Happy Thursday. I'm Chuck Todd. Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Todd cast. Look, the last week has been obviously overwhelming to the world of politics as the fallout from the assassination of Charlie Kirk continues to hover over a lot of

things in the political world. It has certainly taken up a lion's share of my time with you.

I'm not saying I am ignoring this issue in today's episode, but I want to play catch up a little

bit on there. So not a lot of other

things of, I think, important long-term consequences, both politically and for the country and

all these things that I want to get to, including on the economy. We had some big news when it

comes to interest rates. We have some big news when it comes to the CDC and what's going on with public

health. As you know, this is a topic I'm particularly focused on. But there's some, look,

you don't lower interest rates because the economy is healthy. You lower interest rates because you're

worried the economy is headed in the wrong direction.

So I do, there's a few things that I want to make sure you guys, my devoted listeners and

viewers and followers and all of those things, I think need to be updated on.

But I do, I do want to touch on one.

There's a lot of fallout, obviously, coming from the Kirk assassination. And one of it has to do with whether, whether we're going to have

public displays of the democracy, whether it's public protests or town halls with members of

Congress and elected officials.

And I and I just, I'm, you know, the, the only way we, we long term lose in all of this is if we retreat from the public square and we don't have small D Democratic interactions.

And so I want to highlight a quote from earlier this week from a senator,

a Republican senator from West Virginia, Shelly Moore Capito, who said that she was

rethinking all of her public events. She said, I probably can't go on parades. And she added,

I think anybody who is a public figure is going

to have to think more than twice about the kind of exposure events present.

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