The Chuck ToddCast

With just 105 days until the 2026 midterms, Chuck Todd and Chris Cillizza use their last Super Tuesday before the sub-100-day mark to take stock of what they think they know. The headline: with Trump's approval stuck below 40, gas back over $4, an Iran conflict reigniting, and an ICE controversy dominating the news, nearly every fundamental points toward Republicans losing both chambers — and the guys argue the only thing standing between Democrats and a monster year is the Democrats themselves. They dig deep into the polling weeds, unpacking why the generic ballot has quietly become more of a party-ID number, why you can't compare it across cycles anymore, why independents are breaking hard left, and what to make of the model giving Democrats a 62% shot at the House while Republicans hold a 59% edge in the Senate.
From there it's onto the races reshaping the map: South Carolina, where Trump ally Russell Frye jumps into the special and Lindsey Graham's appointed sister surprises everyone by running for a full term — a rare bit of GOP pragmatism that hands John Thune a much-needed win — and Maine, where Troy Jackson is set to be coronated at the Democratic convention and the ICE story has erased Susan Collins's post-Platner breathing room. Chuck and Chris also weigh the stalled Todd Blanche confirmation, the $400 million Qatari plane suddenly deemed too unsafe to fly, and why character and temperament remain the whole ballgame. Then they close on LeBron's looming decision — Heat, Cavs, or Sixers — and Chuck plugs the summer slate across the "Chuck Todd expanded universe."
Timeline:
00:00 105 days out from the midterms
02:07 Why August, not July, is when politics really kicks off
03:01 Why campaigns no longer wait for Labor Day to run their hits
04:34 Trump's approval is stuck below 40 a recipe for losing both chambers
05:44 ICE story erases whatever Collins got from the Platner disaster
06:49 Democrats are more motivated
07:23 Arizona Republicans line up to nominate a candidate who can't win
08:08 Trump's primetime speech relitigating 2020
09:26 GOP candidates on the trail are running as far from Trump as possible
10:50 Trump is too lazy to be a dictator
11:54 On 2020, Trump is on an island — even his own party won't follow
14:14 The history: 20 of the last 22 midterms punish the president's party
15:05 The generic ballot vs. 2018 and 2010, for reference
15:51 Why the generic ballot is now really a party-ID number
17:31 Trust the trend lines, not the raw numbers
19:59 The StateNavigate Georgia poll that floored them
20:49 Why Democrats peak in summer polling
22:19 A smarter "informed ballot" experiment using Google search results
24:36 Democrats 62% to win the House, Republicans 59% to hold the Senate
25:20 Why the Senate number is lower than it should be
26:54 Iowa as the 50-yard line for a wave
27:42 The daunting Senate map for Dems
30:04 Why the 62% House number surprised Chris
31:52 The one thing that changed all summer — a possible new forever war
32:56 The math favors the GOP: Democrats are playing a road game
34:18 No swing districts left, and a country sorted to the bone
36:03 South Carolina: Trump ally Russell Frye jumps into the special
36:56 Graham's appointed sister surprises by running for a full term
37:30 A rare case of Trump and the GOP doing the pragmatic thing
41:13 Troy Jackson set for a coronation
42:53 The stalled Todd Blanche confirmation & the $1.8B slush fund
43:15 Why the ICE story is a real problem for Collins
44:02 Ambition as a drug — Homan, Bovino, Noem & the $50k question
45:09 The Odyssey movie and how online discourse isn't real life
47:07 The $400M Qatari plane is suddenly too unsafe to fly
48:07 Character and temperament as the whole ballgame
50:20 Quotes that aged badly
52:05 Trump as Grover Cleveland
53:34 LeBron's decision: Heat, Cavs, or Sixers
56:20 Miami and Denver as the best physical fits for a 40-year-old LeBron
57:34 The Hall of Fame "five rings table" and the chase for a fifth title
1:00:17 What the prediction markets say
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bestselling novelist Daniel Silva — creator of the Gabriel Allon series — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a conversation that starts with the craft of spy fiction and quickly becomes something closer to a threat assessment. Silva's newest plot turns on drones, and he's blunt that this isn't speculative: he believes it's a matter of time before a drone carries out an assassination or a mass-casualty attack. He talks about the strange responsibility of writing a fictional event that could plausibly happen next month, why he deliberately withholds visual detail so readers build the scene themselves, and what he learned reporting out how modern kidnappings and ransom negotiations actually work. The darker current running underneath is his read on American intelligence: the FBI is no longer the same place, the U.S. is jettisoning allies and hollowing out its agencies, and Silva poses the question a novelist is uniquely positioned to ask — if you're the GRU right now, where would you most want an asset placed? He notes that the best assets often don't know they're assets, that NATO held a crisis meeting about Trump, and that this is precisely the moment to be putting the screws to a vulnerable Putin, since Ukraine has victory in sight and isn't desperate for any deal.
The conversation turns personal when Chuck asks how Silva handles Israel's collapsing global reputation in a series built around an Israeli intelligence officer. Silva says the shift was entirely foreseeable, that he has no interest in writing about Gaza, and that what saddens him most is the "fortress Israel" mindset — a country founded on European-style socialist ideals now convinced it can go it alone, siloed from the world, while antisemitism surges globally in a way he warns only ever needs the right set of circumstances to reignite. He and Chuck range across the forces reshaping the century: giant corporations approaching the power of nation-states, a new generation of the ultra-wealthy who simply don't believe in philanthropy, AI's capacity to wipe out the knowledge economy, and Silva's conviction that the next great political crisis may be a climate-driven natural disaster — noting that the last major El Niño produced famines that killed millions, that today's migration patterns are already climate-driven, and that people are dying right now as a direct result of cutting humanitarian aid. He's unsparing on writing and AI), amused and appalled that Trump has turned the National Mall into a mess with a reflecting pool gone "Kermit green," and closes on the question every prolific novelist gets asked and rarely answers honestly: does he ever actually rest?
Play ball and swing for the fences on FanDuel, an official partner of the MLB at https://FANDUEL.COM.
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. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.
Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Daniel Silva joins the Chuck ToddCast
01:00 Gabriel Allon is ageless
02:45 How much do you put yourself into Gabriel Allon?
03:30 Gabriel’s character allows Daniel to pursue things he’s interested in
05:15 Potentially creating a spin-off series
06:30 Vibe of the book series is European art
07:15 How did you learn about modern kidnappings and negotiations
09:15 Not writing with great visual detail to allow readers to imagine it
10:15 We are going to have a major incident triggered by drones
11:15 Ukraine has become the drone specialists of the world
12:00 Drones will eventually carry out an assassination or mass casualty event
13:15 Any trepidation creating a fictional event that could actually happen?
14:15 There was an emergency drone incident in Copenhagen
14:45 Europeans are already very nervous about impacts of drones
15:30 There are cameras everywhere in modern society
16:45 The level of criminality & corruption in the world is staggering
18:00 The current FBI is no longer the same place
18:45 We are jettising allies and destroying our intelligence agencies
19:30 If you are the GRU… where would you want an asset to be?
20:30 There are different types of intelligence assets
21:00 Some of the best assets don’t realize they are assets
22:15 Crisis meeting held at NATO headquarters about Trump
25:30 We should be putting the screws to Putin right now, he’s vulnerable
26:15 Ukraine has victory in sight, they aren’t desperate for a deal
27:00 How do you tackle Israel’s reputation in the world in the books?
29:30 The changes to Israel’s reputation were foreseeable
30:00 Don’t want to write about the war in Gaza
31:00 Is all hope for a two state solution gone?
33:45 There’s a “fortress Israel” mindset, they think they can do it alone
34:15 Is Gabriel Allon still a zionist?
35:00 Israel was founded with tenets of European style socialism
36:00 It’s sad seeing Israel becoming so siloed from the world
37:30 There’s been a major resurgence of antisemitism
39:15 It only takes the right set of circumstances to reignite antisemitism
40:30 Giant corporations are becoming as powerful as nation states
42:00 The new generation of ultra wealthy don’t believe in philanthropy
42:45 AI has the ability to wipe out the knowledge economy
44:00 The next great political crisis might be a climate driven natural disaster
44:45 The last great El Nino created massive famine, killing millions
45:30 The current migration patterns are climate driven
46:00 People are dying as a direct result of cutting humanitarian aid
49:30 Trump has turned the national mall into a mess
50:15 The reflecting pool is now “Kermit green”
51:30 If you could write your next book about anything, what would it be?
52:30 Don’t think he could write non-fiction, too many novels to write
54:15 If you use AI to do your writing, then that isn’t writing
57:30 Anthropic CEO gave a reasoned answer to AI military applications
58:00 Could have an AI version of yourself that lives forever
59:15 Do you ever take a rest from writing?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chuck Todd opens with a story that seems small and turns out to be a perfect miniature of everything wrong with this Pentagon: a Blue Angels flyover at Pensacola Beach came in too low, the pilot who made the honest mistake felt terrible about it — and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, without bothering to establish a single fact about what happened, seized the moment to gloat and own the libs. Chuck calls Hegseth an absolute clown and a fake soldier, argues the incident is a window into a Pentagon where the boss cares more about winning an online argument than about the safety of the people he commands, and where the entire "military testosterone" discourse — Hegseth's fixation on creating "supertrooper" fighting men is both dumb and genuinely dangerous. His verdict: a great American military culture is being actively degraded. He extends the same argument to ICE, where the violence has been entirely predictable — the officer involved in the latest shooting had enormous red flags in his background, and the agency appears to have no meaningful vetting process at all.
He also explains why, contrary to much of the commentary, he wasn't alarmed by Trump's primetime election-denial address: it was a nothingburger. Trump has no evidence, which is why he keeps turning to cranks — his endorsement of Mike Lindell tells you everything — and there's no policy response attached to his own foreign-interference allegations, since China has faced no sanction whatsoever for what Trump claims it did. He argues American elections are extraordinarily hard to overturn precisely because the system is decentralized, that Trump is too lazy to become a Putin or a Mao… A more disciplined president would frighten Chuck far more. Chuck sees a forever war taking shape in Iran: the strategy amounts to throwing kinetic weight at the problem and hoping the regime collapses, while Iran fights the asymmetric war it always planned, targeting Gulf states and now civilian survival infrastructure — hitting desalination plants could trigger a crisis lasting years — and nobody in Washington actually knows how to win. He closes with a genuinely important profile of Undersecretary Elbridge Colby, the intellectual architect of the new right's foreign policy and a favorite of JD Vance, whose vision of American retreat from its allies would effectively be the policy of a President Vance: Colby has trashed Mark Carney's "middle power" strategy and declared that no country is entitled to the American defense industry — which, notes, misses that buying military hardware is a 30-year bet on trusting an ally, and middle powers who conclude they can be coerced by Washington will simply take their money somewhere else. Quick hits on a messy Wisconsin governor's race (Tony Evers built no infrastructure and left no obvious heir in one of the country's most misunderstood swing states) and Tuesday's Arizona primary round things out.
Finally, Chuck hops into the ToddCast Time Machine to draw parallels between the arguments in modern American politics to the argument between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev in the infamous “kitchen debate” and answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment.
Play ball and swing for the fences on FanDuel, an official partner of the MLB at https://FANDUEL.COM.

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. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.
Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
02:15 Pensacola Beach is the home of the Blue Angels
03:15 Low flyover from Blue Angels generated massive controversy
03:45 Hegseth has allowed unsafe flyovers in the past
04:15 Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon has been awful
05:00 Hegseth used the flyover to try to “own the libs”
05:45 The low flyover at the beach was an honest mistake by the pilot
07:30 Online discourse about flyover was both sides trying to prove their point
08:30 Hegseth didn’t even bother to figure out the facts about the incident
09:00 The pilot felt terrible about the mistake, while Hegseth gloated
11:00 Why Chuck isn’t alarmed by Trump’s election denial primetime speech
11:45 Trump has tested constitutional boundaries unlike any other president
13:30 Trump’s endorsement of Mike Lindell says everything
14:00 Trump doesn’t have evidence of fraud, he turns to election denial cranks
15:15 Trump’s speech was a big fat nothingburger
16:30 Trump wanted government to interfere in the 2020 election
17:30 There’s no policy response to Trump’s allegations about foreign interference
18:30 China hasn’t received any sanction or response to allegations
20:00 Trump has lackeys cherry pick facts to try to sew mistrust in elections
22:00 It is extraordinarily difficult to overturn an American election
22:45 The electoral system is decentralized making it harder to meddle with
23:30 A president more disciplined than Trump would be a bigger worry
24:30 We need to repair structural weaknesses in the democracy
25:15 Trump is too lazy to become a dictator like Putin or Mao
26:00 Trump has his sycophants… but they all fear jail too
27:15 Trump wants other people to risk themselves to keep him in power
28:30 We’re on the road to a “forever war” in Iran
29:00 The plan is just to throw kinetic weight & hope the regime collapses
29:45 Iran’s whole strategy is asymmetric, targeting Gulf states
30:15 Iran is now targeting civilian survival infrastructure
30:45 Hitting desalination plants could create a yearslong crisis
31:30 Administration keeps doubling down on the same strategy
33:30 Nobody in Washington knows how to win the war
34:30 Pete Hegseth is an absolute clown… a fake soldier
35:00 The military testosterone discourse is both dumb and dangerous
36:00 Undersecretary Elbridge Colby has a big role in shaping policy
37:30 Colby wants America to retreat from the world & our allies
38:30 Colby has been embraced by JD Vance & the new right
39:15 Colby’s policies would be those of a President JD Vance
40:30 Allies realize they can be coerced by America
42:30 Colby trashed the “middle power” strategy of Mark Carney
43:00 Colby says nobody is entitled to the U.S. military industry
44:00 Buying military hardware is a 30 year bet on trusting an ally
45:00 Middle powers will look elsewhere to buy their military equipment
46:15 Hegseth wants to create testosterone driven “supertroopers”
47:00 Women aren’t being offered a similar screening
48:00 Jesse Watters comments on testosterone were beyond awful
48:30 Most watched cable host was making sexual assault jokes
49:15 Military has had a longstanding issue with sexual assault
50:00 Young men are marketed testosterone from influencers & now government
51:00 Taking outside testosterone shuts down natural production of it
51:45 Taking testosterone has major negative side effects
53:00 Our great military culture is being destroyed by Trump
53:30 The violence from ICE officers has been entirely predictable
54:15 DHS under Trump never deserves the benefit of the doubt
55:15 Officer involved in shooting had massive red flags in his background
56:00 ICE doesn’t appear to have any vetting process for recruits
1:00:00 Wisconsin governor’s race has become a political mess
1:01:00 Tony Evers didn’t build a strong infrastructure around him
1:01:30 Evers didn’t set up an obvious heir in the Democratic party
1:03:00 The party establishment hasn’t responded to all parts of the base
1:03:45 Wisconsin is one of the most misunderstood swing states
1:05:00 Democrats in Wisconsin have to make the political center comfortable
1:07:30 Arizona primary coming up on Tuesday
01:13:15 ToddCast Time Machine July 24, 1959
01:13:45 Nixon and Krushchev host the “Kitchen Debate”
01:14:45 The countries were showing off their way of life - Capitalism vs Communism
01:15:30 Soviets set up a display in New York to show off their society
01:16:15 Khrushchev believed history would belong to the communists
01:16:45 The answer to the Soviet display was a model of an American home
01:17:30 The argument was that a middle class worker could afford that home
01:18:00 America showed it offered equality of opportunity, not outcome
01:18:45 Krushchev and Nixon debated knowing the world would hear it
01:19:45 Krushchev didn’t believe Americans actually lived that well
01:20:15 Nixon argued that competition inspired innovation and growth
01:21:45 Market capitalism proved to be the more dynamic economic system
01:22:15 There are echoes of the Kitchen Debate in modern American discourse
01:23:45 The Soviet Union disappeared, the debate hasn’t
01:24:00 Ask Chuck
01:24:15 Is MLB lockout avoidable? The state of baseball card collecting?
01:34:45 Is Trump’s erosion of norms a form of the incrementalism you champion?
01:38:15 What rights are D.C. & Puerto Rico residents still missing beside representation?
01:44:00 What goes into a decision to run for office?
01:47:30 MAGA just a rework of Reagan’s slogan?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chuck Todd opens with a story that seems small and turns out to be a perfect miniature of everything wrong with this Pentagon: a Blue Angels flyover at Pensacola Beach came in too low, the pilot who made the honest mistake felt terrible about it — and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, without bothering to establish a single fact about what happened, seized the moment to gloat and own the libs. Chuck calls Hegseth an absolute clown and a fake soldier, argues the incident is a window into a Pentagon where the boss cares more about winning an online argument than about the safety of the people he commands, and where the entire "military testosterone" discourse — Hegseth's fixation on creating "supertrooper" fighting men is both dumb and genuinely dangerous. His verdict: a great American military culture is being actively degraded. He extends the same argument to ICE, where the violence has been entirely predictable — the officer involved in the latest shooting had enormous red flags in his background, and the agency appears to have no meaningful vetting process at all.
He also explains why, contrary to much of the commentary, he wasn't alarmed by Trump's primetime election-denial address: it was a nothingburger. Trump has no evidence, which is why he keeps turning to cranks — his endorsement of Mike Lindell tells you everything — and there's no policy response attached to his own foreign-interference allegations, since China has faced no sanction whatsoever for what Trump claims it did. He argues American elections are extraordinarily hard to overturn precisely because the system is decentralized, that Trump is too lazy to become a Putin or a Mao… A more disciplined president would frighten Chuck far more. Chuck sees a forever war taking shape in Iran: the strategy amounts to throwing kinetic weight at the problem and hoping the regime collapses, while Iran fights the asymmetric war it always planned, targeting Gulf states and now civilian survival infrastructure — hitting desalination plants could trigger a crisis lasting years — and nobody in Washington actually knows how to win. He closes with a genuinely important profile of Undersecretary Elbridge Colby, the intellectual architect of the new right's foreign policy and a favorite of JD Vance, whose vision of American retreat from its allies would effectively be the policy of a President Vance: Colby has trashed Mark Carney's "middle power" strategy and declared that no country is entitled to the American defense industry — which, notes, misses that buying military hardware is a 30-year bet on trusting an ally, and middle powers who conclude they can be coerced by Washington will simply take their money somewhere else. Quick hits on a messy Wisconsin governor's race (Tony Evers built no infrastructure and left no obvious heir in one of the country's most misunderstood swing states) and Tuesday's Arizona primary round things out.
Then, bestselling novelist Daniel Silva — creator of the Gabriel Allon series — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a conversation that starts with the craft of spy fiction and quickly becomes something closer to a threat assessment. Silva's newest plot turns on drones, and he's blunt that this isn't speculative: he believes it's a matter of time before a drone carries out an assassination or a mass-casualty attack. He talks about the strange responsibility of writing a fictional event that could plausibly happen next month, why he deliberately withholds visual detail so readers build the scene themselves, and what he learned reporting out how modern kidnappings and ransom negotiations actually work. The darker current running underneath is his read on American intelligence: the FBI is no longer the same place, the U.S. is jettisoning allies and hollowing out its agencies, and Silva poses the question a novelist is uniquely positioned to ask — if you're the GRU right now, where would you most want an asset placed? He notes that the best assets often don't know they're assets, that NATO held a crisis meeting about Trump, and that this is precisely the moment to be putting the screws to a vulnerable Putin, since Ukraine has victory in sight and isn't desperate for any deal.
The conversation turns personal when Chuck asks how Silva handles Israel's collapsing global reputation in a series built around an Israeli intelligence officer. Silva says the shift was entirely foreseeable, that he has no interest in writing about Gaza, and that what saddens him most is the "fortress Israel" mindset — a country founded on European-style socialist ideals now convinced it can go it alone, siloed from the world, while antisemitism surges globally in a way he warns only ever needs the right set of circumstances to reignite. He and Chuck range across the forces reshaping the century: giant corporations approaching the power of nation-states, a new generation of the ultra-wealthy who simply don't believe in philanthropy, AI's capacity to wipe out the knowledge economy, and Silva's conviction that the next great political crisis may be a climate-driven natural disaster — noting that the last major El Niño produced famines that killed millions, that today's migration patterns are already climate-driven, and that people are dying right now as a direct result of cutting humanitarian aid. He's unsparing on writing and AI), amused and appalled that Trump has turned the National Mall into a mess with a reflecting pool gone "Kermit green," and closes on the question every prolific novelist gets asked and rarely answers honestly: does he ever actually rest?
Finally, Chuck hops into the ToddCast Time Machine to draw parallels between the arguments in modern American politics to the argument between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev in the infamous “kitchen debate” and answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment.
Play ball and swing for the fences on FanDuel, an official partner of the MLB at https://FANDUEL.COM.
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. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.
Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
02:15 Pensacola Beach is the home of the Blue Angels
03:15 Low flyover from Blue Angels generated massive controversy
03:45 Hegseth has allowed unsafe flyovers in the past
04:15 Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon has been awful
05:00 Hegseth used the flyover to try to “own the libs”
05:45 The low flyover at the beach was an honest mistake by the pilot
07:30 Online discourse about flyover was both sides trying to prove their point
08:30 Hegseth didn’t even bother to figure out the facts about the incident
09:00 The pilot felt terrible about the mistake, while Hegseth gloated
11:00 Why Chuck isn’t alarmed by Trump’s election denial primetime speech
11:45 Trump has tested constitutional boundaries unlike any other president
13:30 Trump’s endorsement of Mike Lindell says everything
14:00 Trump doesn’t have evidence of fraud, he turns to election denial cranks
15:15 Trump’s speech was a big fat nothingburger
16:30 Trump wanted government to interfere in the 2020 election
17:30 There’s no policy response to Trump’s allegations about foreign interference
18:30 China hasn’t received any sanction or response to allegations
20:00 Trump has lackeys cherry pick facts to try to sew mistrust in elections
22:00 It is extraordinarily difficult to overturn an American election
22:45 The electoral system is decentralized making it harder to meddle with
23:30 A president more disciplined than Trump would be a bigger worry
24:30 We need to repair structural weaknesses in the democracy
25:15 Trump is too lazy to become a dictator like Putin or Mao
26:00 Trump has his sycophants… but they all fear jail too
27:15 Trump wants other people to risk themselves to keep him in power
28:30 We’re on the road to a “forever war” in Iran
29:00 The plan is just to throw kinetic weight & hope the regime collapses
29:45 Iran’s whole strategy is asymmetric, targeting Gulf states
30:15 Iran is now targeting civilian survival infrastructure
30:45 Hitting desalination plants could create a yearslong crisis
31:30 Administration keeps doubling down on the same strategy
33:30 Nobody in Washington knows how to win the war
34:30 Pete Hegseth is an absolute clown… a fake soldier
35:00 The military testosterone discourse is both dumb and dangerous
36:00 Undersecretary Elbridge Colby has a big role in shaping policy
37:30 Colby wants America to retreat from the world & our allies
38:30 Colby has been embraced by JD Vance & the new right
39:15 Colby’s policies would be those of a President JD Vance
40:30 Allies realize they can be coerced by America
42:30 Colby trashed the “middle power” strategy of Mark Carney
43:00 Colby says nobody is entitled to the U.S. military industry
44:00 Buying military hardware is a 30 year bet on trusting an ally
45:00 Middle powers will look elsewhere to buy their military equipment
46:15 Hegseth wants to create testosterone driven “supertroopers”
47:00 Women aren’t being offered a similar screening
48:00 Jesse Watters comments on testosterone were beyond awful
48:30 Most watched cable host was making sexual assault jokes
49:15 Military has had a longstanding issue with sexual assault
50:00 Young men are marketed testosterone from influencers & now government
51:00 Taking outside testosterone shuts down natural production of it
51:45 Taking testosterone has major negative side effects
53:00 Our great military culture is being destroyed by Trump
53:30 The violence from ICE officers has been entirely predictable
54:15 DHS under Trump never deserves the benefit of the doubt
55:15 Officer involved in shooting had massive red flags in his background
56:00 ICE doesn’t appear to have any vetting process for recruits
1:00:00 Wisconsin governor’s race has become a political mess
1:01:00 Tony Evers didn’t build a strong infrastructure around him
1:01:30 Evers didn’t set up an obvious heir in the Democratic party
1:03:00 The party establishment hasn’t responded to all parts of the base
1:03:45 Wisconsin is one of the most misunderstood swing states
1:05:00 Democrats in Wisconsin have to make the political center comfortable
1:07:30 Arizona primary coming up on Tuesday
01:14:00 Daniel Silva joins the Chuck ToddCast
01:15:00 Gabriel Allon is ageless
01:16:45 How much do you put yourself into Gabriel Allon?
01:17:30 Gabriel’s character allows Daniel to pursue things he’s interested in
01:19:15 Potentially creating a spin-off series
01:20:30 Vibe of the book series is European art
01:21:15 How did you learn about modern kidnappings and negotiations
01:23:15 Not writing with great visual detail to allow readers to imagine it
01:24:15 We are going to have a major incident triggered by drones
01:25:15 Ukraine has become the drone specialists of the world
01:26:00 Drones will eventually carry out an assassination or mass casualty event
01:27:15 Any trepidation creating a fictional event that could actually happen?
01:28:15 There was an emergency drone incident in Copenhagen
01:28:45 Europeans are already very nervous about impacts of drones
01:29:30 There are cameras everywhere in modern society
01:30:45 The level of criminality & corruption in the world is staggering
01:32:00 The current FBI is no longer the same place
01:32:45 We are jettising allies and destroying our intelligence agencies
01:33:30 If you are the GRU… where would you want an asset to be?
01:34:30 There are different types of intelligence assets
01:35:00 Some of the best assets don’t realize they are assets
01:36:15 Crisis meeting held at NATO headquarters about Trump
01:39:30 We should be putting the screws to Putin right now, he’s vulnerable
01:40:15 Ukraine has victory in sight, they aren’t desperate for a deal
01:41:00 How do you tackle Israel’s reputation in the world in the books?
01:43:30 The changes to Israel’s reputation were foreseeable
01:44:00 Don’t want to write about the war in Gaza
01:45:00 Is all hope for a two state solution gone?
01:47:45 There’s a “fortress Israel” mindset, they think they can do it alone
01:48:15 Is Gabriel Allon still a zionist?
01:49:00 Israel was founded with tenets of European style socialism
01:50:00 It’s sad seeing Israel becoming so siloed from the world
01:51:30 There’s been a major resurgence of antisemitism
01:53:15 It only takes the right set of circumstances to reignite antisemitism
01:54:30 Giant corporations are becoming as powerful as nation states
01:56:00 The new generation of ultra wealthy don’t believe in philanthropy
01:56:45 AI has the ability to wipe out the knowledge economy
01:58:00 The next great political crisis might be a climate driven natural disaster
01:58:45 The last great El Nino created massive famine, killing millions
01:59:30 The current migration patterns are climate driven
02:00:00 People are dying as a direct result of cutting humanitarian aid
02:03:30 Trump has turned the national mall into a mess
02:04:15 The reflecting pool is now “Kermit green”
02:05:30 If you could write your next book about anything, what would it be?
02:06:30 Don’t think he could write non-fiction, too many novels to write
02:08:15 If you use AI to do your writing, then that isn’t writing
02:11:30 Anthropic CEO gave a reasoned answer to AI military applications
02:12:00 Could have an AI version of yourself that lives forever
02:13:15 Do you ever take a rest from writing?
02:16:30 ToddCast Time Machine July 24, 1959
02:17:00 Nixon and Krushchev host the “Kitchen Debate”
02:18:00 The countries were showing off their way of life - Capitalism vs Communism
02:18:45 Soviets set up a display in New York to show off their society
02:19:30 Khrushchev believed history would belong to the communists
02:20:00 The answer to the Soviet display was a model of an American home
02:20:45 The argument was that a middle class worker could afford that home
02:21:15 America showed it offered equality of opportunity, not outcome
02:22:00 Krushchev and Nixon debated knowing the world would hear it
02:23:00 Krushchev didn’t believe Americans actually lived that well
02:23:30 Nixon argued that competition inspired innovation and growth
02:25:00 Market capitalism proved to be the more dynamic economic system
02:25:30 There are echoes of the Kitchen Debate in modern American discourse
02:27:00 The Soviet Union disappeared, the debate hasn’t
02:27:15 Ask Chuck
02:27:30 Is MLB lockout avoidable? The state of baseball card collecting?
02:38:00 Is Trump’s erosion of norms a form of the incrementalism you champion?
02:41:30 What rights are D.C. & Puerto Rico residents still missing beside representation?
02:47:15 What goes into a decision to run for office?
02:50:45 MAGA just a rework of Reagan’s slogan?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Opdycke — founder and president of Open Primaries, one of the leading organizations pushing to end closed partisan primaries — joins the Chuck Toddcast to make the case that the exclusion of independent voters is one of the great overlooked scandals of American democracy. Opdycke walks through the byzantine patchwork of voter and party registration rules that vary wildly by state, explains why so many independents sit out partisan primaries entirely, and argues that after 30 years of closed primaries the cumulative effect has been a system where the parties function as both the umpires and the players — a structure that simply doesn't work. He makes the bipartisan argument that tax dollars shouldn't fund the private nominating contests of what are essentially private organizations, and is pointedly critical of Democrats for actively fighting open primary initiatives.He notes that policies with 80% public support routinely fail to pass because voters don't actually have a meaningful say.
The conversation turns tactical and forward-looking, with Opdycke offering a sober assessment of the broader reform landscape and its persistent failures. He argues the ranked-choice voting movement has made serious tactical errors, that the party in power always fights ranked choice voting, and that the modern reform and independent movement suffers from a fundamental lack of a compelling public face — as well as from philanthropic funders who attach outcome expectations that distort the work. Opdycke is candid that third parties fare poorly in nearly every electoral system, that Ross Perot's Reform Party is now essentially a shell, and that the American people still don't trust the reform movement — but he sees real opportunity in specific fights, particularly mobilizing Florida's independents to change the law and pursuing top-two systems that would genuinely open the door to competition. He notes the striking statistic that 10,000 people per week are changing their voter registration, laments the general lack of curiosity (and polling) about who swing voters actually are, and argues there's meaningful left-right overlap among libertarians that reformers could tap. They explore whether the redistricting wars could create a backlash against the two-party system, why there are only about 25 competitive House districts left, and why several states are now actually moving back toward closed primaries. They close with a clear-eyed take on 2028: the reform movement needs a credible presidential candidate, and with 2028 shaping up to be a wild and unpredictable year, the opening for that kind of disruption may be wider than it's been in decades.
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.
Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to https://Quince.com/chuck for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.
Link in bio or go to https://getsoul.com & enter code TODDCAST for 30% off your first order.

Timeline:
(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
00:00 John Opdycke joins the Chuck ToddCast
01:45 Voter & party registration rules vary greatly by state
03:00 Why do so many independents sit out partisan primaries?
05:30 NYC Democratic party actively fought open primary initiative
07:00 There have been cumulative effects of 30 years of closed primaries
08:15 Voter apathy across the board for voting in primaries
09:00 Independents showing strong support for Open Primaries
10:45 Parties have every right to choose their candidates
11:15 Parties now are both the umpires and the players, it doesn’t work
13:00 There’s bipartisan arguments for not using tax dollars for private orgs
14:15 Why are Democrats fighting against open primaries?
16:15 Ross Perot’s Reform Party is basically a shell at this point
19:00 Independent voters are incorrectly understood as in the middle
19:30 Independents are moderate in temperament, not ideology
21:15 Politics post-Clinton/Gingrich designed to keep independents down
22:15 The modern reform/independent movement lacks a face
23:15 Philanthropic funders come with expectations of outcomes
24:15 Ranked choice voting movement has made serious tactical errors
26:30 Party in power always fights ranked choice voting
28:00 Exclusion of independent voters is a Jim Crow level violation of rights
28:30 Policies with 80% support don’t pass, voters don’t have a say
30:00 Third parties don’t do well in almost any electoral system
31:15 Swing voters are ignored until October
31:45 Which states offer best opportunities for a third party?
32:30 Independents require the Democrat to drop out in senate races
36:00 Could the redistricting wars create backlash to the two party system?
36:45 There’s only 25 competitive house district
37:30 Leaders in several states now looking to go back to closed primaries
38:45 The American people don’t trust the Reform movement
40:45 Mobilizing independents in Florida to change the law
43:15 There’s left-right overlap amongst the libertarians
44:45 There’s a lack of curiosity about independent/swing voters
46:45 10,000 people per week change their voter registration
47:30 We need a flood of polling and research about independent voters
48:45 What does success look like for Open Primaries this year?
51:45 A top two system would open up the door to competition
53:15 There are fewer “generic” candidates, much more variance
55:45 The Reform movement needs a presidential candidate in ‘28
59:30 Perot had to scare both parties to get them to make reforms
1:01:00 Have to creative in ‘28, it will be a wild year in politics
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.