Chuck Todd opens with the Iran war's arrival on American soil: hackers have hit water systems across multiple states in one of the most serious cyberattacks on U.S. water infrastructure in years and investigators probing an Iranian link. Trump's response tells you everything about the presidency in its current state — he didn't blame the attacker, he blamed the victim, using the hack as an occasion to attack Minnesota Democrats. Chuck’s question hangs over the whole segment: was Trump briefed on the Iranian connection and went after Minnesota anyway? Either way, the first instinct was to find a Democrat to blame, which Chuck calls a kind of polarization disease that leaves a president caring more about his narrative than about American citizens drinking the water. It fits a pattern the episode keeps circling: Jeanine Pirro presented false evidence to a grand jury blaming a former Olympian for damage to the White House reflecting pool, dropped the case when Interior produced documents proving otherwise, and Trump publicly disagreed with dropping it because he still insists it was vandals. Chuck argues negative information never reaches Trump, and people who bring him bad news don't last long — which is how you end up with a president insisting affordability is a Democratic scam

Then, Chuck highlights a Wall Street Journal piece that lays out Trump's corruption — roughly $800 million raised through what amounts to an advertised pay-to-play scheme. Anti-corruption is a devastating midterm message sitting right there for Democrats to pick up… then Chuck Schumer rolled out a bill that Chuck calls a piece of garbage: it wouldn't even cover the conduct in the WSJ story, it's likely unconstitutional because it names individuals, and — most absurdly — it creates a new anti-corruption agency inside the executive branch, meaning a corrupt president would appoint its director and seven board members and, per the Supreme Court, could fire them at will. Congress can already do every bit of the oversight the agency would perform and Schumer's answer to executive corruption is to hand the executive more power and write Congress out of its own job. He closes on Michigan and Wisconsin as the clearest signals of where the Democratic Party is headed — Abdul El-Sayed running a movement inside a Senate race with the explicit goal of changing the party, DSA-endorsed Francesca Wong leading in Wisconsin while the establishment fails to coordinate against her — and on the DSA's new call to abolish the Senate, which Senate Democrats pushed back on without ever defending the institution. Chuck defends it himself: the Senate is a feature, not a bug, a brake on political extremism, and the right response to losing an argument is to win it rather than rewrite the rules. 

Finally, Chuck hops into the ToddCast Time Machine to revisit Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation, and answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment.

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Timeline:

(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)

00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction

06:15 The Iran war has become a global conflict

06:45 Once again Trump issues threats, then walks them back

08:15 War is one of biggest strategic mistakes in decades

09:00 Increased gas prices have cost households additional $560

10:30 CISA warns that Iranian hackers are targeting water infrastructure

11:15 Iran could cause unreliability to the American water supply

13:00 Trump used hacking attacks to blame Minnesota Democrats

13:45 Trump didn’t blame the attacker, he blamed the victim

15:30 Jeanine Pirro blamed former Olympian for damage to reflecting pool

16:00 Dept. of Interior had documents proving otherwise, Pirro dropped case

17:00 Pirro presented false evidence to a grand jury

18:30 Trump publicly disagreed with Pirro dropping case, says it was vandals

19:30 Trump’s staff is shielding him from the truth

21:00 Trump’s lack of understanding reality is terrible for him

21:30 Trump’s low approval is a midterm disaster in the making

23:00 Stephanie Grisham says 85% of negative info is kept from Trump

24:15 People who bring Trump bad news don’t last very long

25:30 Republicans aren’t campaigning like things are going well

26:00 Ken Paxton puts out an affordability agenda, looks like a Dem proposal

27:15 Trump still saying affordability is scam made up by Democrats

28:15 Trump can’t understand the reality of the situation

28:45 Was Trump briefed on Iran hack… then attacked Minnesota anyway?

30:00 Trump’s first instinct was to find a Democrat to blame

30:45 Trump is demented with polarization disease

31:15 Trump cares more about his narrative than American citizens

32:15 Trump is bragging about his grifting an Americans are tired of it

33:15 Anti-Corruption is a massively effective midterm strategy

33:45 Chuck Schumer rolls out a stinker of an anti-corruption bill

34:45 WSJ publishes airtight piece about Trump’s overt corruption

35:45 There’s no buffer or plausible deniability for Trump in the corruption story

36:45 Trump is basically advertising that government is a pay to play scheme

37:45 There’s a list of presidential promises for favors that have been bought

38:15 Trump has raised $800m in pay for play schemes with little accounting

39:00 There is no law outlawing a president from raising unlimited money

39:30 Trump is now the biggest alligator in the swamp

40:15 Schumer’s bill is a piece of garbage, why many senators didn’t sign on

41:45 Jamie Raskin is performing oversight, Schumer wants agency to do it for him

42:30 The bill wouldn’t even cover the corruption outlined by the WSJ story

44:00 The bill is unconstitutional because it names individuals

45:00 Laws can target behavior, not individuals. It’d be thrown out in court

45:45 The agency Schumer proposed would live in the executive branch

46:15 Agency to stop a corrupt president would be staffed by the president??

47:15 SCOTUS says president can fire the heads of exec branch agencies

48:45 If bill passed, Trump would pick agency head and 7 members of board

49:15 Congress can perform all the oversight the proposed agency would do

50:30 Congress could stop all this corruption if it wanted to

52:00 Schumer’s idea is to hand more power to the executive branch???

54:30 The plan from congress is to write themselves out of oversight?

57:00 Schumer’s bill will never see the light of day

57:45 Michigan & Wisconsin will show where the Democratic party is headed

59:30 Abdul El-Sayed made clear his goal is to change the Democratic party

1:00:15 His campaign is a movement inside a senate race

1:01:00 Francesca Wong in Wisconsin is frontrunner & endorsed by DSA

1:01:45 Establishment hasn’t coordinated well to stop Wong

1:02:15 Movement politicians are usually right about the future, wrong about present

1:03:30 Sometimes the movement comes first, sometimes the coalition does

1:04:00 DSA has become a force, and is now calling for abolishing the senate

1:05:00 Senate democrats pushed back, but didn’t defend the senate

1:05:45 The senate is a feature, not a bug

1:06:30 The senate is a brake on political extremism

1:07:15 The response is to win the argument, not rewrite the rules

1:08:00 Movement nominees are easier to defeat than governing ones

1:13:30 Toddcast Time Machine - The five days that ended Richard Nixon

1:14:00 Nixon resigned 52 years ago, this week

1:14:45 Why is Nixon the only president that paid a price for his corruption?

1:15:45 We tell the story of Watergate backwards and start with resignation

1:17:00 The June arrests weren’t the beginning of Watergate

1:18:45 We don’t know what Nixon’s operation learned before the arrests

1:20:30 We never got full answer on the missing 18 minutes

1:21:15 Supreme Court stayed in session during summer to oversee Watergate

1:21:45 Smoking gun tape goes public six days after the break-in

1:22:30 Nixon needed 34 votes in the senate to survive, only had 16

1:23:15 Impeachment in the house was a foregone conclusion

1:23:45 Senators didn’t demand he resign, just showed Nixon the numbers

1:27:00 How different would history have looked had Nixon survived?

1:27:45 Ask Chuck

1:28:00 Is presidency becoming more powerful in a way that could outlast Trump

1:31:00 Can the U.S. government create a true unbiased media source?

1:34:45 Would mandatory voting create better political participation?

1:39:15 Would Illinois make for a better early primary state?

1:41:00 Why not hold every primary on the same day?

1:43:15 Personal anecdote about AI job displacement and fear