The Chuck ToddCast
Chuck’s Commentary - U.S. Is Drifting Toward Competitive Authoritarianism + Social Media Has Fueled Extremism
15 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Chapter 2: What incident sparked a discussion on antisemitism in this episode?
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Chapter 3: How does social media contribute to the rise of antisemitism?
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Chapter 4: What reforms are being suggested for technology companies?
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Chapter 5: How has Trump's foreign policy been critiqued in this episode?
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Chapter 6: What does Chuck Todd mean by 'competitive authoritarianism'?
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Chapter 7: What historical context does Chuck provide regarding authoritarianism?
First night of Hanukkah, 10 days to Christmas, 16 days to New Year's Eve, and of course Christmas. What I'm counting down five days until the University of Miami's debut in the college football playoff. I've got a pretty good I've got a pretty, pretty sort of robust show today that's going to hit a bunch of topics, a fascinating and an incredibly important topic.
A study by some from some folks from the Council on Foreign Affairs about the state of the United States and its democracy. Extraordinarily important read. I'm going to pass on the highlights in a minute. Fascinating new poll from the Searchlight Institute on corruption. And more importantly, it's not about the concern about political corruption.
Chapter 8: What cultural impact did The Simpsons have on politics?
It's about what voters believe is corrupt corruption. versus sometimes what lawmakers view as corrupt. Here's a hint. It's let's just say that they don't share the same definition of what is political corruption these days. It is Monday, which means we're going to hop into the time machine. And I'm just going to give you one hint at what I'm going to be talking about in the time machine.
Monorail, monorail, monorail. How many of you will figure out what I'm going to talk about based on that hint? Guess what? I won't actually find out the answer to that, but I thought that would be a fun little clue. We'll do some Ask Chuck, and I have a few thoughts on the state of college athletics, given what happened, what we're watching at the University of Michigan. But I'm going to start...
With the news out of Australia, it's pretty painful. First night of Hanukkah around the world that this is what all of us had to wake up to on Sunday morning here in the United States and what the world is grappling with. And that is just yet another reminder. that anti-Semitism is at an ugly level globally right now. Look, anti-Semitism is not new. We've gone through fits and starts.
Anybody who's Jewish knows the history. We know the history of this quite well. The rise and falls of attempts eradicating Jews, blaming Jews for financial problems, blaming Jews for cultural problems. We are the smallest of the major religions. We are the smallest of groups that there are. It's amazing how much power so many people try to attribute to.
To to us, and we're not even three percent of the world's population. Obviously, what we've been you know, there's there's a lot of people that are looking at this and immediately trying to make a political argument to make the case that it's the left. that is supercharging antisemitism or the right that is supercharging antisemitism.
I will remind you all once again, I have only experienced it in stereo. All right. Before 2015, I experienced very little antisemitism, if any at all. I think I shared a story with you. An old friend of mine, we were talking about this one time and
Sort of right when the rise of sort of – it was those of us in the press that were starting to feel it first and then it sort of broke open out into the mainstream. But in 2015, 2016, you can say it was coincidental with the timing of the rise of Donald Trump or if that is what sort of – essentially lifted up the pretext on all of this.
But essentially, the rise of the populist left with Bernie Sanders and the rise of the populist right with Donald Trump has given a permission slip to anti-Semites to either use it to promote a left-wing ideology or use it to promote a right-wing ideology. Here's what I will say. If you're using anti-Semitism to try to promote the left or the right, you're obviously doing it wrong and you're not
a very small d, democratic, and you certainly don't believe in freedom. That's for sure. Freedom of anything, let alone freedom of religion on that front. But I remember talking with this old friend of mine, and we were talking about how our mothers would tell us these stories about their anti-Semitic experiences in grade school and high school. My mother's second generation.
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