The Erick Erickson Show

Erick Erickson closes the 25th anniversary of September 11 by playing the sound a camera crew heard at the World Trade Center that afternoon, more than 300 firefighter PASS device alarms sounding under the rubble, then turns the overwhelming weight of the news into practical advice out of Jeremiah's letter to the exiles in Babylon: seek the welfare of the city in which you live, because Washington is not coming to help you. From there it is an Open Line Friday run through the Lindsay Clancy trial twist, where juror Paula Devlin told Gayle King on CBS that the lone holdout who wanted a guilty verdict was the only black man on the panel, plus Ted Cruz and Dave McCormick warning about a red green alliance of communists and Islamists at the Republican convention, President Trump's wardrobe jab at Ken Paxton, and the $5,000 Trump dividend that landed like a lead balloon with congressional Republicans. Erick ends where he began, with Welles Crowther, the red bandana, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

• The PASS device audio from Ground Zero, the 300 plus firefighters lost, and Erick's answer to feeling overwhelmed by inflation, China, Russia, Iran, the Sahel, and fentanyl all at once
• Jeremiah 29 and the Babylonian exile as practical living rather than theology: volunteer at the food bank, read to kids at the elementary school, spend money locally, know your city councilman, because Washington did not storm the towers and is not coming for you
• The Lindsay Clancy jury twist: juror Paula Devlin, Gayle King saying she has to sit with that, the white jurors who wanted not guilty by reason of insanity, and Erick's shot at the online racists who assumed the opposite
• Ted Cruz on the red green alliance, Dave McCormick on socialism returning from the dustbin of history, Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laughing during the reading of the names, and the al Qaeda volunteer headed to Congress from New Jersey
• Why Israel has not finished the job in Iran: Erdogan, the Turks, the Kurds in northern Iraq, and a president who took his friend's phone call over the war plan
• President Trump on Ken Paxton's wardrobe, the $5,000 Trump dividend Congress does not want, caller Jim at 80 on his schizophrenic brother-in-law and the case for reopening Milledgeville and the mental institutions, and Welles Crowther climbing back up the stairs

Erick opens on President Trump's Dallas convention promise of a $5,000 "Trump dividend" to every adult citizen if Republicans hold the House and Senate, and calls it what it is: a bribe funded by the tariffs listeners are already paying, with JD Vance out on Fox News defending it. His counteroffer is zero income tax for married couples with kids earning under $200,000, money people keep instead of money the government prints and hands back. Then the real story of the hour, the Republican midterm message of common sense versus crazy, as James Talarico scrambles to walk back six genders and a non-binary God, Abdul El-Sayed runs from his 9/11 problem, John Fetterman cuts an ad for Dave McCormick, and a new Tony Fabrizio poll shows Talarico beating Ken Paxton in Texas by four.

• Trump's $5,000 dividend pitch in Dallas, the never-delivered $5,000 DOGE check, and why Erick calls it bribery and "unicorn farts"
• JD Vance on Brett Baier defending tariffs as the funding source, and Erick's rebuttal that American workers pay tariffs through flat wages and higher prices on beef, coffee and bananas
• The better plan: zero income tax on married couples with children under $200,000 instead of a Biden-style $2,000 COVID check that reignites inflation
• Common sense versus crazy: James Talarico backpedaling on SB 14, transgender surgeries for minors and "God is non-binary," plus his Charlie Kirk dodge
• Mike Rogers, Abdul El-Sayed and the 9/11 attack line in Michigan, John Fetterman's ad for Dave McCormick, Jake Tapper on tied Senate races, and the Fabrizio poll red flag with Talarico up four on Ken Paxton

Erick opens with the hard economic numbers Republicans keep trying to spin past: the Atlanta Fed says a household now needs $124,674 a year to afford a median priced home against a median income just over $80,000, wholesale prices rose 0.4 percent in August with the producer price index running 5.4 percent annually, diesel surged 24.1 percent, and West Texas crude sits above $101 a barrel with Brent at $106. His argument is that President Trump should stop spinning and level with people, because Iran is deliberately wrecking the American economy to elect weak Democrats and win a nuclear weapon. Then the story of the hour: Erick walks through the case that Jacob Coxon's dramatic resignation from Anthropic after six weeks is not organic at all, but a funded operation to regulate American AI into oblivion.

• The Atlanta Fed housing math, the August producer price index, 24.1 percent diesel, oil over $100 a barrel, and why the Federal Reserve interest rate decision next week still points to a hike
• Trump's claim that the war ends immediately after the election, and Erick's case that Iran is holding the American economy hostage to install Democrats who will let them go nuclear
• Erick's frustration with the tariffs and the Canada trade war, and his pitch to blame Joe Biden's economy while running on common sense versus crazy
• The Jacob Coxon story: six weeks at Anthropic, a Wall Street Journal exclusive, a Twitter post 18 minutes later with 149 million views, and Anderson Cooper and Brett Baier interviews demanding an international body to control AI
• Following the money, from Extinction Rebellion and Newspeak to Jan Tallinn, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, Encode AI, the AI Policy Network, the AI Futures Project, Dustin Moskovitz and Bernie Sanders' bill to ban artificial superintelligence, with Elon Musk, Dylan Loomis and Parker Thayer questioning whether any of it is organic

Erick opens the final hour on Eva Moskowitz's Washington Post op-ed and the Success Academy lawsuit against New York education commissioner Betty Rosa, filed after the state blocked US News and World Report from reporting aggregate AP exam results, dropping one Success Academy high school from 11th in New York to 196th overnight. Then the news of the hour: the United Kingdom has formally requested the extradition of Andrew and Tristan Tate on 59 charges, including 15 counts of rape, and Erick names the right wing influencers who elevated them anyway. He closes on the eve of the 25th anniversary of September 11 with George W. Bush at Ground Zero, the 537 votes in Florida, the USA Today recount that would have cost Bush the presidency under his own hanging chad standard, and a hard argument about Islam, Charlie Hebdo, and the post liberal right.

• Eva Moskowitz, Success Academy charter schools and the federal lawsuit against Betty Rosa over New York hiding AP exam data, plus regents exams curved down to 29 of 82 raw points
• Teachers unions, whole word reading versus phonics as a revenue play, Mississippi outperforming California and New York, and the Georgia speaker pushing the Mississippi plan
• School choice, Bibb County school closings decided by race instead of academics, and Erick's defense of good teachers stuck babysitting kids the state forces through the door
• The United Kingdom's extradition request for Andrew and Tristan Tate, 42 charges against Andrew and 17 against Tristan, and the Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson wing that promoted them
• The 25th anniversary of September 11, George W. Bush's bullhorn moment and Yankee Stadium pitch, Bush versus Al Gore and the 537 votes, Saxby Chambliss beating Max Cleland, and why Erick says Islam as practiced is incompatible with Western free speech
• The post liberal right, Patrick Deneen, JD Vance's advisers, and Erick's case that attacking classical liberalism is socialism with a church pew

Erick opens the midterm stretch run by dismantling the Republican panic over Senate polling, using Patrick Ruffini's study of 3,312 polls showing Democrats are overstated by an average of 3.7 points, with the high water mark landing right at Labor Day. Then, as the Republican convention opens on the week of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, he argues the GOP should embrace the nationalized election and run on it, pointing to the Great Lakes PAC ad hitting Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race. Plus Trump's Presidential Medal of Freedom for the Man in the Red Bandana, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declaring "I am the house now."

• Patrick Ruffini's polling error data: Democrats overstated 3.7 points on average, 73 percent of polls, peaking at 5.9 in late July
• The 2020 echo: Lindsey Graham, Steve Bullock, Cal Cunningham, Roger Marshall, John Cornyn, Joni Ernst, Cindy Hyde-Smith, and every panic that fizzled
• Race by race averages in Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, with Ken Paxton and Michael Whatley the real trouble spots
• 9/11 at 25: Erick's daughter Evelyn on remembrance versus a macabre idol, TSA opening gate access again, and the Man in the Red Bandana Medal of Freedom
• Mike Rogers versus Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, the Great Lakes PAC ad, and Erick's case for nationalizing the election on 9/11
• Scott Bessent at SMU: "I am the house now," the yen intervention, and the tripled Treasury buyback of 10 and 20 year notes

Erick opens hour two with survivors calling in on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, including Robert, who was on the 101st floor of the South Tower, and Greg, who listened over a squawk box as Cantor Fitzgerald went silent. Then he tears into the Trump administration's trade war of choice with Canada and the move to ban Bombardier jets, warning it puts Roger Marshall in Kansas, Susan Collins in Maine and Mike Rogers in Michigan at real risk two months before the election. He closes with a nuanced defense of Flock cameras paired with a hard line on facial recognition, and a blistering take on Anthropic researchers publicly claiming AI could kill humanity.

• Callers Robert and Greg on surviving 9/11, Aon's 176 dead, Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and a generation of kids with no memory of the world before
• Zohran-style progressives who say America deserved 9/11: Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, the "hurt people hurt people" line, and Erick's case for nationalizing the midterms on 9/11
• The Canada trade war: the Bombardier ban, 2,000 Kansas jobs, Howard Lutnick sabotaging a done deal, Jamieson Greer, oil over $100 a barrel and the Dow down 300
• Flock cameras defended and limited: no right to privacy in your license plate, but ban facial recognition in the public right of way and ban proactive alerts, with WSB TV's Brookhaven case of a family ticketed over stale insurance data
• Anthropic's Evan Hubinger and a departing researcher saying AI could kill all humans, and why Erick is not buying it: "I read the end of the book"

Erick opens hour three with the Wall Street Journal story on why returning online orders got hard, Lane Bryant restocking fees, shortened Macy's and Home Depot return windows, McDonald's killing free refills, and argues none of it is corporate penny pinching. It is what a low trust society looks like when a post Christian America abandons the ethics that made cheap trust possible. He then takes a caller on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and delivers his sharpest attack yet on the JD Vance welfare proposal, calling it a plan to turn stay at home moms into welfare queens, before objecting to the Attorney General speaking at the Republican convention in Dallas.

• The Wall Street Journal on return fees: Lane Bryant, Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, TJ Maxx, Macy's cut from a year to 30 days, Home Depot's seven day window, and 68 percent of retailers now charging
• Why the low trust society explains it all: shoplifting, locked up razor blades at Target, dashcams, drivers in the left lane, Roman lawsuits as spectator sport, and Ross Douthat's post Christian right
• Caller Kathleen in Jacksonville on the 9/11 25th anniversary, never forget, and Erick on his daughter's question about where remembering ends and idolatry begins
• JD Vance and the Trump administration draft rule extending child care welfare to married couples: the $9,000 per child benefit, the $75,000 benefit cliff, and why dad cannot take the promotion and mom cannot take the part time job
• The Republican convention in Dallas: Erick's objection to the Attorney General and cabinet secretaries speaking at a partisan convention, plus LIV Golf filing Chapter 11

The post Labor Day panic has arrived, and Erick Erickson says the bad news is actually good news. He walks through the Real Clear Politics generic ballot average, Donald Trump's 36 to 39 percent approval, the two point Democratic polling bias, and the Senate map from Ken Paxton in Texas to Susan Collins in Maine, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Mike Collins in Georgia. His verdict: Republicans probably lose seats, but there is no blue tsunami coming, and the billion dollars Trump is finally spending changes the math.

• Why Democrats always peak in summer polling, and why the averages settle after Labor Day
• Trump approval at 36 percent, the Iran war drag, and the AI worry numbers from Steve Kornacki
• Ken Paxton, the $10 million Texas rescue ad, and the Republican convention nobody may watch
• Susan Collins in Maine, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Michael Whatley in North Carolina, and national money pulling out of Georgia over Mike Collins
• The DSA conference, "the Democrats must be destroyed," and the GOP's 9/11 twenty fifth anniversary messaging opportunity

Erick Erickson takes apart the Trump administration's draft rule, championed by JD Vance, that would let married couples with a stay at home spouse collect roughly $9,000 per child from a Health and Human Services child care fund built in the 1990s to move single working mothers off welfare. His verdict: it is the Diet Coke of socialism, and you cannot beat the real thing. He walks the $75,000 income cliff, the promotions dad will never take, the marketable skills mom will never rebuild, and offers his own alternative: a $15,000 per child tax deduction with no cap, plus deducting local school property taxes for homeschool and private school families.

• The New York Times report on the JD Vance child care subsidy, the 870,000 families now on the program, and why redirecting money from single working mothers guts the whole point of 1996 welfare reform
• Congress never voted on it: Article I Section 8, the Necessary and Proper Clause, US v. Butler, and why judges will probably stop the end run around the legislature
• The $75,000 hard cap trap: two kids, $18,000 a year, a 10 percent raise dad cannot accept, and a couple stranded at 50 with no promotions and no marketable skills
• Erick's alternative to turning parents into welfare queens: a $15,000 per child tax deduction through age 18 (21 in college), no cap, plus deducting school property taxes for private and homeschool families
• Kevin Roberts and the post liberal Heritage Foundation, Lawrence Jones on Fox and Friends, the EBT card nanny state hypocrisy, and Reagan's "a choice, not an echo"
• Plus the Rams and 49ers flying 15,000 miles for a 10:35 a.m. Friday game in Melbourne, and the NFL's bet on supersonic travel

Erick Erickson walks through the Wall Street Journal report that Iran's oil dollars are drying up, with no Iranian crude crossing the US Navy blockade since mid July and offshore stockpiles feeding China down from 90 million barrels to 29 million. His tell that the regime itself is cracking: the Ayatollah has had two London houses foreclosed on for missed mortgage payments, and the Iranian army is going unpaid and hungry. He also unpacks the new OECD PISA study showing a worldwide learning recession, and keeps taking apart the JD Vance stay at home parent child care subsidy.

• Wall Street Journal on the Strait of Hormuz blockade, Kpler tanker tracking, the collapsing Iranian rial, and the Ayatollah's two foreclosed London houses
• Victoria Coates on Fox, Scott Bessent on Operation Economic Outcast, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright on nine million barrels a day still transiting the Strait
• Why the IRGC and the regular Iranian army are different animals, and why hungry, armed, unpaid soldiers are how the Shah fell to Khomeini
• The OECD PISA study: reading down 28 points, math down 22 points since 2015, kids using AI to cheat rather than learn, and a Dark Ages comparison from Rome to the monasteries to the Renaissance
• More on the JD Vance child care plan turning stay at home moms into welfare queens while punishing married moms who work, plus callers on property tax exemptions for modest homes and whether Vance or Marco Rubio gets 2028
• China's deflation, mortgage and real estate crisis, the sanctioned Turkish bank, and Canada helping on Iran even in the middle of a trade war