Erick Erickson HR 1 7/13/26

Greetings, conversationalists. Welcome. It is Eric Erickson here across the United States. We obviously have to begin today talking about Lindsey Graham. One of the most influential senators in Washington, D.C. You know, if you talk to Republican activists in South Carolina, there is not a lot of love for Lindsey Graham among the hardcore conservative base. It's true. But there was a lot of love for Lindsey Graham among the people of South Carolina. Lindsey Graham died, if you have not heard, it was a tear in his aorta. He had been suffering some, not taking care of himself. His father died of cardiac issues when he was 68. Lindsey Graham was 71. A lot of people sprung into conspiracy theories as there were some understandable concern at being a foe of Vladimir Putin and having been in Ukraine. But the most likely presumption was either a clot given his travel or heart issues, which he had had. And it was his heart, a tear of his aorta. There is a toxicology screen, but that seems most likely. He had talked to his staff on Saturday. and they had told him he needed to go get checked because he was not feeling well after all that whirlwind travel. And he said he would do it after meet the press on Sunday and that he could not die now because the Russia sanctions bill finally got the White House backing and he wanted to push it. To the president and the Republicans in Congress, to honor Senator Graham, you should push the Russia sanctions package that you have all agreed to on a bipartisan basis now. You should proceed with that. The turn of the tide is upon us in Ukraine, in large part because of Lindsey Graham, who tirelessly supported the Ukrainians. Again, a lot of Republican activists did not care for Lindsey Graham, and he was frequently maligned as a warmongering neocon. The truth is, Lindsey Graham recognized what too many people have forgotten. The world is safer when the United States is in charge of it. And to the extent that Lindsey Graham was seen as malleable over time, to the resentment of some of the Republican base in South Carolina, what you have to understand is that Lindsey Graham had things he wanted to get done, things he believed passionately in, and Lindsey Graham was willing to blow with the wind. towards and away from people so long as he could accomplish his goals. goals that he very much wanted, goals that he very much felt were necessary and needed. Lindsey Graham was an icon in the United States Senate. I did not know him well, but had several exchanges with him over the years, was very much convinced that he just must not like me because I had criticized him more than once, and he made his way through the crowd one time to see me to inform me that he bore no ill will towards my criticisms, thought some of them might be legitimate.

but also said that everybody had an opinion and he was used to him and then left me laughing. He had a fantastic sense of humor. In fact, he was considered the funniest member of the United States Senate. The former comedian and turned progressive Democratic Senator Al Franken once said that Lindsey Graham was the funniest member of the Senate, said they were in the Senate bathroom one time, standing next to each other at urinals when Graham was running for president. And Al Franken said, Lindsay, if I were a Republican, I would vote for you. And without missing a beat, Lindsey said, says, and that's my problem. He had a great, great sense of humor. And his sense of humor. will be missed in the Senate. Democrats and Republicans both came forward and praised him. Now, that's kind of the problem. Lindsey Graham was beloved by Democrats and Republicans in South Carolina. He replaced Strom Thurman, whose staff taught Lindsey Graham, Strom Thurman's constituent model. If you are unfamiliar with Strom Thurman, he was an icon of the United States Senate. In fact, between Graham and Thurman... South Carolina has had one Senate seat held for 70 years by two men. And Strom Thurman had the most impressive constituent service in the Senate. It was studied by Democrats and Republicans alike. He subscribed to every county newspaper. His staff monitored every news feed. Every kid who got a 4-H award, got a note from the senator. Anyone with the 50th anniversary got a note. It was remarkable constituent service and outreach by Strom Thurman that Lindsey Graham duplicated and would reliably get reelected, even though the polls would regularly show him close because Republican activists uphold. Lord Lindsey Graham, what they perceived as his moderation over time. What they never seemed to quite figure out is that, again, Graham had things he wanted done in Washington, D.C., and he was willing to cut any deal necessary. Yesterday, JD Vance, told the story that he and Lindsey Graham were yelling at each other in a Senate luncheon when Graham and JD Vance were the Senate together. They were deeply, deeply frustrated with each other over the Ukraine situation. And then the next day... JD Vance found out Lindsey Graham had behind the scenes been arranging the votes to get a core piece of JD Vance's legislation passed. And Graham told him that they could agree to disagree on some things and they would agree to agree on other things. And Lindsey Graham never bore ill will when you disagreed with him. He was a master of getting things done in the Senate. People on the right who hated Donald Trump. came to low, Lindsey Graham's what appeared to be a conversion. He was attacked after his death by Ann Applebaum at the Atlantic for his convenient switches. And what she didn't understand and what others can't understand is that Graham was concerned about Donald Trump being surrounded with isolationist voices, wanted to get in good with him, and did, and therefore was deeply influential in Donald Trump's foreign policy and shaping a robust American policy. Graham was able to befriend people and persuade people of the righteousness of his...

ideas, whether you liked him or not. And the defining moment of Lindsey Graham over the last decade came in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Republicans were on defense about Brett Kavanaugh, and Lindsey Graham was having none of it, one of the most famous speeches ever given in the Senate Judiciary Committee. If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us. What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open, and hope you went in 2020. You've said that, not me. You've got nothing to apologize for. When you see Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, tell him that Lindsay said, hello, because I voted for them. I would never do to them what you've done to this guy. This is the most unethical. sham, since I've been in politics, and if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy. Are you a gang rapist? No. I cannot imagine what you and your family have gone through. Boy, y'all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham, that you knew about it and you held it. You had no intention of protecting Dr. Ford. None. She's as much of a victim as you are. God, I hate to say it, because these have been my friends. But let me tell you, when it comes to this, you're looking for a fair process. You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend. Do you consider this a job interview? The advice and consent role is like a job. You consider that you've been through a job interview. I've been through a process of advice and consent under the Constitution. Would you say you've been through hell? I've been through hell and then some. This is not a job interview. Yeah. This is hell. This is going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward because of this crap. Your high school year book. You have interacted with professional women all your life. Not one accusation. You're supposed to be Bill Cosby when you're a junior and senior in high school. And all of a sudden you got over it. It's been my understanding that if you drug women and rape them for two years in high school, you probably don't stop. Here's my understanding. If he lived a good life, people would recognize it, like the American Bar Association has the gold standard. His integrity is absolutely unquestioned. He is the very circumspect in his personal conduct harbors no biases or prejudices. He's entirely ethical. He's a really decent person. He is warm, friendly, unassuming. He's the nicest person. The ABA. One thing I can tell you you should be proud of, Ashley, you should be proud of this, that you raised a daughter who had the good character to pray for Dr. Ford. To my Republican colleagues, if you vote no, you're legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics. You want this seat? I hope you never get it.

Convictions that he believed were at the basis of America. I always use it like the Superman comments. Remember freedom, justice, and the American way? He represented these traditional values. And, Chris, and he never flinched. He never flinched. Lindsey Graham, when he was, I believe, 16 years old, no, when he was 20. His mother and his father both died when he was 20 years old. He had a then 13-year-old sister left orphaned. Lindsey Graham was in the military. The military allowed him to attend the University of South Carolina in Columbia so he could be his sister's legal guardian and finished raising his sister. His sister name is... Darlene Graham. And today the president has asked Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, to appoint Darlene Graham, Lindsey Graham's younger sister, to fill his remaining time in the U.S. Senate. Have something to say? Hello. Hello. Call the show. 1-877-9-97 airing. That's 1-877-933-7-4-25.

Giving you the truth, not the talking points. It's the Eric Erickson Show. Hello and welcome. It is Eric Erickson here. The phone number is 877973-745, should you wish to be on the program. The President of the United States has recommended to Governor Henry McMaster to appoint Lindsey Graham's sister, Darling Graham Norton, as the replacement under the U.S. Constitution if a senator dies in office. A appointee is picked to continue to serve until the next election. Graham is on the ballot in November. And there will be a special election under the South Carolina Constitution to fill the remainder of his term. a snap primary, so to speak, under the election for a new nominee. So the way this will work is that Lindsey Graham's sister would be appointed to fill out the remainder of his existing term, which ends January 3rd of 2027. A special primary will be held on August 11th for individuals who wish to then be the replacement for Graham on the general election ballot in November, and that person would then serve a six-year term. There's no... Word on whether or not Senator Graham's sister would want to run for that. Joe Wilson, the member of Congress, has been someone suggested might run. And Pamela Yvette, who's the lieutenant governor, who lost the gubernatorial primary there to Alan Wilson, Joe Wilson's son. Ralph Northam has also been suggested as someone who might run for the U.S. Senate seat. We will see how that plays out, but it's expected that this afternoon, the governor of South Carolina will appoint Senator Graham's sister to finish out his term in office. Again, that would be until January 3rd of next year, and no telling if she would actually want to run for office. They do not want to pick a member of the U.S. House, although there are several Congressman Frye, Congressman Wilson, and others. They don't want to pick someone from the House because that would give the GOP only a two-seat majority right now in the House. So they don't want to shrink that out. So this is a developing story. We'll keep our eye on it. But it is expected that the Governor of South Carolina might put Senator Graham's sister, Darlene, into the Senate to fill out his term. Now, I got to tell you how you can have hot water forever. You can get a tankless water heater from Reney. We did that in our family.

And the kids' fights went away over bath time because I've got two teenagers, one of whom has extremely long hair. And she takes very long showers dealing with that hair. And inevitably in our house, when we had water tanks, water heater tanks, we would run out of hot water after she would know her shower was over when the hot water went away. That's how long her showers were. Well, we don't have to worry about it anymore. With Renai, we have hot water forever, and you can too. If you go to Talking Tankless.com, you can get a Renai tankless water heater and have eternal hot water. It never goes out. In fact, we have ours on a UPS backup, just one of the little ones I bought at Walmart, and we plug it in. And so if the power goes out of the house, it runs off the battery, and we still have hot water forever in our house, even when the power goes out. And we yanked our tank, so our power bill went down because we weren't paying to keep water heaters heated all the time. Talking Tankless.com is the website. Get a tankless water heater from where I have hot water forever like we do. Bathtime fights go away in the house and maybe your power bill might go down too. Talking tankless.com. Greetings conversationalist. It is Eric Erickson here across the Fruited Plain. 8779773-745. Lindsey Graham died on Saturday night. His office. Says it was a brief and sudden illness. He was 71. He had come home from his 10th wartime trip to Ukraine, was scheduled to sit for meet the press on Sunday morning. He was, for generation, the Senate's most relentless hawk on Iran. He was so relentless that Tehran's state media took the occasion of his death to celebrate that he had been delivered by Allah to hell. You will not be surprised to learn that within hours, before his family had even finished asking for privacy, a certain corridor of the internet already knew what the real story was. He had been assassinated. It was foul play. A regime that hated him? A convenient illness? Body barely cold. None of its evidence, but they were all very certain that he had been. Some speculated it might be Israel that this is, I kid you not, almost said the poop word, I kid you not. There were people online speculating Israel had assassinated Lindsey Graham to make it look like Iran had done it so that President Trump would go back to war. We've seen this movie before recently. The very same voices, the very same voices that spent the last 10 months insisting the murder of Charlie Kirk could not possibly be the work of one young man with a rifle are now the people suggesting the Jews have killed Lindsey Graham. Now,

The Kirk situation, never mind Tyler Robinson left a note confessing it. He texted his confession. He wrote about it on Discord. He left his DNA on the towel wrapped around the weapon. Never mind that there's surveillance footage, the evidence is overwhelming and points in one direction. But for the conspiracy mind, one direction is not enough. There's got to be a network. There's got to be a hidden hand. So. Why are so many people these days reaching for conspiracy theories? I mean, reflexively, they're reaching for the grand explanation. Part of the answer is a bias psychologists have measured for decades. They call it the proportionality bias. or the major event, major cause, heuristic. It is very, very human to do. So this is the way it goes. When something big happens, we presume something big must have caused it. A great man can't simply die of an illness the way ordinary men do. The cause feels too small for the weight of the loss. This is why the assassination of John F. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spawned a thousand theories. The attempt on Ronald Reagan spawned almost none. Reagan lived. The consequence was small. A lone disturbed man was explanation enough. But when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. died, the consequence was enormous. And so our minds demanded a conspiracy heavy enough to balance the scales of what had happened. A senator dying of a sudden illness or a movement's champion felled by a nobody on a rooftop. Those are small causes, large grief. The mind begins to rebel. Honestly.

If you think about it, there's actually a strange comfort in the sinister. There is. A lot of people sleep better at night believing that dark and powerful forces are arranging the world because they sleep better at night believing that than realizing a bureaucrat might have been incompetent. Or there's chance or accident, or the quiet providence of God governs far more than we would like. A hidden hand, however wicked, at least means somebody's in control. Randomness means no one is. And for a lot of people, that's more frightening. Better a villain we can name than a universe or a God we can't command. The conspiracy is not really an explanation. It's a sedative for some people. I've always thought there are three ordinary reasons people gravitate towards conspiracies. As I mentioned before, some people embrace conspiracies because they've got to complicate the simple because a plain fact is boring and a secret plot makes them a believer. They feel like they're initiate into something. Some do it to simplify the complex because the world is a tangle of contingencies and accidents and a single villain pulling the levers is way easier to hold than chaos. Some people do it to avoid blame for their own failures, their own side's losses, their own bad bets. It's easier to say the game was rigged than to admit you've been beaten. By the way, the research bears this out with a lot of precision. Scholars find that conspiracy belief is driven by three motives. The desire to understand a confused world, the desire to feel safe and in control of it, the desire to protect the image of oneself or one's tribe. Those are simply the academic phrases for what I've already described, and these beliefs surge in exactly the moment you'd expect. When there are times a crisis, times a loss, times of upheaval. When people feel the ground moving beneath them, they embrace conspiracy theories. You give a person back his sense of control. His appetite for conspiracy shrinks when you give a man, well, an upturned world where he doesn't feel like he's in control, his mind runs to conspiracy theories. He runs to the hidden hand. Two things. have poured gasoline on what we're seeing now, this fire where people are rushing to believe the world through conspiracy theories. The first is the collapse of the institutions that were referees for our disagreements. The press is less trusted than at any point in living memory. It's earned the distrust. It's more partisan. It's less careful. It's quicker to launder its preferences as reporting. The experts fare no better. Too many of them prove less expert than advertised. And worse, they prove constitutionally incapable of the three hardest words in the English language. was wrong. Their refusal, the unwillingness to admit error, has done more to breed conspiracies than any foreign troll farm paid for by Moscow. When the referees lose credibility, the crowd stops trusting the call and goes looking for its own replay. So people have rushed off now to some of the loudest voices online.

And the hyperconnected and marinate and an engineered feed to reward suspicion over sobriety. And that's why things have gotten so bad and so many people are rushing so quickly now to conspiracy theories. You see, the algorithm and the feed, they don't permit suspicion. They cultivate it. Something you need to understand about how much time you spend online is your algorithm that you see on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube, on Twitter, you name it. The algorithm wasn't built to deliver truth to you. It was built to deliver engagement and nothing engages like fear. The algorithm has figured it out. Feed it a dark theory, it's going to serve you 10 more. Each is going to be a little wilder than the last. The machine has learned that a suspicion frightened and angry user is a loyal user. He keeps coming back to drive the suspicion. Into that steps the enterprise of paranoia, the influencers, the hustlers, the people who keep driving you back. They don't traffic in truth because truth doesn't pay the way the tantalizing lie does. They mine the algorithm for clout, clicks, revenue. They're praying on the very people it's supposed to manipulate. It sells them not the truth they've imagined they're chasing, but it actually just gives them confirmation bias. The sweet assurance, their own suspicions were right all along. It's an ancient temptation. You know, it's fitted with new machinery. Scripture warned of a day when people would no longer endure sound teaching. They'd go for teachers who cater to their own desires. Paul told Timothy about the itching ears, the people craving not the truth, but they wanted their ears tickled. We're living in that age now. It's monetized. It's automated. It's running around the clock, and you can dive in. But then there's something else happening right now with these conspiracy theories we're seeing. That's postmodernism's coming home to roost. We were told for a generation now that there's no truth. You hear it all the time. I'm my truth. Your truth. It's the lived experience outranks evidence. The anecdote is greater than the data. The feeling is a sure guide to reason. Culture can't teach its children. Truth is personal and then act surprise when they believe whatever flatters them. And we're seeing that with the rise of postmodernism and the democratic socialist crowd. Once truth becomes a possession rather than a reality, when it becomes something I hold rather than something that holds me, then a DNA match and a sign confession or no match for feeling something isn't right in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The vibes overrule the verdict. Emotion is enthroned over evidence. And that throne once given way is not easily given back. Now, I can't not do this, particularly if you're a person of faith, if you're a fellow Christian, because of all the people who should be most resistant to the brain rot of the conspiracy theories online, oftentimes it's the people of faith who are the most susceptible. Jesus didn't say he would show us a truth or offer his truth as one of many. He said, I am the truth.

Truth isn't a private feeling. It's not a tribal weapon. It's a person and therefore it's real. And so it's objectively noble. The same for the president and the president. The same on the day it comforts us. The same on the day it wounds us. A faith that stakes everything on the truth being a person. Can't make its peace with a habit of mind that treats truth as whatever the moment requires. There's a commandment, the ninth commandment bearing false witness. It doesn't carry an exception for false witness that helps your team to invent a murder where there was an illness, to manufacture a plot where there was a lone killer, is to bear false witness against the living and the dead alike. Conspiratorial thinking is not discernment. It's discernment's counterfeit. Suspicion dressed up as wisdom. Pride disguised is in sight. Now, none of that means all the questions are illegitimate. It's not unreasonable to want the autopsy of Lindsey Graham. He'd come home from Turkey and Ukraine. He was without close rival, the Senate's most ardent foe of Vladimir Putin and the Mullahs in Tehran. Both regimes had reason to be glad he was gone. Tehran state media said as much within hours cheering on his death. Asking for confirmation is not a conspiracy.

It's diligence, which is a virtue. But diligence and presumption are not the same thing. The emergency call was for cardiac arrest that night. Graham's father died of a heart attack when he was 68. Graham was 71. Two days past his birthday. It's been his final days on a punishing pace on a travel schedule. So the diligence has been done now. The autopsy has been conducted. The District of Columbia's Medical Examiner returned the plaintiff's findings and aortic dissection, a tear on the wall of the aorta, brought on by hardening of diseased arteries. In other words, Senator Graham had a failing body. There was no foreign influence to take his hand. There's a toxicology report pending. It's standard. It's not expected to reveal anything. He died because of a tear in his aorta. Sometimes people do die suddenly, even great men, and all we've got left is grief. Sometimes a killer is exactly who the evidence says he is. Wisdom's proportion, humility's the willingness to let a small cause explain a large sorrow. The itching ear can always find a teacher willing to scratch it. The algorithm has made the supply of those teachers endless. But we were never promised a teacher who would tell us what we wanted to hear. We were promised truth itself. He doesn't arrange the facts to flatter our suspicions. And we're going to honor our dead, not by spinning a story worthy of our anger, but by telling the truth. Because the truth is not served by spreading lies. There are way too many people out there in America today who have embraced conspiracy theories. They want to be entertained. They want their biases confirmed. They want... to explain tragic events of big men in big ways when it's just small ways. They want to take the chaos out of the world. And most importantly, I think most people who spread conspiracy theories or embrace them, the spreaders want to profit from the people who want to sleep well at night. And the best way to sleep well at night is to know that there are bad men on the march. Because you sleep far better knowing bad men are on the march controlling the strings and the hidden hand than understanding that, well, there's a random universe and a God that you can't control. But I would caution you all. When your first reaction every single time to something bad happening is conspiracy. maybe unplug from the algorithm that is breeding that in your brain. Honest. Putting your trust in me to tell you what's going on. Transparent. I need you to know this from the bottom of my heart. Giving you the information without the noise. My job isn't to tell you what you want to hear. It's the Eric Erickson Show.

Text Eric to 33777 and get the four things you need to know podcast. Eric tells you the four things to pay attention to after the show. Also available on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. This is our of the program brought to you by Van Allen Golf. If you text golf to 33777. I'll send you a link or just go to Van Allen Golf.com. And if you use the code Eric, E R-I-C-K at checkout at Van Allen Golf, You say 15%. Doesn't matter what you're getting. Grips, shafts, new clubs, used discount code, Eric E-R-I-C-K, get 15% off. I love their putter. Also, if you text golf to 33-777, I'll send you the Golfers Journal. link and you can use my referral. They'll send me golf balls if you subscribe and you will get into the Broken Tea Society. If you're a golfer or have someone you love who is a golfer, I highly recommend the golfers journal. It's the best publication out there for golf. I got to play this for you. This is an introduction to Darling Graham in a campaign commercial about Lindsey Graham, so you understand their story. It looks like she is set to be the new senator from South Carolina if she accepts. This is Lindsey Graham's commercial from his campaign trail, introducing his family and using his sister, Darlene, in the story. I'm Lindsey Graham, and I approve this message. We grew up in a small town, Central South Carolina. I guess looking back, we didn't have a lot. My parents, they were loving people and cared about us, but Lindsay was always the one that took care of me. He helped me with my homework. I was sick. He gave me my medicine. He taught me how to ride a bicycle. I remember that. It was hard when we lost my mom and my dad. Lindsay assured me. that he was going to take care of me, and he was going to be there for me. And he did. He never let me down. He would come home every weekend, then he would call during the week. He made sure I went to college. To take on that responsibility of raising a little sister, that came from within for Lindsay. And he did a good job. Lindsay cares about the people of South Carolina just like he cares about me. That is Darling Graham talking about Lindsay and his friend Tim Scott, great friend of Lindsey Graham and U.S. Senator on CNN. With us now is his fellow South Carolina Senator and longtime friend Tim Scott. Senator Scott, thank you for being with us. We're very sorry for your loss. And I know when you go back to Capitol Hill this week, it's going to be the first time you've ever served there.

Without Lindsey Graham being there first, you know, across the Capitol, then obviously as Senate colleagues, I just wonder if you've reflected on what that's going to be like. Wow, John, that's that's gosh, saddening to hear that honestly. I have not. I've just been missing my friend. America misses its statesman, but I miss my friend and putting it in perspective for... The rest of my service I will be without Lindsey Graham is a sad, sad thought. His shoes are irreplaceable. His humor and his wit brought us together. And what I love about Lindsay is that because of his humble beginnings and the misery and the pain of his young life, he became a very sensitive person towards the needs of others. That's Tim Scott. Now, I need to tell you about Vision Computer before I get out of here. If you go to call them at 404 Computer, go to Vision Computers.com. They can build you a computer. Now, I got asked a question of the day. I forget who is asking me about them, but, you know, it's not just like having your own, like, minor tech support service when you have Vision Computer. They are, like, managed IT. They can keep your computers going. They can help you find files. And they're not AI chatbots. They're actually human being. So you call them in 15 seconds or less. You get a human being on the phone who can help you. They can do this for your whole business. If you want to buy their managed IT service, you can, or if you buy the computers from vision computers, it comes with them. We're just telling a friend of ours the other day, their daughter needed a laptop that she's not very technically proficient, that you get it from vision computers. They'll build you the laptop exactly what you need, and then you've got their phone number. You call them and he... time you need to need something. Call them at 404 compute today or go to visioncomcom. 404 compute or visioncom. Let vision help you with your computers.