic they obsess my genius plan and that's being as free as I can they want you to stop then they leave you to rot but that's just not my frequency, man.

As I walk this wicked ground Keep me away from the devil's palm As I walk this wicked ground Keep me away from the devil's palm I am the light I am the light Number.

One is play your position don't trust all the hands that you shake if I put the wrong code in the system won't be no permanent change Number two, don't take it personal this place is invested with snakes. Don't get caught in your own trap. Every bat breed has a good trait. Number three Take care of yourself Be vigilant, minding you, help you, pray you can make it to heaven and they're trying to drag you to hell. Number four don't react to a clone don't be the one throwing stones Never eat with the hyenas cause they will look at you as bones Number five Keep the business away from the family Sibling rivalries vicious it's meant to be you and them God in the blood protecting the family business 6 don't quit, keep building it brick by brick Takes a million to send you to prison a million to get you a house in a state As I walk this.

Wicked crown Keep me away from the devil's palm As I walk this wicked crown Keep me away from the devil's palm I am the night.

[Tim Miller]

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

[Unknown Speaker]

You're great at protecting your own personal information. You probably even use things like two factor authentication, strong passwords and a vpn. But as much as you try to be in control of how your information is protected, there are lots of places that also have it and they might not be as careful as you are. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second for identity threats. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed or your money back. Plus, all LifeLock plans are backed by the million dollar protection package, meaning Lifelock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan. If you lose money due to identity theft, you might not be able to control how others handle your personal information, but you can help protect it with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code IHEARTRA or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off terms apply.

[Chuck Todd]

Having MG can make cooking difficult, but over the years I found some really helpful tools and tips that I'm excited to share. Hi, I'm Alicia. I think cooking should always be fun, creative and of course, delicious. These Black Bean burgers are hearty, full of flavor and MG friendly. You're going to love them.

[Tim Miller]

Check out Alicia's Black Bean Burger cooking Video and other recipes full of tips and tricks for managing common MG symptoms while cooking only at mg-united.com Ready? Let's cook.

[Unknown Speaker]

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