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. Then, Dr. Brian King — the former director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, who was placed on administrative leave in April 2025 as part of the mass HHS layoffs joins the Chuck Toddcast to explain what happens to public health when the agency charged with protecting it gets deliberately dismantled. King walks through the extraordinary progress America made reducing cigarette smoking over decades, and how quickly that's being unwound: the tobacco industry donated millions to Trump's PAC, executives pressured the White House directly, and the payoff has been regulatory capture and mounting pressure on the FDA to bring flavored products back to market. He's clear-eyed rather than absolutist on the science — combustible products are far and away the most harmful, nicotine itself is highly addictive but isn't what's killing people, though it's genuinely not risk-free for the adolescent brain — and he walks Chuck through the comparison to caffeine, the data on whether vaping serves as a gateway back into smoking, and what's actually known about nicotine pouches, where youth usage isn't high but stubbornly isn't declining either. The industry, meanwhile, is spending roughly a million dollars an hour advertising its products while fighting every government action to reduce smoking. The conversation turns to what actually works and what's being abandoned. King argues the two most effective interventions available are reducing nicotine levels in cigarettes and banning menthol, credits Congress for getting the Tobacco Control Act right, and stresses that Congress — not the FDA acting alone — has to be the one to regulate tobacco, which is precisely why sidelining the agency is so damaging. He and Chuck get into the questions nobody in Washington wants to answer: why are cigarettes legal at all, how are sugary alcoholic beverages not treated in the same category, and where did the money from the 1998 master settlement actually go. King is pointed that the MAHA movement, for all its rhetoric about chronic disease, has done nothing prominent on tobacco, and that the FDA is now actively undermining both the science and the law it was built to enforce. His closing warning is the bleakest note of the episode: America is in a public health apocalypse that will take decades to repair, it will be enormously hard to recruit a next generation into the field, the entire world will be harmed by the collapse of American public health infrastructure — and the impacts are only just beginning to show up. 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. 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. 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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 bi
