A bully has more than met his match and — like most bullies — has disgraced himself when challenged.  Chuck Todd is a bully in possession of a huge weapon, NBC News, of which he is political director, and his perch as host of its premier program, Meet the Press.  But all it took was a challenge from normally mild-mannered Senator Ron Johnson to have Todd shaking in his chair, his voice cracking, and abruptly ending his interview on Meet the Press.

Todd must have been expecting another Republican patsy when he framed the interview (complete video embedded below) as about "the Republican effort to delegitimize Joe Biden's election," claiming "there was no widespread fraud," there is "no chance of overturning the election," and "it looks like it is being done to curry favor with President Trump."

But Senator Johnson didn't take the bait and calmly began with his extremely important work on COVID therapies — the ability of physicians to effectively treat early-stage cases with widely available, safe, cheap medications.  (This December 8, 2020 hearing chaired by Johnson is eye-opening, and the fact the medical establishment is largely ignoring if not suppressing these therapies is the greatest public health scandal since the Tuskegee studies.)  The senator then moved on to point to facts, and the fireworks began.  Nicholas Fondacaro of NewsBusters describes the mêlée:

YouTube screen grab.

After Todd accused Johnson and his fellow Republicans of being arsonists for holding hearings on the 2020 election, the senator called out the media for being the ones who started the fire (though some would argue that it's been burning since the world's been turning):

This started when the mainstream media stopped, dropped any pretense of being unbiased, and actually chose sides during this election. This fire was started when you completely ignored, for example, our investigation of Hunter Biden. You know, "no evidence of wrongdoing there." Now we find out after the election, no, there is a fair amount of evidence to the point that we have a real FBI investigation –

Once the facts about Hunter Biden came out of Johnson's mouth, Todd immediately tried to shut it down. "Senator! All right. I've had enough of hearing this," Todd screamed over his honorable guest.

That kicked off a heated shouting match which saw Johnson call out the media for destroying their own credibility and American institutions. And at one point, Todd seemed as though he wanted to place that blame on Republicans:

JOHNSON: No, listen, I've had enough of this, too.

TODD: No, Senator –

JOHNSON: The bias in the media--

[Crosstalk]

TODD: You spent the last two years --

JOHNSON: Republicans and conservatives do not trust --

TODD: No --

JOHNSON: - the mainstream media and that is what destroyed the credibility of the media and our institutions and —

TODD: Right.

JOHNSON: -- really –

TODD (Yelling over guest): The destruction of the institutions--

JOHNSON: So, I didn't start this.

You can watch for yourself:

Propaganda media rose to defend Todd, but Ric Grenell provoked Todd into de facto admitting defeat by blocking him (hat tip: RedState)

Chuck’s shaking in his chair and his voice is cracking. He doesn’t like being confronted with the truth.

Wow, Ron Johnson really got to Chuck Todd. https://t.co/g6Sur1VRJX

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 3, 2021

On Chuck....you dish out criticism for a living. pic.twitter.com/vYqQTrBnqz

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) January 3, 2021

Todd throws around the term "arsonist," but he can't stand the heat.