Hello there. Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Todd cast. We are coming up on the end of July. And there's another aspect that I want to get into today. My guest is Dave Weigel. He's sort of the chief political correspondent, certainly the campaign guru these days over at semaphore.

I first got to know Dave Weigel at a few of other stops, if you will, most recently before

that, the Washington Post. He is sort of my type of campaign reporter. He likes to get out of

Washington. He goes to these events. He spends a lot of time. He goes to these, you know, if there's an event where candidates are showing up, there's a state picnic of some sort in Kentucky. They'll call it Fancy Farm. And, you know, it's state fair in iowa where where political candidates get

together there's all these different things someday i'll give you a whole tour i actually would

love to sell a podcast series where i just go from uh political event to political event where they

you know sometimes you've got to go eat bad fried fish with the local political leaders to

showcase your wares and this or that. But anyway, but Dave Weigel's that kind of guy. And he was a

perfect guy to do what I think is, you know, if you look at the midterm calendar and you divide it up

into four quarters, there's basically, you know, we are at the end of the first quarter of this midterm cycle with November of 2026.

Basically, we're at the first quarter pole, if you want to talk about it, is you're a racing fan, either cars or horses.

End of the first quarter, if you want to talk about it, as far as splitting things up

that way.

And there's a few things that I get into deep with Dave about, you know, what are the

similarities between the political environment of 2025 and the political environment

in the first year of Trump 1.0 in 2017. We get into all of that.

And sort of the different sort of historical factors, sort of near-term history that favors one party

versus the near-term history that may favor another. So it is, this is a political junky day. And as you know,

most Wednesdays, I do try to reserve sort of for my, my campaign midterm updates. And so

that's what my substack focus is this week. It is on sort of, where are we in the midterms

after the first quarter? And the way I'd put it is, we're at a coin flip situation.

What, you know, if you'd ask me six months ago, what is the most likely result for the

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