‘Open Secret’: Chuck Todd Reveals That a ‘Senior’ Cabinet Secretary Didn’t Think Biden Could Run Again Two Years Ago

NBC News’ Chuck Todd dropped a bombshell on his podcast, The Chuck Toddcast, on Wednesday.

During a discussion about President Joe Biden’s age and fitness for office with Politico‘s Jonathan Martin, Todd revealed that a “senior” member of Biden’s cabinet had raised concerns over the president’s ability to run for reelection two years ago.

Martin was arguing that Democrats “don’t have the courage of their convictions” because they “aren’t willing to stand up and say in public what they’ve been telling folks like us in private for years.”

“This is not a new story!” exclaimed Martin just before Todd interjected to underline the point.

“Jonathan, I don’t want to out the — I’m not gonna out the cabinet secretary,” began Todd. “But I had a cabinet secretary two years ago, okay? Two years ago, out of the blue asked me, ‘You really think he’s gonna — he can’t run again like this.’ And I said ‘Well, you have more interaction with him than I do,’ and they said, ‘I don’t have a lot of interaction with him.’ This is a pretty senior cabinet secretary.”

“So, and this was two years ago,” added Todd. “This is one of those, you know, it’s the classic open secret, conversation, right? It’s the story everybody knows and everybody was afraid to talk about.”

“Look, the media is as good as the sources that don’t lie to us are,” he continued, before going on to note that Biden has largely avoided high-stakes, high-risk appearances since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Todd went on to rip Biden himself, submitting that “he didn’t get the brass ring until it was handed to him. He never earned it! It was handed to him,” referencing the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, when the Democratic Party establishment coalesced around Biden in spite of his poor performances in the early contests.