The Chuck ToddCast
Ro Khanna On Biden's Big Failure, Trump Damaging America's Reputation, Democrats Leadership Crisis
Thu, 15 May 2025
Chuck Todd opens with a critical analysis of President Trump's approach to governance, suggesting that while his Middle East trip may yield positive results, his administration is missing crucial opportunities for bipartisan cooperation. He argues that Trump's executive order on prescription drugs lacks substance without legislative backing and that the president should "get caught trying" bipartisanship on issues where common ground exists. He also explores Putin's refusal of peace talks as a potential humiliation for Trump, and examines what recent political developments like the Omaha mayoral race might signal about Democratic prospects in upcoming elections.Then, he’s joined by Congressman Ro Khanna, who delivers a candid assessment of the Democratic party's leadership crisis and brand damage. Khanna argues that Chuck Schumer has squandered his leadership position and addresses concerns about deportations in rural communities. The conversation delves into the economic realities facing the Midwest, and calls for Democrats to work more closely with business leaders. Khanna argues that deplatforming Trump after January 6th was "a huge mistake" and discusses the rightward shift among tech leaders. They conclude with Khanna's perspectives on America's global retreat, the timeline for presidential campaigns, and Gen Z's trust issues with politics. The episode wraps with "Ask Chuck," where Todd addresses questions about media coverage of Trump, potential Republican party fractures, and Chuck gives his thoughts on Pete Rose's posthumous Hall of Fame eligibility.Timeline:00:00 Introduction01:45 Trump’s middle east trip may net some positive results02:30 Trump won’t work with Democrats on issues they agree on04:15 Bipartisanship has become toxic06:30 Trump’s executive order on prescription drugs is meaningless without legislation07:45 Congress has been useless08:30 Trump should “get caught trying” bipartisanship10:00 There are multiple issues where Trump could make bipartisan deals12:15 Trump made some great points in his middle east speech13:45 Trump has been pragmatic with his middle east policy 16:30 Trump can’t pick and choose who to be pragmatic with18:00 The ball is in Trump’s court after Putin turned down peace talks19:15 Putin is humiliating Trump… will he sit back and take it?19:50 Does the Omaha mayoral race show a blue wave building? 21:00 Pete Buttigieg admits Joe Biden is political baggage in Iowa town hall23:30 Chuck Schumer punting on the Biden question was cowardly25:30 Donald Trump is unpopular and the Democratic brand is still worse26:15 Ro Khanna joins the Chuck Toddcast! 27:45 Who is the leader of the Democratic party? 28:45 Chuck Schumer has squandered his leadership position 31:30 Rural communities are highly concerned about deportations 32:15 Is Hakeem Jeffries stuck in Nancy Pelosi's shadow? 34:00 How damaged is the Democratic brand and how to fix it? 37:15 Do midwestern voters want to work multigenerational factory jobs? 40:30 NAFTA benefitted the south and hurt the midwest 43:15 Republicans have become the big government party 45:45 Democrats need to work with business leaders 46:45 What caused the rightward shift of the tech leaders? 48:30 Deplatforming Trump was a huge mistake 50:30 Should Kamala Harris be the next governor of California? 53:30 What characteristics will voters be looking for in 2028 55:15 Will Democratic voters want a "celebrity" president? 58:25 What's the lesson learned from Biden's communications failure? 1:00:15 How do Democrats win over independent voters? 1:03:00 One issue he'd work with Trump on? 1:03:45 Will he debate JD Vance? 1:05:45 America's retreat is making the world more dangerous 1:07:15 Rubio needs to step up and assert America globally 1:10:00 It will take a generation to repair America's reputation 1:10:45 When is it appropriate to begin a run for president? 1:12:15 Kamala Harris and her team were too cautious in 24 1:13:45 Gen Z has trust issues with politics1:15:45 Chuck’s thoughts on interview with Ro Khanna1:16:15 Ask Chuck1:16:55 Why are reporters not more combative with Trump?1:19:05 If the Republican party fractures, who would be in the traditional wing?1:21:45 Pete Rose finally eligible for Hall of Fame posthumously(Timestamps vary based on advertisements)
Chapter 1: What are the criticisms of Trump's approach to bipartisanship?
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Todd cast. Thanks for watching or listening. How are you doing? And my apologies to my friends at Apple who listen just on Apple. We know we've had some issues. We're working with them. We'll take your help. pinging Apple to make sure they fix this problem of automatically updating the podcast there.
So my apologies if it's frustrating you on that. My guest today is Ro Khanna. So it continues sort of a series. There's a theme this week, as you can see. Talk to three Democrats from really three different parts of the country. Right. Iowa, Texas, California.
The one's running for governor, one's running for might be running for president in Ro Khanna and one is a rising star inside of potentially House leadership. We'll see. And they all have different takes on what what should the Democratic Party be doing going forward? How should it deal with its past? And so I hope you listen and enjoy this conversation with Ro Khanna through that lens.
And I hope you've listened to Rob saying and I hope you listen to it. Jasmine Crockett. So it's an interesting, I think we're getting an interesting window. All three of these are millennial politicians, by the way, if you're keeping track generationally. So I think it tells you sort of where the next generation of leadership wants to take the party.
The question, of course, is whether this older generation of Democratic leaders will ever give up power. A lot of them struggle to do that, whether it was Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. That's and you can hear a little bit of that frustration in these interviews. But before I get there, I do want to talk a little bit about the president's trip.
I do think he's had some foreign policy potential. He set himself up for some potential positive foreign policy developments. Unless he gets in his own way, which is sort of the, you know, the most generous description of the Trump presidency in 1.0 or 2.0.
If you're looking for positive ways of how he's tried to, you know, try to move, move the country in a direction that maybe there's a majority wanting to move in that direction. But it's his inability to sort of when he's when he's on to something that has majority support, he doesn't seem to know how to implement it.
My my longtime colleague and friend, Sahil Kapoor, who's over at NBC News, had a terrific piece about Donald Trump responding to this executive order he signed this week before he left for his Middle East trip on prescription drugs. And let me read part of what he said. He says there's been a unique tendency for Trump in his second term.
a reluctance to attempt bipartisanship, even when there is significant overlap with Democrats on a goal. Instead, Trump has repeatedly sought to go it alone at risk of failure. The self-styled dealmaker is passing up opportunities for a deal lest they have to share the victory with his political foes. Kapoor writes it is a break from tradition.
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Chapter 2: How has Trump's Middle East trip influenced US foreign policy?
just I think temperamentally really has an opportunity to do well in those caucuses. So he needs Iowa to be first. Well, he made his first sort of presidential foray into Iowa earlier this week. And what was notable to me is what he said about Joe Biden and sort of admitted that Biden was a political liability. Didn't get into it too much.
But the fact that he is saying that, realizing it, because I think it's a I think it's a bit of a problem for him. Right. He was he was a great candidate in 2020 because he was an outsider. He had no Washington baggage. This time he's going to have some Washington baggage that he has to carry with him. And I think the baggage that's labeled Biden is the heaviest of all.
Throw in the fact that the FAA looks like a mess. right now. And we have no doubt Sean Duffy, and he's done this a few times, is going to deflect criticism on him and say, hey, I inherited a mass. So there's going to be, I think, and at his town hall, Buttigieg was pressed a little bit about the problems at the FAA, what's been going on with recruitment of air traffic controllers.
This is clearly not a problem that just started in the last six weeks. Obviously, Elon Musk didn't did Buttigieg a favor, if you will, and did Sean Duffy no favors by axing too many people at first and them having to have a massive staffing, have to fix their staffing problem inside the Department of Transportation for airline safety.
But I think both of those issues are things that I don't think they make him un-nominatable, but they certainly are hurdles he's going to have to get used to. It is fascinating to me to watch different Democrats handle the Biden question. Buttigieg, you got to sort of own it. I think Chris Murphy so far is, is, is done the best.
You know, he's basically said, yeah, I guess he was worse shaped than we thought, you know, sort of asked and answered. Let's move on. Chuck Schumer on CNN. When I made an appearance at CNN and on Casey Hunt show, the arena terrific show, it was a really good panel that day that we had, um, She asked the question and Schumer just said, I'm looking forward.
He didn't want to deal with the question at all, which really is pretty cowardly. You know, I think it is – I really believe Democratic voters want to hear their leaders, certainly leaders that they think should be there. And this is why I think Chuck Schumer is becoming more and more unpopular. You're going to hear Ro Khanna here in a few minutes.
He has he he doesn't have many nice things to say about the leadership these days of Chuck Schumer in the Senate. But his answer to Casey Hunt was, I'm looking forward. You know, he the inability to say, hey, I wish I would have said something sooner. I had my suspicions, but I didn't. I trusted the White House staff, whatever. But be a bit more honest.
You can't tell me you haven't thought about anything else. And so the whole idea is I'm looking forward. Look, I hear you. I'm hearing it in my own household where where there's a question. Why are the Bidens showing up? This is bad for the Democratic Party. Why is the media focused on this? Well, hey, books are coming out. Trump's overseas. The Bidens chose to respond to it.
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Chapter 3: What does the political landscape suggest about upcoming elections?
I think it said there wasn't communication or wasn't communication enough. It was, Bynum was still in the old playbook of you do a press release. You speak at the State of the Union. You go and meet the press and that's enough. And it wasn't being out there telling the story day to day, putting out content, being present, energetic, creating a sense of vitality and motion and doing things.
And I... Whether the country wants that, I certainly think Democrats are going to want that. Democrats are going to want someone they think is energetic, who gets the communication, who is going to be out there and energetic. And what I would hope is that that energy has been channeled in a way that this is energy for the country, not energy for just the party.
Look, one of the things Kamala Harris said that I thought was good is when she said, OK, I'm going to appoint a Republican into the cabinet or try to bring the country together. It never got much traction because then she said, I'm not going to do anything different. That was one thing she articulated that was different right there. But my sense is that there's
You know, the parts of the Harris campaign that were right, because we forget that there was a time she was doing things quite well, was when it was, we're going to turn the page. We're going to bring the country together. It's going to be a more hopeful era for America. It turned out that people said, oh, it's joy and you're not getting the anger. That's fine.
But there was a sense we wanted to move forward. She just couldn't finish the sale. I think that sense is going to be deeper by 2028. Do you...
There's a movement out there. In fact, the guy who helped recruit Dan Osborne to the Senate in Nebraska, you said you were just out in Nebraska, and he views some of his success as not being a Democrat, right? Pledging himself as an independent. And there are people that were very supportive of him are actually going, hey, that's the right road to go down in Iowa.
And that's the right road to go down in Kansas. And maybe that's the right road to go down in Florida. What do you say? I mean, I look at my home state of Florida. The state Senate Democratic leader left the party. Wow. He's the elected leader. Right. He left the party to go independent, saying the Democratic brand was was. Yeah.
And yet there is half of the state not liking the Republican governance of the state. Right. Right. What's your prescription in these places that doesn't like their leadership? Iowa is a good example. Nebraska is a good example. But they've lost total trust in the Democratic Party, so they don't look to the Democrats as an alternative.
you know, there's a movement of independence here that the Democrats have to win over in order to be a majority party. How do you get them back?
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Chapter 4: Who is the current leader of the Democratic Party and what are the challenges?
I have a fascinating I have my lead item this week is about whether Both parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, are fragile enough that they could collapse a la what's happening to the Tories in the UK. I provide a little bit of historical context there. Would love for you to check it out and tell me what you think. Please respond and ask questions based on it. I'm all for it.
Here we go. Question from James E. Why do reporters who cover Trump avoid asking him questions about his weaknesses? Why not ask him about his mafia mindset? Has anyone asked him about Lisa Murkowski's comments about being afraid? Or how would he feel if the next president tries to remove or limit his Secret Service and his lack of character being a bad example for the next generation?
Well, there's a reason why you're not hearing many reporters ask him these questions, because he has decided who gets to come into the Oval Office and be in the press pool. And I do think the attempt to control the press pool, because this actually happened a lot more often. in the first term. You'd have more just combative questions, which I think is a healthy, you know, combative questions.
You'd have combative questions. That's what the White House press corps should be there for, no matter who's president, you know, a little bit, because sometimes it's a combative question that really can help you suss out what the president is really thinking or understand the motive for a decision. And, you know, I also believe that
There are questions that you ask a president that isn't always about trying to catch him in a gotcha, but in fact, hand him rope to hear more of his answer. I'm one of those, you know, look, Trump will get out of anything and claim he's not for something, this or that. So you're better off asking him about things he might be for rather than things he might be against sometimes.
or asking him why didn't he do things that he said he was going to do, right? Why didn't you go up to Capitol Hill on January 6th? It's a question that nobody's asked him directly. And I kind of, I don't, I certainly hope to have that opportunity. And whoever does next, why didn't you go? Why did you choke on January 6th?
So I think that that style of questioning should be more common with dealing with Donald Trump. But the reason you're going to get many of these questions is he's handpicking
some of the people in the pool so while he's still doing this daily back and forth he's you know they're they're he's he's trying to have the most friendly questioners as he can surround himself with at times on that all right let me do one more before we talk a little pete rose um And here's the question.
You talk about the possibility of the Republican Party splitting between more traditional Republicans and mega Republicans that were to happen, who would even be in the traditional wing? It's interesting. This is Josh in Ohio. And the question goes on for a while. Here's the thing. I just do think that you're going to see you already are seeing the Republican Party is broken into two.
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