Erick Erickson HR 2

Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas-style games on my phone at the same time. Drink in one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at SpinQuest. Over a thousand games including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. minutes Eric Erickson here across the United States. Delighted to have you with me. The phone number is 877-973-7-4-25, should you wish to be on the program, would be happy to have you. I want to talk about one more Super Bowl ad. We can't not talk about the Jeffrey Epstein ad during the Super Bowl. The Epstein files continue. More and more people with the conspiracy theories and the like that aren't panning out, and so now they're twisting, justifying, insisting there's still more cover-up. I want to play for you the advertisement that was played during the Super Bowl last night. I don't know where the money came from for the ad, but...

After years of being kept apart, we're standing together. Standing. Standing. Together. Because this girl deserves the truth. Because she deserves the truth. Because we all deserve the truth. Showing pictures of them as they were younger. Stand with us. Tell Attorney General Pam Bondi, it's time for the truth. World Without Exploitation.org. I don't know. I'm sure I could Google and find out who the money is behind the ad. At this point, I feel like we're all being played. If these women wanted to tell us their stories, they could do that. If they're barred by non-disclosure agreements and the person who abused them broke the law and their abuse, well, the non-disclosure agreement is not going to be binding on them. Why are they asking Pam Bondi to do what they themselves could do unless this is a political operation? Thomas Massie was on CNN, I believe, over the weekend, and then again this morning insisting that he is going to go look at the unredacted Epstein files. And if Pam Bondi doesn't release the names of the abusers, well, then by God, he's going to do it. Now, he's previously said he was going to do that, and he never did. Marjorie Taylor Greene, remember when she was in Congress before she bolted. Marjorie Taylor Greene, very big of her, puffed up her chest and insisted she was going to name and shame the abusers. She would use her rights as a member of the House of Representatives to stand on the floor of the House and read the list of names. She never did, and then she quit. Thomas Massie says the same thing. He's going to do it. The United States Constitution's Article 1 contains the famous speech and debate clause. Any member of Congress may, on the floor of their respective body, the House for the Congressman, the Senate for the Senators, stand and say anything they want, and no one can sue them. In just the last year to try to get some attention for herself in her gubernatorial campaign, Nancy Mace, the congresswoman from South Carolina, who was mentally unwell, stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and claimed that men had raped her, and she named the names of the men who had engaged in sexual abuse and assorted crimes, and they tried to sue her for defamation, and a judge threw their case out of court, saying he was not ruling on the merits of their claims that she had defamed them, but as a member of Congress, because she did it. the floor of the House of Representatives, they could not sue her. She has not made the same claims outside of the floor of the House of Representatives, only doing it there to protect herself. She gamed the system to try to promote herself and get attention for herself by slandering other people, and she has refused to make the same claims in public, which suggests to me she knows she would be sued for slander. But she hid behind the speech and debate clause because she was trying to get attention for herself for a gubernatorial campaign that's not going well. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and others have all said they were going to read the names, and they haven't. And now these women run a Super Bowl ad saying Pam Bondi needs to do what they themselves could do.

We're learning more and more about Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon's relationship. In November of 2018, Jeffrey Epstein told Steve Bannon that they needed to start working together on his future career as a media figure for protection. Why? Because if Steve Bannon wanted to help foreign assets, he would have to file a Farrow report, a foreign agent registration act report. And if he just claimed he was a member of the media, he could get around it for the journalism exception. He started a war room on Real America Voice the year after Jeffrey Epstein told him he needed to build his military career. The text messages between Steve Bannon and a redacted friend are the same text messages from Jeffrey Epstein in another file. The second file is text messages between Epstein and multiple redacted contact. And it actually lines up with his text messages with... Epstein and Steve Bannon's conversations together. Steve Bannon and Epstein had a long friendship, and it's very interesting to watch the Steve Bannon fans start to try to justify this. Let me read you a tweet from someone who's trying to justify the relationship between Steve Bannon and... and Jeffrey Epstein doing the full on, well, he was a financier. He had lots of unsavory clients sort of stuff. It's wild to watch the extent people can justify anything and everything they wish to justify, including this guy who I put this on social media as well and just found it very interesting, or did he delete the tweet? Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. He deleted the tweet, essentially saying, oh, Steve Bannon was just a financier, and he had some unsavory people he did business with, and Epstein was one of those. No, it's very clear from the documents, actually, that Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein were more than just business acquaintances. So I want you to pay attention to all of the people who beat the drum on the Jeffrey Epstein controversy and scandal and go on Steve Bannon's program. Because the crossover's wild. The number of people who are out there who care deeply about Jeffrey Epstein. and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and went on Steve Bannon's program and Steve Bannon, we now know, was trying to do a documentary to rehabilitate Jeffrey Epstein and spent a lot of time with Jeffrey Epstein. Marjorie Taylor Greene, by the way, was one of those who was a regular until she turned on drop. A lot of the Heritage Foundation folks. It's just interesting. The wide little nexus of the Jack Brosobiex of the world and the like who were into the, I mean, the Pizza Gate stuff, the Epstein stuff and ties to Steve Bannon. It's all very curious. Banner, by the way, also has ties to a Chinese Communist Party operative. I think he was arrested on that guy's boat. Here's my theory.

While there are some people who really have cared about the Epstein stuff and may by now realize that Epstein himself was the monster and he had a lot of wealthy friends, but they weren't the monsters you were led to believe. There are a lot of people who only cared to the extent that they care about gossip. You know, if you live in a community, like in my community, there's a neighborhood that has been notorious for swingers over the years. And in the upper income white circles of town, there's all sorts of snippety little comments about people who live in this neighborhood. given the history of casserole dinner parties in the neighborhood that were fronts for the swinger crowd. Or there's the local golf club and the conversations of the different people there or the private school and who the moms are who have showed up clearly on Xanax or ambient or something and have pill addictions. And it's all the gossip of the white people gossip. And in the black neighborhoods, you know the black neighborhoods. They've got gossip in their neighborhoods as well. The Hispanic neighborhoods too. Everybody has gossip. about people in their neighborhood, the goings on at the private school, the goings on at the country club, the goings on in the little neighborhood full of swingers, and all those people, they got the upside-down pineapple statue in their front of are. You know what that means. Hear this stuff all the time in these communities. Every community has gossip. You join a country club, and you're immediately the source of gossip, and you're immediately gossiping about other people at the country club. And then COVID hit. And a lot of people who used to have those community outlets, even the small group at church, you'll never guess what Janet had for her prayer request. I can't really talk about it. It would be gossiping. It was a sin, but you need to pray for Janice. You all know the types. I had a encounter with a, I will leave the details somewhat obscure because they're listeners, but with a medical professional. who always wanted the play-by-play of, did you hear what Ben Shapiro said? Did you hear what Tucker Carlson said? What about Candace Owens? What is going on with these people? Why are they? And I just, I had to stop going. And what it is, for a lot of people, they weren't really that concerned with the victims. It was their source of gossip. They got isolated after COVID, and their online podcast community became their source of gossip. It used to be the country club or the Sunday school class. It used to be the private school line. Their kids have aged out now. They don't go to the country club. They're not involved in a small group of church, but they got a gossip. And so it's the podcast world. They were all talking about Jeffrey Epstein today. Do you know they said so and so and so and so was there with Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton probably did X, Y, Z? But you know, it turns out that what was there? Victoria Guffrey or whoever her name was, who killed herself, that federal agents and a federal court hearing decided she was extremely unreliable. Did you know that? That a lot of her information was deeply contradictory, and she admitted at some point to have fabricated some of the information. Did you know? Because I read that today. Turns out there's a whole court documentation about it. And these women, they're doing an ad campaign saying Pam Bondi needs to tell the truth.

Well, why don't you women tell the truth at this point? No one's going to sue you. And by the way, Elon Musk has said, if you came forward and someone did sue you, he would cover your legal bills. So why don't you people, or is this just a game? Is it all a game? I do kind of wonder about that now. Is it a game? I don't know. But I'm kind of... tired of the Epstein stuff. The thing we know is that Epstein had deep relationships with Howard Lutnick and not a single Trump fan who cared about the Epstein files is trying to get Howard Lutnick fired. Think about this. A massive amount of MAGA supporters were invested in the Epstein files. It turns out that Jeffrey Epstein and Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, had business together. And not a single one of the Trump supporters is out calling for Howard Lutnick's head today. Not a single one of them. They don't really care about it. They said they cared about Epstein, but they're finding out Howard Lutnick, a Trump cabinet secretary, was involved with Epstein, or Steve Bannon. Not a single one of them seemed to really care about Steve Bannon. How opportunistic they thought they could get their political enemies, and it turns out it's their political allies who were wrapped up. But the same with the Democrats. The Democrats thought they could get Donald Trump, but it turns out it's Barack Obama's General Counsel who now works at Goldman Sachs and Bill Clinton. Surprise, surprise.

surprise all of these people cared about the gossip none of them really cared about the victims and the victims themselves don't seem to care much about the other victims because instead of coming out and telling us what they know they're telling Pam Bondi to do it. Well, you know what? It turns out that most of the documentation reveals this global trafficking ring that Jeffrey Epstein was supposedly part of didn't exist. It never did. It was conjured in the imaginations of podcasters and social media influencers who wanted to lure the gossip crowd in because they're no longer at the country club or church getting their gossip. And a lot of people fell for the gossip that never was. And yet they can't be convinced because to recognize they got play. would be to recognize they were gullible. It's like rehab for the QAnon set. They bought into a conspiracy theory yet again that did not yet again pan out, and they can't admit, fool me once, shame on me, or fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, well, I can't have shame, I've been fooled multiple times. That's what's happened here. There was no there there. And to the extent there was a there there, it's, it is the Obama General Counsel. It is Howard Lutnick. It is Steve Bannon. And now people realize it and they've reverted to their tribes. Well, we can't get rid of that person. He's in my tribe. So what you're saying is you really didn't care about the victims either. 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.

Taking the complicated and making it simple. It's the Eric Erickson show. Hello there, welcome. It is Eric Erickson here. The phone number is 8779373425. Should you wish to be on the program, you are welcome to be a part of the program. Now, I got to mention just real quick this continuing tragedy of Nancy Guthrie. My understanding is Savannah Guthrie's families decided they will pay the ransom. It's very weird. how so much of this has come through the media and the sheriff's office doesn't seem to have any clues as to what happened. It's just a very odd thing. And I just, I keep going back to that ring door camera. And the ring door camera, they didn't add during the Super Bowl about the surveillance state we have built to be able to find lost dogs. And so many people now have these cameras on there for doors. I've got one. It's not ring. It's a different brand. But it's just, it's wild to me that there's just no one's been able to find anything on these cameras to be able to. to track this down. And then you've got the flock camera systems are all over. I don't know if they're in that area, but they seem to be everywhere. We've got surveillance cameras everywhere these days. And I'm just, I'm flummoxed. by their inability to find. Sometimes things don't play out the way that in theory they should. And this is one of those, and I hope it doesn't end in tragedy. Prayers for the Guthrie family. This is just a tragic, tragic situation where clearly my suspicion is that due to her daughter's fame, someone decided to kidnap this poor 80-something-year-old woman with a heart condition. That's horrible. Absolutely horrible. Nightmare fuel for a lot of people out there. So prayers for this family, and I certainly hope that they find their mother and that she is safe. Now, I need to tell you about the Eden Pure Thunderstorm. You can get three of them. You can save $200 on them at Edenpuredeals.com. The discount code is Eric 3, E-R-I-C-K-3. If they don't work for you to wipe out odors, you get a money-back guarantee. The details are on the site at Edenpuredeals. Again, the discount code is Eric 3. They're near a purefire, so get rid of dust, they get rid of pollen. They get rid of pet dander. They also kill 99.9% of bacteria and viruses, and they...

wipe out odors. All odors, they generate ozone, and the ozone is like odor bleach. It finds odors and wipes them out of the source where you can't get, I've used them in rental cars and hotel rooms. They're small enough. I keep one of my travel bag. You can to at Edenpureuredeals.com. Eden, like the Garden of Eden, pure is the driven snow. Edenpeerdeals.com. Discount code is Eric 3. Now, before I get out of here, I got to tell you about JJ's place. Give you a sense of the intolerance of the left. JJ's place is a sports bar. And yesterday, 80% of the bar wanted to watch the Turning Point USA halftime show with Kid Rock. About 20% wanted to watch Bad Bunny. So he split the video TVs in the bar half and half. And the people who wanted to watch the Bad Bunny one started canceling their orders and going on YouTube or Yelp and giving bad reviews in Google because they couldn't abide just splitting the TVs half and half. Intolerant, the left is.

Welcome back. It's Eric Erickson here. It would help if I didn't have the mute button on so you guys could hear me. I am a professional. There are days I've got a million things going on, though. But I want to move on. We've got to talk about voter ID. I'm interested in the media conversation this weekend that actually wasn't that favorable to the Democrats. But I just, I want to read you fully this tweet that has now gone viral from Danielle Jirinsky. It looks like Aurora, Illinois. I run a business, a sports bar, JJ's place. Yesterday, 80% of the bar wanted the turning point halftime show. The rest wanted bad bunny. To accommodate, I put the TVs on half and half. The 20% started canceling the orders, taking to social media, calling me a racist, being disrespectful to my staff, and leaving one-star reviews on Google and Yelp. Mind you, the 80% who wanted the Turning Point halftime show weren't happy that Bad Bunny stayed on, but they didn't leave me a bad review. Take to social media, cancel their orders, or disrespect my staff. It has become impossible to run a business. I support three generations of my family and a sole income and try to accommodate everyone. The bar business is not what it used to be. Sad day. So, before I get into voter ID, I, I, I, I, you know, people choose to be offended these days. There are real victims in the world. Mention the Jeffrey Epstein victims. There are real victims in the world. Some of you have been victims of crime, abuse, intolerance, some of you really have been. Increasingly, though, the people in the United States who insist on behaving like victims very often are not. They identify as a victim. And to go full circle to the beginning of the show today, talking about critical theory, one of the reasons a lot of people identify as victims these days is because it gives them a moral claim and power over other people. Take the number of people who, in this day and age, identify as trans or adopt pronouns.

My daughter is a very good artist. And I don't say that as a father. My daughter is such a good artist and has been for so long that at one point I thought she had cheated on a project because it was so good and she had to prove that she had not cheated on it. Yes, that's your bad dad story of the day. I just presume my kid had cheated on something. There's no way she's that talented. Nope, turns out she is. She took an art class at her university, which is not a very woke university. And she... abandoned her art interest because she had a professor in her introductory art class. Frog March a student up to the front of the class for having used female pronouns for a female in the class because that other female wanted to use they-them pronouns. And this poor girl was from a rural part of her state, had not encountered a they-them before and made a mistake. But the they, them, chose to be empowered abusively to exercise control over the other person by virtue of claiming a victim status. Victimhood gives people power to bully these days. There are real victims in the world. And unfortunately, the desire to be a victim these days empowers cruelty by those who choose to be victims.

And it's a real problem. And it's a growing problem. And as we wrap politicization into victimhood, it gets even worse. And so here is a woman who runs a sports bar, who to accommodate both the people who wanted to watch Kid Rock and the people who watched Bad Bunny, she split the TVs in half in her sports bar. And the bad buddy supporters rushed to Yelp and Google to give one-star reviews. And she notes now that Google took down the one-star reviews yesterday. Google was kind enough to recognize that typically when it happens with this flood of one-star reviews that it's a politically charged environment, and Google will get rid of those reviews. And so good for Google and for Yelp for accommodating this woman's concerns, and all she did was she showed Kid Rock on some TVs and Bad Bunny on other TVs. Increasingly, though, this transcends partisanship and gets into tribalism. Some of you know, Pastor John Piper. John Piper is actually going to be guest preaching at my church later this year. It's our 200th anniversary, and he's going to come down here to George and preach. He's a wonderful, fabulous preacher. He's written incredible books. And he criticized the president on Friday for that video on the president's true social account that it wasn't acceptable. You know, he got piled on by Trump supporters, and do you know why he got piled on by Trump supporters? Because he didn't also criticize the Somali fraud in Minnesota. Huh? You see? He's clearly woke because he criticized Donald Trump, but not this litany of things on the left. Now, you should know that many of the, why I call them Theo Bros on social media who went after this well regarded, highly regarded evangelical pastor, they've never been arrested before. John Piper preached the gospel outside of an abortion clinic and got arrested and thrown in prison for preaching outside of an abortion clinic. The Theo bros, who sleep comfortably at night in their beds and never have to worry about getting arrested, decided to pile on John Piper for criticizing the president, something none of them could bring themselves to do, by the way. They never do. But Piper's actually paid a price for his faith, and they haven't. But they wanted to be professional victims and attack a noted pastor for Derry to suggest. The president of the United States should not be putting that sort of content on a social media feed. On the left, you know, these days, the left will pile on anyone who's a Democrat who sides with Republicans. John Fetterman has come out. The Democratic Senator of Pennsylvania, who ran as a progressive, has come out and said that he actually thinks voter ID is a good idea. And progressives are out to get him.

We actually look at the data. It's all emotions-based. Adam Schiff, now the senator from California has gone on television. Let me just play you this clip from Adam Schiff on ABC. But in one recent pupil, 83% of adults support requiring photo ID to vote. 71% of Democrats favor requiring photo ID. Is that something that you can support? And if not, why? It's still going to be something, Jonathan. It's still going to be something that disenfranchises people, that don't have the proper real ID, driver's license ID, that don't have the ID necessary to vote even though they are citizens. This is another way to simply try to suppress the vote. And the last thing I think we want to do is discourage more people, more citizens from voting. Now, you will note that everything Adam Schiff says is a lie. Yet the media that insists on fact-checking Donald Trump never fact-checks Adam Schiff. They love to put Adam Schiff on and let him tell lies, and they never challenge him on those lies. But with Donald Trump, every word he says is presumed to be a lie. There's definitely a media double standard there. And also the idea that it is voter suppression. Actually, you know what? Minority participation in Georgia went up after voter ID. Didn't go down. They told us it would go down. It was voter suppression, minority voter participation in Georgia. Remember Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden said it was Jim Crow 2.0? And minority voter participation increased in the state. In Ohio, same thing. Ohio passed strict photo ID laws and minority participation went up. The actual rate of participation in states that give photo ID, by the way, it's over 30 states. 34 states have some form of ID requirement for voting. Some of them have strict photo ID, only about a dozen have strict photo ID, where you actually have to show it at the time to vote and apply it to absentee ballots. Of the 30-some-odd states, most of them don't apply it to ballots, to absentee ballots. But Georgia applies it to absentee ballots, and it did not suppress the vote. Here's what's going on here. Whether it's Hakeem Jeffries or Adam Schiff or these other Democratic politicians, Chuck Schumer, who opposed photo ID. It's actually the white progressive groups. The donor class, white donor class, because they have it in their heads. They're paternalistic when it comes to non-white voters. The real racists in America actually are the white progressives.

They real racist in America actually presume that black people are incapable of taking care of themselves. They actually presume that non-white voters and non-white Americans are inferior. And who are they to judge? It's their upbringing. It's their class. Remember, this goes back to critical theory. It's their class. It's how their race behaves, and we can't expect better of them. It's a paternalistic racism from white progressives. They presume that black people don't have driver's licenses. They presume that black people can't get photo ID. And notice that one of the things Schiff says is the real ID. So Adam Schiff is okay with the idea that you can't travel because if you don't have a real ID, you can't go to an airplane anymore in this country. But he thinks, well, poor people, they don't travel on airplanes. Y'all, it's... It is an interesting thing to watch the racism of white progressives in this country. They never get called out on it by the media because, frankly, so much of the media is also invested in that emotional racism, in that paternalism with non-white voters. I was, I have to give credit to Dana Bash. I don't have the clip in front of me because it was just, it ran so long and there was no good part to edit it out. And I was just like, I don't want to play three or four minute video clip of this conversation from Dana Bash. But Dana Bash on CNN did a very good job of pushing back on Adam Schiff and other Democrats on voter ID pointing out that it's deeply popular among Democrats. It's deeply popular among black voters. And all they could keep coming back with was it would suppress the vote. And she came back to them and says it didn't in Ohio. It didn't in Georgia. It has not suppressed the vote. Give me examples of it suppressing the vote. And the Democrats have been able to give zero examples of voter ID, voter ID suppressing the vote. They simply can't do it. It does not exist. Voter ID is actually a very good thing because why? In states that have voter ID for voting, voters implicitly trust the system more to root out fraud and criminal behaviors in the vote. Whether you're black or white, if you've got to show up and show your idea to vote, you trust that people who shouldn't be voting are not voting. It builds integrity for the system. And that's the thing here is I think Democrats have actually profited for a number of years. Until Trump turned it on its head in 2020, it has historically been Democrats who cast doubt on elections because they tend to lose presidential elections. And they want to be able to cast doubt on those elections. And when people have voter ID and they've got to show their driver's license or their other voter identification to be able to vote, it makes people trust the system more. And Democrats can't cast doubt on Brian Kemp winning an election in Georgia or Donald Trump winning an election nationally or any member of Congress or senator winning an election. They don't like if voter ID is imposed by the voters. The voters trust the system. And then Democrats will have to start blaming themselves instead of voter fraud. 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.

Taking the complicated and making it simple. It's the Eric Erickson show. Welcome back. It is Eric Erickson here across the United States. Valero has just paid a $1.1 billion breakup fee to get out of California. The company would rather take a billion dollar write down. and leave California, then continue to work there, which should tell you all the problems with the operating environment in California and the regulatory structure in California. Valero is shutting down its Benicia Refinery by April of 2026. They would rather do that than continue operating in the regulatory environment in California. It's gotten that expensive. The facility produces roughly 145,000 barrels per day. About 8.6% of California's gasoline supply. 400 jobs have already been lost. Local revenue is going to be hit. Conoco Phillips exited, and that means that there's about a 10% reduction of California's in-state refining capacity. And the analysts out there that are looking at this say California's gas prices are going to go up even higher because of this. Think about this. A oil company. that invested in building an oil refinery in the state of California would rather shut it down and take a $1.1 billion loss than to continue operating in California with its environmental regulatory structure. That should tell you everything you need to know about how bad the business environment is in California, particularly for the fossil fuel industry, that California is going to need well into the future. They are driving up prices on the poor and the middle class in California. They're pricing more and more people out of being able to live in California. I really do think that the wealthy progressives in California would be very happy if every poor and middle class person packed up and left and moved into Nevada and Arizona and could at least come back to pick their crops and take care of their kids for them. They are pricing everybody out of California. Gavin Newsom doesn't seem to care about it. Good luck with the presidential run, Gavin. Now, we got to move on. But before we move on, do anything else, I got to tell you about incogny. I-N-C-O-G-N-I, incogny, I-N-C-O-G-N-I-N-C-N-C-N-C-N-C-N-C-N-C-E.com slash Eric, E-R-C-C-K. If you are tired of getting those spam solicitations and the phone calls and the harassment online, Incogni serves as your representative online to go to the data brokers that sell all your information online and send them takedown notices. They have done it for me for some time now. They can do it for you. In fact, let me go in Incogni.com. Then you put in the slash, Eric, to get the 60% off discount with Incogni.

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