Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Bonus Friday Episode - Indiana GOP REBUKES Trump: Is The Trump Era Finally Ending?

Transcript

Bonus Friday Episode - Indiana GOP REBUKES Trump: Is The Trump Era Finally Ending? · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: personal experience. I was sixteen when my father passed away.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: We didn't have any money. He didn't leave us in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the best shape. My mother single mother, now widow, myself
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: sixteen trying to figure out how am I going to
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: pay for college and lo and behold, my dad had
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: one life insurance policy that we found wasn't a lot,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: but it was important at the time, and it's why
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I was able to go to college. Little did he
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: know how important that would be in that moment. Well,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: guess what. That's why I am here to tell you
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: about Etho's life. They can provide you with peace of
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: mind knowing your family is protected even if the worst
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: comes to pass. Ethos is an online platform that makes
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: getting life insurance fast and easy, all designed to protect
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: your family's future in minutes, not months. There's no complicated
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: process and it's one hundred percent online. There's no medical
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: exam require you just answer a few health questions online.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: You can get a quote and it's a little ten minutes,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and you can get same day coverage without ever leaving
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: your home. You can get up to three million dollars
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: in coverage and some policies start as low as two
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: dollars a day that would be billed monthly. As of
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: March twenty twenty five, Business Insider named Ethos the number
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: one no medical exam instant life insurance provider. So protect
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: quoted Ethos dot com slash chuck. So again, that's Ethos
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and the
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me, life
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: insurance is something you should really think about, especially if
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: you've got a growing family. Hello there, Chuck Todd. Here
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: it is Friday, December twelfth. I thought I would jump
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: in with just a quick little update on what was
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I think a pretty monumental day that when we look
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: back on what happened on Thursday, December eleven in the
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: era of Trump, that this will be one could be
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: one of those plot points. And I know we've been
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: done this road before. It could be is this the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: sign that it's coming to an end? Etcetera, etcetera. But
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: let's talk about two important things that happen and in
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: two ways, where something President Trump demanded, where he tried
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: to bend the will of the law, bend the will
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: of politics, bend the will of individuals his way, and
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: he hasn't been able to do it. Obviously, the big
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: news is what happened in Indiana, with essentially Indiana Republicans
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: feeling comfortable saying no to Donald Trump. But earlier in
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the day we had a grand jury who you know,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the famous joke is you can get a grand jury
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: to indict a ham sandwich. Perhaps the Trump administration should
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: have tried indicting a ham sandwich named Letitia James. Rather
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: than trying to indict Leticia James a second time on
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: this idea that she committed mortgage fraud. Grand jury said no.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: And it is you're starting to see a pattern here
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: where there is more comfort in pushing back, and when
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: you do, you're not seeing the consequences that are threatened.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: But let's start with the political consequences or lack thereof,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: with what happened in Indiana. This is Republicans saying no.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: This is not the first time, right, we have seen right,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: There has been sort of this. I wrote about in
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: a sub stack about a month ago that I said,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: the cracks and the coalition are starting to appear focusing
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: then on the Marjorie Taylor Green situation Thomas Massey, and
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: it's like, slowly, but surely, you've had people push back
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: and there have been no consequences. Look and Trump one
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: point zero. And even in the four yer exile period
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: where he was still sort of hovering over our politics,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: even if he didn't have actual power, his words mattered,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: his threats mattered, and he did instill sometimes fear in
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the minds of some Republicans to go his way, because
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, the voters were with him.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But that's the issue here. It's like, why did Indiana
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Republicans feel comfortable pushing back? Why does Marjorie Taylor Green
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: feel comfortable pushing back? Why is Thomas Massey felt comfortable
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: pushing back? Why do you see a growing you know,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: ever so slowly, a growing number of House Republicans and
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Senate Republicans essentially looking for ways to go in a
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: different direction than what the Trump administration is demanding. And
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: that is because this economy is not good and voters
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: don't like this economy, and ultimately, if they don't like
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: the economy, everything else starts to bother them. And who
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: knows this better than lawmakers that are closer to the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: voters than the president is. He has had a hard
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: time making Thomas Massey pay for what he has done,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: and he's essentially pushing back on him. In particular on
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: the Epstein files. Marjorie Taylor Green seemed to indicate that
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: she just didn't want to go through the idea of
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: having to fight Trump in a primary, and so she
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: chose resignation rather than going down that road. So perhaps
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: you could make the argument, if you really wanted to,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: to say, well, Trump did intimidate or intimidator out of Congress.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: She's also now serving as an incredible rhetorical weapon against
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: him from the point of view of MAGA. But this
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: is a significant moment because what is he going to
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: be able to do. It wasn't just one or two
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Indiana Republicans that stepped up against him. You ended up
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: having a fairly large coalition. You had the former governor
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Mitch Daniels, whether he was just giving advice to lawmakers
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: or actively trying to thwart him, because Mitch Daniels is
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: a conservative, is a Republican who does not believe any Essentially,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Trump's vision for the Republican Party. It is hard to
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: call Trump a conservative anymore by any definition of conservatism
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: that most of us have grown up with over the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: last fifty years. He's not for limited government. If anything,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: he is aggressively trying to be strong government, trying to
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: use the power of government to get business to do
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: its well, use the power of government to get other
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: countries to bend do as will. That is not a
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: limited government philosophy. He is also not. The debt is
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: not an animating issue to him. Balanced budgets are not
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: an animated issue to him, never was for him personally
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: as a businessman. And he has certainly taken that philosophy
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: into government with him. And you have somebody like a
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Mitch Daniels who think, hey, government shouldn't be a part
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: of this. And then there's the whole state's rights issue,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: which has been arguably among the most important planks to
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: the conservative movement the last seventy years. Right, it was
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: under the umbrella of states rights that conservatives wanted to
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: fight back on the Civil Rights Act. It was under
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the umbrella of states rights that conservative social conservatives pushed
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: back on abortion laws. And here he is essentially trying
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: to thwart the state's rights, whether it's the threats that
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: were made by Heritage Action. And by the way, I
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: don't know what's happened to the Heritage Well we know
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: what's happened to the Heritage Foundation. They just followed the
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: money donors that wanted to support Donald Trump became very
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: important to Heritage. So they've changed their philosophy completely. You know,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: there were two major think tanks in this town on
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the conservative side of the aisle, the American Enterprise Institute
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: and Heritage. American Enterprise Institute is still a small c
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: conservative think tank that certainly has plenty of ideas that
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: sort of in the Venn diagram overlap with some of
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the goals of the Trump administration. But at their core
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: these are still sort of this is a Reagan This
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: is a think tank that it thinks of conservatism through
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the definition of Ronald Reagan strong, you know, international foreign policy,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: interventionists when necessary, but sort of a little bit of
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: a moral code to our foreign policy. There is no
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: more moral code to our foreign policy anymore, inn Trump.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: And then of course what he's doing with tariffs and
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: the economy that is not sort of that. And so
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: the Heritage Foundation used to be sort of in that
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: sort of shared in some ways. Heritage and AI simply
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: fought over individuals to work at their institutions because philosophically
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: they were mostly on the same page. But Heritage decided
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: to sell out financially. And now that they came out
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: with and said that somehow federal funds would be taken
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: away from Indiana, any projects that Indiana thought they were
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: going to get would be taken away. It It is
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: just anti antithetical to what conservatism has been for the
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: last fifty years. Again, apparently not caring about federalism, not
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: caring about states rights. You so, and I actually think
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: that you're going to see a lot of Republicans push
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: back on this executive order that Donald Trump signed last
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: night trying to prevent states from doing their own regulation
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: and artificial intelligence. That is going to be an interesting
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: It's going to be some interesting I don't think what
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: he signed is constitutional. I don't think he can do that.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: It appears that only Congress can overwrite state laws. That
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: they would have to do it. He didn't have the
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: votes in Congress to include this. This was yet another
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: sign right they tried to bully that moratorium on state
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: regulations into the last couple of bills, either tried to
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: put it to the must pass Defense Bill or try
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: to get it into opening the government bill, and they
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: couldn't get it there because there were so many Republicans
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: that were against this. And guess who else is against this?
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: The public. The public is very skeptical right now of AI,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: very nervous about AI. And so this is politically, I
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: actually think, really damaging to Republicans in twenty twenty six. Right,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump doesn't want you know, doesn't want to prevent
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: you could just see the ads now, right, Donald Trump
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to prevent these tech companies from abusing our kids'
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: mental health. Donald Trump doesn't want to prevent these tech
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: companies from abusing your pocketbook by doing surveillance, pricing and
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. That is going to be you know,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: that is they're going to see a lot of Republicans,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: probably starting with Ronda Santis, who has been among the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: most vocal conservative Republicans in the States against this federal moratorium,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: against a regulation. So Donald Trump's inviting another fight, and
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: he's going to be inviting yet more proof that perhaps
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the Emperor's you know, and I'm not going to sit
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: here and say the Emperor has no clothes. But we're
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: starting to see a striptease here. And it feels like,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: now this is the third straight month where there's been
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: something where parts of his coalition have begun to fray. Right,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: First it was over Epstein, Right, you've seen it that.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Now you've seen it over healthcare and the state of
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the economy. We've seen it on tariffs, which also are
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: linked to the state of the economy. And I'm telling you,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: and now we've got it on artificial intelligence and sort
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: of getting into bed with big tech, who's just as
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: unpopular on the conservative right as they are on the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: progressive left. Like I said Thursday, December eleventh, is I
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: think is going to be seen as one of the
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: more significant days when we start to plot when is
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: this the beginning of the end? Right? Was it Election
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: Day twenty twenty five? Was it the break on the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Epstein files with the discharge petition? Was it? You know,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: what we're seeing is a consistent Is it the Indiana
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Republicans saying no one redistricting? The bottom line is there's
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: fewer Republicans who are afraid of Donald Trump. There are
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: more base conservatives who don't like this economy, who aren't
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: going to punish local lawmakers who decide to defy Donald
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Trump if it is grounded in something the public themselves
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: is concerned about. So look, a lot of people have
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: lost money trying to predict the end of the Trump era.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: But as I've said before, we're in year ten. It
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: is no political movement lasts that long. And we're starting
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: to see Trump's grip loosening all the time. Pick your metaphor.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Emperor is doesn't have no clothes, but he's looking you know,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: he's never looked more naked than he looks now on
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: twelve on December twelfth, twenty twenty five. Now, when he's
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: in these moments, I do you know, he's going to
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: want to prove he still has strength. He's going to
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: want to prove he still has influence. He's going to
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: want to prove he can still sort of bend people
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: towards his will. So I wouldn't be surprised. You know,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: nobody's going to let go of power easily. So he's
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: being challenged a lot. Probably should be prepared for a
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: lot of rants, a lot of public threats, But the
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: bottom line is a lot more of those folks on
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: the receiving end are going to be are viewing those
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: threats as empty, and they're now realizing Donald Trump's never
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: going to be on a ballot again, and Donald Trump's
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: influence gets weaker and weaker every day he's in office. So,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: as the old saying goes, if it walks like a
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: lame duck, if it quacks like a lame duck, I
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: think it's slightly we have a lame duck. I'll see
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: him Monday