Independent media entrepreneur and broadcast legend Chuck Todd said that President Donald Trump’s stock market-threatening tariff machinations could be “politically catastrophic” — and might even fracture his support among Republicans.

Todd will be the guest on this week’s edition of Mediaite’s new Press Club podcast, hosted by Aidan McLaughlin, to discuss the media, the news of the day, and life after NBC.

In the episode, now out on YouTube and podcast platforms, McLaughlin asked Todd about Trump’s tariffs and the resulting stock market roller coaster this week:

AIDAN MCLAUGHLIN: Trump finally consummated his decades-long flirtation with tariffs. Have you looked at your portfolio this week?

CHUCK TODD: I’m over 50, I’m having to look at it every hour. No, I mean, and that’s this, that’s the dirty little, you know what I took his biggest political problem, is that when you’re of a certain age, you start looking at this every day.

You know, this whole, “well people don’t look at the stock market every day.”.

Yeah, but the people who are most likely to vote in midterms, they do. They pay attention to if the Social Security office is taking their phone calls. Like, he is rattling constituencies that are the ones that are most likely to show up to vote. Right? So it’s just one of those, you’re like, this is why this could be politically catastrophic.

AIDAN MCLAUGHLIN: So yeah, so we’re in very much uncharted territory right now.

CHUCK TODD: And then some.

Todd went on to explain why the chaotic tariff roll-out could be Trump’s “Afghanistan moment” — a reference to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that led to a collapse of former President Joe Biden’s approval ratings, a collapse he never recovered from.

He explained:

Afghanistan became a competency question. And I think this tariff business for Trump becomes a competency question. ‘Wait a minute, you went about this all wrong and you caused an economic tsunami. We agree we needed to do it, but you don’t know how to do.’ And in some ways, competency is actually more lethal here than the ideological distinction between the two. And this is why I think he’s probably never going to be over — barring some we don’t know, rallying around the president because we’re in war or something like this — I don’t if he ever gets over 45 [percent approval rating] again.

Watch above via Mediaite’s Press Club podcast.

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The post Chuck Todd Breaks Down Why Trump’s Tariff-Stock Market Debacle is ‘Politically Catastrophic’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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