Chuck Todd Gets Award After Revelation He Strategized With Fauci

Former NBC Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd is slated for an award celebrating “his role as one of the country’s leading independent voices covering politics, democracy and public affairs” mere days after he was exposed maintaining a cozy relationship with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Poynter, a fake fact-checking institute known for training and elevating corrupt corporate media, plans to honor the “veteran political journalist” with a ticketed salon event dedicated to celebrating The Chuck ToddCast host’s “decadeslong impact on political journalism.”

“Chuck Todd has always been one of the smartest voices in American journalism, from his sharp political analysis and interviews during his years at NBC, to now, reporting on his own terms on independent platforms,” Poynter President Neil Brown said in the 2026 Poynter Make a Mark Leadership Award announcement. “He always gives the audience his best.”

According to the Fauci diary document dump from Sen. Rand Paul, Todd’s “decadeslong impact on political journalism” apparently includes advising the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director on how to navigate criticism from conservative media.

Fauci admitted in his June 10, 2021 entry to seeking advice from Todd on “whether he thought that I should pull back from publicly defending myself against the slanderous attacks since that might call more attention to them.”

Fauci further wrote that Todd not only “completely agreed” with that proposition, but also warned the NIAID director that Fox News and its then-top performer Tucker Carlson would “use anything I say as the theme for their next show.”

“Chuck is really an excellent journalist and although he must maintain his objectivity and reporting it is very clear that he is really being a friend in understanding the difficult position that I am in,” Fauci concluded.

Before that, in March 2020, Fauci named Todd as one of several media panelists who expressed an interest in giving Fauci airtime because “he has a decades long history of giving the truth in a calming way to the public.” From 2020 to 2022, Fauci appeared on Todd’s NBC show at least 20 times.

Todd was not the only member of the propaganda press to receive a shoutout from Fauci. Yet, as The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman noted, Todd’s Fauci-focused tongue bath “tacitly show[ed] Todd and NBC News had no desire to get to the bottom of the Covid cover-up, or possible lab leak, or shutdowns pushed by Fauci that caused innumerable damages.”

Todd’s history as a corporate media propagandist is not limited to his alarmism during the Covid years. During his time on NBC’s Meet The Press, Todd doubled down on the Russia collusion hoax even after the Steele dossier was debunked, deceptively edited his show to lie about Trump-era Attorney General Bill Barr, and pretended someone has to be a scientist to know boys are boys and girls are girls. In addition to public embarrassments like tweeting a crotch photo, Todd also dubbed believing in God-given rights “fundamentalist” and had a meltdown when NBC sought to recruit former RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as a Republican contributor.

“Let me deal with the elephant in the room,” Todd said on-air to his colleague Kristen Welker. “I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.”

When Biden family corruption took center stage, Todd argued against investigating it and even refused to air comments President Donald Trump made about the Biden family business.

“We are going further than we’ve ever gone before to say, we aren’t going to play the sound. We aren’t going to repeat the president’s vicious attacks on Hunter Biden. The president of the United States stood in front of a crowd of supporters and character-assassinated [Hunter],” Todd said. “We can’t in good conscience amplify those attacks.”

Even after he left his 18-year career at NBC, Todd blamed Trump for almost being assassinated again. He later pretended to decry the violence that follows Trump despite playing a clear role in stoking it.

Todd even had the audacity to pin fault for Americans’ plummeting trust in corporate media on Fox News instead of using it to spur on industry-wide self-reflection.

Jordan Boyd is an award-winning staff writer at The Federalist and producer of “The Federalist Radio Hour.” Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.