Hello there, I'm Chuck Todd. This is the Chuck Todd cast. So this weekend is the July 4th holiday.

And every year during Independence Day, we hear it meet the press. Get to wondering what's

it like to be an actual independent and American politics today? Like a day one thing, it's

very lonely. My guest today is Denver, Wrinklebin. He was formerly a Republican Congressman

for Virginia until 2020. He lost his seat in a bizarre primary challenge. Today, he says

he is an independent, saying the Republican Party has moved away from him and turned into

a cult of personality. Wrinklemin also served on the January 6th Committee as a senior technical

advisor working with the committee's team to sift through data that the committee uncovered

as part of his investigation. He happened to leave that position at the end of April.

Denver Wrinklemin, welcome back to the talk. It's good to be here, buddy. Good to see you.

So look, I do this thematically every year and every year it seems more of a head scratcher

than nobody more elected officials don't leave their party. And I guess that's where I

start, which is, you know, the two parties have never been less popular. They get less

popular every year, essentially. And yet the examples of people like you are actually

quite few. You know, it was another gentleman. We were going to put on a state senator at

a Pennsylvania who left the Democratic side because he was tired of that and he was trying

to be in the middle. Of course, he's now also going to be leaving politics soon. So why

is it so hard to leave the super parties? I think if, because if you have a career in

politics, right, and it's something that you sort of levered yourself on, for me, you

got to remember Chuck, I came from nowhere, right? I'm almost like an accidental congressman.

No, you're exactly what the founder is intended for. No, meaning, no, I mean that you had

a job. You did other work and you're like, okay, it's my turn for public service. Yeah,

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