The Erick Erickson Show

Erick Erickson closes Open Line Friday with the fight that earned him death threats this week. He plays Hassan Piker telling Axios the Middle East would be more stable with an Iranian nuclear weapon, watches Jake Tapper and Abby Phillip try to make Tucker Carlson the right wing mirror image of a man Tucker just endorsed in Michigan, and then walks through Charles Haywood, the shampoo millionaire whose foundationalist manifesto, praise for Francisco Franco and whites only Society of American Civic Renewal are quietly buying their way into conservative boards and church bodies. Then breaking news from the Department of Justice: the federal ban on handgun sales to 18 to 20 year olds is unconstitutional and will no longer be enforced. Plus F-35 stealth components that disappeared into Hong Kong, and callers on assimilation, refineries and six dollar diesel.

• Hassan Piker on Axios saying Iran has a right to nuclear weapons and citing John Mearsheimer, why Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers make Michigan the test case, and Jason Crow refusing to say whether he would campaign with him
• Abby Phillip and Scott Jennings on CNN, and why calling Tucker Carlson the right wing Hassan Piker misses that Carlson has endorsed El-Sayed and wants Donald Trump impeached
• Charles Haywood, American Reformer, the Center for Baptist Leadership and the Society of American Civic Renewal: the foundationalist manifesto, the praise for Thomas Rousseau and the Patriot Front, and Chris Rufo's "no enemies to the right" debate
• Breaking: the Office of Legal Counsel finds 18 U.S.C. 922(b)(1) and (c)(1) inconsistent with Heller and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruen, so DOJ will stop enforcing the handgun ban on 18 to 20 year olds
• F-35 canopy and stealth components bound for repair were rerouted from Australia to Hong Kong, Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon briefed Capitol Hill in June, and the parts have never been found
• Callers on the melting pot versus the salad bowl, Lee Zeldin at EPA unwinding refinery regulations, sweet crude versus sour crude, and diesel at $6.25 against an inflation adjusted $3.59 at the peak of the 1979 crisis

Erick Erickson opens on the Axios interview in which Twitch streamer Hasan Piker says the United States is worse than Al Qaeda pound for pound, and traces how Democrats built Piker into their answer to Joe Rogan before trying to walk it back. He ties Piker to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who deflects criticism of Sharia law as white supremacy and argues breast cancer research is overfunded because of white privilege, and to Michigan congressional nominee William Lawrence, who wants to abolish single family homes and heterosexual marriage. Then Erick turns the same spotlight on his own side, calling for the Republican Party to purge the white nationalists and Nazi sympathizers before independent voters decide both parties are crazy.

• Hasan Piker tells Axios that America has caused more terror than Al Qaeda, while the Democrats who elevated him into fawning New York Times and Vanity Fair profiles now claim he is just a live streamer
• Abdul El-Sayed on Sharia law, white privilege and breast cancer research, with Senator John Kennedy calling him a socialist and Mark Short pushing back on Karen Finney's racism defense
• William Lawrence, the Democratic nominee in Michigan 7, wants to abolish single family homes and heterosexual marriage to break what he calls the heteronormative patriarchy
• Maria Elvira Salazar runs a Spanish language ad in a Trump plus 15 Florida district breaking with the president on immigration enforcement, the real red flag for the GOP midterms
• Harry Enten's polling math on a two to four point Republican polling miss, JD Vance's "the other party is consumed by craziness" message, and Erick's call to purge the Charles Haywood white nationalists from the right

Erick Erickson devotes the hour to Greta Gerwig's new Chronicles of Narnia, beginning with The Magician's Nephew, and the decision to have Meryl Streep voice Aslan. He walks through why Aslan is C.S. Lewis's Christ figure, from the stone table in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, and argues that one small change guts the entire Christian allegory even if the movie sells tickets. He also defends Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey against critics on the right, and closes with a personal tribute to Dauvey Eisner.

• Greta Gerwig's Chronicles of Narnia reboot starts with The Magician's Nephew, and Meryl Streep voices a female Aslan, which Erick calls missing the point out of the gate
• Why Aslan cannot be female: the stone table, the resurrection at sunrise, the torn temple curtain parallel, and the line where Aslan tells the Pevensie children he has another name in their world
• C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, the Oxford pub, Mere Christianity, and how Tolkien brought Lewis to Christianity but only as far as Anglicanism
• Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey defended: not a feminist translation, not an immigration parable, but Christian allegory about the West abandoning the golden rule
• A tribute to Dauvey Eisner, the Jewish convert to Catholicism who championed the poor, the disabled and the pressured to accept euthanasia, and who encouraged Erick for years before Erick ever knew he used a wheelchair and a ventilator

Erick Erickson turns his equal opportunity offending on the left, taking apart Congressman Thomas Massie's House floor claim that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, and arguing that what happened was a war Hamas started on October 7th, not a genocide. He walks through the New York Times piece on Israel viewing itself as a victim, the Macklemore antisemitism fight that got the rapper booted from Robert Kraft's Gillette Stadium and left Ed Sheeran's tour in limbo, and the Ms. Rachel YouTube backlash, then makes the theological argument that antisemitism comes from the devil and that no Christian can hate the Jews. He closes the hour on Constitution Day with a defense of compromise, federalism and gridlock, plus breaking news on a proposed U.S. Army base in Poland and Marco Rubio's new round of Cuba sanctions.

• Thomas Massie's genocide claim on the House floor, and Erick's argument that Massie let his critics radicalize him into contrarianism and antisemitism after 2016
• Why there was no genocide in Gaza: October 7th, the murder and torture of Israelis, Israel's warnings before entering Hamas strongholds, and the Hamas leadership that stole food from its own people
• Macklemore dropped by Gillette Stadium and Robert Kraft over antisemitic stage material, performers walking out on Ed Sheeran, and the Ms. Rachel indoctrination backlash
• Antisemitism as sin: Christ was a Jew, not a Palestinian, and Erick's Calvinist framing that to hate any race is to be of the world and not of God, aimed at the Nazis on the right as much as the progressives on the left
• Constitution Day, September 17, 1787: the three fifths compromise, the great compromise, Article I and the power of the purse, Yuval Levin's American Covenant and Casey Mattox on Federalist 10, the Lindsey Graham Russia sanctions bill, the Loper Bright ruling on Chevron, and why gridlock is a feature and not a bug
• Breaking news: a forward operating U.S. Army base in Poland with President Karol Nawrocki, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio sanctioning 11 more Cuban entities over nickel and military capability under Executive Order 14404

Erick names the names. He walks through his newsletter on Charles Haywood, the shampoo magnate turned self described would be warlord whose money runs through the Claremont Institute, the Society for American Civic Renewal, American Reformer, New Founding and American Moment, and who is funding a push into the Southern Baptist Convention, the PCA and the Global Methodist Church. Then the economy turns ugly: oil over $100 a barrel, diesel near $6.22 a gallon, and a Federal Reserve under Kevin Warsh widely expected to raise interest rates.

• Charles Haywood, the "foundationalist manifesto," and the call for an American Caesar
• Claremont Institute money, the Society for American Civic Renewal, Nate Fisher, American Reformer, William Wolfe and the Center for Baptist Leadership
• Carl Schmitt's friend and enemy politics, the twisting of "love your enemies," and the "no enemies to the right" doctrine
• Bo French, Jack Posobiec and Benny Johnson attacking Indian American kids in Texas, and why it is racism
• Oil over $100, diesel near $6.22, the Strait of Hormuz, Patriot and THAAD interceptor burn rates, and an expected Fed rate hike
• A caller on energy independence: why America exports record oil but cannot refine its own sweet crude

Erick breaks down the numbers in the Georgia governor race, where Republican Rick Jackson has reserved $40.5 million in ad time against Keisha Lance Bottoms and her $42,000, and calls Jackson's foster care and Atlanta riot spots the best political ads of the cycle. Then to Michigan, where Mike Rogers is sitting on opposition research that has Abdul El-Sayed in his own words saying the government overfunds breast cancer research, and to Texas and Florida, where James Talarico and Angie Nixon are handing Republicans the tape. Plus callers on Iran's enriched uranium buried under Pickaxe Mountain, why America cannot refine its own sweet crude, and Saudi Arabia firing a Chinese made Dongfeng missile in Yemen.

• Rick Jackson's $40.5 million ad reservation versus Keisha Lance Bottoms' $42,000, and why the Georgia governor race is not close on money
• Why Jackson's positive foster care ads let his negative Atlanta riot ads land without raising his own negatives
• Mike Rogers, Abdul El-Sayed, and the coming breast cancer research attack aimed at Michigan's white women voters
• James Talarico's AI generated attack ads in Texas versus Florida Republicans simply rolling tape on Angie Nixon and David Jolly's money problem
• Iran's enriched uranium under Pickaxe Mountain, Kharg Island, the Bab al-Mandab choke point, and Brad Thor's "Choke Point"
• Sports betting's spread through ESPN and golf, the 59 percent checking account gap, and Sydney Sweeney's newest ad controversy

Breaking news opens the hour: the Federal Reserve under Chairman Kevin Warsh votes 12 to 0 to raise interest rates a quarter point, the first hike in more than three years, with the dot plot signaling another to come and the inflation target pushed out to 2029. Erick Erickson then turns to the horseshoe theory tying together the Nazi curious weirdos on the right and the effective altruism crowd at Anthropic who want you to worry about the wellbeing of AI chatbots, and why both groups are really just asking to be put in charge of your life. Plus Xi Jinping appearing to fall ill at the BRICS summit in India, the purge of his own generals, Mitch McConnell's decline, and Susie Wiles announcing she is cancer free.

• The Federal Reserve's unanimous 12 to 0 quarter point rate hike, the 3.75 to 4 percent target range, Kevin Warsh declining to submit a dot, and PCE inflation now projected at 3.7 percent
• Horseshoe theory in action: Charles Haywood and the American Reformer and Claremont Institute crowd on the right, the effective altruism movement and Dario Amodei's Anthropic on the left, and why both want to decide for your family
• Why Erick Erickson opposes AI regulation, how incumbents use regulation to kill competition, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta's quiet safety review, and why free market competition beats Chinese one party rule
• Xi Jinping's apparent health scare at the BRICS summit as Narendra Modi pauses his remarks, Gordon Chang's stroke speculation, the purge of Xi's own generals, and China's real estate and debt crisis
• Events, dear boy, events: Harold Macmillan's line applied to Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Salman, Iran, Mitch McConnell, Brian Johnson's quest to beat the clock, and Susie Wiles announcing she is cancer free

Erick makes the case that the AI safety panic is regulatory capture dressed up as the apocalypse: Anthropic, racing toward an IPO and burning cash on GPUs and data centers, wants Washington to freeze its competitors in place before open source models from Meta catch up. He plays Kara Swisher's nuclear nonproliferation analogy on CNN and dismantles it with the history of the China Syndrome, Three Mile Island, and the 100 nuclear plants America never built, then plays David Sacks calling Dario Amodei's bluff. The back half is a full teardown of effective altruism, the Sam Bankman Fried utilitarian cult now running AI safety, complete with shrimp welfare and a Beth Barnes TED talk.

• AI as a math equation, not a god: why the doomers keep building what they claim will kill us
• Anthropic's IPO, GPU costs, closed models versus Meta's open source, and regulation as a moat
• Kara Swisher's nuclear analogy, the China Syndrome, Three Mile Island, and the Soviet funded anti nuclear pivot to climate change
• David Sacks and JD Vance on the AI Trojan horse: if you believe it ends humanity, why are you running the company
• Effective altruism, Sam Bankman Fried, William MacAskill, Beth Barnes, and shrimp welfare as moral math, plus a preview of tomorrow's newsletter naming names on the right

Erick returns to Beau French and the Indian American Longhorns fans in Stetsons to argue that a legitimate grievance about H-1B visa abuse is being allowed to rot into racism, and he warns that America is walking the same road that produced the AfD and Europe's far right. Then a hard look at the numbers: the New York Times and Siena College poll has Democrats up 51 to 43 on the generic ballot, President Trump at 38 percent approval, 31 percent on the war in Iran and 28 percent on cost of living, with Nate Cohn drawing the 2006 comparison. The bond market is doing its own voting, with the 10 year Treasury yield at a 19 year high, the Dow off more than 400 points, and crude at 106 dollars a barrel.

• Beau French, the University of Texas, and why assimilated American kids became a target for the anti DEI right
• Europe's far right, no go zones, the British rape gangs, and what happens when elites refuse to fix immigration
• Real H-1B visa abuse: the Disney layoffs, universities importing cheap labor, the "unique skills" dodge, and Erick's own immigration law practice stories
• The New York Times and Siena poll, Nate Cohn's 2006 parallel, JD Vance campaigning in Kansas, and why Erick still says do not panic
• James Talarico on parents and gender transition, Ken Paxton, Susan Collins, John Sununu, and the redistricting red wall
• The bond market rejecting Washington, the 10 year Treasury at a 19 year high, and Anduril's drone challenge to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon

Erick opens on a religious liberty case the Supreme Court has just agreed to hear, and it is one he says he could not believe was real: University Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, threatened Daniel Grand with jail, sent police to monitor his house, and encouraged neighbors to report "unauthorized prayer activity" after he tried to gather ten Orthodox Jews for a minyan on the Sabbath, with neighbors telling him "we don't want your kind here" because they feared the neighborhood would be labeled Jewish. He walks it back through Kelvin Cochran, the Atlanta fire chief fired over his Sunday school book, Jack Phillips and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and RLUIPA. The second half is the Supreme Court blocking the Trump administration's Postal Service ballot mail rule, with Erick taking the side of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett against Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, and asking Republicans a simple question: do you want Barack Obama's Postal Service holding a barcode that says this ballot belongs to this Republican?

• Daniel Grand, University Heights, Ohio, and a city using its police force to watch an Orthodox Jewish family for unauthorized prayer, now headed to the Supreme Court
• Kelvin Cochran, Jack Phillips, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Charlie Hebdo, and the argument from "You Will Be Made to Care" that the difference between the two persecutions is the sword
• The Postal Service ballot rule struck down: Alito and Thomas in dissent, four conservatives in the majority, and Erick's Lois Lerner and IRS warning about who controls the machinery next time
• A preview of tomorrow's newsletter naming the money behind the anti-Semitic turn on the right, the Franco admirers, and the effort to capture the Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church in America
• John Kennedy grilling FBI Director Kash Patel over a hiring rule change on bestiality, plus breaking news: a Kansas man charged over threats to kill Ben Shapiro, a Russian murder for hire indictment in the Southern District of New York, and a disrupted ISIS plot in Philadelphia