December 12, 2025 • 13 mins
In this special Friday episode, Chuck Todd breaks down a striking turn inside the Republican Party as Indiana Republicans openly rebuke Donald Trump’s demand to redraw their congressional maps—an early sign that his once-iron grip on the GOP may be loosening. With voters frustrated by a shaky economy, Trump’s political coalition is showing new cracks. Chuck also explores the Heritage Foundation’s hollow threat against Indiana lawmakers and why Trump’s executive order banning states from regulating AI is unpopular and almost certainly unconstitutional. Taken together, these shifts suggest a pivotal moment: the first real indications that the Trump era may finally be entering its twilight.
Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/chuck. Application times may vary. Rates may vary.
Timeline:
00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction
01:00 Indiana Republicans rebuke Trump’s redistricting demand
03:00 Voters don’t like the economy and it’s weakening Trump’s grip on GOP
04:30 Trump is not a true conservative
07:15 Heritage Foundation made an empty threat against Indiana
08:00 Trump’s EO banning state AI regulation is unconstitutional
09:30 Trump’s coalition is beginning to fray
10:45 This feels like the beginning of the end of the Trump era
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from
personal experience. I was sixteen when my father passed away.
We didn't have any money. He didn't leave us in
the best shape. My mother single mother, now widow, myself
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one life insurance policy that we found wasn't a lot,
(00:22):
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mind knowing your family is protected even if the worst
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(00:44):
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(01:06):
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your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free
quoted Ethos dot com slash chuck. So again, that's Ethos
(01:27):
dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and the
rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me, life
insurance is something you should really think about, especially if
you've got a growing family. Hello there, Chuck Todd. Here
it is Friday, December twelfth. I thought I would jump
in with just a quick little update on what was
(01:52):
I think a pretty monumental day that when we look
back on what happened on Thursday, December eleven in the
era of Trump, that this will be one could be
one of those plot points. And I know we've been
done this road before. It could be is this the
sign that it's coming to an end? Etcetera, etcetera. But
(02:12):
let's talk about two important things that happen and in
two ways, where something President Trump demanded, where he tried
to bend the will of the law, bend the will
of politics, bend the will of individuals his way, and
he hasn't been able to do it. Obviously, the big
news is what happened in Indiana, with essentially Indiana Republicans
(02:34):
feeling comfortable saying no to Donald Trump. But earlier in
the day we had a grand jury who you know,
the famous joke is you can get a grand jury
to indict a ham sandwich. Perhaps the Trump administration should
have tried indicting a ham sandwich named Letitia James. Rather
than trying to indict Leticia James a second time on
(02:55):
this idea that she committed mortgage fraud. Grand jury said no.
And it is you're starting to see a pattern here
where there is more comfort in pushing back, and when
you do, you're not seeing the consequences that are threatened.
(03:17):
But let's start with the political consequences or lack thereof,
with what happened in Indiana. This is Republicans saying no.
This is not the first time, right, we have seen right,
There has been sort of this. I wrote about in
a sub stack about a month ago that I said,
the cracks and the coalition are starting to appear focusing
then on the Marjorie Taylor Green situation Thomas Massey, and
(03:39):
it's like, slowly, but surely, you've had people push back
and there have been no consequences. Look and Trump one
point zero. And even in the four yer exile period
where he was still sort of hovering over our politics,
even if he didn't have actual power, his words mattered,
his threats mattered, and he did instill sometimes fear in
(04:02):
the minds of some Republicans to go his way, because
at the end of the day, the voters were with him.
But that's the issue here. It's like, why did Indiana
Republicans feel comfortable pushing back? Why does Marjorie Taylor Green
feel comfortable pushing back? Why is Thomas Massey felt comfortable
pushing back? Why do you see a growing you know,
ever so slowly, a growing number of House Republicans and
(04:24):
Senate Republicans essentially looking for ways to go in a
different direction than what the Trump administration is demanding. And
that is because this economy is not good and voters
don't like this economy, and ultimately, if they don't like
the economy, everything else starts to bother them. And who
(04:49):
knows this better than lawmakers that are closer to the
voters than the president is. He has had a hard
time making Thomas Massey pay for what he has done,
and he's essentially pushing back on him. In particular on
the Epstein files. Marjorie Taylor Green seemed to indicate that
she just didn't want to go through the idea of
(05:10):
having to fight Trump in a primary, and so she
chose resignation rather than going down that road. So perhaps
you could make the argument, if you really wanted to,
to say, well, Trump did intimidate or intimidator out of Congress.
She's also now serving as an incredible rhetorical weapon against
(05:30):
him from the point of view of MAGA. But this
is a significant moment because what is he going to
be able to do. It wasn't just one or two
Indiana Republicans that stepped up against him. You ended up
having a fairly large coalition. You had the former governor
Mitch Daniels, whether he was just giving advice to lawmakers
(05:51):
or actively trying to thwart him, because Mitch Daniels is
a conservative, is a Republican who does not believe any Essentially,
Trump's vision for the Republican Party. It is hard to
call Trump a conservative anymore by any definition of conservatism
that most of us have grown up with over the
last fifty years. He's not for limited government. If anything,
(06:14):
he is aggressively trying to be strong government, trying to
use the power of government to get business to do
its well, use the power of government to get other
countries to bend do as will. That is not a
limited government philosophy. He is also not. The debt is
not an animating issue to him. Balanced budgets are not
(06:36):
an animated issue to him, never was for him personally
as a businessman. And he has certainly taken that philosophy
into government with him. And you have somebody like a
Mitch Daniels who think, hey, government shouldn't be a part
of this. And then there's the whole state's rights issue,
which has been arguably among the most important planks to
(06:57):
the conservative movement the last seventy years. Right, it was
under the umbrella of states rights that conservatives wanted to
fight back on the Civil Rights Act. It was under
the umbrella of states rights that conservative social conservatives pushed
back on abortion laws. And here he is essentially trying
to thwart the state's rights, whether it's the threats that
(07:19):
were made by Heritage Action. And by the way, I
don't know what's happened to the Heritage Well we know
what's happened to the Heritage Foundation. They just followed the
money donors that wanted to support Donald Trump became very
important to Heritage. So they've changed their philosophy completely. You know,
there were two major think tanks in this town on
the conservative side of the aisle, the American Enterprise Institute
(07:41):
and Heritage. American Enterprise Institute is still a small c
conservative think tank that certainly has plenty of ideas that
sort of in the Venn diagram overlap with some of
the goals of the Trump administration. But at their core
these are still sort of this is a Reagan This
is a think tank that it thinks of conservatism through
(08:02):
the definition of Ronald Reagan strong, you know, international foreign policy,
interventionists when necessary, but sort of a little bit of
a moral code to our foreign policy. There is no
more moral code to our foreign policy anymore, inn Trump.
And then of course what he's doing with tariffs and
(08:23):
the economy that is not sort of that. And so
the Heritage Foundation used to be sort of in that
sort of shared in some ways. Heritage and AI simply
fought over individuals to work at their institutions because philosophically
they were mostly on the same page. But Heritage decided
to sell out financially. And now that they came out
(08:47):
with and said that somehow federal funds would be taken
away from Indiana, any projects that Indiana thought they were
going to get would be taken away. It It is
just anti antithetical to what conservatism has been for the
last fifty years. Again, apparently not caring about federalism, not
caring about states rights. You so, and I actually think
(09:10):
that you're going to see a lot of Republicans push
back on this executive order that Donald Trump signed last
night trying to prevent states from doing their own regulation
and artificial intelligence. That is going to be an interesting
It's going to be some interesting I don't think what
he signed is constitutional. I don't think he can do that.
(09:34):
It appears that only Congress can overwrite state laws. That
they would have to do it. He didn't have the
votes in Congress to include this. This was yet another
sign right they tried to bully that moratorium on state
regulations into the last couple of bills, either tried to
put it to the must pass Defense Bill or try
to get it into opening the government bill, and they
couldn't get it there because there were so many Republicans
(09:55):
that were against this. And guess who else is against this?
The public. The public is very skeptical right now of AI,
very nervous about AI. And so this is politically, I
actually think, really damaging to Republicans in twenty twenty six. Right,
Donald Trump doesn't want you know, doesn't want to prevent
you could just see the ads now, right, Donald Trump
(10:15):
doesn't want to prevent these tech companies from abusing our kids'
mental health. Donald Trump doesn't want to prevent these tech
companies from abusing your pocketbook by doing surveillance, pricing and
all this stuff. That is going to be you know,
that is they're going to see a lot of Republicans,
probably starting with Ronda Santis, who has been among the
(10:38):
most vocal conservative Republicans in the States against this federal moratorium,
against a regulation. So Donald Trump's inviting another fight, and
he's going to be inviting yet more proof that perhaps
the Emperor's you know, and I'm not going to sit
here and say the Emperor has no clothes. But we're
starting to see a striptease here. And it feels like,
(11:02):
now this is the third straight month where there's been
something where parts of his coalition have begun to fray. Right,
First it was over Epstein, Right, you've seen it that.
Now you've seen it over healthcare and the state of
the economy. We've seen it on tariffs, which also are
linked to the state of the economy. And I'm telling you,
and now we've got it on artificial intelligence and sort
(11:24):
of getting into bed with big tech, who's just as
unpopular on the conservative right as they are on the
progressive left. Like I said Thursday, December eleventh, is I
think is going to be seen as one of the
more significant days when we start to plot when is
this the beginning of the end? Right? Was it Election
(11:47):
Day twenty twenty five? Was it the break on the
Epstein files with the discharge petition? Was it? You know,
what we're seeing is a consistent Is it the Indiana
Republicans saying no one redistricting? The bottom line is there's
fewer Republicans who are afraid of Donald Trump. There are
more base conservatives who don't like this economy, who aren't
going to punish local lawmakers who decide to defy Donald
(12:11):
Trump if it is grounded in something the public themselves
is concerned about. So look, a lot of people have
lost money trying to predict the end of the Trump era.
But as I've said before, we're in year ten. It
is no political movement lasts that long. And we're starting
(12:32):
to see Trump's grip loosening all the time. Pick your metaphor.
Emperor is doesn't have no clothes, but he's looking you know,
he's never looked more naked than he looks now on
twelve on December twelfth, twenty twenty five. Now, when he's
in these moments, I do you know, he's going to
(12:55):
want to prove he still has strength. He's going to
want to prove he still has influence. He's going to
want to prove he can still sort of bend people
towards his will. So I wouldn't be surprised. You know,
nobody's going to let go of power easily. So he's
being challenged a lot. Probably should be prepared for a
lot of rants, a lot of public threats, But the
(13:18):
bottom line is a lot more of those folks on
the receiving end are going to be are viewing those
threats as empty, and they're now realizing Donald Trump's never
going to be on a ballot again, and Donald Trump's
influence gets weaker and weaker every day he's in office. So,
as the old saying goes, if it walks like a
lame duck, if it quacks like a lame duck, I
(13:41):
think it's slightly we have a lame duck. I'll see
him Monday
Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from
personal experience. I was sixteen when my father passed away.
We didn't have any money. He didn't leave us in
the best shape. My mother single mother, now widow, myself
sixteen trying to figure out how am I going to
pay for college and lo and behold, my dad had
one life insurance policy that we found wasn't a lot,
(00:22):
but it was important at the time, and it's why
I was able to go to college. Little did he
know how important that would be in that moment. Well,
guess what. That's why I am here to tell you
about Etho's life. They can provide you with peace of
mind knowing your family is protected even if the worst
comes to pass. Ethos is an online platform that makes
(00:44):
getting life insurance fast and easy, all designed to protect
your family's future in minutes, not months. There's no complicated
process and it's one hundred percent online. There's no medical
exam require you just answer a few health questions online.
You can get a quote and it's a little ten minutes,
and you can get same day coverage without ever leaving
your home. You can get up to three million dollars
(01:06):
in coverage and some policies start as low as two
dollars a day that would be billed monthly. As of
March twenty twenty five, Business Insider named Ethos the number
one no medical exam instant life insurance provider. So protect
your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free
quoted Ethos dot com slash chuck. So again, that's Ethos
(01:27):
dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and the
rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me, life
insurance is something you should really think about, especially if
you've got a growing family. Hello there, Chuck Todd. Here
it is Friday, December twelfth. I thought I would jump
in with just a quick little update on what was
(01:52):
I think a pretty monumental day that when we look
back on what happened on Thursday, December eleven in the
era of Trump, that this will be one could be
one of those plot points. And I know we've been
done this road before. It could be is this the
sign that it's coming to an end? Etcetera, etcetera. But
(02:12):
let's talk about two important things that happen and in
two ways, where something President Trump demanded, where he tried
to bend the will of the law, bend the will
of politics, bend the will of individuals his way, and
he hasn't been able to do it. Obviously, the big
news is what happened in Indiana, with essentially Indiana Republicans
(02:34):
feeling comfortable saying no to Donald Trump. But earlier in
the day we had a grand jury who you know,
the famous joke is you can get a grand jury
to indict a ham sandwich. Perhaps the Trump administration should
have tried indicting a ham sandwich named Letitia James. Rather
than trying to indict Leticia James a second time on
(02:55):
this idea that she committed mortgage fraud. Grand jury said no.
And it is you're starting to see a pattern here
where there is more comfort in pushing back, and when
you do, you're not seeing the consequences that are threatened.
(03:17):
But let's start with the political consequences or lack thereof,
with what happened in Indiana. This is Republicans saying no.
This is not the first time, right, we have seen right,
There has been sort of this. I wrote about in
a sub stack about a month ago that I said,
the cracks and the coalition are starting to appear focusing
then on the Marjorie Taylor Green situation Thomas Massey, and
(03:39):
it's like, slowly, but surely, you've had people push back
and there have been no consequences. Look and Trump one
point zero. And even in the four yer exile period
where he was still sort of hovering over our politics,
even if he didn't have actual power, his words mattered,
his threats mattered, and he did instill sometimes fear in
(04:02):
the minds of some Republicans to go his way, because
at the end of the day, the voters were with him.
But that's the issue here. It's like, why did Indiana
Republicans feel comfortable pushing back? Why does Marjorie Taylor Green
feel comfortable pushing back? Why is Thomas Massey felt comfortable
pushing back? Why do you see a growing you know,
ever so slowly, a growing number of House Republicans and
(04:24):
Senate Republicans essentially looking for ways to go in a
different direction than what the Trump administration is demanding. And
that is because this economy is not good and voters
don't like this economy, and ultimately, if they don't like
the economy, everything else starts to bother them. And who
(04:49):
knows this better than lawmakers that are closer to the
voters than the president is. He has had a hard
time making Thomas Massey pay for what he has done,
and he's essentially pushing back on him. In particular on
the Epstein files. Marjorie Taylor Green seemed to indicate that
she just didn't want to go through the idea of
(05:10):
having to fight Trump in a primary, and so she
chose resignation rather than going down that road. So perhaps
you could make the argument, if you really wanted to,
to say, well, Trump did intimidate or intimidator out of Congress.
She's also now serving as an incredible rhetorical weapon against
(05:30):
him from the point of view of MAGA. But this
is a significant moment because what is he going to
be able to do. It wasn't just one or two
Indiana Republicans that stepped up against him. You ended up
having a fairly large coalition. You had the former governor
Mitch Daniels, whether he was just giving advice to lawmakers
(05:51):
or actively trying to thwart him, because Mitch Daniels is
a conservative, is a Republican who does not believe any Essentially,
Trump's vision for the Republican Party. It is hard to
call Trump a conservative anymore by any definition of conservatism
that most of us have grown up with over the
last fifty years. He's not for limited government. If anything,
(06:14):
he is aggressively trying to be strong government, trying to
use the power of government to get business to do
its well, use the power of government to get other
countries to bend do as will. That is not a
limited government philosophy. He is also not. The debt is
not an animating issue to him. Balanced budgets are not
(06:36):
an animated issue to him, never was for him personally
as a businessman. And he has certainly taken that philosophy
into government with him. And you have somebody like a
Mitch Daniels who think, hey, government shouldn't be a part
of this. And then there's the whole state's rights issue,
which has been arguably among the most important planks to
(06:57):
the conservative movement the last seventy years. Right, it was
under the umbrella of states rights that conservatives wanted to
fight back on the Civil Rights Act. It was under
the umbrella of states rights that conservative social conservatives pushed
back on abortion laws. And here he is essentially trying
to thwart the state's rights, whether it's the threats that
(07:19):
were made by Heritage Action. And by the way, I
don't know what's happened to the Heritage Well we know
what's happened to the Heritage Foundation. They just followed the
money donors that wanted to support Donald Trump became very
important to Heritage. So they've changed their philosophy completely. You know,
there were two major think tanks in this town on
the conservative side of the aisle, the American Enterprise Institute
(07:41):
and Heritage. American Enterprise Institute is still a small c
conservative think tank that certainly has plenty of ideas that
sort of in the Venn diagram overlap with some of
the goals of the Trump administration. But at their core
these are still sort of this is a Reagan This
is a think tank that it thinks of conservatism through
(08:02):
the definition of Ronald Reagan strong, you know, international foreign policy,
interventionists when necessary, but sort of a little bit of
a moral code to our foreign policy. There is no
more moral code to our foreign policy anymore, inn Trump.
And then of course what he's doing with tariffs and
(08:23):
the economy that is not sort of that. And so
the Heritage Foundation used to be sort of in that
sort of shared in some ways. Heritage and AI simply
fought over individuals to work at their institutions because philosophically
they were mostly on the same page. But Heritage decided
to sell out financially. And now that they came out
(08:47):
with and said that somehow federal funds would be taken
away from Indiana, any projects that Indiana thought they were
going to get would be taken away. It It is
just anti antithetical to what conservatism has been for the
last fifty years. Again, apparently not caring about federalism, not
caring about states rights. You so, and I actually think
(09:10):
that you're going to see a lot of Republicans push
back on this executive order that Donald Trump signed last
night trying to prevent states from doing their own regulation
and artificial intelligence. That is going to be an interesting
It's going to be some interesting I don't think what
he signed is constitutional. I don't think he can do that.
(09:34):
It appears that only Congress can overwrite state laws. That
they would have to do it. He didn't have the
votes in Congress to include this. This was yet another
sign right they tried to bully that moratorium on state
regulations into the last couple of bills, either tried to
put it to the must pass Defense Bill or try
to get it into opening the government bill, and they
couldn't get it there because there were so many Republicans
(09:55):
that were against this. And guess who else is against this?
The public. The public is very skeptical right now of AI,
very nervous about AI. And so this is politically, I
actually think, really damaging to Republicans in twenty twenty six. Right,
Donald Trump doesn't want you know, doesn't want to prevent
you could just see the ads now, right, Donald Trump
(10:15):
doesn't want to prevent these tech companies from abusing our kids'
mental health. Donald Trump doesn't want to prevent these tech
companies from abusing your pocketbook by doing surveillance, pricing and
all this stuff. That is going to be you know,
that is they're going to see a lot of Republicans,
probably starting with Ronda Santis, who has been among the
(10:38):
most vocal conservative Republicans in the States against this federal moratorium,
against a regulation. So Donald Trump's inviting another fight, and
he's going to be inviting yet more proof that perhaps
the Emperor's you know, and I'm not going to sit
here and say the Emperor has no clothes. But we're
starting to see a striptease here. And it feels like,
(11:02):
now this is the third straight month where there's been
something where parts of his coalition have begun to fray. Right,
First it was over Epstein, Right, you've seen it that.
Now you've seen it over healthcare and the state of
the economy. We've seen it on tariffs, which also are
linked to the state of the economy. And I'm telling you,
and now we've got it on artificial intelligence and sort
(11:24):
of getting into bed with big tech, who's just as
unpopular on the conservative right as they are on the
progressive left. Like I said Thursday, December eleventh, is I
think is going to be seen as one of the
more significant days when we start to plot when is
this the beginning of the end? Right? Was it Election
(11:47):
Day twenty twenty five? Was it the break on the
Epstein files with the discharge petition? Was it? You know,
what we're seeing is a consistent Is it the Indiana
Republicans saying no one redistricting? The bottom line is there's
fewer Republicans who are afraid of Donald Trump. There are
more base conservatives who don't like this economy, who aren't
going to punish local lawmakers who decide to defy Donald
(12:11):
Trump if it is grounded in something the public themselves
is concerned about. So look, a lot of people have
lost money trying to predict the end of the Trump era.
But as I've said before, we're in year ten. It
is no political movement lasts that long. And we're starting
(12:32):
to see Trump's grip loosening all the time. Pick your metaphor.
Emperor is doesn't have no clothes, but he's looking you know,
he's never looked more naked than he looks now on
twelve on December twelfth, twenty twenty five. Now, when he's
in these moments, I do you know, he's going to
(12:55):
want to prove he still has strength. He's going to
want to prove he still has influence. He's going to
want to prove he can still sort of bend people
towards his will. So I wouldn't be surprised. You know,
nobody's going to let go of power easily. So he's
being challenged a lot. Probably should be prepared for a
lot of rants, a lot of public threats, But the
(13:18):
bottom line is a lot more of those folks on
the receiving end are going to be are viewing those
threats as empty, and they're now realizing Donald Trump's never
going to be on a ballot again, and Donald Trump's
influence gets weaker and weaker every day he's in office. So,
as the old saying goes, if it walks like a
lame duck, if it quacks like a lame duck, I
(13:41):
think it's slightly we have a lame duck. I'll see
him Monday
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