“Believe Chuck Todd?” That’s the not-so-rhetorical question people on social media were asking Sunday after the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” reported the results of a new NBC News poll about the potential rematch of President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump, saying that “there are only 6% of Americans that would like to see both Trump and Biden run.”
“The point is this: There’s large majorities that don’t want either gentleman to run,” he said, flashing a graphic showing that 60% of Republicans don’t want Trump to run and 70% of Democrats don’t want to see Biden run again.
“It’s not because of his policies, it’s simply because of questions about his physical ability to do it and his current age,” he told Willie Geist of “Sunday Today.” “But the thing that is most striking in our poll is how much Republicans are rallying around Donald Trump. When you look at this poll, on one hand, if you’re Ron DeSantis, you can say, ‘Well, hey, so I’m trailing by double digits — Barack Obama trailed Hillary Clinton by double digits the entire calendar year of 2007.’ Right? He didn’t overtake her nationally until he won Iowa. But, boy, does it not look like the same type of race when you look at — you have 70% of Republican primary voters tells us, basically, that these charges against Donald Trump mean that it’s more important to rally around Donald Trump rather than giving them a choice that says, you know, he was a good president but these could be distractions in defeating Joe Biden. Only one in four Republican primary voters believe that.”
“This, right now, looks like both parties are about to nominate two people that the country doesn’t want to have — and there are going to be unintended consequences for that, Willie, whether it’s people not showing up, whether it’s a third party flirtation,” Todd said. “Whatever it is, politics supports vacuums, and if the two of them are careening towards this rematch, it’s going to create a vacuum.”
Later Sunday on his own NBC show, “Meet the Press,” Todd went into detail about the “why” Democratic primary voters said Biden shouldn’t run.
“What’s the top concern for that? We didn’t prompt them,” Todd said. “It’s almost all about his age and his ability to do the job.” He went on to show that the Biden alternative — Trump — is even more unpopular among the American public, but the Trump investigations have only galvanized his support.
Below is a small sampling of reactions to the poll numbers Todd presented — and to Todd himself.