Independent Americans with Paul Rieckhoff

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 One Behind slate, the fastest-growing political force in America, and why the two-party system needs to make room for independents before November, not after the race is already over.

And as America celebrates its 250th birthday, Moore delivers a message that hits hard: patriotism is not about a person. It’s about an idea. It’s about sacrifice, service, hope, and the future we all have to build together. The flag belongs to all of us. America’s birthday belongs to all of us. And the work of patriotism belongs to all of us.

Independence is an attitude. Stay vigilant. Happy Birthday America.

-WATCH full video of this episode here.

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-Join IVA and help us get independent veterans elected to office.

-Learn more about Paul’s work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America.

-Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here.

-Remember Independent is an Attitude.

-Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It’s a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255.

Connect with Independent Americans:

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-Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power. 

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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 democracy. It’s baseball. It’s war and peace. It’s sacred honor. And it’s a reminder that the story of America was never clean, never easy, and never finished. Independence is an attitude. Stay vigilant.

-WATCH full video of this episode here.

-Visit Kalshi and trade on anything. Use code [INDEPENDENT] to get ten dollars when you trade ten.

-Join Noble Mobile today and get a $100 bonus when you use code PAUL and stay a member for 2 months!

-Join IVA and help us get independent veterans elected to office.

-Learn more about Paul’s work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America.

-Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here.

-Remember Independent is an Attitude.

-Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It’s a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255.

Connect with Independent Americans:

Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms

Read more at Substack

Support ad-free episodes at Patreon 

Connect: Instagram  • X/Twitter • BlueSky • Facebook 

Follow on social: @PaulRieckhoff on X, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
-Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power. 

-And get cool IA and Righteous hats, t-shirts and other merch now in time for the new year. 

Independent Americans is powered by veteran-owned and led Righteous Media. 

And now part of the BLEAV network! 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 point of being indistinguishable from an infantry assault, and the guardrails that once separated a constitutional republic from a government of gangsters are cracking in real time. McCaffrey brings the receipts of a lifetime — Vietnam as a young lieutenant, the Joint Staff, three administrations on the National Security Council, and a hard-won view of what happens when political leadership sends troops into fights it doesn't understand.

The conversation ranges across the militarization of ICE and the 11th Airborne on standby, the humiliation of Davos, the quiet withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Iraq, the collapse of trust with Canada and NATO allies, and the dangerous new fantasy — post-Venezuela strike — that war can be clean and bloodless. McCaffrey is blunt about the opposition being incoherent, about institutions being hollowed out, and about why 40% of the country still backs Trump anyway. But he closes with a story about a French counterpart that lands like a punch: when you're in trouble, we'll be there. If you care about what the military is for, who it serves, and whether America can still be the good guy, this is the briefing to sit with.

-WATCH full video of this episode here.

-Visit Kalshi and trade on anything. Use code [INDEPENDENT] to get ten dollars when you trade ten.

-Join Noble Mobile today and get a $100 bonus when you use code PAUL and stay a member for 2 months!

-Join IVA and help us get independent veterans elected to office.

-Learn more about Paul’s work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America.

-Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here.

-Remember Independent is an Attitude.

-Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It’s a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255.

Connect with Independent Americans:

Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms

Read more at Substack

Support ad-free episodes at Patreon 

Connect: Instagram  • X/Twitter • BlueSky • Facebook 

Follow on social: @PaulRieckhoff on X, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
-Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power. 

-And get cool IA and Righteous hats, t-shirts and other merch now in time for the new year. 

Independent Americans is powered by veteran-owned and led Righteous Media. 

And now part of the BLEAV network! 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

“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 authorized and the American people never signed off on. Hertling — former commanding general of US Army Europe, 36 months in combat, and author of the new book If I Don't Return: A Father's Wartime Journal — lays out exactly why this moment feels more like Vietnam than anything we've seen in a generation, and why the silence from both parties is its own kind of sucking chest wound.

Paul and the general get into the levers that could still slow this thing down, the cowardice gripping Congress, the very real threat of election interference and attacks on the homeland, and the demented, steroidified version of "fitness" and manhood being pushed by Hegseth, Kennedy, and the rest of the MAGA machine. They also go somewhere most cable news won't: the human cost. Hertling shares the story behind the Army-green notebook he filled with life lessons for his two young sons before deploying to Desert Storm, convinced he might not come home. It's a conversation about war, yes — but also about character, courage, fatherhood, Mr. Rogers, and what it actually takes to be the kind of leader this country is starving for.

-WATCH full video of this episode here.

-Visit Kalshi and trade on anything. Use code [INDEPENDENT] to get ten dollars when you trade ten.

-Join Noble Mobile today and get a $100 bonus when you use code PAUL and stay a member for 2 months!

-Join IVA and help us get independent veterans elected to office.

-Learn more about Paul’s work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America.

-Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here.

-Remember Independent is an Attitude.

-Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It’s a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255.

Connect with Independent Americans:

Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms

Read more at Substack

Support ad-free episodes at Patreon 

Connect: Instagram  • X/Twitter • BlueSky • Facebook 

Follow on social: @PaulRieckhoff on X, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
-Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power. 

-And get cool IA and Righteous hats, t-shirts and other merch now in time for the new year. 

Independent Americans is powered by veteran-owned and led Righteous Media. 

And now part of the BLEAV network! 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 through the moral and legal architecture of what an illegal order really is. In a week when the commander in chief is calling combat-veteran senators traitors and floating executions, McRaven offers something different: dignity, decorum, and ground-truth analysis from a man who has actually carried the weight.

This is the kind of solo briefing the angry middle has been begging for. McRaven and Paul cover the Nuremberg roots of the illegal-order doctrine, the reality of Russia's million casualties in Ukraine, the Mississippi miracle in early reading, the assault on academic freedom, and why most Americans — MAGA or liberal — still share the same core values when you actually sit down with them. They close on hope, on Friday football, and on whether a four-star independent could ever run for the White House. If you're politically homeless and looking for an alternative narrative to the noise, do not skip this one.

-WATCH full video of this episode here.

-Visit Kalshi and trade on anything. Use code [INDEPENDENT] to get ten dollars when you trade ten.

-Join Noble Mobile today and get a $100 bonus when you use code PAUL and stay a member for 2 months!

-Join IVA and help us get independent veterans elected to office.

-Learn more about Paul’s work to elect a new generation of independent leaders with Independent Veterans of America.

-Learn more about American Veterans for Ukraine here.

-Remember Independent is an Attitude.

-Learn more about The Headstrong Project for Veterans, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), and Department of Veterans Affairs resources in your area. Seeking support is not a sign of weakness. It’s a show of strength. If you or a loved one are in immediate crisis, dial 988 and press 1, or text 838255.

Connect with Independent Americans:

Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all podcast platforms

Read more at Substack

Support ad-free episodes at Patreon 

Connect: Instagram  • X/Twitter • BlueSky • Facebook 

Follow on social: @PaulRieckhoff on X, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
-Join the movement. Hook into our exclusive Patreon community of Independent Americans. Get extra content, connect with guests, meet other Independent Americans, attend events, get merch discounts, and support this show that speaks truth to power. 

-And get cool IA and Righteous hats, t-shirts and other merch now in time for the new year. 

Independent Americans is powered by veteran-owned and led Righteous Media. 

And now part of the BLEAV network! 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.