Hello there. Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Toddcast. We have a fascinating set of guests for you today. It's the two New York Times reporters behind the uncovering of these, I guess you might call them sleeper Russian agents and how the country of Brazil essentially

became an incubator for the, you know, if you were a fan of the show of the Americans and this

idea of the illegals and the actual program where you had these deep undercover spies that Russia will infiltrate various Western societies.

Well, way do you understand.

And you're going to hear, and they do a terrific job of telling you the story, but how

Brazil and it sort of has unique ways of proving, of being able to get a birth certificate,

that it became basically ground zero for the Russians and for Putin's factory to potentially, and what's interesting is that it's

possible this has been going on since before the end of the Cold War. And in fact, may have been sort of never, it wasn't a program that

was quote unquote revived when Putin came into power that actually never ended, even as the Cold War

ended. Anyway, it's a fascinating conversation. I hope you make time for it. It's a terrific.

It's why I'm releasing it on Thursday because I think it's a terrific longer listen, if you will.

But before we get to that, I want to do a little bit of, I've got gotten my hands on polling in a couple of important states, Texas and Michigan, as well as some polling that I'm going to be dismissive of in South Carolina.

I'll tell you that in a minute.

But and while both Texas and Michigan are very 2026 oriented, there is, I want to sort of

do a little big picture here and just say, you know, is where we're sort of the leader of the

Republican Party has put the Republican Party right now and how Donald Trump is actually putting

them and starting to make some of the same mistakes that leaders of previous, you know, previous presidents have helped to create similar mistakes that have only led their party to losses, particularly in midterm years.

Just think about what he's been talking about more over the last, oh, say, 7,2, 96 hours, right?

He spent Memorial Day weekend attacking Harvard.

He compared himself to Al Capone.

He hyped his crypto business.

His kids are out in Vegas doing more crypto business this week.

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