Is Trump Softening on ICE? DHS Death Cards. w/Chuck Todd.

Summary

Independent Americans with Paul Rieckhoff

Episode: Is Trump Softening on ICE? DHS Death Cards.
Guest: Chuck Todd
Date: February 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Independent Americans dives deep into some of the most urgent political and cultural issues facing the U.S.: the ongoing controversies surrounding ICE under former President Trump, the alarming power play of corporate elites like Jeff Bezos over national institutions like The Washington Post, the evolving anti-corporate sentiment in American culture, and the growing influence and opportunity of independent politics. Paul Rieckhoff welcomes veteran journalist and commentator Chuck Todd to provide insights, historical perspectives, and some much-needed candor—along with a dose of optimism and NBA talk.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Anti-Corporate Mood, ICE, and Government Distrust

[02:17] Chuck Todd opens with commentary on the increasing anti-corporate sentiment across the political spectrum, connecting the dots between cultural moments (like interest in the Epstein files) and anger about how the wealthy operate above the law.

[03:07] Paul Rieckhoff highlights acute concerns about ICE’s actions:

• ICE agents allegedly leaving "death cards" with white supremacist roots in the vehicles of detained immigrants.
• ICE’s mistreatment of the public and even local police, with reports of federal agents detaining off-duty officers and drawing guns.
• A climate where ICE detains citizens, acts without warrants, and threatens the fabric of American values.

“If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. … ICE is detaining citizens. They’re leaving death cards. They’re not using warrants, they’re detaining kids. And this is where we are, America.”
— Paul Rieckhoff [06:41]

Rieckhoff urges listeners to "believe your eyes, not the government" amid escalating federal overreach.

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2. Media Under Siege: The Washington Post, Bezos, and Power

[09:38 & 36:45]
Rieckhoff and Todd examine the fallout from layoffs at The Washington Post and Jeff Bezos’s motivations for owning—and arguably gutting—the newspaper. They argue it’s not about profit, but raw political influence.

• Rieckhoff expresses outrage at the devastation in the Post’s Kyiv bureau and the worrisome notion that Bezos, with nearly limitless resources and ambitions beyond journalism, is willing to neuter the media as a power play.

“What if he wants, I don’t know, to be president one day after Trump? If you consider different goals, I think these moves make a bit more sense than what I’m hearing in a lot of the national media.”
— Paul Rieckhoff [11:46]

Chuck Todd’s historical breakdown:

• Bezos bought the Post in 2013 for "runway" and influence, not journalism.
• The real pivot was when federal contracting—and competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX—became central to his fortunes.
• Bezos’s recent actions neuter the Post so it’s no longer a threat or a platform for others; selling would mean giving up a unique lever of D.C. power.

“He is not buying the Washington Post to turn it into a business. At the time he used it, it was essentially like buying a lobbying firm…But then when it becomes a problem, let me shut it down.”
— Chuck Todd [40:01]

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3. American Decline and the New Gilded Age

The hosts repeatedly compare the current moment to dystopian fiction (notably Fallout and The Walking Dead), drawing parallels to real-world elite capture of democracy and global resources.
[30:06 & 33:17]

“If you’re rich enough, you can afford to survive, and if you don’t, you live in the wastelands, which is not that far from where it feels like for many people in America right now.”
— Paul Rieckhoff [33:25]

Chuck Todd emphasizes how Fallout, despite being fiction, feels prophetic given the rampant privatization and profit motives driving American policy and government.

“Profit motive can’t be part of decision making when it comes to what you do with a civilization—and yet that is, essentially, sort of the core…of Fallout. And I find that to be an incredibly important moment culturally, politically.”
— Chuck Todd [31:31]

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4. The Crisis and Opportunity of American Independence

[48:44 & 50:21]
Discussing the rise of independent politics—and referencing Jesse Ventura’s advice—both agree that independents could soon disrupt the binary political system, but only with a unique blend of celebrity and financial backing.

“Most people are not necessarily in the middle, but most people say it … they want something that’s an alternative to all of it.”
— Paul Rieckhoff [48:49]

Chuck Todd explains:

• The U.S. could function as a four-party system: business and nationalist wings on both the left and right.
• States with one-party dominance are ripe for independent breakthroughs.
• Mayors, often elected in nonpartisan races, still have the highest credibility and offer proof of concept for nonpartisan governance.

“The only elected officials in America that have credibility above partisanship are mayors. And you know why? Because 90% of mayors races are nonpartisan.”
— Chuck Todd [57:22]

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5. Memorable Quotes & Banter

On Meet the Press and changing media:

“Sunday morning television is sit-back television and weekday television is sort of interrupt-you television… You have to almost shout at people to get them to pay attention.”
— Chuck Todd [18:45]

On algorithmic media bubbles:

“The Internet makes it even harder because the algorithms don’t necessarily steer people to less comfortable places.”
— Chuck Todd [20:26]

On American history and crisis:

“We voters, we Americans, always eventually figure it out. As Churchill said, we’ll do the right thing after we’ve exhausted every other path. I just don’t know how many people have to die first.”
— Chuck Todd [27:18]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:17 – Chuck Todd’s take on rising anti-corporate sentiment and the Epstein files’ resonance
• 03:07 – 12:00 – Rieckhoff on ICE abuses, white supremacist death cards, and public outrage
• 36:45 – 46:30 – Deep dive: Bezos, The Washington Post, and the dynamics of power over principle
• 48:44 – Jesse Ventura’s independent candidacy formula and the billionaire/corporate threat
• 52:29 – Todd’s analysis of how independents can disrupt uncompetitive states
• 57:20 – Why mayors show that nonpartisan politics works
• 60:24 – Rieckhoff’s “Something Good”: NBA’s new generation as leadership examples
• 61:41 – 66:57 – Chuck Todd’s “Something Good”: The Wizards’ NBA resurgence and local pride

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Tone & Style

The conversation is frank, passionate, and occasionally darkly humorous—layered with pop culture, sports references, and dystopian analogies. Both hosts are incisive but manage to infuse optimism, always returning to the themes of civic duty, constructive outrage, and togetherness.

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “Don’t believe the government, don’t believe Trump. Believe your eyes. ICE is detaining citizens. They’re leaving death cards. They’re not using warrants, they’re detaining kids.”
  — Paul Rieckhoff [06:41]

• “Bezos probably cares more about power than money, especially given he has so much money. … What if he wants to be president one day after Trump?”
  — Paul Rieckhoff [11:46]

• “He is not buying the Washington Post to turn it into a business. … It was essentially like buying a lobbying firm…”
  — Chuck Todd [40:01]

• “If you’re rich enough, you can afford to survive, and if you don’t, you live in the wastelands.”
  — Paul Rieckhoff [33:25]

• “Fallout…was trying to study how do human beings reorganize themselves in crisis, right, and how you organize and the various experiments you end up doing…”
  — Chuck Todd [30:12]

• “The only elected officials in America that have credibility above partisanship are mayors.”
  — Chuck Todd [57:22]

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Summary Table of Main Topics

| Segment | Timestamps | Summary | |------------------------|-------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------| | Anti-corporate Mood & ICE | 02:17-12:00 | Todd and Rieckhoff on anti-elite sentiment & ICE abuses under Trump | | Media & Power | 36:45-46:30 | Bezos, The Post, and how power (not profit) shapes institutions | | Decline & Dystopia | 30:06-33:30 | Lessons from Fallout, privatization, and the real risk to democracy | | Independence & 3rd Parties | 48:44-59:12 | Barriers, billionaire/celebrity threats, mayors as model leaders | | Something Good | 60:24-66:57 | NBA role models & D.C. sports as cultural hope |

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Final Thoughts

Paul Rieckhoff and Chuck Todd deliver a nuanced, urgent discussion of America's civic crises—where private power subverts public institutions, where media, democracy, and rule of law hang in the balance, but where independent thinking, new leaders, and even sports offer hope and renewal. If you care about democracy's future and the fight for the American soul, this episode is essential listening.

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Listenership Takeaway:
You’ll come away outraged, informed, and oddly galvanized—reminded why vigilance, independent thought, and genuine leadership matter more than ever.

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Key Advice from Chuck Todd:
“Go read the Washington Farewell Address. Man, it is—it should, it’s the North Star for independent America.” [59:51]

Transcript

[Chuck Todd]

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[Chuck Todd]

The anti corporate vibe is really starting to amp up and I think the pitchforks are being sharpened left and right. This is something left and right agree upon, which is. I also think it's why there's extra interest in the Epstein files, which is, man, are the rules different for rich people? Are the rules different? If you have enough money, you can buy your foreign policy uae. If you have enough money, you can buy government regulation Nvidia and Palantir. And you know what's, you know what happens if that just never stops, if that accelerates.

[Paul Rykoff]

Welcome to independent Americans. Welcome to episode 4 34. I am your host, Paul Rykoff, coming to you from New York City, USA. It is Thursday, February 5th, the day after our Jesse Ventura interview. If you didn't check that out, YouTube audio, whatever, go back and check it out. I still feel like I got a little bit of a buzz from hanging out with Jesse Ventura, but we need that kind of energy. We need that kind of inspiration. It is still super bowl week and that can give us a little bit of energy as well. Even if the weather is cold where you are, here it is sunny and back to being cold, which is kind of like America right now, up and down and give and take. And as I told you yesterday, I'm going to pick a different musical artist that I introduce my boys to every day. Today's artist is Olivia Dean. We were kind of sleeping on Olivia Dean in this house, but she got best new artist at the Grammys. She's absolutely fantastic. And she has a really good song called Nice to each Other, which I think is a good song for us to try to spread, especially in times like these when folks tend to be divided a little bit and a bit concerned. But be nice to each other. And I'm going to bring you the five eyes. I bring you in every show, independence, integrity, information, inspiration and impact. And our guest coming up is going to bring that the great Chuck Todd. You know him from NBC, from media, from politics, also one of the nicest guys I've met in my many decades. He is, of course, now the host of the Chuck Todd cast. He was at Meet the Press and NBC for many years, driving the national conversation on all things politics. And he's also going to talk to me about his wizards and the big trade there's and everything happening in the news. But first, a ton coming up today that I got to make sure you're tracking on. Number one, don't believe the government. Believe your eyes. As ice continues to rampage across America, Trump kind of moderated his language a little bit yesterday, but didn't walk back calling Alex pretty and Rene good domestic terrorists. There have been 700 ICE agents pulled out of Minneapolis as we discussed yesterday with Jesse Ventura. But Meanwhile, more bad shit continues to come out almost every single day. And I wanna highlight something that Senator Hickenlooper highlighted in the testimony this week. He highlighted death cards that are being left behind by ICE agents. Cards with white supremacist history left in detained immigrants, abandoned cars. So imagine finding a family member with one of these cards in the driver's seat. This is the kind of like worst shit that we saw in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. If we did that in Iraq and Afghanistan, we, we would be reprimanded. But ICE agents are doing this. I think it's another sign of how toxic the culture is and how out of control ICE continues to be. And another example they continue to fuck with cops. Yesterday, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Burley reported that federal agents recently stopped an off duty officer demanding her paperwork wouldn't let her record and drawing their guns before she identified herself as a police officer. But don't believe the government, don't believe Trump. Believe your eyes. ISIS detaining citizens. They're leaving death cards. They're not using warrants, they're detaining kids. And this is where we are, America. I'm going to get into that. More with Chuck coming up. But if you're not angry, you're not paying attention. And if you're not angry, you're probably the minority in this country because everybody from second amendment advocates to far left protesters are pissed off at ICE because they're ripping our country apart. All right, another top news story that I've got to touch on. Savannah Guthrie, who also a longtime leader at NBC, continues to plead for the safety of her mother as the search enters the fifth day of the. She and her family have put out a very moving video as they continue to look for her 84 year old mother who is somewhere we don't know. But I think the country has really been captured by this. I think it's important for a number of reasons. Most of all because it reminds us that America has heart. They care about Nancy Guthrie because they feel like they know her. And there are still some stories that can crack through to the humanity of people. And I think people can relate to the pain that this family is experiencing. And we continue to send our prayers and information and we'll keep you updated there. All right. In contrast, there is the Insurrection act still looming. Fall elections continue to be meddled with and something I've, I've pushed on this show. Where is Tulsi Gabbard? I think it's always important to think about, where is Tulsi Gabbard. She was actually on this show in season one. As you know, I used to work with her before she turned into what she is now. But it looks like she was in Georgia last week doing shady shit around the elections. And now there's new reporting that she was also in Puerto Rico. Looks like she led some kind of an investigation into Puerto Rico's voting machines. This is from sources familiar with it. I think it's important to remember and don't forget that they're still holding Maduro in a jail here in nyc. No telling what they want to pin on him. And some folks have floated this idea that the Venezuelans or Maduro may have tried to tamper with our elections. Here's what you should know. Most of all, it looks like Tulsi Gabbard has been designated as the what the elections are. She's been below the radar. She's wearing like a spy hat, looking like a Bond villain. But watch this space. And we will continue to ask, where is Tulsi? Because where she ends up is usually bad news. All right, Trump continues to try to take over and piss off the Western Hemisphere. But there are some good news, pieces of good news that are a contrast. I don't want to pull one thing out. The Queen of the Netherlands has enlisted in the Army Reserves. And as a private, she said, because our safety can no longer be taken for granted. And she, like others, wants to contribute to that safety. This is really amazing. I mean, the queen is going in as a private in the Netherlands army. And I think this is what leadership looks like. It's in contrast to the White House. And I would say, what say you, Barron Trump? You're of age. The other Trump kids haven't served. And if you, your dad wants to send folks into Venezuela and any other number of places, you can follow the Queen's lead because Trump is all gas, no brakes, nothing is slowing him down. And that continues to include his attacks on the free press. We're going to talk about that with Chuck Todd, the perfect guest to help us pull it apart. But there continues to be Washington Post fallout, including the Kyiv bureau of the Washington Post was really hit hard. These are folks that are literally in a war zone, including Lizzie Johnson, who posted that she was laid off by the Washington Post in the middle of a war zone. She has no words and she's devastated. Just a couple of days she was talking about waking up with no power, heat, running water. The Washington Post continues to do really good work. And their foreign affairs work, I think is especially Important. I just want to say I think this is a disgraceful way of doing business. Shame on anyone in Lizzie's chain of command that okayed this crap. Thankfully, Dan Lamoth has posted that his national security team is intact, but he did, of course, send support to lots of his wonderful colleagues. Dan Lamoth is a vital team. Their crew, focused on national security veterans issues is still intact, but a lot of other folks aren't, including Jonathan Barron, who I want to call out. He's a visual forensics reporter and one of the few army vets that worked at the Washington Post. And the top line here, as I said yesterday, bad news for our democracy, good news for Trump. Another leader of the fourth estate has been weakened, which is bad news for America. And I think our enemies are celebrating the decreased coverage of national security, foreign affairs, and especially Putin. This is a really good day for Putin when less coverage is happening around what's happening in Kiev and other places. I also want to say something about Bezos that I'm really excited to get into with Chuck. People say, you know, he's going to lose a lot of money on this. Well, what if he has so much money that he doesn't care about these minute losses at the Washington Post and he's more focused on gaining power by ripping down the Washington Post, removing it as an obstacle to, to Trump and to himself. Because I think like most people, Bezos probably cares more about power than money, especially given he has so much money. But everybody wants power. And this is a power move and a bad one, but an effective one. So what if he wants, I don't know, to be president one day after Trump? If you consider different goals, I think these moves make a bit more sense than what I'm hearing in a lot of the national media. All right, going back to the Washington Post and things you're not hearing in the national media. The Washington Post continues to put out information about Iran's sweeping crackdown that left more than 6,800 people confirmed dead. Could be more. The death goal could reach over 11,000 people as Washington Post continues to show why they're so vital by covering the fallout of the regime actions in Iran. All right, back to Ukraine. Day 1443 of Russia's full scale invasion. Today, Zelensky put out information that is new. He says at least 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in Russia's war, with many missing. That is a huge number. I will continue to say it will never end until Putin is defeated or gone. And there is also related information to the Middle east and to Ukraine and to Russia. Today, the last remaining nuclear treaty between the US And Russia is set to expire because we don't have enough problems. All right. We talked about politics a lot yesterday with Jesse Ventura. We will continue to focus on independent candidates in particular. I hope you can spread that one far and wide because I think he reminds people that we are kind of the people's champions and we're not moving the needle. We are the needle. I'm going to get into more of that with Chuck in just a second. All right. Rounding the bend in culture, there is news about the intersection of culture, politics and and sports at the Olympics. Mariah Carey will be singing in Italian at the opening ceremony also, and Andrea Bocelli will be belting out at Arias in English, Italian, French and Spanish and doing a duet with Chris Stapleton, which maybe can give America a positive image to the world. And also Columbia's Carol G. But culture, politics, sports will all intersect starting next week. And finally, it is a Super bowl week, but there is a huge week of basketball news breaking this morning. Anthony Davis, the big man that's dominated much of basketball for years, is heading to the Washington Wizards along with Jaden Hardy, d' Angelo Russell and Dante Exum. Dallas is getting Khris Middleton, AJ Johnson, Maliki Branham, Marvin Bagley and a draft pick. The Wizards just got a whole lot stronger. This is still part of the extension of the Luka deal to the Lakers. This and remember, Harden went to Cleveland and the east just got a lot more interesting. But the east is looking strong as we saw last night. My Knicks in a thriller beat the Nuggets 134 to 127. Jalen Brunson again showing what leadership looks like and I think showing what meeting the moment looks like, which is what we're going to definitely have to do around news and politics this week with our guests coming up. Because now, even during super bowl week, even with the NBA, even with the deep freeze of February, it is now definitely a time to stay vigilant.

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[Paul Rykoff]

All right, Helping us do that, A man I've been eager to have on the show for a very long time. A guy who has been a voice of reason, conscience light, and always keeps it real. A guy who you know from podcasts, from media, from your television, and I hope from your inbox. Finally, joining us on Independent Americans, the great and powerful Chuck Todd is here. Welcome, sir.

[Chuck Todd]

Paul, it's a pleasure. You know, I come in here, your producer has a shaved head. You have a shaved head. You know, I am, I am hanging on to dear life, to what's remaining of my head of hair, and, you know, I almost feel bad. Should I have just gone? When do you make the move? When do you advise? What, what's your advice to me? When do I go all clean?

[Paul Rykoff]

You know what? I made the move in Iraq. I was like, because it was hot and everybody was like, shaving their heads and I was like, shit, this seems like the time to do it. So I went, I went for it in Iraq, I think I shaved my head for the first time.

[Chuck Todd]

You ever tried to grow it back?

[Paul Rykoff]

Not, not intentionally, no. Like, if I don't shave for a while, it comes back and, and it doesn't look that great, but it's kind of a commitment. And you look good, man. You had the beard before Democrats all started growing beards.

[Chuck Todd]

Yeah, no, I was, I bearded before. It was cool. I'd like to thank me. And, you know, I joined the Wolf gang, you know, Wolf Blitzer. We were the only two guys in mainstream television. You know, when I first started NBC, there a, one of the sports Dick Ebersol, who was the legendary sports executive, said, hey, you look like a Marxist. You should shave.

[Paul Rykoff]

Really?

[Chuck Todd]

I had a goatee at the time. And I'm like, man, I'll just look like another pasty white guy.

[Paul Rykoff]

Yeah.

[Chuck Todd]

And, and needless to say, I, I refuse to do it. You know, I, I not giving up the chin. My old man had a beard my, my whole life before he died. So, you know, in some ways I see the beard and every day I see my old man and I like that. So I keep it.

[Paul Rykoff]

That is, that is. That is good. And also, I think it also, you know, a lot of people in real life have beards. Right. I think it reminds me of like a football coach or somebody, you know, in your neighborhood. Like, you know, only people on TV for a long time were so clean shaven all the time and so buttoned up. So I honestly think it helped people connect with you. You might have been one of the only guys with a goatee too, outside of like professional coaching for a while now.

[Chuck Todd]

This, these days, right now, everybody, you know, it's. I think Covid completely changed, changed all of that.

[Paul Rykoff]

Can. I was looking in the way, way back machine getting ready for this conversation. I don't know if you remember, you know, I'd been on with you many years, but there was one time that always stands out with me, which was way back in 2012. One of the, I think one of the few times I went on Meet the Press and it was March 18, 2012. And do you remember who was on Meet the Press with us?

[Chuck Todd]

Trying to remember that was that, that. Because that was Gregory's hosting at the time would be.

[Paul Rykoff]

It was, it was really interesting. It was like when I was on Meet the Press the last time I was with John McCain and Westmore. John Krakauer. Yeah, yeah, John. John Krakauer was also on. I think we were talking about the anniversary.

[Chuck Todd]

Had to be talking about something with, with. With troops. You wouldn't have had that kind of focus.

[Paul Rykoff]

Yeah. Yep. It was right around the anniversary of the Iraq war. But it was, it was interesting to see John McCain was kind of in his. In his later days and Wes Moore was kind of an up and comer. But we had this really interesting conversation and I could feel, you know, Wes kind of meeting the moment. And now we reflect on that. He's the governor. He's out there doing all kinds of stuff. But it was a real interesting conversation in part two because I remember the way they used to do Meet the Press. They had like breakfast afterward.

[Chuck Todd]

Yeah, I know, I know. Well, cost cuts, man. Yeah. When that. That bad. Yeah. Let's just say there was a time there was even waiter. It was white glove service.

[Paul Rykoff]

I was there for that. And I bring that up.

[Chuck Todd]

By the time I took over, you know, we didn't have the white glove service anymore.

[Paul Rykoff]

I bring that up, though, because it was so civil. And I felt like Meet the Press was a place where People came together and respected the format in a big way.

[Chuck Todd]

No, that was. And I used to say, look, the show, you know, people would say, oh, it really is a two way street. Meaning, you know, I used to say Sunday morning television is sit back television and weekday television is sort of interrupt you television, meaning you're doing other stuff while you have the TV on. So you gotta almost shout at people to get them to pay attention. These, you know, you have to do breaking news developing now, right, Versus Sunday morning. It's a choice. You've decided. No, no, no, no. I'm going to sit down. I want to digest the week. I don't want to, you know, you've had your meal, you want to do that. So I was always mindful of that. And I always, every interview I tried to end on a positive note, no matter how contentious it got, I always usually did something with local sports because every elected official, even if they don't like sports, has to pretend they like sports, right? So just something a shout out a local community where they're from. And look, part of that was just simply, you know, they were a guest in, you know, in the house that I'm the custodian of. And, and you be polite, you thank them for coming, you know, you thank them for not making a mess, you know, because you want to, you want to make it available to everybody. And I think right now I really worry about this because, you know, that, that we make, I think people feel unwelcome if they think nobody, everybody on a program disagrees with them or something like that. And you've got to go out of your way to make people feel welcome now. And the Internet makes it even harder because of the algorithms don't necessarily steer people to less comfortable places. Right. Which arguably the reason why we have such a disconnect in this country is we're not make, we're not putting ourselves in a position to hear somebody else's uncomfortable point of view. And Sunday morning was actually a place. We all did that, we all agreed to do that. We do it in a civil way. But you understood where everybody stood. And then at some point, right, the way information is moved, these algorithms, we now avoid these hard conversations, but we dunk on people in our own little corners. But we don't have the uncomfortable. So why do you, you know, why are you so, you know, intent on doing this when it comes to the immigration issue? Well, hear them out. Let's hear their case before you condemn their point of view. And we have lost that. Right. And I. I don't know. We're not going to get back the old era, and I'm tired of trying to be nostalgic for it. I think what you're trying to do, what I'd like to think I'm trying to do, look, this is go. Go meet people where they're at. Don't try to hope people will come to you in an old format.

[Paul Rykoff]

Yeah, I think that, that, that's the advantage is now we can literally. I'm in my kitchen. You're in your really cool man layer with, like, you know, University of Miami thing. I can tell you like, like, this is real. I forgot to close this shade, and now the sun's coming in, so I'm gonna go over there.

[Chuck Todd]

No worries.

[Paul Rykoff]

I'm gonna close this because that's all right.

[Chuck Todd]

I got my dog laying. I got my dog laying next to me.

[Paul Rykoff]

She could get. There we go now. We fixed that. That's a little better, right?

[Chuck Todd]

It's all right. That's the beauty, right? I got my dog right next to me. She could easily jump into this frame if she gets a little bit.

[Paul Rykoff]

But it also. We have, you know, we don't have Viagra commercials slammed in. In between everything, and we can have a real conversation. And I think the fact that there are no hard timelines. I don't know who was in cable news told me once, you know, part of their. Their job is basically like being a timekeeper and they have to keep the shot clock in their head. Right. And you're a master.

[Chuck Todd]

That was. Can I just tell you, Paul? That was what made me just tired of Meet the Press, you know, when I left, because it was. I equate. I compared it to the issue with baseball before they changed the rules to speed up the game. We hit a point in baseball where everybody had the data. Everybody had the same data, and everybody knew. Right. And everybody was literally doing the same thing. And we had a lot of. It was monotonous. Well, the same thing with the way interviews work on cable TV or on conventional television. Everybody knows it's eight to 10 minutes. Everybody knows that the host has got to do these. And so the guest figured out, well, if I filibuster on the first answer, I probably have cut off two questions I have to. And, you know, they've got to get to their commercial break and their roundtable and their promotion of this and da, da, da, da, da. And just when an interview might be getting interesting, you're. You're done with it. And, you know, it used to be the tyranny of the following. I'd have a big guest, I'd only have a 15 minute window and, and we'd have this debate. Did I do one topic with eight good questions and go deep, or do you do eight topics? You know, two questions each of the topics. And like a speed dating and you know, the marketing side of people wanted the speed dating so you hit a variety of issues. I wanted the long form because I wanted to learn something. And you know, look, it is. The original programs were that it would be one interview, one guest for the whole show. Yeah, that's what it was in the 80s and 90s when you and I were kids. And we're not, you know, part of it is our attention span. Part of it's, yes, we're all conditioned. We gotta move after five minutes. Move it after five minutes. And yet I see yourself, myself, Joe Rogan, you go a couple hours. People seem to be fine with it. Look at Bill Simmons. So I think we were wrong about the viewer and we dumbed down television so much that the smart people left.

[Paul Rykoff]

I think that that's right. And your podcast is constantly in the top charts. We're chasing you. I told you, I'm trying to get there and knock on your door and we're getting closer. But I do think without being overly provocative, because if you look at the top of the charts, it's Shapiro and it's Candace and it's Megano. Today is back up to number two. Right.

[Chuck Todd]

Paul, you and I both could, we could trend tomorrow. We could trend right now. We could take some silly pot shot at Megan Kelly, at a Joe Rogan or whatever. You, you, you pick a fight. Like I saw somebody, somebody that's kind of lame and meaty. I don't want to give him attention. Was trying to pick a fight. I'm like, I know what you're trying to do. I have no interest. I'm just not going to engage that way. But in some ways, like I watch them and they've made a decision to acquire an audience in that form. But here's the problem. Who's in charge of your format? You are the audience. Right. I want to stay in charge. And you know, I'm here to tell people sometimes what they don't want to hear. And when you're doing what Megan and Ben and what Pod Save America guys are doing, you're suddenly allowing the audience to condition you, the host.

[Paul Rykoff]

Yeah, I think that that's really, really important because when I started the show, the, the one Thing I wanted to make sure I did was focus on national security issues that I felt like were underreported veterans, issues that obviously never get enough attention. But then the growing world of independent politics, and I want to hit all of those with you, but I also want to meet people where they. I want to ask you a question that I ask every guest. I don't want to pass this over. Chuck, tell us, where are you? And in these wild times, how are you?

[Chuck Todd]

Where am I? Metaphorically or physically at the moment?

[Paul Rykoff]

Both. I'll let you. You're the first one to ask that, so I'll say both.

[Chuck Todd]

Look, I'm. I'm in Arlington, Virginia, which for you real historians of Washington, D.C. is part of the original Washington, D.C. but the piece on the other side of the Potomac went back to Virginia at some point. So I'm in Arlington. I am a recovering Washingtonian, is what I like to say on that front. I'm doing great. I have. It's one of these. And I say this. I have the luxury to be concerned about the country. I have the luxury that I'm losing sleep over that because my life is good. My kids are good. They're in a great education. They're. Boom. I got a senior in college, a freshman in college. I got healthy family, you know, so it is. I understand. You know, some people say, hey, I. I'd be concerned about this, but I've got to pay my bills or I've got something. I got a crisis here. And I get that. But that's the. It's the hardest thing because people will ask me that question, how you doing? And I'm like, you know what? Personally, I'm doing pretty well. I'm excited being an entrepreneur again. You know, I really actually think what Jeff Bezos has done is only created more opportunity for what I'm working on. So I'm. I'm personally like. And yet, oh, my God. You know, I am. I am not confident in our financial system and how it's being rigged for the very top. I'm not confident about our government that feels like it is now for sale, that there's a for sale sign and that everything is for sale. Like, our foreign policy is for sale and all of this. And that's how. And I've probably watched one too many episodes of Fallout because I, like, look at that and go, wow, is this a warning? Should we be realizing what's coming? And I'm being a little facetious, but only a little, right? So I'm good. I am Very concerned about the country. But I will say this. I am very long term confident. I always say I'm short term pessimistic, long term optimistic. Because we voters, we Americans, always eventually figure it out. As Churchill said. Right. We'll do the right thing after we've exhausted every other path. I just don't know how many people have to die first. And I don't say that for drama's sake. It's true. You look at every moment in our history as a country where we've had these moments. Sometimes we had a. There has always been violence associated with these upheavals. The question is how much? And I know we'll get through this moment, but how. How much violence do we have to deal with before we sober up?

[Paul Rykoff]

I'm glad you say that, because this is a show where we've dealt in, delved deeply into the realities of war. We've had folks who are combat veterans, humanitarians, survivors of so many different kinds of conflict all around the world. And I think that people need to be grounded in the fact that nothing will happen without a cost. And that cost could come in a lot of forms. You could be on the losing end of that, you can be on the winning end of that. But the true transformation that is happening in this world is going to kill people. And I think we've been, you know, we've been lulled into complacency to think that it won't impact Americans. Right. I mean, we had nine, 11, which was a shock to the system, but then we had 20 years of patriotism light where other people's kids were fighting and dying, and we looked at conflict around the world, and now we have a real threat of violence in our streets. So when people ask me, how are you doing? I've been saying, well, better than our democracy. But I think that we have to understand that this is a moment for our country and for a new generation to meet. But that moment won't be without sacrifice, and that moment won't be without loss. But it will be worth it. Right in the end. And that's what decades of presidents haven't put out to the American people. Yeah, here's the goal, here's the cost, and here's why it's going to be worth it. Venezuela is the greatest, latest example where Trump just makes you think, hey, it's going to be easy. We can fly in with the Navy seals. Nobody's going to die. And if I want to take on Cuba or Iran or anyone else, it's going to Be like that too. So don't worry, go back to shopping on Amazon. But I'm glad you brought up Fallout. We, I actually was my something good a couple of weeks ago. How amazing is Fallout?

[Chuck Todd]

So, you know, it's funny, I, I was skeptical, right? I didn't start it at first when everybody else did. Yeah, I'm like, I'm just not, you know, my video gaming was always sports focused. Just always ditto with my son. Always, you know, I'll Madden with anybody. I'll, you know, love the college football, all that. I've just never got into these other, other video games. So I was a little skeptical and then, you know, frankly, you know, just kept reading about it, reviews and give it a shot. And it, it reminds me of the first five or six seasons of Walking Dead, which I loved and then Walking Dead just sort of got tired. But what I always loved about Walking Dead is what I love about Fallout. It is that it was trying to study how do human beings reorganize themselves in crisis, right. And how you organize and the various experiments you end up doing. Right. Walking Dead was really good at it. Some of them you had many authoritarian regimes, some you had super egalitarian, you had some that were identity based. Remember the all woman tribe that they had. And you're seeing the same thing with Fallout. So it's, it's good. I think the most fascinating part of Fallout for me politically, and it fits to where I think the country's politics is heading for the next decade, is the extreme anti corporate vibe it has, right? The fact that it's the, the politicians were, it were bystanders because they got bought off essentially and they handed all of their, all of the government's decision making and resources to private enterprise. Right. And it's the extreme example of it in Fallout. But to me that's the lesson to take away. Like how does, what is, what are the, what are the producers? What are the writers potentially trying to tell us? Some of them may not even be trying to do that. They're just sort of writing a good story. That's what I'm taking away from it, which is, hey, you do not want to put. Profit motive can't be part of a decision making process when it comes to what you do with a civilization. And yet that is exactly essentially sort of the core, it's the origin story of Fallout. And I find that to be an incredibly important moment culturally, politically. Because I've noticed this, right, A lot of current culture, I always. Culture is always meeting, trying to Meet the moment in some form. The anti corporate vibe is really starting to amp up. And I think the pitchforks are being sharpened left and right. This is something left and right agree upon, which is. I also think it's why there's extra interest in the Epstein files, which is, man, are the rules different for rich people? Are the rules different? If you have enough money, you can buy your foreign policy uae. If you have enough money, you can buy government regulation Nvidia and Palantir. And you know, what's, you know what happens if that just never stops. If that accelerates, where does that head? And that, to me is the lesson you can get out of Fallout. If you, if you, if you're, if you watch it for that, I'm so.

[Paul Rykoff]

Glad we got into it. It's going to be a perfect transition into our top topic. But before we do that, I think, you know, I love sci fi and, and I, I've always had an interest in anything dystopian. I think that's part of growing up in the 80s, all the way back to, you know, the day after, you know, when I was growing up.

[Chuck Todd]

Red dawn, day after America with a K. Remember that one?

[Paul Rykoff]

I, I read enough and I watched enough and I was frankly like educated enough to know to be scared of those things. Right, right. And that was what, what scared me. But came in, which I thought was a brilliant dystopian vision for what could happen around the cultural components. But fallout, I think you're hitting it right on the head. I mean, it's a rebellion against or a criticism of the rich. Right. And a world where you want to eat the rich, but you can't because they're literally locked in vaults for folks who don't know the show. The rich basically create a nuke war and hide out in fallout shelters and everybody else dies. Right. And if you're rich enough, you can afford to survive, and if you don't, you live in the wastelands, which is not that far from where it feels like for many people in America right now. Which brings me to our top topic. This is why I was eager to have you on today, especially Chuck. And I want to dig into the Washington Post. And I want to dig into it from a macro standpoint because there's a lot of folks who, understandably, we all have friends at the Washington Post. We all appreciate the Washington Post, but I want to put something else out because people keep talking about how much money Bezos is losing. What if Bezos doesn't care? What if Bezos's goal is different. I think this is where a lot of people are kind of losing the plot. I think the goal for Trump is power. It's all about power. Everything he does is about power. Right. And anything else is friction. And when you're as powerful as Trump, you can focus on more power. And when you're Bezos and you have enough money where it doesn't matter how much money you lose at Washington Post, you can deliver the removal of an opponent right on the chessboard. And I think if you look across the broader strategy of the war he's had on the Fourth Estate, going back to changing X Twitter to X, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR and, and, and PBS and Kimmel and Colbert and CBS and the Washington Post, it's literally like a list of targets that he's working his way down and he's winning, Chuck. Right? Oh, yeah. And if you look. And if you look at. Look at maybe X as a dystopian vision for what CBS can become, for what Washington Post can come. Because I think there's an assumption that Bezos. I'm going to say this, that he's a good. That maybe he's a good guy. What if he's not a good guy? Right. Let's flip the table and assume the most dangerous course of action, which is what we do in the military. What if what he wants is the most power possible? He wants to assume that he can get closest to Trump and he can knock out some targets for him, and maybe one day he wants to be president. And if you want to be president and you want to be authoritarian, you want to have a lot of money, you want to remove anything that's in your way, and the Washington Post would be a good thing to take down. So I just want to put that out to you as, I think, a failure of imagination. That's happening especially across the media, not just around national security. Because I was one of the guys who said, yeah, he's going to hit Venezuela and I think he'll try to topple Cuba. And I think he's serious about Greenland because he wants it all. He wants the moon. He's grew indispicable. Me. Right? He wants to rule the world, and, and so do others. They don't want any friction. So let me put that out to you and ask you, what if Bezos's strategy is to take down the Washington Post?

[Chuck Todd]

So I would argue so you and I are aligned here, but I'm going to. I'm going to tackle this from A different timeline. And this is, this is what I did on my podcast earlier this week, trying to explain where this started. Right. And I, I went back and I began on the day he debuted in front of the Washington Post staff. Jeff Bezos is interviewed by Bob Woodward on, in, in 2013. And he's got to answer a simple question. So why'd you do it? Why'd you want to buy this? Right? And, and I want to read the quote because it's, it really is damning. So I'm going to read it directly. So this is, again, it's 2013. He's the new owner. Woodward in front of the entire newsroom. By the way, Jeff Bezos still hasn't addressed the Washington Post newsroom since he decided to cut it. But this is in 2013. He goes, why'd you do it, Bezos? I finally concluded that I could provide Runway Financial Runway because I don't think you can keep shrinking the business. You can be profitable and shrinking and that's a survival strategy. But it ultimately leads to irrelevance at best and at worst it leads to extinction. So this is what 2013 Jeff Bezos said about why he chose to buy the Washington Post. Now let's actually remind people what was happening in Jeff Bezos life in 2013. Right before then he was made a very high profile, almost American Idol style game show out of bidding for the second headquarters of Amazon. Remember cities all over the country. Your Detroit, your St. Louis's your Chicago's, your New Yorks and Arlington and Crystal City and D.C. right. Everybody was bidding for this. And I remember as a political guy, I was hoping, I was really worried that the tech world was frankly being seen as too blue and not enough red. And I was like, I really hope St. Louis needs this. St. Louis is a, is a, is a city literally geographically in the center, but also politically sort of in brings red and blue America together. And I thought St. Louis would be a great spot for this, etc. And it was. I've got some ties to St. Louis. I just. St. Louis, I wish we gave it the same attention we gave to Detroit when it was failing. St. Louis is just a, it's a struggling city and it's a bummer. But what did he choose? He chose D.C. and then what did we understand? A majority of the Amazon business were Pentagon contracts. Single most important thing. So you know, Amazon's business frankly might have started in Seattle, but the most important clients were the federal government. So he decided, I've got to move a second Headquarters right here. So what does he do if I'm going to be here a lot? He then purchases a trophy called the Washington Post to put on his mantle. And what does that do? It gives him entree into the Washington community. It means he's hosting all the big players and it's an asset for his businesses. He is not buying the Washington Post in order to turn the make the Post a business. He told you that in 2013, right? At the time he used it, it was essentially like buying a lobbying firm. But instead of buying a lobbying firm, you bought the biggest mouthpiece you could find in the Washington metro area, the Washington Post. It gave him immediate gravitas, immediate entree. So the Washington Post is an asset to those businesses until it isn't. Right. So he sticks by the Post, sticks by the Post, sticks by the post. Then 2021, 2022 comes along. First of all, as a business, they totally missed the moment. The New York Times and the Post were neck and neck on traffic. The New York Times takes their Trump 1.0 financial gains and reinvests it, buys the athletic, expands its bandwidth, tries to essentially Trumpify their business. Hey, we've got to make a way to, to, to make it so that we're not always reliant on the crazy man, orange haired man, to drive traffic. We've got to have a variety of ways. And they diversify their business.

[Paul Rykoff]

More videos, they broke into gaming, they're doing more culture.

[Chuck Todd]

And what happened this week? They put out a report. They're making money. Yep. They're on their way. They're going to have 15 million subscribers. They have transformed that business. Washington Post does none of that. And then they kind of miss the mark. And then Elon Musk happens. Right. And I bring up Elon Musk for a reason. Because after Amazon, the second most important thing in Jeff Bezos life is Blue Origin and space. And there is. He cannot have any success if he doesn't have government access. It doesn't have access to the government space resources. And he realizes Elon Musk is all in with Trump. First it's Desantis and Trump, but he's realizes Musk has got, he's all in. He is, he is the guy. He's already probably got better technology and you know, SpaceX was beating Blue Origin on the tech front left and right. And so it was suddenly he realized, I've got to get in good. So it's at that moment he's like, I've got to right wing ify my paper a Little bit, or at least do something. So he hires a Murdoch guy. And Will Lewis. Will Lewis is really just sort of a traffic guy at best, meaning he's a clickbait guy. He tries a few things. They all fail. Because the Washington Post is not a clickbait organization. It's a. It's. It's got a different. It's got a different DNA. And the local community also cares about it a lot. So they kind of whiff here, whiff there, and eventually it's. It's, you know, becoming. It's hemorrhaging. So the smart thing to do would be to sell it. But then you ask yourself, why isn't he selling it? Well, I go back to the first question. He was never bought it for profit. He bought it in order to exert influence in Washington. And now the best way to exert influence in Washington is to shrink it, neuter it. Because if he sells it to Kara Swisher or to a group that I'm involved in or anybody else, or Marty Barron, right? There's a lot of us that have been like, yeah, we'll do it, please. You know, we can go find some wealthy people to back us. We're happy to sort of save this. It's not just saving the institution. I think there's smarter ways to build a business here. But he won't do it. And so then you realize he made a business decision. But it's not for the business of journalism. It was for the business of getting into. Getting into orbit. Low Earth orbit, getting to the moon. He realized the only way he was going to have. And what happened this week, Pete Egseth made his first visit to Blue Origin, where Jeff Bezos was there for a handshake. So you and I are sort of aligned in that. I think we both see it the same way. I just think Bezos motivation was originally. If having a great, thriving newspaper was good for his business, then he would do that when it became that, it was a problem. All right, let me shut it down.

[Paul Rykoff]

Yeah. And NASA scrubbed a launch this week, right. Which I'm sure Elon is celebrating and maybe Bezos is celebrating. But I think it always comes back to one thing that I think people miss. And I learned this from Les Gelb and from. So it's about power, right? And to move forward, what you want to do, you need power. So if you look at what is the power move here? The power move is to buy the Washington Post. The power move is to not give a shit if it wastes money and the power move is if it bites your hand, you put a tighter leash on it and you control it and you keep it. If. Even if. Even if people offer you a ton of money because you want to control it and you don't want anyone else to have it. Right? And I think that's really, really important. When you look at what these guys want to do is. What they want to do is whatever they want. And anything that's in their way either has to be absorbed or crushed. And that's Trump's strategy all along. I think Epstein, he wants to push it to the side because it's friction. He wants to keep going faster and further before he dies. Right. And anything else that can propel that vision and that assumption of more power is part of his plan. That includes the Insurrection Act. That includes pissing off Greenland. He's all gas, no brakes, and anything that's friction has to be absorbed or eliminated. And I think you brought up something else that's really important. A lot of these private sector guys all of a sudden saw what the federal budget looks like. I had these conversations with tech people about the VA for years. Hey, do you guys know how big the VA budget is? Do you know it's second only to the Pentagon? We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in the last 10 years. They all woke up and now they have contracts at dhs, they have contracts at dod, they have contracts at va, which I will always say is the veterans industrial complex. There is the military industrial complex at the Pentagon. But the VA is also massive and increasingly privatized. So it's all about this consolidation that leads us toward potentially fallout. Right?

[Chuck Todd]

I mean, that's exactly Fallout. The show. Exactly, yeah.

[Paul Rykoff]

Which is on. It's on Amazon, isn't it?

[Chuck Todd]

On Amazon? How the irony of that. I mean, I guess Amazon, Chuck, it's on the Amazon. I know, right? It's all circulated. And you're like, I guess he. He's in on the joke, huh?

[Paul Rykoff]

Look, I mean, look, I think at some levels, you got to respect the game, but you also got to understand the game they're playing. And these guys do not have a failure of imagination. They want to go to Mars. They want to, like, drop, you know, couches off your house and drones in 12 hours. I mean, these guys have done incredible things. And I think we have to remember that going back to a conversation you and I have had a lot, there is a loss of core American values in this country, especially among business leaders, especially who never served in the military, never had to sacrifice, didn't have the connective tissue. Right. We've got a generation of what maybe Scott might call like, like the patriotic freeloaders. Right. The Democratic freeloaders. Right. Galloway talks about this and he was on my show.

[Chuck Todd]

But what about the problem that essentially the Magnificent Seven. Right. That Wall street likes to.

[Paul Rykoff]

Yeah.

[Chuck Todd]

They're basically the size of, they're, they're bigger than most countries.

[Paul Rykoff]

Yeah.

[Chuck Todd]

And they operate increasingly. And by the way. So then when Donald Trump is no longer advocating. Right. He's advocating this sort of go it alone foreign policy, which then every. If, if everybody is. If it's survival of the fittest, well, these big tech companies are going to say, okay, they, they're not bound by American law anymore or even American norms. And we'll go ahead and do, you know, play by the Chinese rules to do business there and we'll play by Saudi's rules to do business there, play by Russia's rules to do business there. When, when there was some cohesive sort of a moral code to the economic order, which is essentially what the G7 attempted to do, to bring some sort of ethics and morals to a capitalistic small d democratic order. You know, it would be, well, yeah, I could go make a bunch of money, but that'd be unpatriotic. That'd be anti America. That would be against the interests of America. But if the President of the United States has put his own profiteering ahead of everything else, well then what, what do you expect corporate America to do?

[Paul Rykoff]

And somebody like Elon Musk can call somebody like Senator Mark Kelly, astronaut, Armed Services Committee member, a traitor. Right. I mean, this is kind of where we are is, I think, truly fighting for the soul of the American experience, the American experiment. But the core values that our grandparents built this country around, I think are under attack most of all. And let me ask you, this is a good transition. I want to go to something below the radar. Yesterday we had Jesse Ventura on and we talked about the power of independent politics. You have been on this. You've understood this before. Many folks in the media understood it. Many folks in the media forget that Jesse Ventura won.

[Chuck Todd]

Right.

[Paul Rykoff]

They forget the impact of Ross Perot. They don't know that Yemi Mobilade is the mayor of Colorado Springs and Tim Kelly is the mayor of Chattanooga. And most people are not necessarily in the middle, but most people say it, all right? They want to, they want something that's an alternative to, to all of it. Now, Jesse yesterday said something important. He said, you need two things if you're going to run as an independent, he said, you need celebrity or something that can get attention and you need enough money to do TV right now, of course, authenticity, independence, populism, all of that. But he's right. And it's what's kind of been missing among most of the recent independent candidates.

[Chuck Todd]

Correct.

[Paul Rykoff]

Veterans are kind of a different play on that, right? Because they've got a degree of celebrity and integrity. But Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Mark Cuban and any other number of billionaires are just a step away from saying, fuck it, I'm gonna run for governor of Texas or I'm gonna run for president or I'm gonna run for the Senate. And they are in a place where this is kind of the evil side of the independent movement, right? Or the opportunistic. We talk a lot about how 45% of the American public is independent and the Democratic Party and Republican Party are failing. This is an opportunity. And I talk about veterans and other patriotic folks who are stepping up, but it's also an opportunity that RFK Jr. Kind of took advantage of for a little while and many others as well. Let me ask you this. What do you see as the opportunity? And I'm not talking about five, ten years from now. I'm talking about this year going into the midterms. We've got potentially viable Senate candidates in Montana and other places. And what do you see as the opportunity for the next presidential.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, look, it all depends on sort of. I will like. My larger motivation is I just think the two parties are too big. And I think we actually should be a four party system. I think you have basically two. If we were in Europe, the Democratic Party would be split in two and the Republican Party be split in two. You'd have sort of a business wing and a nationalist wing. You'd have a business wing and a progressive wing on each side and the left and right and some to be. To simplify it. So you do have that issue. What both Perot and Ventura did as successful independent candidates, and I call Perot successful, even though he didn't actually win, but he was successful, is that they changed the. They made the two parties change who they were for a bit and be a little bit more responsive one way or the other. I always said Perot made Bill Clinton and the Democrats a little more sensitive to the debt and Perot made Republicans a bit more sensitive against free trade. Right? Hey, guys, free trade isn't always the answer here. Be careful. And so then it began. The realignment of both parties, ironically. Now, I would, I would say they've both overcorrected. Right. And then they've. And which is what's made, you know, when some people say, boy, I don't. The Democratic Party doesn't feel like my party, or the Republican Party doesn't feel like my party, it's because it has been transforming. They literally, you could make an argument over the last 50 years, they've essentially switched places. And you're starting to see that a little bit. But I think where the power of the independent comes from are in these places where there is no competition between the two parties, where you have almost, you know, either all blue or all red. Right. In a state legislature or in the congressional delegation. And it's going to be. And so this is where, where the brands of each party, like nobody. I think it's ridiculous that anybody's trying to run as a Republican for governor of California if you want to run as an independent. And just like I think it's ridiculous for a Democrat to try to run statewide in Idaho, run as an independent. So you see, for instance, Idaho is a pretty strong independent Senate candidate. I've, I've interviewed him, Todd Achilles, and.

[Paul Rykoff]

He'S been on his.

[Chuck Todd]

You got South Dakota. You've got obviously Nebraska with Dan Osborne.

[Paul Rykoff]

Ryan Bangs in South Dakota. We've got Osborne in Nebraska.

[Chuck Todd]

Obviously, you know, to me, they're six. You know, if they get into the 40s, that's a win. Yeah. I think on any of those cases, and it should be a warning sign. And then maybe it wakes up the Democratic Party in that state and says, you know what? Why don't we create a South Dakota Democratic Party? That's South Dakota first. But here are Democratic values versus allowing yourself to be branded by the national party. Right. That's an issue. So I do think opportunities, especially right now, the distrust in both parties is huge. And I do think just the word independent has a halo effect, right, for us in media because of the corporate collapse, corporate ethics collapse that we've had, whether it's Disney paying off the Stephanopoulos lawsuit, which was just devastating. The legacy media, what Disney did there, that is a stain on Bob Iger's legacy. That was a First Amendment case that would have been open and shut, and instead he paid Trump off and I don't know, thinking it was going to help him down the road. And of course, with Donald Trump, I say go read the children's book. If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll always keep coming back for More of that cookie. So I. You look at the numbers, it's there. Obviously there is a barrier to entry for independent candidates. That's problematic, which is why I agree with Jesse that celebrity probably matters more than I wish it did. And I think in a presidential for sure, you need a little bit of celebrity. I was a Bill McRaven guy. I really wanted him to run in 24. The make your bed speech. It's so funny. I talk about this all the time. When I give a speech, I'll say, you know, I do think we really could use a strong candidate that could sort of reset us. A Washington or an Eisenhower that's sort of above the partisanship to sort of reset the country. Parties are going to be there. We can't get rid of them. But to do a little reset. And I said, you know, Bill McRaven was my guy. And I see people go, Bill McRaven, make your bed speech. Everybody knows to make your bed speech. It's amazing. And I'm like, you watch that speech and you say, how about that As a role model for American values? How about that? Right? So I do think we need that. The question I have for you, Paul, is, you know, who can fill that role? When we were kids, Aali Iacocca was seen as a good guy, and we thought the business community were good guys. Right now, the independent world does not trust corporate America. And I understand why they don't. I don't right now. So you're. We're not gonna. I don't know if Mark Cuban's the answer. I think he's. He might be better at it than most. I. We saw Howard Schultz fall on his face trying to do this. Yep. So I, and I. Part of me thinks that there's a little bit of distrust of rich people to a degree. You know, it almost. You know, and that's why I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm skeptical, I think, of somebody with a Ventura profile. Makes a lot more sense. Right. You know, maybe it's the Rock, you know, maybe it's gotta be a blue collar celebrity. Can't be a white collar. Can't be George Clooney.

[Paul Rykoff]

No, I think, I think the opportunity. I still think the opportunity is wide open because you've got a dramatically underserved market, which is almost the majority. It's 60% of young people, a high percentage of almost every demographic you look at. And I think we are one billionaire or one major celebrity away from a breakthrough moment. And when I talk about the billionaire. I mean there is no Koch brothers for the independents and unaffiliated. There is no George Soros for independents and unaffiliated. There are a lot of them talking about it. Elon has flirted with it, right? But the moment someone starts to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into open primaries, into campaign finance, into level the playing field and then helping the players get on it. And we think that veterans are the tip of that spear. That's why we launched Independent Veterans America. You mentioned those guys especially because they can win at the local level. But then we're also a celebrity away because if Matthew McConaughey runs in Texas, he's gonna get some attention, right? If. I don't know if Ben Cohen from Ben and Jerry's runs in Vermont. Right. I mean it's kind of a.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, we saw with Arnold.

[Paul Rykoff]

But if you find a local solution to each of those problems and you have the right mix of celebrity, anti establishment, because what they're really the real opportunity is to say fuck both parties. The Democrats have failed you, the Republicans have failed you. You can't trust any of them. But here we are a new generation of leaders who are not just in the middle of the, but are none of the above. That's the populism we see especially good populism at like school board level for mayors, for people that are at the point of attack. I really think we're like very close to, you know, a breakthrough moment.

[Chuck Todd]

I'm such a huge advocate of open primaries because first of all, I think it's an. I think it's unconstitutional for taxpayers to vote to pay for a primary where I have to join a private club to participate in that taxpayer funded primary. I believe we used to call that a poll tax. So I don't understand how that works. But if you look right now the only elected officials in America that have credibility above partisanship are mayors. And you know why? Because 90% of mayors races are nonpartisan. All voter primaries. And it's, you know, I saw it in my own hometown of Miami Dade County. Our county mayor is the power. Carlos Jimenez, he's a conservative Republican congressman from the area. Before that he was mayor. When he was mayor, nobody knew his politics, how ideological he was because his voters were the whole county. And he governed to the whole county. When he became a member of Congress, he governed to those. He became very conservative because that's who elected him. I don't say this to criticize Jimenez. I say this to remind people of how representative democracy actually works, the politician will be responsive to the voters that put him in office. And if you create an ideological set of voters to put somebody in office, then how do you think they're going to respond? And if you use, if it's the entire electorate that is, that you have to worry about in your community, well, guess what, right? Why are the swing, why are those that are in the 50, 50 states or the 50, 50 districts the most so called moderates? Because that's who puts them in office. Politicians are not good or bad. It all depends on whether the incentives are good or bad. And if there are good incentives, politicians will do good things. And when there are bad incentives, even good people will behave badly.

[Paul Rykoff]

That's a great point to end this segment on and get to something good. But before we do, I want to thank you because you have been really knowledgeable and respectful about open primaries, about unaffiliated voters, about giving airtime and support to these conversations that a lot of folks in the media just dismiss. I think calling independents spoilers all the time is ignorant, but it's also kind of slanderous. Right? And I think the future is independent. And the good part of this is that that's where I think our country started. I think most folks would consider themselves born independent and they get pulled in one way or another. But I think it's a very exciting opportunity. I say, look, you want to, you.

[Chuck Todd]

Want to feel better, you want to feel better about how you, about your being independent, go read Washington's. Anytime you feel down in the dumps, go read the Washington farewell address. Man. It is, it should, it's the North Star for independent America.

[Paul Rykoff]

Yep.

[Chuck Todd]

Yep.

[Paul Rykoff]

Well, this, this, this show is trying to at least draft off that North Star. And we always want to focus on something good. And I think I got something that's going to build on that and I'll come to you in a second. But I got something good.

[Chuck Todd]

Something good.

[Paul Rykoff]

I think we talk about the power of, of example and I want to call out a really positive example. And it's the NBA. I think that sports gets, gets, gets railroaded a lot, gets shit on a lot. But I think there are a lot of leaders in the NBA, especially among the next generation of voices that are positive role models, that are good examples. Everybody from Jalen Brunson to Jokic to Weber Yama speaking out last week about ice. I think that there is a culture and a community of leadership that understands their role as leaders and especially global leaders now where so many young people look up to them so if you want to talk about somebody who could run for office as an independent. Yeah, LeBron could run when he finally retires. I mean, Jalen Brunson, I said, this would have destroyed everybody if he ran for mayor of New York City. But there is a generation that's leading the right way, and I think they have a social conscience, and they're not holding back their voices at a time when we need them most. So I'm going to celebrate the NBA and this new generation of leaders, and I think we're going to see a similar type of role model come out of the Olympics at a time when Americans need to put forward a really positive example. Look to the Olympics for something good. But right now, my something good is the NBA. All right, Chuck Todd, over to you. What do you got? That something good, other than Anthony Davis, who just landed in D.C. which you gotta be pretty excited about.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, I'll say that. You know, look, it was such a weird day. Like, the community of Washington is. I'll just be honest. It's been a weird time to live. Live in Washington over the last year. There's times it felt like an occupied territory. I say that not to be. I'm not trying to be dramatic. It's just strange, right? You're, like, walking around, why are there people in fatigues picking up garbage? And then there would be times I'd be in other parts of the city. I'm like, why aren't those guys over here? Why are they only performing for the tourists? But I think that was the feature, not the bug, right? As we learned. I am going to say there's something good is the Wizards, because I'll be honest with you, the sports in D.C. has been nothing but disappointment, right? The Nats have just been a disastrous. The owner is vacillating between selling and not selling. And when you're in that mode, your. Your franchise atrophies. And that's an atrophied franchise. We. We literally. We started a rebuild. Then it's like they ran out of money. And then you're like, oh, look, they found new money again, and they're knocking down the house and rebuilding it again. And you're like, my God, that house is going to be under construction in my neighborhood for a decade. The Wizards, out of nowhere, Trey Young and Anthony Davis in the last month, I'll be honest, I'm like, I'm going to go get my season tickets again. I was season ticket holder for the Wizard. I kind of gave up a couple years ago because I couldn't give them away. I couldn't give away these tickets. My son loves the NBA. He's in Dallas going to college right now. So he's obsessed with Cooper Flag. He's more of a Devin Booker guy, but he just loves the NBA. He was so ecstatic about the Wizards. The Wizards haven't had. Let's be honest, there's been nothing to be. I was at.

[Paul Rykoff]

Is this the biggest moment for the Wizards since Michael Jordan?

[Chuck Todd]

Well, not. Look, I'm not going to say that yet because I was at the most exciting Wizards game maybe since they actually won a title in 78, which I was not at. I was 6. And not living in this community was when John Wall and Beal were healthy for long enough time that they got. They. They won an infamous Game 6 against the Celtics at home and forced a Game 7. And it looked like they were on their way to the Eastern Conference finals. They were going to lose to LeBron. But it would have been really cool to like the Wizards hadn't been to the Eastern Conference finals since they'd won a title. And John Wall hits the game winner. We had game six and we were in that arena. It was the year before the Nats won the World Series. And I remember saying this the most. It was the most exciting game I'd ever attended in Washington. Then we got the World Series and the Stanley cup and of course that quickly over overdid that. But that's the point. Wizards memories, Paul, are like, well, we won game six. Let's not talk about getting blown out in game seven by an Isaiah Thomas led Celtics team. Yeah, we had the Gilbert Arenas years, which most people just remember for the handgun incident.

[Paul Rykoff]

Right?

[Chuck Todd]

And then we somehow had Chris Weber in between periods in his career where he was awesome. We didn't get the awesome version. We got the guy who got pulled over for getting high on 395.

[Paul Rykoff]

You guys have had some hard, hard runs in Washington. I mean, and there's also.

[Chuck Todd]

So I have to say I. Look, Anthony Davis is injury prone and I'm like, sure, we'll get him and he'll never play 50 games again. But the idea that the, you know, like you said, suddenly the east, you know, you put a healthy trae young Anthony Davis, Alex, if Alex Saar figures out how to use his body. Learning from Anthony Davis counter. Oh, man, it's interesting. And in the east, right, there's the Knicks, the Cavs and everybody else, right? Yeah.

[Paul Rykoff]

And Detroit. I mean, like, look, and the Celtics. I mean, it's Wide open. And I think, you know, Washington has had a really hard. I mean, everything from, like, the rebranding from the Bullets to, you know, Snyder refusing to change the name, and then it became the Washington football team. And, you know, the RG3 side, you guys have had some hard.

[Chuck Todd]

No. And Jaden. And now already, even with Jaden Daniels, a little bit of hope. And now you're like, oh, is he RG4? Right? Like, you're there. There's all sorts of.

[Paul Rykoff]

Still, I mean, I can't root for Trey Young, so it gives me one more reason to dislike Washington.

[Chuck Todd]

He. He is a good. He's a good visitor to Madison Square Garden, right? MSG loves to hate on Trey.

[Paul Rykoff]

Oh. I mean, you know, I don't know who would get more boos in msg. Trae Young or Donald Trump right now. I mean, I don't know. It would be close. But look, man, you are always an awesome guest and an awesome conversation, and I just want to thank you as something good for all you've done for this democracy, and especially all the years you covered veterans stuff and foreign conflict and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You've always kept your eye on the ball for America, and that's really something good. And I'm grateful for your continued leadership and your sacrifice and the public service that you've done for a long time, Chuck.

[Chuck Todd]

Well, Paul, you're kind to say that, but, I mean, look, I'm a big admirer of yours. And you. You. You lean in, you lead with your heart and your head at the same time, which is unique in this world. And it's actually really, really inspirational and motivational.

[Paul Rykoff]

Well, thanks, man. That's why I got no hair, because I'm just. The hair is burning off.

[Chuck Todd]

You're all head and heart together, and it's all right. You know, that's what America needs, to be smart and empathetic.

[Paul Rykoff]

We're all. We're all in it together, man. And I thankful for all you're doing. Check out Chuck's Todcast. I will be on there soon, maybe next week. But follow him on all that he does and especially check out his. His podcast, where you can continue to get his insights, wisdom, and I hope, more NBA analysis, because there you go.

[Chuck Todd]

Declare your independence.

[Paul Rykoff]

There you go. Don't just go all the way and become a Wizards fan. All right, thank you, Chuck Todd. The great and powerful Chuck Todd. There he is, folks. It has been a wild week already. We had Jesse Ventura yesterday. We had Kevon Schrop earlier in the week and tomorrow we're going to finish with a big Football Friday.

[Chuck Todd]

Football.

[Paul Rykoff]

A pre Super Bowl Football Friday with Rachel Maddow. She will be here and it'll cap off another big week. As I mentioned earlier, we're trying to catch Chuck Todd on the charts. So please follow, subscribe, check us out on Substack, but especially on YouTube and Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review America is divided. But more than ever we are here at Independent Americans working to change that, adding light to contrast to heat and keeping it real. So if you're among the now 45% of Americans who are independent, welcome. This is your show. Or even if you're just independent, curious, or even if you're a Wizards fan, our independent movement is hope for the Future. Country over party, people over politics, light over heat, challenging the status quo and fueling a new movement that is growing that Chuck Todd was among the first to see. And we're bringing hope that is the oxygen of democracy. So if you enjoyed this episode with Chuck Todd, please share it far and wide and invite others to declare their independence. And stay vigilant, my friends, because eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. And no, you're not alone in your vigilance. We're all vigilant and we're all in this together. And I hope you feel that this week with our guests especially. I'm your host, Paul Reop. Thank you for tuning into Independent Americans. I will see you tomorrow for a big pre Super Bowl Football Friday with Rachel Mattow. Until then, enjoy the NBA and stay vigilant.

[Chuck Todd]

America tells me the left and right are dreams for those without a clue and when you wait it's time to grow and it's not cool to believe in school but if I can say one thing I've seen the children up the revolution and the good trouble they can bring he says the red and blue are dead and independent is an attitude an island in the sea of rhetoric and I can probably go he tells me the left and right Our dreams propose without a clue and when.

[Paul Rykoff]

You wait it's time to grow Powered by righteous media.