Full Episode - The Iran War Risks Going Global + Mitch McConnell’s Disappearing Act & How Democrats Can Win In Trump Country

Chuck Todd argues Republicans and the White House are frantically trying to manufacture headlines about the past precisely because the actual news of the present is terrible for the GOP, and because the very issues that got Trump elected are the ones he's now ignoring. Democrats are winning heading into the midterms, TChuck says; the only real question is by how much, which is exactly why Republicans are so desperate to feed their base culture-war red meat as a distraction. But the story Chuck argues is being dangerously underplayed is the Iran war, which is no longer a regional conflict at all: close to thirty countries have been directly involved, multiple nations have been hit, and the Iran and Ukraine wars have effectively merged through shared supply chains — Russia has launched thousands of Iranian-made drones at Ukraine, improved and manufactured them, and is now shipping them back to Iran, while Ukrainian air defense teams have been redeployed to the Middle East and the American stockpile of interceptor missiles has been so massively depleted that commanders are rationing them. He calls the war the dumbest mistake a president has made in decades, while rising oil prices help both Iran and Russia.. It's not World War III, he cautions, but it's genuinely hard to see how it ends, and Congress should be singularly focused on it and simply isn't. He then pivots to what he calls a politics of AI that hasn't been invented yet, where the public is way ahead of the politicians: 72% of Americans have used AI in the past three months and like it, but the vast majority don't trust big tech or the AI companies, and the fierce backlash against data centers is really the manifestation of a deeper anger ever since tech companies stopped trying to improve lives and started maximizing engagement. The public isn't rejecting AI, he argues, it's rejecting the technologists, and Trump has planted himself firmly on the side of the tech companies over the public. He closes by lamenting that political energy is being spent on Fauci rather than pandemic preparedness — before quick hits on Todd Achilles getting a one-on-one race in Idaho, Seth Bodnar leading in Montana if the Democrat can be coaxed into dropping out, and the question hanging over Michigan: if Abdul El-Sayed loses, will it have been because of Mamdani's Israel speech? 

Then, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear — the popular two-term Democrat in a deep-red state and a name increasingly floated for 2028 — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a wide-ranging conversation that opens with Kentucky's famous Fancy Farm Picnic and the increasingly countercultural idea that political disagreement shouldn't make people enemies. Beshear turns pointed on Mitch McConnell, who he says has been absent for six weeks without speaking to him, arguing that McConnell has a fundamental duty to level with the people of Kentucky about his condition.. Beshear notes the governor has no authority to declare a vacancy, calls on John Thune to help put the concerns to rest, and observes pointedly that if the situation were reversed, McConnell would be ruthlessly tactical about it — and that the right should arguably be angrier, since it's one fewer vote for the GOP agenda. Beshear reflects at length and with real emotion on the COVID years, which he calls the war of our time with a higher casualty rate than most Americans appreciate, credits Kentucky's expanded Medicaid with keeping the state from running out of hospital beds, and warning that Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" will close 35 hospitals in Kentucky alone. He's sharply critical of Rand Paul for dragging Fauci into character-assassination hearings while staying conspicuously silent on McConnell, and reminds listeners it was Trump who ordered governors to shut down the economy, not Fauci.

The conversation turns to Beshear's political philosophy and the road ahead for Democrats. He rejects the "moderate" label in favor of "pragmatic," arguing that the constant battle to label everyone misses how much more complicated reality actually is. Beshear makes the case that Democrats don't win by becoming a Democratic version of McConnell or Trump, that the party needs to be the party of making the economy work again, and that it should champion structural reforms like campaign finance amendments, outlawing gerrymandering, and directly electing the president. He's visibly frustrated with Democrats who blame other Democrats when Republicans are the ones doing the damage — there's no time for "woulda-couldas," he argues, when Trump and the GOP are inflicting this much harm. As a leader in the Democratic Governors Association, Beshear lays out where he sees real opportunity: big resources heading into Georgia, the critical importance of Katie Hobbs winning in Arizona to ensure a fair 2028 election, and the DGA's willingness to spend anywhere it can win. He addresses the data center backlash as fundamentally rooted in anxiety about AI and big tech's failure to talk to the communities it moves into, and stays characteristically coy about his own 2028 ambitions.

Finally, Chuck presents his ToddCast Top 5 Independents/Independent minded leaders who could reshape the U.S. Senate 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

02:45 Republicans & WH are trying to manufacture the headlines

03:15 Attacking Fauci, going after Smithsonian, relitigating 2020 election

04:00 These stories are about yesterday, modern headlines are bad for GOP

04:30 The issues that got Trump elected are the issues he’s ignoring

05:30 Dems are winning heading into midterms, question is by how much

07:00 Republicans are desperate to distract their base 

07:45 They believe the culture war red meat will turn out their base

08:45 The Iran war is being underplayed

09:45 There have been close to thirty countries directly involved in the war

10:45 Multiple countries have been hit directly during the war

11:30 This is not a regional war

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