Erick Erickson HR 2 03-03-26

Hello, America. Welcome, it is Eric Erickson here. The phone number is 8779373-725. If you want to be on the program, you can text Eric E R-I-C-K to 33-777 as well. Happy to have you. I will get to your phone calls here in just a few minutes. Chris standby, I do want to talk to you. And before I get to Chris, though, we got a problem. We have a Spanish problem. The president of the United States is not happy with the Spanish. In fact, a lot of the Europeans aren't happy with the Spanish, and the Portuguese who have simmering rivalries with the Spanish have filled the gap. The Spanish prime minister has told the United States, we're not allowed to use air bases in Spain for our mid-air refuelers, many of which were stationed in Spain. And the president has decided that it is time to impose sanctions on... Spain, including a trade embargo. He can't tariff Spain, according to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court noted their decision that a restricting trade is possible. The President intends to restrict trade. He was with the Chancellor of Germany yesterday, and the German Chancellor said this. The answer on that is quite simple. We are trying to convince Spain to catch up with the 3% or 3.5%, which we agreed on in NATO. As the President said, it's correct. Spain is the only one who is not willing to accept that. And we are trying to convince them that this is part of our common security that we all have to comply with these numbers. And this is 3.5 for military and another 1.5 for our military infrastructure. So Spain has to comply with that. Now, it's not just that. Here's what's actually going on here. Spain is run by a far-left party in an alliance with the communists in Spain. The Spanish communists have been around for quite a while. The socialists and communists are an alliance together in Spain. They're very far left. They're very anti-Semitic to begin with. The Spanish Prime Minister's Party has actually sold detonators and other weaponry. to the Iranian. So part of what we've been battling in Iran is actually Spanish munitions in addition to things from China and Russia. The Spaniards are deeply anti-Semitic. In fact, Jews have been leaving Spain over the last number of years because of the anti-Semitism festered by the Spanish political party in charge right now. Spain also has a pretty robust conservative party, but it had some corruption issues, lost the last election, and Spain is drifting left right now. So they are deeply hostile to the United States to begin with, and they're very hostile to Israel as well. The former Spanish Prime Minister actually went and hung out with the Ayatollah. in Tehran.

They did, and they don't care because the Spanish prime minister actually is more supportive of the Russians than he is of the Americans and wants to get in bed with the Chinese if he can. So good for the Portuguese for stepping up. Now, I want to circle back to the issue of weapons and munitions because we got to call her Chris is calling from Oklahoma City, listening on Freedom 969 there. I want to talk to Chris about this issue because I was going to jump there. Chris, welcome. Thanks for calling in. First time caller, long-time listener. Thanks very much. What I wanted to tell you, I was an ordnisman in the Navy for 10 years. We called a BB stacker or whatever. But that was my job. I built and loaded bombs. I was in El Central California for three years, and I worked at Station Weapons, and that was our main job was building bombs. We built hundreds of bombs on a daily basis. The difference between regular ordinance are just a Mark 80 series bomb, which is your 1,000 pounds, 2,000 pounders, stuff like that. They're a lot cheaper to make than, you know, your harpoon, your slam. All these missiles and guided, any type of ordinance that's guided or any type of missile. is a lot more expensive than just a regular 1,000 pound bomb. That's the reason they're not using. It's not that we don't have it. We have stockpiles. We probably got... I'm not sure exactly how many. I mean, I'm not that high up on the pay scale for that. But we have plenty of stockpiles of weapons all over this country and in other areas of the world. I mean, for the Democrats or the liberal, they're just using that as a scare tactic. It's, oh, no, no, we need to stop. But no, we have plenty and plenty of ordinance. Yeah, okay. So I'm glad you said that, Chris, and thank you very much for listening and for calling in on this. I got a highlight this for you. And now, it could be fair warning. I don't think there's any profanity in this, but I didn't listen to the whole thing. But it shouldn't. So Matt Bill Gates has become not only deeply anti-Semitic. Remember, he left Congress. He was going to be the Attorney General. The Senate Republicans were like, Mr. President, we're not ever going to support this guy for the United States Attorney General position. So now he's at OAN, which is increasingly deeply anti-Semitic. I don't know exactly what the programming choices there are about or who's funding them. But he had on Douglas McGregor. Now, one of the problems with McGregor is that he's somebody that JD Vance listens to, which is a concern. But he, Douglas McGregor, got on with Matt Bill Gates and just had the most buffoonish.

Take on this. Now, keep in mind, McGregor is one of the people who has also regularly attacked Ukraine on behalf of Russia and claimed that Ukraine was losing the war. We now know today the Russians have themselves admitted that they have been set back on the battlefield and lost territory for the first time in two years to the Ukrainians. This is McGregor with Matt Bill Gates on OAN. China and Russia are sitting on the sidelines monitoring everything. They're in close touch with the government. They're providing satellite intelligence, which accounts for some of the tremendous. successes, particularly in Israel and our U.S. bases, all of our bases have been destroyed. Our harbor installations are destroyed. We're actually having to fall back on India and Indian ports, which are less than ideal. That's what the Navy says. And I just, I think Iran, much to our disappointment, is faring very, very well. He says we're having to fall back on ports in India. That's not true. He thinks Iran is very well. That's not true. He thinks our bases have been destroyed. That's not true. This is what, if you're listening, if you watch OAN, and I don't know that anyone watches OAN in the United States, but if you were, if you were watching Matt Bill Gates put this guy on, he's painting for you a scenario that's simply not real. Now, I want to pause and reset with you on a very important point here. We live in postmodern times. And one of the hallmarks of postmodernity is that everyone has their own truth. The truth doesn't matter. What you believe is what matters in postmodernity. But there are things people believe in postmodernity that simply are not really true. transgenderism could not arise in modernity when people believe there was an objective truth because it is not actually biological truth that a boy can become a girl. You've got X, X, X, X, Y chromosomes that that determines whether you're male or female. But Douglas McGregor can go on Matt Bill Gates' show and say that our bases in the Middle East have been destroyed. Our harbors have been destroyed. We're relying on India. And because you're not there, and he says, well, that's what naval sources tell me. He hopes you'll believe him. And one of the other issues of post-modernity is that we all have our influencers. The government and the experts from the government discredit themselves so you don't believe them. So you believe these people online. The Iranians are taking advantage of this and seeding conspiracy theories about how they're actually destroying American vessels. They're destroying American ships. The Chinese have actually put out AI-generated images of the USS Abraham Lincoln being blown up. It's simply not true. But they're hoping that enough people believe it, enough dumb people on social media believe these things, that they start spreading the rumors in this country that actually the war is going badly for us.

The Iranians can no longer win the war, so they're trying to win the information war. And there are enough people on the left who hate the United States that they're willing to cede the lies of the Iranian regime. Be very careful what you're hearing online. I don't expect you to just adhere to a party line from the Trump administration. But with neither the American press corps, which hates Donald Trump, nor Donald Trump's administration is... attacking the American war effort or discrediting the American war effort, you kind of have the idea that maybe the American war effort is going well. The fact that even the Iranians acknowledged B-52s are in their airspace and not being shot down is a big red flag that things aren't going well for the Iranians. So what the Iranian fallback position is now is twofold. One, the Iranians are trying to make the claim that they've been saving their weapons, their drones, and their missiles for the Americans running out. It's not a coincidence. You're now beginning to hear a lot of stories circulating on channels on the internet being regurgitated by people in the media as supposedly educated talking heads claiming we're about out of weapons. It mirrors the same Iranian talking points. These are the same people who peddle the Gaza talking points about Israel conducting genocide in Gaza. They're willing to believe the enemy before they believe the allies. They're willing to believe the far left and the communists before they believe the Jews and the Americans. When you start hearing people talk about the Iranians are holding back waiting for us to wipe out our stockpiles. Maybe you should think, okay, why then are we dropping so many gravity bombs over Iran? Bombs that we don't have to direct there. We drop them out of planes. Why are the Iranians allowing us now to use gravity bombs to keep blowing up their positions, blowing up the entrances to the tunnels where their bombs are, blowing up the tunnels where the bombs are, blowing up all their positions. Why can we do it? We can do it with impunity because the Iranians no longer have the missiles to launch at us. They don't have the drones to launch at us. They still have some, but not enough. You've got to think rationally about this stuff because there are a lot of lies online right now that are carrying water for the Iranian regime because they simply do not want the Americans to win. And among them is a contingent of the American left in media, but I repeat myself, who they don't care whether we win or lose. They just want Donald Trump to lose. And so they're all collectively rooting against America because they hate Donald Trump. Those who love him, listen to find out what he's going to say next. Those who disagree with him also listen to see what he's going to say next. It's the Eric Erickson show. Okay, this is personal time here. So if you're in the Atlanta area and are an architect or a builder,

My son is not going on a class trip next week, and he was informed that if he will spend some time since he wants to go to college to be an architect at Samford with builders or architects next week, he won't get an absence. He's got, I think, one day is scheduled. It's Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday next week. I think he's got Wednesday taken care of, and otherwise he needs the 10th, the 12th, and the 13th. think, are the available openings for him if you want to reach out, Eric, E, R-I-C-K, Eric at EW-Erickson.com. We would greatly appreciate it. My kid wants to be an architect. But the wild thing is he wants to be a cinematographer. He wants to be an architect. He wants to, everything he wants to, like he's taking music composition right now and decided everything he's doing is like architecture in different ways. It's the architecture. of film, the architecture of music. It's, he's just, he's, I guess, naturally. I'm not that creative. My kid taught himself to play the trumpet and then the trombone. And then he taught himself to play the piano. Then he taught himself the cello. Now he's teaching himself the organ. He's got a teacher now for the piano and the organ. He had a teacher for the cello. And the cello teacher was like, you're so good at the piano, you should go learn the organ instead of the cello. So now he's doing the pipe organ and he's doing the piano. And he's actually impressing me. But he really wants to be an architect. And he really doesn't want to go to school next week and clean out a shed since he's not taking the class trip. So if you're an architect or a home builder and you got some time and want to hang out with a bright 17-year-old who's got good manners, let me know. Okay, we got more to talk about on the actual news front, including an amazing video from a communist in this country. You really need to hear. But first, I need to tell you about incogni. Incog-N-I, incogni.com. Incog-N-I-N-I-N-I-C-N-I-C-N-I-C-N-C-N-C-N-C-E-RIC. You can go get a great discount. I think 60% by signing up with them. What do they do? They work to protect you online, to get rid of your personal data that's available and for sale online. Did you know when you get your driver's license? Most states sell your information to advertising agencies online, who then can also go to your credit card company and buy your purchase history, overlay it on your driver's license history, sell it to advertisers who then customize spam calls to you and advertising online to you and marketing through your... mail to you. They can even tie you into your family's accounts and build maps of your family. And Incogni sends the takedown notices and demands they take everything down to restore your privacy. You didn't sell it to begin with. You don't want it sold. Incogni takes it down. If you go to incogni.com slash Eric, you get 60% off. They have reduced my junk mail. They've reduced my spam calls. They've reduced the information available about me and my family online. Our home address was there. It's not there now, thanks to Incogny.

I-N-C-O-G-N-I-Incogni.com slash Eric. Sign up with Incogni today like I did and protect your privacy online. Welcome back. It's Eric Erickson here. The full number 877-97975. Should you wish to be on the program, happy to hear from you. Why now? Why do this engagement now? One of the things many Democrats have complained about is that the President gave the State of the Union address last Tuesday, and I told you we wouldn't even be talking about it by Friday. We never do. But one of the complaints Democrats have been making over the last 96 hours is that the President could have explained to the American people why war with Iran was necessary and used the State of the Union to do so. But he didn't. We now know why he did not use the State of the Union address. It is pretty well documented now, and we've got a very interesting piece in Axios, credit to them, that essentially Benjamin Netanyahu reached out to the President of the United States and said, we know when they are going to, the Iranian leadership, is going to meet together in person. And it's going to be Saturday. It has been arranged. The Israelis had deep intelligence. And they went to the president and said if you want to decapitate the head of the snake, you need to engage now. And the president said, okay. And the President of the United States decided to act against Iran and decided not to mention Iran. in the State of the Union address because he didn't want to tip them off. He wanted to continue the cover of negotiations. The president now says that the Iranians, the entire time, were bragging about how much enriched uranium they had and they weren't going to give it up. We offered them free unlimited nuclear power for eternity, basically, and they said no. They bragged about the amount of uranium they had that was already enriched enough for weapons. And what you need to understand, this is very important for you to understand this. The Iranians went into the negotiations with the Trump administration, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and treated them like they treated John Kerry with the Biden administration, and before that, the Obama administration. John Kerry was one of the point people as both Secretary of State and as an outside person brought in by Biden again to talk to the Iranians. And what we know from those, based on lots of leaks, is that the Iranians would come in, stomp their feet, make demands, and John Kerry would accede to them. The Iranians didn't update the playbook for the Trump administration. They went into the administrative negotiations. They negotiated like they did with John Kerry, and the Trump administration said, well, fine, we'll blow you up instead. And they did.

This is the President of the United States. And they had no problems with it. Also hitting only civilian places, hotels and apartment buildings, and we're hitting them where it is much more appropriate. We're hitting them very hard. And the big scale heading goes now. They no longer have air protection. They no longer have any detection facilities at all left. So they're going to be in for a lot of hurt. These are bad people. These are people that killed. I guess it's 35,000. It's coming out. 35,000 over the last three weeks, protesters. 35,000 violently killed. So these are bad people, and the leader of the pack is gone. And as you know, 49 people were taken out in the first hit. And I guess there was another hit today on the new leadership, and it looks like that was pretty substantial also. So they're getting hit very hard, and we'll see what happens. A lot of people are coming forward. A lot of the people you at least suspect want to quit. They want to have immunity. They're asking for immunity, and probably at some point they'll be dropping, as you would say, laying down their guns. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, we're just continuing to go forward. Our military is the number one. Listen. We do know the chatter among the Iran... You have to... First, let me back up here. The Iranian army is separate from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is made up of the true believers of the elite families of Iran who are dedicated to propping up the regime. The Iranian army simply functions as an ancillary service around the country to maintain law and orders like a glorified police force. They're the ones who actually fight to the wars while the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps stands behind the scenes, pulling the strings. The Army and the Guard Corps appear to be at odds right now, with members of the Army signaling they're ready to surrender before a land war starts. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are the true believers, however. Now, a little more here because some of what Marco Rubio said the other day was excerpted in... by people to claim that Israel provoked the United States into this war. This is Marco Rubio re-clarifying that he did not say what people are claiming, he said. No. was going to get. Yeah, your statement is false. So that's not what you. I was asked very specifically. Were you there yesterday? Yes, I asked the question. Okay. Were you the one that? Because somebody asked me a question. Did we go in because of Israel? And I said, you asked me that you from that follow-up. And I said, no. I told you this had to happen anyway. The president made a decision. And the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program. That Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ability to conduct these attacks. That decision had been made. The president systematically made a decision to systematic. destroy this terroristic capability that they had, and we carried that out. I was very clear in that answer. This was a question of timing of why this had to happen as a joint operation, not the question of the intent. Once the president made a decision that negotiations were not going to work, that they were playing us on the negotiations, and that this was a threat that was untenable, the decision was made to strike them. That's what I said yesterday, and you guys need to play it. If you're going to play these statements, you need to play the whole statement, not clip it to reach a narrative that you want to do, all right?

He's right, and a lot of people made that snippet. And so now the president has been asked about this, and this is the president's statement. You didn't force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran? He didn't force your hand. No, I might have forced their hands. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack if we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that. great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully, and have done it all their lives very successful. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn't want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand. But Israel was ready, and we were ready. And we've had a very, very powerful impact. So the president of the United States disputing the talking point himself that Israel induced us into doing this. It's just remarkable how so many people want to blame Israel for all this. The reason we did it at the time we did it is because Benjamin Netanyahu let the president know that all of Iran's leadership would be meeting with the Ayatollah. They had been tipped off and they decided to attack. That's why. We are seeing a lot of people display how anti-Semitic they are and how anti-American they are and how many of them are in it for clicks. I mentioned yesterday, I'm just, I'm, I got to tell you, I think the criticisms against Megyn Kelly for her statements about our troops who got killed, the criticism is on point, claiming they somehow died for Israel's War. This is not Israel's War. The Iranians have since 1979, as I documented for you yesterday for 15 solid straight minutes, have been killing Americans since 1979. Marco Rubio made a point yesterday. I don't have the audio of it, but essentially he said that Iran was on the verge of having... a non-nuclear capability that would exceed our ability to take it out. They have built so many missiles and so many drones that they had the effect of being able to rain downhill on their enemies without the reciprocal ability to stop it. And before they got to that point, we needed to stop them. We knew it was coming. In addition to them bragging about the amount of enriched uranium they already had, they had the capability for 11 nuclear weapons. Now, I want to throw into this audio here. This is a self-declared communist. She has purple barista hair.

And I want you to listen to this. There is a Holocaust right now on Muslims. And the equivalent of the Pope, the Ayatollah, has been murdered. It doesn't matter what you think of the Ayatollah. It is a psychological warfare on Muslims. The attack on Iran is the Holocaust expanding. to a new territory. This is an attack on Muslims. It's an attack on the Muslim faith. It is a spiritual attack. I, myself, I believe in energies and stuff like that. I'm not exactly religious, but I do understand that this is a big deal. This is a big deal. That I told her has now become a symbol. It's become a symbol of resistance. And what the imperialist West thought, what was going to happen, that people lose faith, people that would be, feel hopeless, has done the exact opposite. Naitola was slain in his duties. He was in his office, doing work, not hiding, out in the open, working for his people. And he was slain. He is now a martyr. He is now a symbol of resistance. And he will be seen that way. And this makes... for a new wave of radicalized youth. For the better, this is good. I mean, it's not good that he died, but he wanted to go that way. He wanted to go that way on his own terms. It is an honorable death. It is just very confusing why people are celebrating his death in a way that it reminds me of like people celebrating Stalin's death or like Lenin's death where it's like, no, the USSR will continue. We'll continue its fight against imperialism. It is... The revolution, the Islamic revolution, is not a man. It is not a man. It is a people. And people that come on here and say that he was killing communists and things like that, needs to look at history. Because Trotsky was a communist, and he wanted to overthrow the USSR. He wanted to keep revolutionizing the USSR while it was at war. Iran has always been at war with the West, always since its beginning. It cannot go through another revolution until the West has fallen. And communists that aren't working with the state, that are working against the state, are enemies. They're not understanding that the Islamic Revolution is fighting the West. That's how I reconcile with that. Hopefully, in the future, it does go towards a more socialist system. And it is. What I see, free housing, things like that, taking care of its people, education for everyone. education for women was that before the revolution? I think 30% were illiterate. Now I think it's almost 100%. That's an actual communist justifying the Iranian revolution has no sense of history with her purple barista hair that would not be allowed in Iran. I've told you this before. The communists allied with the Ayatollah regime in the 1970s to oust the Shah. And when the Shah was ousted and the Ayatollah came back, the Ayatollah systematically exterminated the communists inside Iran. They were all either chased out or killed. This woman, were she to go to Iran, the Ayatollah would kill her.

She doesn't understand that. And if she did, she's so deluded, it sounds like. So brainwashed and indoctrinated by communism, she would think she was dying for a righteous cause to advance the Ayatollah's regime. We have people like this in this country. And then we have the social media grifters on the right who are blaming the Jews because they get clicks. And you've got to understand this. My Twitter account is monetized. I don't make a lot of money on Twitter. I turned it on and people recirculate me. I can make some off of it. But there are people making thousands of dollars a month on social media. I am not making that much. There are people making thousands of dollars on social media by saying incendiary things by design to get a rise out of people. And when I see people on the right who have podcasts who are making this about the Jews and blaming the Jews, All I can think is either they're just trying to make money or they've been captured by their audience. They don't want to lose their audience by telling their audience the truth. I am not captured by my audience. I get hate mail from a lot of you all the time, but you tune in because you never know what I'm going to say. There are people who are so scared of losing their audience that their audience has now started shaping their opinions and their audience is nuts. And so they become nuts. They become bitter. They've become anti-Semitic. And they're willing to cheapen the deaths of American soldiers as a talking point to be able to blame the Jews because they've been captured by their audience and they think that's what their audience wants to hear. I just want to tell you the truth. I want to keep you entertained. My job's entertaining, really. But I want to tell you the truth. I don't want to entertain you by lying to you as some of these people are doing. On the left and the right now, willful lies, whether it scares about the munitions of the United States and our ability to wage war or downplaying who the Ayatollah was or blaming the Jews, there are a whole lot of people who are invested in lying to you to whip you into a frenzy, to keep you in perpetual anxiety with them as the only tonic to your anxiety. And I just think, That's abusive, and I don't want to be a part of it. And when I hear a communist like this who is so indoctrinated, I hear the echoes of the grifters on the right as well who have become so indoctrinated and captured by their audience. They wouldn't know the truth if they'd bit them anymore. When the truth seems hazy, Eric will clear the way. It's the Eric Erickson Show.

Welcome back, Eric Erickson, here, 8779773-745. If you want to be on the program, I would be happy to have you, very happy to have you. We have some interesting data on the housing market, which is kind of what I think you and I have suspected. One of the biggest problems in the housing market now is that... People are living in their starter homes far longer than anticipated in large part because they have a 1% mortgage on their starter home, a 3% mortgage on their starter home. They don't want to go get a 5% or 6% starter on a bigger house. And the result is that the... People who are living in their starter homes for life now are hog in the market for people, and we've got to find economic incentives to get people to move out of those starter homes for the young. What's wild to me, though, are the number of people I know who grew up in the 70s and 80s, and their parents always lived in the same house. They never moved to a bigger house. But then somehow in the 80s and 90s, as our economy grew and people got wealthier, they would buy bigger houses. As the family grew, I would love to buy a bigger house. I got to check and see if I won the lottery last night.

or did I have a long-lost dead relative die and leave me everything. I would love to live on a lot of land with a big house, just not there yet. But our interest rate is so good on our present house, I would struggle to give it up. And that's what a lot of people are doing. And the result is that young people who are getting married are being forced to rent. But also, there's something else. And I want to spend a little bit of time on this later in the show. But have you noticed, I don't think it's a coincidence. As the trans movement has begun to collapse to this country, growing body of data that basically, if you are in ninth grade or younger now, there is no one in your class anymore who identifies as trans. You all think it's nonsense. There is also... At the same time, this growing media movement to tell women, you don't need kids. Having kids are bad. So we've gone from trying to sterilize kids to just trying to convince women not to get married and have kids. It's all about population control. It's deeply Malthusian. While all of this has happened, we've got the economic turmoil out there with people trying to get into houses. They can't with interest rates the way they are. Swiss America has been warning people about this, and they've been educating people about the economy. They would love to build a relationship with you, educating you about monetary policy, about fiscal policy in the country. You can get their free report, the Secret War on Cash, by going to swissamerica.com slash Eric, swissamerica.com slash ERIC. While you're there. They've got a News and Insights tab. You click it, you get their blog. You get a lot of information about the current monetary policies in the world, their impact on global financial markets on precious metals. Swiss America is one of the leaders in precious metals and has been for 40 years in this country. They would love to partner with you. All you got to do is call them or text them, my name. You can also go to swissamerica.com, swissamerica.com slash Eric. The phone number, if you want to call or text of my name, is 800, 289. 2646. That's 800 to 89, 2646, 800 to 89, 2646 or Swissamerica.com slash Eric. Message and data rates may apply.