Former “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd on Friday opened up about the concerning consequences of President Donald Trump attacking him during his first term, when asked about the security risks that come with it.
“There was direct correlation, right? He’d call your name out, you’d get weird phone calls, you’d get weird death threats, I got my tires slashed in front of my house,” Todd told Times Radio’s Maddie Hale.
Todd, who left NBC News after nearly two decades in January, told Hale that he had “conversations” with Trump regarding his name-checks of people who are not in “the public square.”
Todd recalled, “He goes, ‘Oh, isn’t it good?’ He views it as, ‘Oh, it’s good publicity.’”
He later continued, “I don’t think he’s doing it to create a security problem for these people, but what he wants to do is deflect blame, ‘Just remember, you blame them, you don’t blame me.’ That’s always what he’s looking for. But the reality is, Maddie, it creates a security problem.”
As Trump continues to embark on a revenge tour in his second term — going after his political foes and their associates — judges, their families, elected officials and more of his perceived enemies have faced increased threats, leading them to boost their security.
Moments earlier, Hale asked Todd about the president’s response to three judges on a federal trade court who struck down his sweeping tariffs in a ruling last week (a federal appeals court would go on to reinstate them in a decision the next day).
Trump — in an unhinged rant on his Truth Social platform — took aim at the trade court judges (one of whom he appointed) before making a dig at “sleazebag” Leonard Leo, a former ally who handpicked most of his appeals court and Supreme Court nominees.
Todd, later in the interview, claimed that more public officials in Washington have their own security detail now more than at any point in his decades of covering the nation’s capital.
“And it’s simply because of the name-checking,” he added, “threats that takes place now by him.”