The Erick Erickson Show

Erick Erickson says America needs litmus tests for crazy, starting with the Last Ditch lesbian bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where critics cried ableism and eugenics when the struggling bar dropped its N95 mask mandate one night a week, and moving to Bill Burr's defense of Luigi Mangione, Tyler Robinson and Charlie Kirk, and transgender athletes in girls sports. Then Erick explains why Xi Jinping is a real totalitarian, unlike Donald Trump, as the Chinese dictator arrives at Joint Base Andrews believing he can make Trump cave on Taiwan, plus the Paramount Warner Bros merger meltdown at CNN and the AI bubble coming for online retail.

• The Last Ditch lesbian bar mask mandate fight in Greenfield, Massachusetts, the "intersectional" backlash, and the Boston Globe's record breaking story
• Litmus tests for crazy: Luigi Mangione and Brian Thompson, Bill Burr and Dave Chappelle, Tyler Robinson and Charlie Kirk, Lindsay Clancy, masks in 2026, and kids transitioning
• Xi Jinping's visit, his purge of Chinese generals, Uyghur concentration camps, a declining Chinese economy and birth rate, and the fight over Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines, and Japan
• Trump versus a true totalitarian: court losses on tariffs, birthright citizenship, and banning CNN and Politico from the White House pool
• The Paramount Warner Bros deal, Bari Weiss, Kara Swisher, a 90 day diesel export ban, and Amazon blocking Meta's AI shopping agent as Wall Street sees an AI bubble

Erick Erickson explains why Meta's new AI agent Muse, the number one app in the Apple App Store, has Amazon blocking it and Wall Street dumping bank, insurer, telecom, and travel stocks, and why he is fine with AI agents canceling unused subscriptions and hunting down better deals even as a Financial Times study finds ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Grok get financial questions wrong most of the time. Then, with the 10 year Treasury yield at a 19 year high, Erick plays Rand Paul on CNBC blaming both parties for the national debt, warns of stagflation and a bipartisan fiscal cliff Mitch McConnell predicted, and asks listeners to pray for Ben Sasse after his liver surgery.

• Meta's Muse AI agent: Amazon blocks it from shopping, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Allstate, and Charles Schwab shares slide, and Goldman Sachs flags telecom, insurance, and utilities as "consumer inertia" stocks at risk
• AI agents versus Main Street retail: Amazon's ad business, Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Blick, and why Erick misses browsing a real store, plus Apple's new Siri agent on the iPhone
• Financial Times study: AI chatbots give wrong answers to money and tax questions 57 percent of the time, with Claude Opus 5 the best performer at about 60 percent
• Rand Paul on CNBC: warfare and welfare spending, deficits causing inflation and the affordability crisis, tariffs, the 10 year Treasury yield, entitlement reform, Social Security and Medicare, and Mitch McConnell's warning that both parties will go off the cliff together
• The White House denies a diesel export ban as Chris Wright seeks voluntary help from the oil industry, and Erick shares an update on former Senator Ben Sasse's surgery and fight with pancreatic cancer

Erick breaks down President Trump's speech to the United Nations General Assembly, from calling the International Criminal Court a rogue institution and an evil group of people, to the Iran ultimatum (a deal or annihilation, with no thought given to the midterms), to the moment the Cuban delegation walked out. Then a searing hour on Canada's MAID program and the death of 83 year old Brigitte Stegman, a Christian grandmother who told her family she had made a mistake two days before doctors killed her. Plus Marco Rubio made permanent as national security advisor, Zelensky laying white roses at the 9/11 memorial, and why deregulating natural gas in 1993 proved the free market right.

• Trump at the United Nations: the International Criminal Court, UNESCO, a 15 percent UN budget cut, and no global carbon tax on his watch
• Iran ultimatum from the UN podium, plus Marco Rubio on diesel prices, the Black Sea, and the Houthis
• The Cuban delegation walks out as Trump ties Havana to the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and the DSA, and celebrates the capture of Nicolas Maduro
• Canada's MAID program: Brigitte Stegman's family speaks out, one in every 20 Canadian deaths is now physician assisted, and Erick's theological case against a culture that has stopped respecting life
• Marco Rubio commissioned permanently as national security advisor, and the 1993 natural gas deregulation that liberals like Mario Cuomo admitted they got wrong

Erick takes apart the online outrage machine after Converse pulled a Chuck 70 ad over absurd claims that a K-pop star's photo evoked a KKK hood and a lynching, and explains why Nike's habit of apologizing to the white wokes helped drop it out of the S&P 100 for the first time since 1998. Then the mob turns on Taylor Swift for cheering her husband Travis Kelce during the Chiefs' 33 to 30 win over the Colts, Rick Jackson's brutal 2020 riot ad flatlines Keisha Lance Bottoms in the Georgia governor's race, and General Motors delivers Patriot missile housings to Lockheed Martin just 22 days after signing the contract. His thesis all hour: the only way to play the outrage game is to refuse to play it.

• Converse pulls the Karina Chuck 70 ad instead of saying "we did nothing wrong," and Nike falls out of the S&P 100 for the first time since 1998
• Taylor Swift cheers Travis Kelce and gets attacked for it, plus Brad Wilcox and the Institute for Family Studies data on masculine husbands and happy marriages
• Rick Jackson's ad guts the Keisha Lance Bottoms campaign in the Georgia governor's race, and why Ken Paxton and Mike Collins should stop running AI drivel
• General Motors retools a car plant and delivers Patriot missile housings for Lockheed Martin in 22 days, beating subsidized General Dynamics without a dime of industrial policy
• Trump at Gracie Mansion with Zohran Mamdani, GM walking back the Apple CarPlay decision, and Nikole Hannah-Jones on standardized tests

Erick Erickson walks through the economic war on Iran, with Brent and West Texas crude back below $100, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CNBC detailing five new sanctions authorities that shut down Iranian airlines worldwide and closed branches of Egyptian, Turkish and Russian banks, and Wall Street Journal reporting on the US Navy blockade, stranded truckers at the Pakistani and Afghan borders, and Iran's paranoia after the Hezbollah pager operation. He covers record diesel at $6.31 a gallon, JP Morgan admitting it has no model for the endgame, Steve Moore's deregulation case, and the breaking news that the Trump administration is weighing a diesel export ban. Then former Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin joins to explain the Education Freedom Tax Credit and why 20 governors still have not opted in, and Erick closes on the Associated Press tying a Mississippi killing to lynchings and on Senator John Curtis demanding an investigation of the Don Jr. wedding.

• Iran under blockade: Scott Bessent on CNBC, aviation and maritime and crypto and gold sanctions, three sanctioned banks, and the September 23 shutdown of Iranian airlines worldwide
• Oil below $100, diesel at an all time high of $6.31, gasoline at $4.37, JP Morgan saying it has no baseline view, and the Trump administration studying a diesel export ban that failed for Jimmy Carter
• Iran's self sabotage at the Pakistani, Afghan, Turkmen and Turkish borders, the Hezbollah pager operation behind the paranoia, new long range Iranian missiles, and Chinese help replenishing them
• Glenn Youngkin on Empowering America's Parents, the $1,700 dollar for dollar federal tax credit, 30 states in and 20 out, Kathy Hochul and Jared Polis opting in, Josh Shapiro holding out, and Rick Jackson versus Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia
• The Associated Press tying the murder of Tasia Fortune to Southern lynchings after a black suspect was arrested, plus Senator John Curtis pushing an investigation of the Russian oligarch who funded the Don Jr. wedding

Erick opens on the Nikole Hannah-Jones piece in the New York Times Magazine, where the 1619 Project author admits she sent her own daughter into a failing New York City public school as an act of collective good, then watched the girl move to a better high school and discover she had never actually learned algebra. Fresh off his debut on ABC's This Week, Erick lays out the three things Donald Trump must do before the midterms: go quiet, kill every tariff, and finish Iran. Plus the networks suspending the White House pool, a $35,000 per pupil system that cannot teach long division, and why Republicans on the ground are in all hands on deck panic.

• Nikole Hannah-Jones, the 1619 Project, and the New York Times Magazine confession that her daughter's school failed her
• The case against public schools: teachers unions, no homework, Algebra for All, and New York City at $35,000 per pupil losing to Mississippi at $10,000
• Erick's three-step plan for President Trump: disappear from social media, take all tariffs to zero, and arm the rebels inside Iran
• Midterm panic: Democrats up 8.1 on the generic congressional ballot, Republican consultants predicting a House and Senate sweep, and why Erick still thinks the polling overstates it
• ABC This Week debut with John Karl, Frank Luntz, Donna Brazile and George Will, plus the networks suspending White House pool coverage over the CNN ban

Oil slips under $100 a barrel on talk of negotiations, but Erick Erickson argues the Iran story is Groundhog Day: the extremist faction now running Tehran has no interest in talking, is rebuilding its missile shield with Chinese technology, and is betting it can outlast Donald Trump until Democratic socialists gut the war. He walks the map of the world's great choke points, the Strait of Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb, the Strait of Malacca and the Suez Canal, explains how the Houthi seizure of Perim Island closes the Red Sea, and makes a blunt proposal: buy drones from Ukraine, which will build over 5 million this year while America builds fewer than 100,000, and finish the job. Then a Cobb County mother named Harper calls with the story of a straight-A middle schooler who drowned in honors classes, and Erick returns to his most radical idea, abolishing public schools altogether.

• Iran's extremist faction consolidates power, pushes out its own president, and rebuilds its missile shield with Chinese help while Marco Rubio's warning looks prescient
• The choke point map: Strait of Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb, Perim Island, the Strait of Malacca, the Singapore Strait and the Suez Canal, plus Brad Thor's new book Choke Point
• Why the Saudis and Emiratis cannot fight the Houthi themselves, and the Cold War era security guarantee that keeps Gulf militaries small
• Buy Ukrainian drones: Ukraine builds over 5 million, all of NATO under 500,000, the United States fewer than 100,000, and the Flamingo missile strikes on Moscow
• Harper in East Cobb, the honors class gap, Mississippi outperforming California and New York, and Erick's case for one room schoolhouses, classical Christian education and abolishing public schools

Erick Erickson plays a new Great Lakes PAC ad in which David Beamer, father of Flight 93 hero Todd Beamer, confronts Abdul El-Sayed over his refusal to disavow Hassan Piker's claim that America deserved 9/11, and calls it one of the most powerful spots of the cycle. Before that, a full teach-in on vertical and horizontal federalism and the case every American should be watching, Suncor Energy v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County, where Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers is fighting a Colorado theory that would let one county regulate emissions produced anywhere on earth. Then Lincoln Public Schools, where the district quietly hired an LGBTQ+ advocate with a Luigi Mangione shirt while only 55 percent of its third graders read at grade level.

• Vertical and horizontal federalism explained: Article I Section 8, the plenary police power of the states, why Washington could not lock down your state during COVID, and Erick's case for repealing the Seventeenth Amendment
• Suncor Energy v. Boulder County at the Supreme Court: Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers, Exxon Mobil, more than 30 climate liability suits from California, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota and New York, and a Colorado dissent warning that Boulder now acts as its own republic
• The Michael Bloomberg funded State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at NYU Law shuts down under congressional scrutiny after placing climate fellows inside Democratic attorneys general offices
• David Beamer, Todd Beamer and Flight 93 versus Abdul El-Sayed and Hassan Piker in the Great Lakes PAC ad, plus Erick on the week's critics who answered his column with insults instead of rebuttals
• Lincoln Public Schools hires an LGBTQ+ advocate alongside a Latinx student advocate while third grade proficiency sits at 55 percent, and Erick's case that indoctrination has replaced instruction

Erick Erickson opens Open Line Friday with the Democratic pivot nobody expected: Lindsay James running ads on girls sports in Iowa's second district, James Talarico backing off in Texas, and Democrats all over the map fleeing open borders and defund the police with forty days left before the midterms. Then a caller on the Lindsay Clancy mistrial sets Erick off, and he makes the case that the lone Haitian American juror who refused to be browbeaten is the hero of the whole story. Plus the real driver behind gas prices at the pump, why Ken Paxton still has a path in Texas while Republicans quietly pull money out of Georgia, and Erick's Sunday debut on ABC's This Week with Donna Brazile and Frank Luntz.

• The Democratic pivot on 80/20 issues: Lindsay James in Iowa, James Talarico in Texas, and the sleight of hand hiding inside "boys should not be in girls sports"
• Why the polling may be wrong again: the "who do you think will win" metric, Sean Trende, and the 2014 Pat Roberts lesson in Kansas
• The Lindsay Clancy mistrial: juror anonymity, the harassment of the lone holdout, and jurors who wanted to send a message about postpartum instead of reaching a verdict
• Diesel, not crude, is driving gas prices: the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi supply, Brent at 103, and the coming hit to groceries and Northeast heating oil
• Ken Paxton versus James Talarico in Texas, Mike Collins versus Jon Ossoff in Georgia, and where the national money is quietly going

Erick Erickson spends the back half of Open Line Friday on two collapses. Nike, the company named for the Greek goddess of victory, has been dropped from the S&P 100 after almost 18 years, having wiped out more than 200 billion dollars in market value since its 2021 peak, and Kylian Mbappe just walked away to On, the Swiss brand that hired Thierry Henry to run its entry into soccer. Erick argues the Colin Kaepernick lectures and the direct to consumer gamble did the damage the business press will not name, then turns to a New York Times guest essay arguing the University of California should stay away from the SAT, which sets up his case that poor black kids in Mississippi are out reading and out scoring rich kids in California.

TOPICS

• Nike drops out of the S&P 100 after 18 years: more than 200 billion dollars in market cap gone since November 2021, Greater China sales down 17 percent, and CEO Elliott Hill trying to rebuild the wholesale relationships the company burned
• Kylian Mbappe leaves Nike for On, the Swiss sportswear brand that brought in Thierry Henry as director of football, and what Colin Kaepernick, the ad strategy and the direct to consumer pivot cost the brand
• The New York Times guest essay by Miriam Pawel on why the University of California should not bring back the SAT, and the sentence Erick cannot get past: students who struggle with basic math but graduate at record rates
• Why Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana are beating California on reading and math scores: phonics, accountability, and the teachers unions that pushed whole word curriculum instead
• Open Line Friday callers on oil and impeachment: why America pumps more crude than anybody on earth but refines heavy crude instead of sweet crude, and why we cannot decouple from the global price