Veteran NBC News anchor and chief political analyst Chuck Todd is leaving the network, TheWrap has learned.
“There’s never a perfect time to leave a place that’s been a professional home for so long, but I’m pretty excited about a few new projects that are on the cusp of going from ‘pie in the sky’ to ‘near reality,’” Todd said in a memo to staff obtained by TheWrap on Friday. “So I’m grateful for the chance to get a jump start on my next chapter during this important moment.”
His update comes a few weeks after Semafor reported the former “Meet the Press” host had been looking at different news outlets to join. Todd said in his Friday memo that his “Chuck Toddcast” podcast would be “coming with me” to his next stop, for which he thanked NBC.
“We’re grateful for Chuck’s many contributions to our political coverage during his nearly two-decade career at NBC News and for his deep commitment to ‘Meet the Press’ and its enduring legacy,” a NBC News spokesperson told TheWrap. “We wish him all the best in his next endeavors.”
Todd’s exit from NBCUniversal comes after Jim Acosta similarly left CNN earlier this week after 18 years at the channel — the same amount of time Todd was at NBC News. He joined NBC News as its political director in 2007, and later was made the moderator on “Meet the Press” from 2014 to 2023.
During his exit memo, Todd also shared his thoughts on the mainstream media’s crumbling status among the general American public. An October Gallup poll found America’s trust in the media is at an all-time low, with only 31% of respondents saying they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence the news was being reported accurately.
“The media has a lot of work to do to win back the trust of viewers/listeners/readers and I’m convinced the best place to start is from the bottom up,” Todd said. “At my core, I’m an entrepreneur — I spent my first 15 years professionally working for the company that started the political newsletter craze that dominates today. And this is a ripe moment.”
He further noted that the “only way to fix this information ecosystem is to stop whining about the various ways the social media companies are manipulating things and instead roll up our collective sleeves and start with local. National media can’t win trust back without having a robust partner locally and trying to game algorithms is no way to inform and report.”
One of Todd’s more notable exchanges on “Meet the Press” came in 2017, when he had a dustup with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway over her use of the term “alternative facts.” Todd later told TheWrap he regretted some of the faces he made during the interview.
“There’s times in that interview where I had facial expressions,” he said in 2017. “You have to be careful.”
More recently, Todd made himself the headline last year when he publicly criticized his employer over its decision to hire former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a contributor. He told his colleague Kristen Welker that their bosses “owe you an apology” for making her interview McDaniel.
