Can Obama close the deal? Lawler on the ropes. Cait Conley’s breakout ad. And why independents decide it all one week from now.

The partisan machine is scared, and it's showing. In episode 658, Paul Rieckhoff goes solo to answer the growing chorus of independent-haters — from Hillary Clinton's smear of Matthew McConaughey on Kara Swisher's show to the online pundits recycling the tired "hidden partisan" talking point against the 45% of Americans who refuse to put on a jersey. Paul lays out why that smear falls apart the second you look at Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho, and Montana, where a vote for the Democrat is the actual spoiler. He also celebrates Sara Haines doing on The View what McConaughey did on Kara Swisher — breaking the seal, giving millions of Americans permission to declare their independence out loud.

Something is cracking in the Midwest. Iowa farmers are staring at $1,000 fill-ups for their tractors, fertilizer costs through the roof, and a White House that only remembers rural America two weeks before an election. Meanwhile Donald Trump is spending $1.2 billion of taxpayer-adjacent money on an East Wing ballroom, a triumphal arch, a Garden of Heroes, and a plan to repaint the Eisenhower building because he thinks it should be whiter. Paul Rieckhoff joins Katie, Carrie Dan of the Cook Political Report, Mike Nellis, and McKay Coppins to connect the dots between the vanity projects, the $8 billion farmer bailout nobody trusts, and a corruption narrative that is finally landing with independent voters.

Dan Osborn is back for a record sixth appearance, and he's walking into the final stretch of the most-watched Senate race in the country. Running as a true independent against Pete Ricketts — a sitting senator from a billionaire family that owns the Chicago Cubs — Osborn has outworked, out-hustled, and out-organized a $50 million machine. Fourteen counties left on a ninety-three county tour. More than two hundred public events. Small-dollar donations from all fifty states. And a message that is cutting through: less than two percent of Congress comes from people who punch a clock, and that is exactly why nothing gets done.

Paul Rieckhoff joins Connell McShane on News Nation with retired Air Force Special Operations Commander Glenn Ignazio to call the Ukraine pivot what it is: a 180. Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff addressed Vladimir Putin as a "humanitarian" — a word for a man who has indiscriminately killed civilians from Odessa to Bucha and is still shipping lethal aid to Iran. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports Elon Musk himself ordered the Starlink/Starshield throttle that blindsided Ukrainian forces mid-fight, a precedent Glenn calls unprecedented and dangerous: a civilian defense contractor unilaterally shutting off a battlefield capability. Zelensky is signaling openness to freezing the front lines to get to a ceasefire — not to surrender territory — but only if Putin stops the bombing and shows up to the table.

Paul Rieckhoff sits down with retired Marine Colonel Matt Baker, the independent veteran running for Congress in Virginia's 2nd District — a shipyard-and-base-heavy stretch of coastline where readiness is being ridden into the deck and families are watching their sailors cycle in and out of the Iran war. Baker is a Naval Academy grad, a combat veteran of Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and a battalion commander in Afghanistan who's now running against a Republican incumbent and a Democratic former Navy commander — two candidates with roughly $7 million each. Baker's campaign has $6,800. The local paper didn't bother to mention him. There has been exactly one formal debate across all 12 Virginia congressional races. By design.