Erick Erickson 4-17-26 HR 3

Summer means firing up the grill, getting together with friends, and making the most of the weekends. Total Wine and More is my first stop. Whether it's salesers and ready to serve cocktails for the cooler, or a good bottle of bourbon. Everything I need is at Total Wine. With the lowest prices, it's easy to stock up for whatever the weekend brings, and I can get everything I need in one stop. Shop Total Wine and More and get ready for your next summer party. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina? Drink responsibly, B-21. Welcome. It is Eric Erickson here. The phone number is 8779-73-7-4-25. If you would like to be on the program, it's an open line Friday. If you text Eric to 33-77-get everything you need, I just got an email from Nina. A listener in Woodstock, Georgia, she says, who is the Mahdi? This is a person. Can you describe it? Let me explain this to you first. Muhammad. said that there would be a Mahdi of his stock and will have a broad forehead, a prominent nose. He will fill the earth with equity and justice as it was filled with oppression and tyrants and will rule for seven years. The Mahdi is believed to be a descendant of Muhammad. And in 12 or Islam, they believe that the Mahdi was the 12th in line after Muhammad. Muhammad was the prophet, and then one of his descendants was, and one of his descendants was. So you get down 12, and that he disappeared as a child. The would-be Madi disappeared as a child and will come back as a grown man. He disappeared into a fold in space. Now, let me just read you Wikipedia. They actually pretty much do a good description of this. The Madi is a messianic figure in Islamic belief compared to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ or the Jewish concept of the arrival of the Messiah. The Mahdi is said to be a descendant of Muhammad and is believed to appear at the end of time shortly before Jesus returns to rid the world of evil and injustice. The Mahdi is mentioned in several compilations of the Hadith, but is absent from the Quran. The Hadith are the sayings of the prophet. The two most revered Sunni Hadith collections are in it. As such, he plays only a marginal role in Sunni Islam, and some Sunni theologians have rejected the idea of the Mahdi altogether. However, to 12 Versheas, which is the branch of Islam that the rulers of Iran subscribed to, the Mahdi plays a significant role.

They believe the Madi is Imam Muhammad al-Madi, the 12th Imam and the 11th Imam, Hassan al-Azkari, who is said to be in occultation by divine will. He's somewhere trapped at a fold of space. The idea of the Madi seemed to have been popularized during the religious and political unrest of the first and second centuries of Islam. Some of the first references to the Madi appear in the late 7th century. Although the concept of Amadi is not an essential doctrine of Islam, it is popular among many Muslims. In particular, 12-er Shia Islam. Twelve-er Shia is what you have to remember. Now, what is that? It's the largest branch of Shiite Islam. Twelve or Shia believe that the twelve imams are divinely appointed as both spiritual and political successors of the Prophet Muhammad. and they possess special knowledge and authority to guide the Muslim community. According to their theology, the 12 imams are exemplary human individuals who rule over the Muslim community with justice and are able to preserve and interpret Islamic law and esoteric meanings of the Quran. The words and deeds of Muhammad and the imams are a guide and model for the community. There are 170 to 200 million 12-year Muslims. They include the inhabitants of Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan, and about half the Muslim population of Bahrain and Lebanon. 12ers share a lot of the Shiite sect beliefs, such as the belief in the leader being the Imam, and they believe that the 12th Imam has disappeared and will return. Now, it is all about a, all about... the list. So it begins with the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was one of the 12, and then the eldest surviving grandson of Muhammad, and then grandson of Muhammad and brother of the prior Imam, and then an author of prayers, and on and on it goes, all the way to... uh hujat ala ibn al-hasaan according to 12er doctrine he's the current imam and the promised maudi a messianic figure who will return with the prophet jesus he will re-establish the rightful governance of islam and rule the whole world now they essentially believe that this guy uh hujat al-i bin al-hasan has been trapped in a fold in space and that he will return with Jesus. Jesus is supposed to return and usher in the Mahdi. And Jesus will exercise rulership of the planet while.

The Madi will return and destroy the false prophets, the Christians and the Jews, and then the Madi will be set up. So Jesus is a servant, essentially, of the Madi in Islam. You will... If you hear the word Mottie and you know anything about Dune, you understand that a lot of Dune, the third one's coming out in December, supposed to be a phenomenal movie by people who've seen clips of it. My son and I loved the first and second ones. I didn't like the book, but I've liked the movies. The Madi is essentially the Islamic Messiah, and Jesus is his servant. Remember, one of the whole presuppositional things of Islam is that Islam is correcting the errors of the Christians and the Jews. So we're talking about people here, and the Iranian regime totally believes this stuff. And if you can't believe in miracles and you don't believe in Jesus, you are never going to understand that the Iranians fundamentally philosophically believe this stuff. You need to understand that they fundamentally do. Now, I want to move on to podcastistan. I saw a great tweet, and I want to give credit to the great tweet about all these ankle biters out there from Park McDougald. I'm going to say McDougal. It sounds very Scottish. She's a senior writer at the scroll. Let me read you this tweet from Park McDougal. Or McDonald. McDonald. I'm Park. We'll just say Park. He's riffing off of something from the nation. The nation tweeted out Hasan Piker and said at Yale, Hasan Piker quoted Lennon. He quoted Mao. He said, Benjamin Netanyahu was the real American president. Then he called the fall of the Soviet Union one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century. Now, you should understand that the nation is a far left publication. And they love that Hasan Piker quotes Lennon and Mao and laments the fall of the Soviet Union. What Park says is between Hassan and Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson, we're watching the emergence of a new podcast consensus. Russia and China are good. America is evil. Islam is good. Israel runs America. The only thing that separates the left from the right as far as I can tell is how you feel about trans people. When I was in college, I had a professor of political science, James Comey. And he talked about the horseshoe theory. He actually talked about it being a circle. He said, when you get to the far left and the far right, you find the same people who believe the same things. For a very long time, a lot of political philosophers were dismissive of the horseshoe theory of politics, but we're sitting in real time. The far left and the far right believe so many of the same things. Ilhan Omar.

And David Hogg, the far-left gun control advocate, they have decided that we should give Marjorie Taylor Greene a chance, that she should be embraced by the left. Why? because she hates Donald Trump and Israel. She hates the Jews. So if you hate Donald Trump and you hate Israel and the Jews, Marjorie Taylor Greene is welcomed by Ilhan Omar and David Hogg and other progressives on the view. The women on the view have been claiming that Marjorie Taylor Greene should become a Democrat. Why? Because she hates Donald Trump and the Jews. Ironically, Marjorie Taylor Greene has it changed to my knowledge on her opposition to transgenderism or being pro-life. But as long as you hate Israel and you hate Donald Trump, you're now welcome by the left. We are watching a consensus on the far left and the far right about Russian, China being good, the United States is the bad guy, Islam is good, Christianity is bad, Israel runs America, it's wild to watch this happen in real time. Tucker Carlson claims that America's new religion is Israelism. where essentially Israel runs everything. If you're a young person and you think Israel is pulling strings of this country, you are a naive fool and maybe you should shut up and pay attention to the world and get a job and grow up. The amount of anti-Semitism out there that is now just, well, I'm anti-Israel. I'm not anti-Semitic. I don't hate the Jews. I just hate the Jews. No, you actually hate the Jews. You do. You're just not brave enough to admit it. Tucker Carlson is obsessed with Israel and the Jews. So is Marjorie Taylor Greene. So is Ilhan Omar. So are these people on the left. The ankle biters of podcast to stand are in this together, yapping like little chihuahuas. On the right, they tried to do like little chihuahuas on Donald Trump's leg, and it didn't work, and now he's blasting them. So now they've turned on him. Candace Owens even turned on JD Vance, that Carrie Prejean woman, who many of you think God have not heard of. She was a Miss America pageant, amateur porn star person who... converted to Catholicism like five minutes ago and now wants to lecture the Pope on Catholicism. She's turned on JD Vance. It's kind of funny to watch JD Vance. He tried to coddle all these people and try to keep them all together in some sort of coalition for himself. They're all turning on him now.

The far left and the far right believe that the United States is to blame for the problems of the world. The far right largely believes that it's Israel to blame, and it's Israel by proxy. You see, we're making all these bad decisions. Donald Trump is making all these bad decisions, but it's really Israel. It's not Donald Trump. He's a slave to Israel. You see, that's what Tucker Carlson believes. He's a slave to Israel. Candice, so is Megyn Kelly. They're all there that Donald Trump is a slave to Israel. And suddenly today, the president is cutting a deal with Iran that Israel doesn't want. And how dare he bully Israel? It's incredible to watch this happen. Viktor Orban. has lost his election in Hungary. It's kind of interesting to watch the new prime minister. He's been going on TV stations that refuse to allow him to come on television. They slander him and his family, and he's doing interviews with him. At the end of the interviews, he says, when I get into power, you're over, you're gone, you're fired. He has met with the president of Hungary who has to allow him to take government control and says, when I become prime minister, he's fired. He's met with leadership in government and said, when I get in here, you're fired, and he's basically in there now. He's refusing private protection. I'm kind of worried about the guy's life. The media heralded him as a liberal champion of European-style democracy. They didn't know anything about the guy. He's actually more conservative than Viktor Orban. He's actually more conservative than Viktor Orban. In fact, he's done something Viktor Orban never did. He just prohibited immigration into Hungary by non-Europeans. He's closed the border to the Muslim and African immigrants that the EU was trying to send in Hungary and says, we're not going to do it. He's just against corruption. And here's what we're finding out. Viktor Orban used the tax dollars of the Hungarian people to subsidize right-wing groups in the United States and push them to become pro-Russia. That's what we're finding out. That's why so many of these people on the right were so adamant that they needed Viktor Orban, who is to the left of the guy that just got elected. Do you realize that? I bet you have it from conservative sources. that the new guy is actually more conservative than Viktor Orban. He's for free markets. He is anti-immigration. He is anti-corruption. And he's just exposed that Viktor Orban was using tax dollars in Hungary to fund CPAC going to Hungary. And he has said now that they will be exposing that Viktor Orban used Hungarian tax dollars and floated to groups on the right in the United States to advance Vladimir Putin's agenda. So suddenly it makes all... all the sense in the world as to why so many conservative think tanks in D.C. were pro-Orbahn and pro-Pooten. Turns out Viktor Orban was using Hungarian tax dollars to subsidize support for Vladimir Putin and to oppose Ukraine. The new guy is actually more ruthless on immigration than Viktor Orban, but also supports Ukraine.

Have you, if you understand what's going on here. We have a new leader in Hungary who's actually conservative and is actually exposing that the old outgoing leader of Hungary used Hungarian tax dollars to buy off Americans to support the Russian agenda because Viktor Orban was the pass-through for the money from Russia. You want to understand how horseshoe theory works? You've got the far right and the far left now. friendlier policies with China and Russia, defending Islam, hating the United States and hating Israel, these people directly, indirectly through proxies, money has probably shifted their opinions. In the meantime, podcastistan becomes less and less relevant as Donald Trump goes to war with them, and I suspect we're going to see a federal investigation real soon into where they're getting their money from. Follow Eric on X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Rumble. Search E.W. Erickson. You can be live on Eric's show by calling 877-97-9-7 Eric. That's 877-97-9-3-7-4-25. Hello there, welcome. Eric Erickson here, 8779373425. If you will stay on the phones, please. I will get to you after our next commercial break. The phone number for the rest of you, 877-97-973-725. Germany's chancellor has released a statement, quote, Iran must end its nuclear program. It must stop attacking Israel and the Gulf states. It must reopen the Strait of Hormuz reliably, permanently, and without any form of payment. So all the stuff that Donald Trump managed to accomplish this morning before the Chancellor of Germany woke up, the Chancellor of Germany now says he wants. This is one of the most face-saving things I've ever seen. By the way, the French and the British basically doing the same thing. Hey, guys, we demand Iran do all of this stuff that they agreed to do this morning before we woke up. That's the ticket. Wow. Wow. Wow. By the way. There actually is an interesting story out there about the... about the missing or murdered scientists, according to multiple media outlets, not just the Daily Mail. A cluster of UFOs were spotted over a U.S. over Wright-Patterson Air Force Base prior to the disappearance of a scientist, Neil McCastland, appear to be drones of some kind.

Keep your eye on this story. This is getting weirder and weirder, and the president is taking it very seriously. Now, I got to tell you about Old Glory Bank. They're my bank. I have a no fee checking, no fee savings account with them. And if you are a active duty military... or a first responder, including ICE and Border Patrol. You qualify for Old Glory Protect, which is $100,000 line of duty death benefit. If, God forbid, something happens to you. All you have to have is an account with direct deposit set up. You can find out more at Old Glory Bank slash Eric. They are a full service bank, and they're very active in the military community. In fact, Homeless veterans, a lot of them that they've struggled either with jobs or mental health issues, which has led to their homelessness. They get benefits and they can't collect their benefits because they don't have bank accounts. Old Glory Bank has partnered with a number of nonprofits around the country that work with homeless veterans on bank accounts to be able to provide for them. They're big advocates of the first responder community and our service members. If you want to find out more, they do business checking as well in business savings. They do mortgages. They do CDs. Find out more. Old GloryBank.com slash Eric. Old Glorybank.com slash ERICK. Member FDIC, Equal housing lender, terms and conditions apply. Guys. Um, I have just seen the coolest video. I can't show it to you, but I can describe this video for you. It is an Iranian, not Iranian, it is a Ukrainian soldier. I got to send this video to my team. It's on Twitter. I'm going to retweet it. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll be able to see it. It's an Iranian...

pilot who is flying a, it's almost like it's a Soviet era yak 52 training aircraft, which is a propeller plane. If you know what the Mustangs are from World War II kind of looks like that. And in the back is a soldier with a rifle. It looks like a shotgun, actually. And they're taking down the Iranian drones flying into Ukraine, which is one dude sitting in the back of the plane shooting a shotgun at the Iranian drones. It's incredible. Now, they say rifle, but it actually looks like that's a... box the shotgun shells. No, that's a rifle there that he's using. I'm impressed. It's just it's a slow moving plane that moves faster than the drones that are incoming from Russia and they're just up there shooting them out of the sky with a rifle. That's impressive. Talk about that. That's the air defense you need to take on the Iranian drones. Wow. Okay. I want to go to Trip calling from Middleburg, Florida. Trip, welcome to the Eric Erickson show. Hi, Eric. Great to talk to you. I have a question. Why does it seem that the Republicans have a problem getting out their... messaging for the policies that they have in place. It seems to me like they're not doing anything. I'm not laughing at you, Tripp. This is, what's the song from Beauty and the Beast, a tale as old as time? They're never, they're never, ever, ever. So part of this is, okay. Now, I'm going to go off on a little riff here, trip. Part of this is leadership, and this is no disrespect to the president, but when the president so dominantly controls the agenda and the president is on social media complaining about the Pope and stuff, the party leadership in D.C., he's like, well, our message isn't going to compete with him. About six months ago, the Republican strategic operatives at the National Republican Congressional Committee released a memo and it got leaked to the public and basically said, just ignore the president on social media. Here's what you need to focus on. Now, the problem with that aspect of it is that it's like hurting cats and it always has been. Republicans are way more individualistic than the Democrats are. It's harder to get them on message. They're way more divided right now. That is also somewhat a sign of... The rats fleeing the ship as we head into midterves where they don't think they're going to do well. But the other big problem is that our messaging sucks.

I mean, like, for example, in the last hour I did the, I was talking about the crime wave and how D.C. and Memphis are safe. And it's, I sent it actually to one of the president's advisors and said, I really wish you guys would talk about this. He's like, you're not wrong. It's a remarkable story to tell. The tax cuts, people are getting larger tax refunds this year than they got last year. These are stories they need to tell. And right now, the Republicans are in disarray. The president is not on message either. And when the leader of the party is not on message, it's hard to make everybody else be on message. And honestly, that's the nature of the beast. Also, let's be honest here. Second term presidents do worse in midterms. And this president, though he set out for four years, is back. It is his second term. And history is repeating itself where... The second term of a White House, you tend to do worse than midterm elections. That's no excuse in my mind for them not doing it, but just so you understand the nature of this. I'm myself and frustrated by it. The Republicans have a foreign policy story to tell, although that doesn't really sell well in midterms, but they have an economic story to tell. Unemployment is down. Employment is up. By the way, as I'm talking to you at this moment, the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 are setting records. They are at record highs now. The Dow is not at 50,000. Sorry, Pam Bondi. But NASDAQ and S&P right now is 24,446. And the S&P 500 is at 7,125. They're setting records today. The stock market is roaring. People's portfolios are going well. They don't feel it at the grocery store, though. They don't feel it at the gas pump. Now, they're about to feel it at the gas pump. But this keeps up because prices are crashing right now. Oil barrel prices are. are just dropping right now. In fact, so I'm looking at energy stocks right now, and energy stocks are all down 5 to 7%. Why? Because as oil goes down, the profitability might be affected for these companies, and there's some real worries there. The stock market level, higher prices are good for them. It's bad for you and me, though. But I'm looking now. Brent crude is down 8.68% now. It was down 12% earlier. It's at $90 a barrel. And West Texas crude is down 11% to $84 a barrel. And they keep going down. These are stories to tell. the public, that the economy is doing well, but people have to fuel it at the pump first, and they got to feel it at the grocery store. Otherwise, you're no better than the Democrats who were insisting things were fine when people didn't feel it. In fact, Scott Bessent.

Essentially yesterday said, well, people in their heart of hearts know they're good. They're just not telling the pollsters that. You can't take that message. That message is condescending to the American people who are going to the grocery store and beef prices are up higher than anything. A lot of grocery store staples are still high. Eggs are down, chocolates down, other things are up. You can't do that. Now, I got to play you a, uh, uh, did I have the clip where to, nope, the clip is gone. That's okay. Um, Where is it? I know I've got this for you. I want to, I want to, you know what it was is I found it on social media and I didn't tell Charlie to get it. I want to play you this quote. Clarence Thomas gave a speech. The media, of course, is trying to make this into some sort of controversy. It's not the Supreme Court justice lamenting progressivism. Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights. He essentially gave a massive broadside against progressivism in a speech the other night. And by the way, he's absolutely right. So progressivism, as we know it today, came from the early 1900s and centered out of Lafellette in Wisconsin, among others, and was embraced by Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson is actually the worst president in American history. Woodrow Wilson was a racist who segregated a military that had become desegregated after the Civil War. And he believed Woodrow Wilson did that the country should be governed by technocrats. Technocrats to Woodrow Wilson were the people who were the smartest people in the room. and they should be allowed to steer the economy, not you and me. And Democrats have embraced Woodrow Wilson technocrats, and some Republicans have as well. What progressivism believes is that our rights come from government. Remember the Democrats a few years ago at one of their conventions when Obama was president, said that the government or the state is the only thing we all belong to, and essentially said our rights come from the government. They booed God. at this convention I was at CNN at the time, so it probably would have been the 2012 Obama re-election. Democrats simply don't appreciate the divine as more than a rhetorical tactic, and they don't appreciate that our rights come from God. My friend Tim Keller, when he was alive, he wrote a great book, The Reason for God. If you are a skeptic and you're curious about Christianity, Tim Keller's book, A Reason for God, is one of the greatest apologetics books that you could possibly read. And essentially, he says, if there's not an objective divine from which our rights come from, because you can go all around the world. And all around the world, even in communist atheist societies, murders wrong. Why is murder wrong?

Now, they still murder people, but the public taking each other's lives, you're not supposed to. They claim that lying is wrong, even if they lie. There's a sense that these things are wrong, even as communist atheist societies break the rules, but there seems to be something objective. Where does this come from? Why does every society have this? Go down to South America, go into the jungles of the unsettled, unchristian tribes that still exist, and you'll find that murder is wrong. You'll find that lying is wrong. People who have no contact with the outside world share the moral conviction. Where does it come from? If it doesn't come from God, it comes from the mob. And if it comes from the God, it's the great says who. Who says this is wrong? And if the mob shifts, the rule shifts, except you don't accept that. If you woke up tomorrow and the federal government said murder is okay, you would not accept that murder is okay. You'd fundamentally philosophically believe that. And even today, you're never going to see the American government as secular as it is say that murder is acceptable. Why not? Where does it come from? It must come from somewhere. Our rights do not come from government. You know, the American revolutionaries believed that our rights preexisted this country. It was always my argument against gay marriage that, listen, I'm a Christian. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. But if society decided otherwise, well, then that's society and that's democratic. But I pointed out the reason from my opposition to the Obergerfeld decision was that George Washington and Martha Washington were married before the Revolutionary War. They did not have to get remarried when the United States, a new nation was formed. because the government recognized their marriage. Government recognized societal marriage. And if we were going to change the societal definition of marriage, it needed to be by the people, not by our black-robed masters on the Supreme Court. And while I might disagree, it's democratic. But also I would note that most states had laws against it, and the left went to the Supreme Court and got Anthony Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to talk about his feels and changed it. That's the way our society works, whether we like it or not. There are morals and rights that predate our country, and our country embrace them. Where do those rights come from? It's just something to consider. And that's Clarence Thomas's point, is that progressivism in the 1900s began to embrace the idea that our governments are derived from the government, not from the divine. that the divine plays no role, and that the technocrats should rule the roost, and the technocrats should be able to flip the gears and move the levers of power to be able to get certain outcomes. And the technocrats, by the way, this is the problem with communist regimes, is the technocrats never get it right. In communist regime, the technocrats are the ones in charge. The Politburo is in charge, and the technocrats frequently get it wrong. You and I are best able to decide what's best for our families through arm's length transactions with other people. That's why the free market is so genius. In a free market, the government will make sure the playing field is fair and level, and then you and I can engage for what's in the best interests of our families.

I moved from New York City to Florida on January 1st. He's got a picture of him on a balcony, smoking a cigar. He says, this is my view as I'm writing this and smoking a cigar. It's looking out over the water in Miami. I haven't told the story, but here's how it went down. I was driving down to Florida to visit my grandparents when I heard the speech from Zohran Mamdani talking about trading rugged individualism for the warmth of collectivism. I make memes for a living. I drive shirtless and my Jeep blasting rap music. I am that rugged individualist your parents warned you about. So what do I do? I turn off the radio. I ask Claude to find me realtors. I immediately start calling realtors while driving and booking appointments. I get down to Florida. Look at four apartments in one day. Said I'll take this one and immediately start of the lease process that evening. By February 1st, we moved into my dream apartment on the beach. It has three bedrooms and three baths and we literally walk out to the beach. And it's less expensive than living in New York City. I've only been back to New York once because I rented out a movie theater to play Instagram Reels. We still have the New York City apartment, but I'm just eating the cost for the rest of the year because it's cheaper than the time it would take to find a sub-lease. To the people who say New York or nowhere, there is somewhere that doesn't hate you, and it is called Florida. Trade the warmth of collectivism for the warmth of the sunshine. You can just do things. Yeah, you can. You can. You can get out of New York City. Now, I need to tell you about Incogni. The 340 data brokers are no longer selling my data online thanks to Incogni. InC-O-G-N-I, Incogni.inC-O-G-N-I, Incogni.com slash Eric. That's right. 340. Two weeks ago is 32. It was 324. Now it's 340, and the number keeps going up. What Incogni does is it reaches out to the companies that sell your private information online. They're called data brokers, and they send takedown notices. And as a result, my spam calls are going to. Yesterday, I did not get a single spam call. You know the one that's going around all the time now? Hi, this is Carol. We're calling to talk to you about the loan for $100,000 or $70,000 or whatever. Just call the business office. I've been getting that call from a Kentucky area code nonstop. about it yesterday for the first time in months. I got none after I bought my son a car, my data broker sales went up and our privacy was invaded. Incogni got rid of all of it. They protected us online. Credit card solicitations no longer happen in the mail. All this stuff thanks to Incogni.com. Eric. Save up to 60%. Incogny.com slash Eric. Have a great weekend. Summer means firing up the grill, getting together with friends, and making the most of the weekends. Total Wine and More is my first stop. Whether it's salesers and ready to serve cocktails for the cooler, or a good bottle of bourbon. Everything I need is at Total Wine. With the lowest prices, it's easy to stock up for whatever the weekend brings, and I can get everything I need in one stop. Shop Total Wine and More and get ready for your next summer party. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina? Drink responsibly, B-21.