The Chuck ToddCast
Jasmine Crockett Interview: Why Trump Won, Fixing The Democratic Party
Mon, 12 May 2025
Chuck opens with an analysis of President Trump's controversial upcoming Middle East trip, focusing on reports that Trump will receive a luxury Boeing airplane as a gift from Qatar. He characterizes this as potentially "the most corrupt bargain a president has ever made," questioning the ethics and legality of such an arrangement while examining Trump's pattern of personal enrichment in office. The discussion extends to Trump's cryptocurrency ventures, the growing influence of Gulf states in American politics, and the administration's unorthodox approaches to foreign policy and homeland security.Then he’s joined by a rising star in the Democratic party, Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett. She provides insights into her rapidly growing Dallas district and discusses the economic benefits of immigration that contrast sharply with current policies. Crockett, known for her viral moments in congressional hearings, offers a candid assessment of the partisan circus in the House Oversight Committee and the ideological divide within the Democratic Party. The conversation delves into factors behind Trump's victory, whether racism and misogyny impacted Kamala Harris's campaign, and the complex political landscape in Texas, including potential opportunities for Democrats if Ken Paxton defeats John Cornyn in a future primary.Finally, the episode concludes with an "Ask Chuck" segment addressing why abortion has faded from national discourse despite its continued importance.Timeline:00:00 Introduction01:55 Trump’s first planned overseas trip is to the middle east02:50 Trump to receive a luxury Boeing airplane as a gift from Qatar04:50 Most corrupt bargain a president has ever made07:10 Whether it’s illegal or not, it’s a terrible look08:20 Trump didn’t want to wait to get a new Air Force One09:15 Trump believes he’s untouchable10:30 Trump’s crypto token is purely a bribery scam12:30 Will any elected Republicans stand up to Trump?14:30 Trump views personal enrichment as a commission 16:00 The gulf states are openly bribing American politicians17:45 It was good that Rubio and Vance intervened in India/Pakistan conflict19:50 Homeland security is running campaign ads with taxpayer dollars22:30 Trump’s Iran deal won’t get done until after his middle east trip24:30 Taking a plane as a gift feels like a bad movie plot25:25 Jasmine Crockett joins the Chuck ToddCast! 25:25 Tour of TX-30 (Dallas) 28:55 TX-30 is a hub for aviation 31:45 Dallas is growing exponentially 33:40 How can St. Louis be revitalized? 37:15 Immigrants produce economic dynamism and we're treating them horribly 39:45 How important are viral moments for political communications 43:25 The partisan circus in the oversight committee 44:40 We have people in government that don't understand how it works* 45:40 DOGE hearing became about trans people competing in fencing 47:25 Is it a generational divide or ideological divide in the Democratic party 48:25 Some members cling to the institutions while they're burning around them* 50:10 State of the Union displayed the differences of approach between members 51:25 How did Democrats end up in this situation? 53:15 Why did Trump win? 55:25 How much did racism and misogyny factor into Kamala Harris losing? 56:40 Did Harris's background as a prosecutor help or hurt her? 59:10 Trump's name being on buildings sold the public on his business acumen 1:01:05 Should Harris take another shot at the presidency?* 1:02:25 Democratic voters don't want "establishment" candidates 1:04:10 Democrats are fighting an uphill battle 1:05:10 Is Texas a 3 party state with two Republican wings? 1:06:10 If Ken Paxton beats John Cornyn, the Texas senate seat will be in play 1:08:40 Did Democrats miss the moment in Texas? 1:10:25 Will the Luka trade leave a lasting mark on Dallas? 1:11:10 Is she running for oversight chair? 1:11:35 Her advice for Hakeem Jeffries1:12:45 Chuck's thoughts on interview with Jasmine Crockett 1:13:15 Ask Chuck 1:13:30 Why has abortion disappeared from the national discourse? 1:16:30 Please let the Wizards get the #1 pick and Cooper Flagg(Timestamps may vary based on advertisements)
Chapter 1: What controversial gift is Trump receiving from Qatar?
then and you've only seen clips, you may have drawn a conclusion about her based on snippets, based on social media, based on a tick tock, based on this. Well, here's what you're going to get today. You're going to get 40 plus minutes getting to know the congresswoman. This isn't going to be short snippets and sound bites and all of that. And I just have a feeling that if you have not
had spent a long time listening to her and just have a sort of quick take, hot take about her. After you listen to this interview, you will file those hot takes where they belong, which is Probably somewhere in the garbage. Anyway, the point is, I think you'll learn a lot and listen to the conversation through the premise.
And I'm going to have a couple of conversations over the next week about this because she's she's making one recommendation of how Democrats should deal with this current moment. I'm going to have Ro Khanna on. He's going to make another. He's going to have another take. You've heard other Democrats make their take. And that's there really is an interesting debate that is happening.
You're going to see it, I think, over the next couple of years, frankly, through in the run up to the eventual actual start of the presidential primary campaign on the Democratic side. But of just what tactic is better? Do you need to be Trump light? Do you need to be, you know, a bit hot? if you will, on social media? Or is this a time to actually zag just as Trump is zigging?
But before I get to that, I think we should talk about the week ahead that we're going to have in politics and where the news is going to be made. President Trump is going overseas. It's his first official overseas trip, even though he actually took one to the Pope's funeral. That was an unplanned. This was the plan.
And just like he did in his first term, he decided to make Saudi Arabia his first stop. And the relationship that he has developed with Saudi Arabia and UAE and Qatar is is quite close. And he's let's just be honest, he's blurring the lines between public and private That it's it's not even subtle. Right. It's it's it's so it's so blatant.
But I think at the heart of what you're going to see this week and the shiny metal object of the week is going to be the news that was broken over the weekend. And we had already gotten hints of this. And that is the. The fact that the president of the United States is about to accept the largest gift that any entity has ever given the United States.
And what if I told you that this gift was coming from the chief patron of the terrorist organization known as Hamas? You remember Hamas. This is the group behind the killing and kidnapping of Israelis and Americans on October 7th. This is a terrorist organization that has the blood of Americans on their hands, the blood of Israelis on their hands, the blood of other Palestinians on their hands.
This is not a good group of people. OK, Hamas is a bad organization and their chief protector is the government of Qatar. And what is the government of Qatar about to do? It's about to gift Donald Trump a plane, a 747. And Donald Trump, it's considered, it's so ornate that it's called a palace in the sky. So Donald Trump wants to accept this gift.
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Chapter 2: How does Jasmine Crockett view immigration's economic impact?
have done this crypto business using. their father's name to do this, never mind half the deals they've been conducting in the Middle East, all with overtures having to do with what the federal government, what the US government foreign policy is going to do. It's totally been mixed in here.
If Hunter Biden were doing 10% of this, you might have had Democrats agreeing to impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden if this is how Hunter Biden and the business of the Bidens were behaving. But that's what the business of the Trumps are behaving. And I'll be very curious. if any Republicans are comfortable sticking their head up and saying this is wrong.
We saw with the crypto, when he did his crypto fundraiser, where basically they announced if you buy his fake token, the Trump coin, the top coin holders are going to get access to the president, going to get a private fundraiser. And then if you are really a top buyer of his coin, you get even further access, VIP to or possibly of the White House, possibly of something else.
And Cynthia Lummis and a few others, they thought, oh, that might be a bridge too far. And actual crypto advocates have quietly been whispering that Donald Trump's greed with these Melania coins and these Trump coins, his personal greed in trying to make and scam crypto money here is probably making it a lot harder to legitimize the idea of the crypto industry.
And you saw some Democrats who are trying to be pro crypto here. Look, I'm a huge skeptic of this. It is, you know, I deal in baseball cards. There's no difference to me between crypto and baseball cards. I believe in the blockchain. The blockchain is an incredible technology, but we're not turning it into a currency and we're not replacing the U.S. dollar.
And by the way, if you ever wanted to spend crypto, do you know what you have to do? to spend crypto, you gotta exchange it for the US currency. Then you can actually spend this money. And it is assigned to this. So it is simply just buying something with a baseball card or buying something with a piece of art, except we're calling it crypto.
And there's no doubt there's a lot of people who have overinvested in crypto and are desperate to see this legitimized and decided Donald Trump was their best vehicle to essentially try to get him to, you know, find a way to line his pockets with crypto to make him invested in it so that he, too, wants to see some sort of federal government legitimizing crypto so that they can so they can all all sort of make whatever.
money they think this crypto should be worth, they want to make it work. You add all this up, you know, this is one of those where I'm going to quote Bob Dole from 1996 when he was frustrated that when the Clintons were raising money in the White House. But I remember when Republicans thought that was a bridge too far.
I'll be curious to see if any of these Republicans speak up today about the plane, about crypto, about this entire trip to the Middle East, which seems to be more about personal business dealings than it is for anything professional on behalf of the federal government and on behalf of the U.S. taxpayers. But here we are.
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Chapter 3: What are the challenges facing the Democratic Party?
And I think that we had that. But it was good to see that that that both Rubio and Vance realized that America is the essential nation, whether whether we want to admit it or not. And if we're not involved, nobody else is going to get involved to try to to try to stop a war between two nuclear powers. So I was glad to see it. I know there's been some back and forth.
You know, if you're telling me the United States is overstating the role that Rubio and Vance played because Donald Trump announced it. I know I'm shocked that that that could possibly be the case. But the fact is, we did get involved a little bit. A few other things that I want to get to before we get to the conversation with Jasmine Crockett. I. I can't believe the ad campaign, speaking of U.S.
taxpayer dollars being used for personal and political purposes. I was... I mean, on Saturday morning, there wasn't a lot to watch as far as live sports was concerned. So I put on my ESPN Plus. I was watching a little multi-screen of the Truist Championship. It's a golf tournament based in Philadelphia. And it had a lot of the top tier golfers actually participating, right?
These non-major events, they're usually, frankly, you know, I'm sort of a, I watch golf if there's nothing else on and there are players that I recognize playing. And in this case, there were. Roy McIlroy, people like that. Well, there was one ad that kept running over and over, and it was an ad paid for by the U.S. Homeland Security Department. And it was voiced by Kristi Noem.
Chapter 4: How did Trump win the election in 2016?
And it was it was basically bragging about all the arrests, bragging about showing footage of that questionable prison that's been run in El Salvador that, you Certainly has plenty of outside groups say violates basic human rights and certainly doesn't abide by, I think, U.S. standards of how we would be expected to keep a prisoner and things like that. And it's paid for with U.S. taxpayer.
It felt like a campaign ad. You know, she was saying, President, we're keeping President Trump's promise. We're rounding these people up. And it was clear. Think about what this was being advertised on golf. The demographic of the golf fan is older and whiter. And and they are trying desperately to make them think that a roundup has taken place.
So they put the big number on screen, 100000 detained. And I guess in order to have it pass legal muster, at the end is this awkward transition where Nome says, so download the app. If you download the app, you can avoid this fate and you might be able to come back.
So it was clear that that was what their lawyer instructed them, that if you want to run this campaign ad paid for with taxpayer dollars, you've got to at least – And make an attempt to do a public service of some sort. And right at the very end, the public service is to download the CPP app in order to avoid the fate, apparently, of going to prison in El Salvador. I will just say again.
considering what I opened with, with this plane, you know, to find other bits, the amount of sort of illegal, unethical behavior taking place in different cabinet agencies, it just blows my mind. And this one, again, isn't going to rise up. A lot of people aren't going to notice it, but it's your taxpayer dollars being used to try to sort of buff up President Trump's image on the border.
And again, or and frankly, a way to for Kristi Noem to give herself more of a national name as well. But again, using taxpayer dollars, because I promise you there wasn't the people they're trying to get to download that app weren't watching the truest championship golf tournament. All right. All right. There's a lot more that I wanted to get to.
We've got current negotiations as I'm talking now here on Sunday evening. We know that the China talks in Switzerland continue. Fourth round of talks with Iran continue. It is clear Donald Trump being not the best negotiator has signaled he's desperate to make a deal with both of them. So some form of a deal, I think, is going to be coming and coming soon.
It'll be interesting to see how the Gulf states, by the way, There's no doubt Donald Trump's not going to want to have an Iranian deal while he's over there. So my guess is that that continues to get slow walked a little bit. He wants to get through his trip with the Saudis, UAE, Qatar, and then, and, you know, get his loot, including the plane.
Then when he comes back, my guess is that's when he's going to do that Iran deal because the Iran deal isn't going to be popular in Saudi Arabia and the Iran deal isn't going to be popular in Israel. Um, Because it's clear J.D. Vance has already signaled this, that they plan to allow some uranium enrichment if it's for, quote unquote, civilian power.
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Chapter 5: What role does virality play in modern political communication?
Correct. Correct. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see how whichever candidates emerge in that Senate race, how they decide to play it. I think there's been this inclination to kind of try to be like Republican esque and it's not worked so far. So I just I really don't think that that's which path works.
I mean, neither one of them worked right. Beto didn't do that. Beto went in a different direction, got close, but lost. Colin Allred went in the hey, I'm I'm a John Cornyn type basically said, you know, he he hugged Cornyn during that race against Cruz, which I think for swing voters, I get it. I get that strategy, too. And he lost by more than than Beto did. What does that tell you?
I mean, I think, again, I hate to do it, but like when you're talking about a tight vote and you're talking about a tight election, that's when you're going to start to get into vibes, period. You just are. Because again, you have a certain portion of the electorate that does not have the time to kind of dig into all of the details.
And Beto broke through and Colin didn't, right?
Yeah. Beto was able to energize so many people. But I also think he caught Cruz slipping, right? Like Cruz wasn't anticipating that he would have a real race. So he had that advantage, but he outworked Cruz definitely like, you know, the entire time. So I think that Beto did what we needed done in that moment, at least, which was to give us a little bit of hope.
But it was because of how well that he did. He lost by three points. We know that Trump only won the state by five points. Next thing you know, they want to change all the voting rules, right? Because you end up running away with Texas. There is no path for the Republicans to get into the White House. And that's why it's really important that we make those investments. Texas is a majority.
Why does the network? Look, I'm a Floridian and I've watched the National Democratic Party pay lip service to Florida Democrats for decades. And now they're in a catastrophic situation. I'm seeing the same set of lip service was paid to... I wonder if the moment's been missed in Texas.
I really do think that we are missing out, but I think that we need to get on the ground and do the work. And that same election we're talking about, we only had 17 percent of the people turn out. 17 percent of people.
This wasn't a registration issue. This was a turnout issue in your mind.
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Chapter 6: How can oversight in Congress be improved?
Chapter 7: Why has abortion faded from national discourse?
Well, I want to go in so many directions here, including Texas politics, but let me start with the Oversight Committee. Oh, God. Because, no, I mean, I sit there, you know, look, I'm one of those journalists who always rolls their eyes when there's an Oversight Committee hearing, right? Because it feels like predictable partisan talking points, right?
If it, depending on who's, you know, you'll have one half of the questioners defending the person being questioned and the other half, and then... It's always like, oh, whoa, a member of the same party asked a tough question, right? That becomes the news rather than, let me ask you this. You've watched this now, you've participated. How can we improve oversight?
And would it be better if there were no TV cameras?
It would absolutely be better if there were no cameras. I'm sure that that will never happen, but it would.
I know C-SPAN is one of those things like, hey, look, I'm a sunshine guy, but I also don't believe in cameras in the courtroom. Give me audio. Give me all the audio in the world. I'll take all the live audio in the world. If we, cameras in the courtroom gives us too many lancetos and that's not a good thing.
Yeah. I think, though, I mean, if you've got people, if you've got like a president that doesn't understand that he took an oath to the Constitution, like to protect and defend it, I don't I think you're giving them a little too much credit. Like we have people that are elected in government and truly don't understand how it works. And so in order for oversight to work the way that it should.
then it honestly would take people that understand what we're supposed to be doing. For instance, today, I had to have a Doge subcommittee hearing. And for everybody out in the general public, when they hear Doge, they hear Department of Governmental Efficiency. This is all supposedly about efficiency. The reason
that we have had to fire a historic number of, you know, federal employees in such a short amount of time is because it's more efficient. Not true. Right. Like, but all of these things that we've experienced, the reason that, you know, people may not have their life saving healthcare across, you know, the, the ocean is because they had to cut off USAID because it was efficient.
Like that's what it was coined as. And my hearing today is, was about trans people fencing. I mean, our argument was, please tell me what part of, like, we read through the mission of Doge as they created the subcommittee. What does that have to do with anything? And then they even admit it. They were like, well, yeah, you know, U.S. fencing. We know that we don't give you any money.
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