Chuck Todd told viewers Sunday he is leaving the moderator’s chair on the 75-year-old program in September. He will hand it off to Kristen Welker, the network’s chief White House correspondent.
Welker will be the second female moderator in the long history of “Meet the Press.” Martha Rountree was the first to have the job when the program launched in 1947 and held the position until 1953.
Welker will make history as the first Black woman to serve as moderator of a Sunday morning network public affairs program, among the most prestigious positions in TV news.
The replacement of Todd has been under discussion at NBC for years. Todd himself acknowledged that the job of hosting a broadcast institution was not permanent.
“The program doesn’t belong to me,” Todd told The Times in a 2020 interview. “That is something that I’m fully aware of. I’m a custodian. My job is to put ‘Meet the Press’ in a better place and leave it in a better place than I got it.”
Todd, 51, was often criticized on social media by liberal critics for not being tough enough in his line of questioning on the program. Conservatives were not fond of him either.
Todd said he understood the scrutiny came with the territory.
Welker has been with NBC News since 2010. Her profile was raised in 2020 when she moderated the second presidential candidates debate.
Welker, 46, worked at TV stations in Rhode Island, California and Pennsylvania before settling into the weekend anchor chair at WCAU in Philadelphia. She joined NBC News in 2010 as a correspondent in Burbank and moved to Washington the following year.