Independent Americans with Paul Rieckhoff

Pete Hegseth is on thin ice, and the reason should worry every American with a family member in uniform. U.S. commanders are reportedly picking and choosing which Iranian missiles to intercept and which to let fall. Our stockpiles of Tomahawks, ATACMS, and Patriots are draining. Ukraine's civilians are dying for lack of munitions. And the response from the White House is to hunt down leakers, blame subordinates, and ask Congress for another $67 billion — roughly $20 billion of it for weapons the administration should have planned for in the first place. This is what happens when leadership refuses to take re...

Democrats Drop Out in Idaho and South Dakota. Media Blitz Pod

The rigged two-party system delivered another round of primary results this week, and the pattern is impossible to miss: the extremes keep winning the nominations while roughly 44% of Americans who identify as independent get shoved further to the margins. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed squeaked past Haley Stevens in a race that was supposed to be close and somehow got closer — and now Democrats have ninety days to figure out whether a DSA-aligned progressive can hold a battleground state they cannot afford to lose. Paul Ri...

Brian Bengs—Indy Vet For Senate in South Dakota: the Dem Dropping Out & His Head-to-Head vs GOP Incumbent Rounds

The independent movement is surging — and the machine is fighting back. In episode 594, Paul Rieckhoff breaks down the biggest under-covered story of the week: Mayor Mamdani's Board of Elections quietly rejected 42,000 petitions from New Yorkers demanding open primaries, a direct shot at the one million independents disenfranchised by New York's rigged partisan system. Paul also digs into the Politico report that Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and Joe Kent are sowing the seeds of a ne...

"Let's F***ing Go." Dem Drops Out in South Dakota: Brian Bengs vs Mike Rounds Is On. Two Independent Vets Win in Washington While Their County Burns. 

Michigan is not Manhattan. That's the through-line of this one. The Democratic primary in Michigan handed the U.S. Senate nomination to Abdul El-Sayed, a far-left progressive in a state where roughly 17% of voters are independent and Mike Rogers is waiting on the Republican side. Paul Rieckhoff calls it what it is: another gift from a rigged two-party primary system to the MAGA machine, and one more reason t...

PLUS: The Pentagon's Body Count Bookkeeping Trick. Blanche Ready to Weaponize DOJ. Democrat Spoilers in the Way in Montana, South Dakota. A Marine Vet in Tennessee Steps Up.

Spokane is burning. Three wildfires have merged into the Spokane Complex, torching more than 8,000 acres, destroying over 700 structures with a final count that could top a thousand, and forcing 65,000 people under evacuation orders. The Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center sits inside the evacuation zone and has been shuttered, its veteran patients moved to partner hospitals. And in the middle of that inferno, an election. Four IVA-endorsed independent veterans...

Plus: "Independents Aren't Real"? Kasich's Partisan Slander, Manchin's New PAC, and 45% of America Says Otherwise.

Trump says he's close to an Iran deal. He's been saying he's a week away from a Putin deal for a year and a half. Paul Rieckhoff calls the head fake for what it is, warns the media not to fall for it again, and lays out the chaos Congress is trying to jam through before its six-week recess — including Todd Blanche's nomination and the weaponization fund built to compensate January 6th insurrectionists. The forever wars don't take August off, an...

Governor John Kasich went on national TV and told Paul Rieckhoff, to his face, that independents aren't really independent — that come November they'll just go back to the bench and put the old jersey back on. Paul's response is the spine of this episode: that's an antiquated way of looking at America in 2026. Sixty percent of young people are unaffiliated. Fifty percent of veterans are unaffiliated. Ten thousand Americans are walking out of the Republican and Democratic parties every single week. Trump is sitting at a 22% approval with independents and a 32-34% approval overall — the Bush line — with an unpopu...

Trump's approval with independents just hit 24%. Republicans are going home to their districts and getting an earful about an unauthorized, unconstitutional, and wildly unpopular war with Iran that is now pulling in the Saudis, the Egyptians, and Iranian proxies from Iraq to Yemen. Paul Rieckhoff calls it what it is — a sucking chest wound — and lays out why Senate Republicans are finally breaking, why Lindsey Graham comparing Trump and Netanyahu to Roosevelt and Churchill isn't landing, and why supporting the troops means demanding a coherent plan, not a blank check for one man's war.

From there, the epis...

9/11 Families Telling Mamdani to Stay Away For 25th Anniversary Next Month. Media Blitz Pod

The Iran war is overflowing. Saudi Arabia is now actively engaged. Egypt is getting hit with drone strikes. Roughly 50,000 American sons and daughters are in harm's way — and Congress has authorized none of it. In this episode, Paul Rieckhoff broadcasts from the Huntsville, Madison County Veterans Memorial to lay out exactly how bad it's gotten, why the president's expletive-laced tough talk is a sign of desperation rather than strategy, and how this war is dragging vulnerable Republicans down with it heading in...

The Iran War, Skyrocketing Prices and Jim Risch—A Really, Really Old Opponent. Like Really Old. Defending Public Lands. Independents Are Not The Spoilers. The Shuttle Trailblazer, Southern Nice and Space City Week Continues. 

The Democrat is out in Idaho. That single sentence rewrites the 2026 Senate map. Independent veteran Todd Achilles is now in a one-on-one race against three-term incumbent Jim Risch — chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the third most powerful voice on American foreign policy, and a man who has rubber-stamped an unauthorized Iran war while public lands go up for sale and 1...

Lindsey Graham Funeral—Zelensky in DC. The Dem Spoiler in Montana. Space City Week Continues. Media Blitz Pod
From the 100 degree shadow of the Saturn V in Huntsville, Alabama at NASA, Paul Rieckhoff delivers a no-BS field report on a week when the stakes continue to get higher. President Zelensky is in Washington, Senator Lindsey Graham laid to rest, and the bipartisan opening to finally pass  a Ukraine support bill with stronger sanctions, more weapons, more money — is right in front of Congress. Meanwhile, Trump is openly signaling he intends to attack the November elections, and the confirmation of un...

The Insurrection Act and The Role of Governors. How to Win Over the Other Side. WNBA All-Star Game. Rocket City, USA, NASA and Trash Pandas.

Trump is federalizing National Guard troops, threatening Chicago, New York, and LA with domestic deployments, and using the White House podium to launch personal attacks at anyone who pushes back. Governor JB Pritzker is one of the few Democrats actually fighting — in court, in public, and inside his own party. In his first appearance on Independent Americans, he sits down with Paul Rieckhoff for a no-BS conversation about Trump's nasty WH...

The Secretary of State went on television and refused to rule out striking civilian targets. "A head for an eye," Marco Rubio said — boasting about sending a country back to the Stone Age. At the same time, the Pentagon has cancelled press briefings, killed reporter embeds with combat units, and gone dark on casualty numbers. Paul Rieckhoff joins Katy Tur on MS Now to lay out what that combination actually means: an administration waging war without the accountability the Constitution demands, and military families left in the dark about whether their people are coming home.

Paul draws on...

Iran Now Less Popular Than Iraq, Vietnam, Or Afghanistan. Media Blitz Pod

A president who never served is once again diminishing the cost of war — calling traumatic brain injuries "just headaches," parading a fallen soldier's family at a political rally, and standing next to a Secretary of State who openly floats a "head for an eye" doctrine against Iran. Meanwhile, MSNBC reporting confirms the US military has been targeting civilian infrastructure inside Iran, including a bridge families were using to flee the danger zone. This is not how a country that claims to believe in th...

Mamdani vs Netanyahu and Why The Answer to the Extreme Right Isn't the Extreme Left. Media Blitz Pod

Four young Americans are dead. The Secretary of Defense is asking Congress for more money after months of all gas, no brakes. The Saudis are quietly telling the world they don't trust Trump to neutralize Iran — so they're going to build their own bomb. And now the Washington Post reports the administration is weighing strikes on Mali, the eighth country hit since Trump returned to office. This is what a forever war looks like when nobody in Co...

Another War, Another Congress That Can’t Stop It. Media Blitz Pod

Six months in and Americans already revile this war more than they came to revile Vietnam. Trump went all gas, no brakes — no declaration, no authorization, no plan — and now Pete Hegseth is on the Hill with his hat in hand asking Congress for the money he swore he didn't need. Meanwhile Sergeant Michael Emmanuel Swinton of North Carolina, thirty years old, husband and father, is dead in Iraq. Two more service members are dead in Jordan. And the Secretary of Defense can't tell y...

Hegseth’s $37 Billion Ask. Three Weekend KIA Troops Identified. Media Blitz Pod.

Arizona is where the MAGA machine keeps breaking its teeth, and this episode explains why. Paul Rieckhoff files a rapid recap from inside 30 Hudson Yards after two hours in the Hegseth hearings and a night of primary results — with 34% of Arizona voters registered independent (more than Democrats), a Trump-aligned Andy Biggs winning the GOP nomination while still refusing to admit Trump lost in 2020, and Cindy McCain openly fundraising for the Democratic incumbent Katie Hobbs. It's McCain's revenge, it's a preview of the general, and...

Dr Vin Gupta on How To Stay Healthy in Trump’s Summer of WTF.

Every six months, Paul brings in a doctor the country can actually trust. This time it's Dr. Vin Gupta — pulmonologist, ICU physician, Air Force Reserve major, and one of the sharpest independent voices on public health in America. They open with the human cost of Trump's Iran policy as a third service member's death is confirmed, then move to the Pentagon, where Pete Hegseth is pushing blanket testosterone screening for men over 30 while simultaneously making flu vaccines optional. Gupta, who has spen...

Two US service members were killed and one is missing after another Iranian strike on American forces in Jordan. That brings the confirmed US KIA count to sixteen since the start of a war that Paul Rieckhoff calls unauthorized, unnecessary, and increasingly unpopular — a war Trump owns, and one the White House and the Pentagon show no sign of winding down. Two more families are getting the most devastating call of their lives while the rest of the country tries to enjoy a lake weekend and the World Cup final. Paul refuses to look away.

In this qu...

Plus: The Iran Forever War Grinds On. Hegseth’s Blue Angels “Morale ”Stunt. Quick Response Pod

From a smoky, humid Times Square with the Canadian wildfires blanketing the city, Paul Rieckhoff delivers a quick-response warning ahead of Trump's primetime address. His read: this isn't a State of the Union or a policy rollout. It's the same rhetorical build-up we saw before the strikes on Iran and Venezuela — a president throwing rationales at the wall to justify an attack. Except this time, the target is the one thing that can still check his power: the midterm elections.

Rieckhoff lays out the pattern already in motion — the National Guard extension in DC, the push against mail...

Pete Hegseth is running the Pentagon like a locker room. He's blocking women from the top ranks of the U.S. military while opening the door for men to get tested and juiced up on testosterone boosters. Read that sentence again. This is the state of civilian leadership at the Department of Defense in 2026, and Paul is not letting it slide past as just another weird headline. It's a window into how the MAGA machine thinks about strength, service, and who gets to wear the uniform.

From the middle of a packed World Cup semifinal crowd in...

Plus: Independents Under Attack: The Fight For South Carolina. E.Jean Carroll Finally Receives Justice. United Removing Middle Seats.

Trump's forever war isn't in Venezuela or Greenland anymore. It's on the home front. National Guard deployments in Washington have been quietly extended through 2029, ICE has killed two more people during vehicle stops in a single week, and Trump is now planning a prime-time address to reopen his case against the 2020 election. Paul Rieckhoff walks through why this is the moment — with Lindsey Graham gone, Mitch McConnell sidelined, and the midterms looming as the last real ci...

Plus: DOJ Issues Subpoenas for NYT Qatar Plane Coverage. Jay Z is back. World Cup Final Four. MLB Allstar Game is Something Good.

No guests today — just Paul Rieckhoff, coming to you from a brutally hot New York City with the five I's to keep you cool: independence, integrity, information, inspiration, and impact. The top story is a shock: Lindsey Graham, the 71-year-old South Carolina senator and staunch Trump ally, has died. Paul reflects on a complicated legacy — the man who voted to send him to war, drilled in the reserves as a sitting senator, disa...

Paul Rieckhoff joins the roundtable to dissect the wreckage of Graham Platner's Maine Senate campaign — alongside Bangor Daily News political editor Michael Shepherd, former DNC chair Jaime Harrison, and Puck's Leigh Ann Caldwell. Paul called this one early: Platner was a ship with holes in it from the start, and progressives were so desperate for a gravelly-voiced tough guy that they were willing to ignore the Nazi tattoo, the Reddit posts, and a vetting operation that missed most of it. His bigger point — Maine is an independent-minded state with a Republican senator and an independent one, and the answer isn...

A quick-hit media blitz — Paul Rieckhoff's back-to-back TV appearances in one place. First, on NewsNation Now, Paul unpacks Trump's expanding conflict with Iran: the worst ceasefire ever, missiles still flying, the Strait of Hormuz unsecured, and the regime controlling the tempo while our military gets sucked into what he calls a "sucking chest wound" that's dragging down the economy and Trump's poll numbers. He breaks down the new US–Ukraine Patriot partnership announced alongside Zelensky — better late than never, and real upside for American national security — why defeating Russia is the only road to a deal with Putin, and why Grah...

The Democrats Will Not Save You in Maine—or Anywhere. Cuba is Next. Sen Mitch McConnell is MIA. Independent is Not “a Schtick”. World Cup. And New Professional Women’s Baseball League! 

Trump's forever war is expanding faster than anyone in the mainstream press is willing to say out loud. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has quietly invited more than 60 countries to a meeting framing Antifa as a transnational terror threat — the rhetorical scaffolding for troops in American cities and a move on Cuba before the midterms. Iran is a sucking chest wound draining roughly 40% of the US N...

Two stories broke in the same news cycle, and both are gut punches for anyone who cares about accountability. In Maine, Democratic Senate candidate and former Marine Graham Platner has withdrawn after a Nazi tattoo, ugly online history, and rape allegations from two women who went on the record. Paul was skeptical from day one — and lays out why Platner ducked every veteran interviewer who might have pressed him, why the progressive left keeps chasing candidates who look the part instead of doing the work, and why Maine, one of the most independent states in the country, deserved better th...

Plus: Trump is a Jinx. US Men Implode in Seattle. Platner Continues to Implode in Maine. Optimism for America 250. The New Toy Story is Important.

America just turned 250, Team USA just got bounced from the World Cup, and the MAGA machine is running all gas, no brakes on everything from Iran to the ranks of our own military. Paul sits down with Admiral James Stavridis — former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, former Southcom commander, and author of the new novel 2084 — for a morning briefing on where the country actually stands. Stavridis lays out what the administration is t...

FIFA, Balogun, and the Trump Jinx. July 4/America 250/Independents Day Reflections. 

It's America 250 week, the World Cup has swept through New York, and tonight Team USA plays Belgium in what host Paul Rieckhoff calls the biggest US soccer match in his lifetime. Naturally, Donald Trump has already elbowed his way into the story — publicly pressuring FIFA over Folarin Balogun's red card, then taking credit for the reversal, and floating that if the US loses, the match might be rigged. Paul draws the contrast that matters: a young Brooklyn-born striker handling injustice with grace versus an aut...

His Counter-Narrative To Trump On Patriotism, Open Primaries In Md, The Lessons Of The Knicks, And an NBA Team In B’more. Independents Day Special

It’s Independence Day. And there are few leaders better suited for this moment than Maryland Governor Wes Moore.

Paul Rieckhoff sits down with his longtime friend and returning champion for a July 4th conversation about leadership, patriotism, independent voters, Maryland’s closed primaries, Baltimore’s comeback, the power of joy, and why the future belongs to people willing to disrupt the status quo. Moore talks about his Leave No...

July 4th is two days away. America is turning 250. And there is nobody we’d rather hear from right now than America’s historian, Ken Burns.

Paul Rieckhoff is taking a couple days off at the beach with the kids, so we’re replaying one of our all-time favorite Independent Americans conversations. Ken Burns joins Paul for a sweeping, urgent, deeply American talk about the Revolution, George Washington, baseball, real patriotism, Congress abdicating its constitutional duty, the danger of “us vs. them,” and why the American experiment is still worth fighting for.

It’s history. It’s democra...

Gen. Barry McCaffrey on the Danger of Thinking War Can Be Easy. Plus: Trump, Greenland & the US as a ‘Predator Nation’. Reflections on the End of Iraq. Independents Week Replay

Gen. Barry McCaffrey doesn't do polite. In this replay conversation from the Independent Americans vault, the retired four-star general and MSNOW national security analyst sits down with Paul Rieckhoff to name what almost nobody in Washington will say out loud: the U.S. armed forces — the most trusted institution in American life — are being politicized from the top down, federal law enforcement is being militarized to the p...

“War Is Chaotic — and We Went In Without a Strategy'" with General Mark Hertling. Plus: Iran, Hegseth & 'Fitness Cultism’. Why His Son Chose to Serve. A Father's Wartime Journal — and a Gut Check for This July 4th

War is chaotic and complex. You really never know which way it's going to go — and you especially don't know if you go in without a strategy. That's the line General Mark Hertling keeps coming back to in this no-BS conversation with Paul Rieckhoff, recorded as the Trump administration careens deeper into a war with Iran that Congress never auth...

What Is an Illegal Order? The Four-Star Navy SEAL Walks Us Through It. A Million Russian Casualties, And The Precedent We Can’t Afford To Break. Independents Week Replay

Paul sits down with retired Admiral Bill McRaven — Navy SEAL, former SOCOM commander, former University of Texas system chancellor, and one of the clearest voices in American public life — for a conversation built for this moment. McRaven doesn't flinch. He calls K-12 education the number one national security threat facing the country, lays out exactly where the administration's 28-point Ukraine plan goes wrong, and walks troops throug...

Plus: Why Trump Needs NATO More Than NATO Needs Trump.

Pete Hegseth has been quietly purging the Pentagon of anyone who might outshine him, contradict him, or threaten his grip on power. This week he came for General Chris Donahue — a West Point graduate, 75th Ranger Regiment veteran, former commander of the military's most elite special missions unit, the architect of the Afghanistan airlift that saved 124,000 allies, and the builder of NATO's Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative against Russia. Paul Rieckhoff is joined by former FBI special agent and national security analyst Christopher O'Leary, who worked al...

Iran Deal is the Worst Deal Ever. DSA Runs the Table, WIll it Cost the Dems? The story of the Real SAV Act. Who Do You Trust in  Post-Truth Era?

America has a primary problem, and New York City is ground zero. Less than 500,000 voters showed up to decide who runs a city of five million, while a million independents — Paul included — were shut out by the most closed primary in the country. That's not democracy. That's a rigged two-party system handing the keys to whichever faction can mobilize the most insiders, while the angry middl...

Primary Fallout. Trump Blows Up Housing Bill for SAVE Act—Because He’s Focused on the Elections. DJT Thinks He’s a UFC Fighter. Hegseth’s Pentagon Purge Continues. Good News for Independents in DC.  Flu Outbreak Sickens Hundreds of Troops. 

Mamdani is the new king of the Democratic Socialists, and he didn't get there by accident. He understood that closed primaries are a rigged game where the players are also the referees — and he played that game to perfection while more than a million New York City independents were locked out of the vote that actuall...

Iran Now Costs $80B! Giannis Antetokounmpo to Miami. Will Trump Jinx World Cup Fever?

The MAGA machine is cracking. Tucker Carlson — a 35-year Republican defender — just announced he won't support the GOP in the midterms. Marjorie Taylor Greene piggybacked within hours. Shawn Ryan, Joe Rogan, and others have already signaled the same. So what comes next? A more extreme Republican spinoff? A fake-independent rebrand in the RFK Jr. mold? A Tucker run with Tulsi Gabbard? Paul Rieckhoff delivers a hardcore Tuesday solo briefing on what the fractures inside Trump's base actually mean heading into the midt...

What About an Arc de Healthcare? Trump’s Destruction of Our Shared Symbols is an Attack on All of Us. World Cup Joy, Living in the New South, Friendly, Helpful Neighbors and Driving Across America. 

Henry Rollins doesn't do small talk. The punk icon, author, USO road dog, and longtime friend of the show returns from Nashville to deliver one of the most blistering hours we've recorded this year. He keeps dragging the conversation back to the number no cable network wants to sit with: 13 dead American service members, and countless wounded, from a war in...