The Erick Erickson Show

Erick opens on the Wall Street Journal's tariff refund story (over 40 S&P 500 companies reporting some $9.6 billion, with Apple near $2.2 billion, Nike at $986 million, FedEx at $800 million, Amazon at $640 million, and GM at $500 million after the Supreme Court struck the tariffs) and skewers the populists who swore tariffs would not raise prices yet now demand a cut of the refunds. He then turns to the Tyler Robinson trial in the Charlie Kirk assassination, the Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson conspiracy theories, and the debunked Anthony Fauci mRNA miscarriage claim, arguing that information overload is pulling Americans away from reality...

Erick argues that precedent matters, tracing how Democrats spent decades using lawsuits and court settlements (California's Proposition 8, the state's refusal to defend it, Bill Clinton's illegal immigration consent decree, and Anthony Kennedy's Obergefell ruling) to bind future governments, and how the Trump Justice Department has now learned the same trick by declining to appeal Judge James Wesley Hendricks' Northern District of Texas ruling that struck down the National Firearms Act permit and $200 tax on suppressors and short barreled rifles. From Palmetto State Armory buyers skipping the paperwork to the Fifth Circuit tossing Biden's gas stove limits, Erick says "we...

Erick digs into a troubling defense story: in the Combined Resolve war games in Germany, Ukrainian drone operators wiped out a US armored brigade every single time, exposing how far behind America has fallen even as Reaper drones run low and Iran picks off the rest. He ties it to a missile production problem (the Pentagon never sent Lockheed Martin and Raytheon the demand signal, dating back to the 1993 "last supper" consolidation dinner) and to a Trump class battleship the Navy openly says it does not need, calling it a jobs program instead of a warfighting force. Then he...

Erick breaks down a wild primary night: Democratic socialist Francesca Hong loses Wisconsin after Governor Tony Evers talked David Crowley back into the race, the polls badly oversampled white progressives, and Mike Lindell gets crushed in Minnesota's GOP governor primary. Then he warns Republicans that college-educated suburban voters are the new turnout machine, that Ken Paxton is dragging down Texas against James Talarico, and delivers a signature monologue arguing progressivism is a religion, complete with a viral clip of a reporter insisting you "can't be racist against white people."

On the seventh anniversary of his syndicated show, Erick Erickson tells the untold story of how Rush Limbaugh "lied through his teeth" to launch his radio career and later fought behind the scenes to let him talk faith on the air. He then turns to the "progressive madrasas": how Stanford University let Marxists write the capitalism entry in its Encyclopedia of Philosophy and butchered Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek. Along the way he unpacks critical theory, intersectionality, the "you can't be racist against white people" clip, and the "Yankee invasion of the SEC."

Erick walks through a sobering Washington Post editorial on America's fiscal reckoning: with Social Security projected insolvent by 2032 and the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund by 2033, demographics and mandatory spending are driving the country toward a debt cliff that no war or recession created. He revisits Mitch McConnell's "we will not fix it until we hit the cliff" prediction, George W. Bush's rejected 2005 Social Security privatization, cooling July inflation, and even floats Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce sparking a baby boom, before turning to John Larson's Connecticut primary loss, the Anthony Fauci diaries, and the AI resume filters auto-rejecting...

Erick opens on the Washington Post's exclusive that President Donald Trump secretly slipped out of Turkey after the NATO summit in Ankara, boarding the old Air Force One as a decoy and then being shuttled by catering truck onto a smaller Air Force jet, all because of a credible Iranian assassination threat. The White House press corps is melting down that it was left "expendable" on the decoy plane, and Erick unloads on that self-obsession while asking the bigger question: why has Trump still not taken out the Iranian regime that keeps trying to kill him. He then turns...

Erick tears into Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed after CNN's Andrew Kaczynski and the KFile surface old clips of the democratic socialist calling football "toxically masculine" and tied to slavery, demanding an end to Fourth of July fireworks, floating a repeal of the Second Amendment, and promoting "feminist prison abolition," all now disowned as "cherry picked" comments from just two and three years ago. He then turns to Wisconsin, where on election day far-left gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong (one of only six votes against a bipartisan law making teacher grooming a felony, signed by Tony Evers) sits atop...

Erick pivots from Zohran Mamdani to the Flock camera fight, using the Manhattan Institute's Stu Smith to trace the organized opposition to license plate readers back not to civil libertarians but to the Democratic Socialists of America, the Communist Party USA, and the defund the police and abolish prisons movements. He walks through Columbus, Ohio police chief Elaine Bryant's real case files where Flock helped solve double homicides, arrest a 15 year old murder suspect within 18 hours, recover a kidnapped three year old, and locate missing elderly people with dementia, while conceding the genuine privacy concerns raised by a listener...

Erick Erickson opens on the fight to let Ukraine build its own Patriot missiles and the Lockheed and Raytheon protectionism blocking it, as Ukraine out-produces all of NATO with five million drones this year while America makes fewer than 100,000. He ties a "sclerotic" defense industry and a stumbling Boeing to why the United States cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz or finish the job in Iran, where Tehran keeps raising its price and the promised Bessent and Rubio deal never came. Then a Milton Friedman defense of the free market against tariffs, the imaginary $20 burrito, populism as covetousness, and...

Erick Erickson breaks down Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's first big TV interview in two years, a soft sit-down with ABC's Jonathan Karl, and argues "Woke 2.0" is just the old defund-the-police, abolish-ICE agenda with the honesty stripped out. He contrasts Brian Kemp's early COVID reopening of Georgia, and the "human sacrifice" smear from The Atlantic and Anthony Fauci, with the credit Ron DeSantis got for running for president, then turns to Todd Blanche's narrow 50-vote confirmation as Attorney General. He closes on the new FIRE college free speech rankings, where 166 of 257 schools earn an F and Barnard finishes dead last.

Erick Erickson takes apart the left's redefinition of violence, playing James Talarico's claim that poverty, pollution, and prison are all "violence," then walks through a Savannah, Georgia case where a man arrested 27 times attempted to rape a homeless woman in a public restroom while Judge Claire Williams kept releasing him. He argues prisons exist to punish, not to rehabilitate, and that homelessness is really a drug addiction and mental health crisis the left refuses to treat. Then Zohran Mamdani's FDR and LaGuardia nostalgia, CNN's Harry Enten on Trump's underwater jobs approval, a DSA co-chair's word salad to David Remnick...

Erick opens Open Line Friday on the ugly July jobs report: the economy lost 23,000 jobs, average wages rose just two cents while inflation outran them, and labor force participation fell to a five-year low, with middle-aged men and young workers struggling most to get hired. He argues the sectors government controls most (housing, healthcare, education, and food) are the ones driving prices up, then turns to Donald Trump endorsing Charlie Hatcher over Andy Ogles in Tennessee, Abdul El-Sayed's Michigan Senate win, David Hogg's war on moderate Democrats, and Patrick Ruffini's data on the Democrats' summer polling mirage.

Erick breaks down Donald Trump's Punchbowl News interview with Jake Sherman, where the president insists voters are angry at other Republicans and not at him, defends tariffs and the Save America Act, wants to terminate the filibuster, and warns he could be "the last Republican president." Erick lays out the Axios warning from Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen that Trump is trapped by a war, tariffs, and monuments he never should have chased, plus a Quinnipiac record-low approval and a sub-40 percent polling average, then offers his own Labor Day fix: scrap the tariffs, finish the war with Iran...

Erick makes the case for Florida voters to throw scandal-plagued Congressman Cory Mills out of Florida's 7th District, walking through the House Ethics investigation into Mills' federal weapons contracts, the assault allegations, and the restraining order, then urging support for challenger Ryan Elijah, who trails Mills by just three points in the primary. He warns Republicans that if they will not clean up their own side, the voters will do it for them, invoking the 2006 wave that swept out Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert. Then a pair of Open Line Friday standouts: Enes Kanter Freedom declaring himself a WNBA...

Erick takes on the viral "$20 burrito" affordability debate that lit up the right after a Turning Point USA student's tweet, arguing that tariffs, Fannie and Freddie loan guarantees, and the Jones Act (not lazy consumers) are what really drive prices up. He walks through Trump scrapping tariffs on coffee, bananas, beef, and eggs, and tells the story of his Rev Coffee habit and Jura machine to show tariffs in real life. Then he pivots to the Georgia governor's race, contrasting Keisha Lance Bottoms' "we don't have the facts" dodge on data centers with Rick Jackson's local-control answer, and points...

Erick catches the Democratic Socialists contradicting themselves in their own words: Bernie Sanders on Pod Save America swears no serious Democrat wants to defund the police, abolish ICE, or open the borders, while Ro Khanna openly calls to abolish ICE, pack the Supreme Court from 9 to 13, and tax billionaires. He plays Wisconsin governor candidate Francesca Hong refusing on CNN to disavow her deleted 2021 "cancel Thanksgiving" tweet, then a Politico jump-cut interview where she suddenly calls Thanksgiving her favorite holiday. Add a Mike Bloomberg and Jones Act tariff callback, BMW hijacking customers' screens for a Spider-Man promo, and a caller-fueled...

Erick tracks the fast-collapsing Max Miller scandal as both Ohio Republican senators, his father-in-law Bernie Moreno and John Husted, now publicly call on the OH-7 congressman to quit over domestic violence and child-abuse allegations, including the bizarre "bunny" standoff and a daughter's untreated broken collarbone. He lays out the brutal math: an R+5 district against a D+8 generic ballot, where Miller staying on the ballot could sink Vivek Ramaswamy's run for governor and cost John Husted his Senate seat against Sherrod Brown, and he demands Trump push Miller out the way Democrats forced Graham Platner out in Maine. Then...

Erick breaks down Abdul El-Sayed's Democratic Socialist win in the Michigan Senate primary over Haley Stevens, his Morning Joe damage control on Israel, foreign aid, and abolishing ICE, and why the polls oversampled urban white voters and nearly blew the call. Then a blistering hour on Ohio Republican Max Miller, the abuse and drug allegations, father-in-law Senator Bernie Moreno calling him unfit, and how Democrats force their damaged candidates out while Republicans will not. Erick's warning: if Max Miller stays on the ballot, the GOP could lose the Ohio Senate and governor's races too.

Erick makes the case that the United States simply does not have the electrical capacity to repatriate manufacturing or feed the AI boom, walking through Scott Lincicum's Cato piece on the 1886 Hall-Heroult aluminum cell and why a single smelter needs a permanent, enormous block of base load power that nuclear, coal, and natural gas provide and solar and wind cannot. He then turns to Ross Douthat's interview with Yale Law professor Samuel Moyn, who floats overweighting young voters and handing children's proxy votes to random 20-somethings instead of their own parents, and builds it into a sweeping monologue on...

Erick tears into the right's $20 burrito panic and the affordability fight between Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, and the Turning Point USA crowd, calling out the writers in JD Vance's orbit who blame corporate greed while refusing to admit Trump's tariffs and the Iran war (not just Joe Biden) drove up grocery, beef, and gas prices, with a Reuters poll now showing Americans blame Republicans. A caller pitches a Pacific Ocean to Lake Mead desalination mega-project with nuclear-powered AI hubs, reviving Erick's Ukraine drones and precision-missile shortage capacity argument. The hour closes with a monologue on democratic socialism as a...

Back early from vacation, Erick pulls back the curtain on what Republican pollsters, focus groupers, strategists, donors, and corporate money men are all telling him: James Talarico is leading Ken Paxton in Texas right now, and the fortune the GOP must spend to rescue Paxton could cost them Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed, Haley Stevens, and Mike Rogers set up a nervous primary night. He argues the one thing saving Republicans is a Democratic Party that has lost its mind, from Wisconsin governor hopeful Francesca Hong wanting to cancel Thanksgiving as colonialism to the socialist...

Erick argues the United States is losing to Iran by choice, driven by an isolationist wing embedded around President Trump and Vice President JD Vance that wants a "tripartite" world carved up with Russia and China, even as war torn Ukraine out builds all of NATO with 5 million drones a year while America cannot manufacture a single Patriot missile. He then hammers Ohio Republican Max Miller to drop out over the Daily Mail's syringe and marijuana gummy photos (with Senator Bernie Moreno calling it a "seventh level of hell") and calls on Florida to primary Cory Mills. The centerpiece...

Erick makes a full throated defense of America's data center boom, playing a Mike Rowe clip about Plano, Texas electricians under 30 making north of $240,000 debt free, debunking the Erin Brockovich water panic from Bill Maher's show, and explaining why Caterpillar is suddenly the hottest stock in the Dow. Callers Keith, Max, Chet the Jet, and Ed dig into the skilled trades gold rush, canteen empanada six figure incomes, and the non-disclosure agreements that are breeding data center conspiracy theories. He closes with breaking Iran news as Trump, Scott Bessent, and Marco Rubio claim progress on reopening the Strait of...

Erick returns from a week at Lake Burton to a world still in chaos: Iran spurns peace as Trump halts strikes, the democratic socialists surge with Texas suddenly in play (James Talarico leading Ken Paxton), and New York's Zohran Mamdani demands a photo ID to buy subsidized groceries but not to vote. He connects the dots to JD Vance's post-liberal advisor Patrick Deneen, a Wall Street Journal corporate shakedown story, and a signature monologue framing socialism as a violation of the Tenth Commandment.

Back from Lake Burton, Erick breaks down Marco Rubio's Fox News interview on the funded, organized protest network tied to Cuba, China, Neville Roy Singham, and a Cox Enterprises heir, then makes the grown-up case that the left is both astroturf and real grassroots, just as the Tea Party was in 2010. He hammers Ohio's Max Miller and Florida's Cory Mills over abuse and revenge-porn allegations and demands the GOP force them out, then turns to Mike Turner on Patriot missiles for Ukraine, America's broken missile production, and a big-ideas argument for desalinating Pacific water to save Lake Mead and...

Back from vacation, Erick sounds the alarm on a confirmed Wall Street Journal story about a Trump fundraiser pressing corporations like Apple for cash and doling out tariff carve-outs, warning his own side is now perceived like the Biden crime family while wages slip behind inflation and independents may just stay home in November. He then walks through his friend Josh Trevino's National Review essay on why we abandon the lessons of World War II at our peril, taking on Tucker Carlson, Darryl Cooper, R.R. Reno, and the post-liberalism of Patrick Deneen and JD Vance, and closes with...

Erick opens with a raw, personal plea for his annual childhood cancer Care-a-thon benefiting Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, sharing his wife's stage four lung cancer and the reality that some of the kids he will interview over the next 48 hours may not survive the year. He then unloads on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the progressive squad for falsely claiming the National Defense Authorization Act merges the U.S. and Israeli militaries, mounts a long defense of Sophie Cunningham and Caitlin Clark against a hostile WNBA press, and closes by branding "post-liberalism" as socialism made cute, tracing it to Harvard's Adrian...

Erick builds a full monologue on Nate Silver's Cooperative Election Study data showing the Democratic Socialists of America are not the poor but downwardly mobile rich kids with prestige degrees, invoking Peter Turchin's elite overproduction, Joseph Schumpeter's creative destruction, Graham Platner's fake oyster fisherman act, and Dan McLaughlin's Karl Marx versus Frederick Douglass contrast. His free market fix for Republicans is blunt: scrap the Trump and Peter Navarro tariffs, stop the government from taking ownership stakes in companies, expand school choice to gut the "progressive madrasas," and defund victimization degrees. He then pivots to the Colorado River crisis at...

Erick argues Iran is deliberately holding the American economy hostage as Brent crude tops 100 dollars after the Houthi strike Saudi ships in the Red Sea, warning that high gas prices could sink Republicans in midterms now barely 100 days out and calling on President Trump to unleash Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis to end the Iranian regime and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He then turns to longevity guru Brian Johnson, who announced he is cloning himself to harvest organs while battling autoimmune gastritis, a plan Erick calls demonic and answers with "God is not mocked" and a nod to...

Erick opens the week's big theme, a full diagnosis of the Democratic Socialists of America, arguing the movement is not the poor but downwardly mobile rich kids using Nate Silver's Cooperative Election Study data on elite overproduction. He hands Republicans a free market battle plan (kill the tariffs, expand school choice, end the nonsense college degrees), then turns to Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on arresting Benjamin Netanyahu and now admits he has no legal power to do it, with a hard monologue on October 7th, Hamas, and the Gaza "genocide" claim.

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Erick breaks down New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill's admission that a motor vehicle software glitch registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens to vote (about 400 actually cast ballots) under former Governor Phil Murphy, using it to indict the 1990s motor voter law that the late Georgia Senator Paul Coverdell warned against, while pushing back on both Michael Steele's spin and the conspiracy theorists who cry mass fraud. He plays Congressman David Schweikert's warning that Washington now borrows $93,000 every second and ties fiscal recklessness to the rise of socialism, then wonders aloud, prompted by a retired Air Force caller, whether America's reluctance to unleash...

Erick makes the case for letting Israel off the chain against Iran, reporting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a face to face with Donald Trump at Lindsey Graham's funeral but is being blocked by isolationists in Vice President JD Vance's office, and that America's slow, tit for tat response to Iran may be hiding a real Patriot and Tomahawk munitions shortage. He weighs the new US Saudi Arabia civilian nuclear deal with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (reported by the New York Times from Riyadh), warning that letting an Arab nation enrich uranium will only push Iran to...

Erick opens with Van Jones breaking ranks and calling the far left's ideas "insane, nutty, moronic, dangerous, bigoted," then walks through the Tim Walz pardon of an illegal alien child rapist in Minnesota, DSA nominee Darlisa Chevalier's Gaza "genocide" claims, and Hassan Piker praising Mao Zedong to the College Democrats of America. He argues the Democratic Socialists are running an internal coup of the Democratic Party while elected Democrats applaud politely, and he refuses to give the racists on the right a pass either, naming the Patriot Front and Georgia Senate candidate Mike Collins. Plus the Children's Healthcare of...

Erick connects lost American institutional knowledge (nobody can build an IMAX 70 millimeter projector anymore, and Plant Vogtle had to reteach the country how to build a nuclear power plant) to the bigger story: China is building 39 nuclear reactors and 100 coal plants while the United States builds zero. He argues Joe Biden wrecked the economy with modern monetary theory over Larry Summers's warnings, and Donald Trump wrecked it further by resurrecting failed 1950s tariff policy on aluminum, steel, and lumber. Plus Dan McLaughlin on Karl Marx versus Frederick Douglass, Nate Silver's data on who the Democratic Socialists really are, and...

Erick Erickson builds the hour around a theological indictment of socialism: the Democratic Socialists have taken the one commandment that lives entirely in the heart, thou shalt not covet, and organized it into a governing philosophy, citing Nate Silver's data showing the most liberal Americans are high education, low income kids from wealthy families. He walks through Abdul El-Sayed's defund the police reversal after Manu Raju confronted him with the audio, James Talarico's border flip, Zohran Mamdani's rent freeze war on New York landlords, and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren's careers built on tearing down the rich. Then Mamdani's...

Erick opens on a detained suspect and an incendiary device outside New York's 26 Federal Plaza, then builds his signature monologue on "the outrage machine" breaking brains on the left and the right. He defends theologian John Piper over a misread automated Leviticus 19:34 tweet, dismantles the woke-right meltdown over Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" (a Black actress as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page as the deceiver Sinon), and blasts the left for tearing down Flock cameras and ShotSpotter as a Cambridge park attendant bleeds out. He closes on socialist Senate hopefuls Abdul El-Sayed, Troy Jackson, and Graham Platner, plus fresh...

Erick races through the day's biggest headlines: an anti-ICE activist who poured gasoline and set a fire outside New York's 26 Federal Plaza immigration court, and the Justice Department confirming acting Attorney General Todd Blanche personally approved the arrest of the Tate brothers, contradicting their lawyer Joseph McBride. He turns to Iran, where the Pentagon named fallen soldiers First Lieutenant Tyler James Frean and Private Isabella Gonzalez while the New York Times alleges the Pentagon hid earlier casualties, and he argues America needs a real strategy (letting Israel back in for regime change) instead of an endless tit for tat...

Erick closes the day with his capstone thesis that America already knows what works and the left, joined by part of the right, is choosing decline: Photo ID for election integrity, phonics and memorized multiplication tables for education, the free market over "capitalism," and the two-parent household for stability. He contrasts Mississippi's back-to-basics reading and math turnaround (rejecting Common Core and Singapore math) with California's "gender unicorn" classrooms, plays Mark Warner dodging Jonathan Karl on Virginia Photo ID and the California Federation of Teachers president calling teachers into the streets, then pivots to Abdul El-Sayed's "abolish ICE" clip with...

Erick opens Open Line Friday by dissecting President Donald Trump's prime-time address on election interference, including the DHS claim that roughly 278,000 non-citizens are registered to vote and that China accessed the voter rolls of 270 million Americans. Drawing on his years as an election lawyer and political consultant, Erick argues China does not need to hack anything because voter files are public and resold by data brokers, and he keeps pressing the real question: where are the indictments? He then delivers a two-sided monologue on the scolds of left and right, the progressive meltdown over the Blue Angels beach flyover...