Holy Shit, Even Chuck Todd Has a Breaking Point
Chuck Todd, the normally insufferable host of NBC News’ Meet the Press, has appeared increasingly uncomfortable over the past few days with the talking heads who appear on his show to repeat GOP talking points about Donald Trump.
In the rest of the world, those talking points are called lies, and the typical failure by many cable news hosts to call them out in real time is one of the reasons that watching cable news is so unbearable.
But something happened on Sunday to trigger Todd, and that something was Republican Sen. Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, which rhymes. Johnson appeared on NBC acting like a combative, right-wing lunatic, and spewing pro-Trump conspiracy theories that sounded like they came straight from Fox News, Breitbart, or even InfoWars.
Johnson recently became a central witness in the Trump-Ukraine scandal, after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that a U.S. diplomat told him in August that Trump’s withholding of military aid to Ukraine was contingent on that country’s investigations of Trump’s political rivals and the source of 2016 U.S. election hacking.
Johnson has always staunchly defended Trump, so his acknowledgment of this quid pro quo was a big deal.