After last night I was wondering how Chuck Todd came to have such influence.

“…After Tim Russert’s death in June 2008, Todd was a candidate to replace him as the host of NBC’s Meet the Press,[9] but David Gregory was ultimately selected for the job. On December 18, 2008, NBC announced[10] that Todd would succeed Gregory as NBC News Chief White House Correspondent, partnering with Savannah Guthrie on the news beat. He retained his title as NBC News Political Director and was also named Contributing Editor to Meet the Press. Todd was a focus of an August 2008 Los Angeles Times article paralleling Todd’s rise to the rise of cable news networks in coverage of U.S. politics.[11] The article noted the emergence of Todd’s fans, deemed “Chuckolytes”.*
en.wikipedia.org

*Single-use coinage, or harbinger of idiocracy?