Chuck Todd goes completely off the rails

| 8:35 pm EDT June 27, 2019
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Halfway through last night’s first 2020 Democratic primary debate, there was good news and bad news. The good news: respected MSNBC host Rachel Maddow was taking over the moderator duties. The bad news: Chuck Todd was also taking over the moderator duties. It all went about as poorly as expected.

Chuck Todd is coming off a week in which he disingenuously tried to downplay the horror of Donald Trump’s child concentration camps, just as he was landing his first-ever interview with Donald Trump – two things which surely weren’t a coincidence. NBC News promptly rewarded Todd for that act of journalistic malpractice by naming him one of the five moderators for the first round of Democratic primary debates. Since he was only one of five, how much could damage could he do?

The answer was, ultimately, not a lot – but that wasn’t for lack of trying. The first half of the debate, moderated by Lester Holder, Savannah Guthrie, and José Díaz-Balart, went roughly how a debate should go. Most of the questions were aimed at forcing the candidates to spell out their stances and proposals in more detail. The second half of the debate was a different story.

When Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow first took over, the audio system promptly malfunctioned. That ended up being the high note. From there, Chuck Todd began asking “gotcha” questions that were not so subtly aimed at stirring up trouble, but too lunkheaded to do the kind of damage that Todd was hoping for. The real trouble, though, was that he just wouldn’t shut up.

FiveThirtyEight calculated that, despite having been a moderator for only half the night, and despite having been supposed to simply ask questions and then get out of the way, Chuck Todd spoke more words than all but three of the candidates. In fact Todd spoke roughly 50% more words than Rachel Maddow, who at time couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and seemed to be quietly trying to distance herself from Todd’s antics as the night went on.

Chuck Todd’s antics didn’t ruin last night’s debate, and he didn’t manage to do any unfair damage to any candidates – but that may have been more about luck than anything else. With four of the five highest polling Democrats all appearing on stage tonight, will Todd succeed in doing real damage to the Democratic frontrunners? Stay tuned.