Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Todd cast. I'm Chuck Todd. It is Independence Day weekend.

And for those of you that have known me a long time, you've known this is a weekend and this is a week, if you will, Independence Day, where I like to take the celebration of the

4th of July and focus on either independent candidates, uh, independent voters.

I plan on doing a little bit of both. In fact, I think over the last 10 years, I have probably

interviewed Angus King five of the last 10 years on some show, whether it's my

podcast, whether it's been a meet the press, a meet the press now, a daily rundown.

Angus King has been one of my go-to almost every Independence Day. I always think it's fun

to have a conversation with independent Angus King. Well, I don't have the Angus King interview to tout right now.

I do want to have a big focus on independence.

We're going to get there.

In fact, my guest is somebody who some people thought was going to be running for governor as an independent, but chose to actually switch parties all the way.

It's a candidate for governor in Florida, former Republican

member of Congress, David Jolly, who left the Republican to become an independent and then

left becoming an independent to become a registered Democrat. We talk about that. So it's a big

part of our conversation that we're going to have. But I want to give you a better read of the entire landscape

when it comes to so-called registered independent voters, non-party aligned, the candidates

that are popping up out there. We've got two new ones out there. So I want to get to all that,

but there's a few pieces of news in the news cycle that I do want to touch on.

One is just the colossal and epic, horrendous, greedy decision by Paramount and what they're doing with paying off Donald Trump in order to have a merger, make sure that the government doesn't get

in the way of a merger that Sherry Redstone wants to do to put buy a common paramount all back

together in order to sell it and all of that. And as a, essentially as the price of that merger,

they've decided to settle a lawsuit that, a frivolous lawsuit

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