Erick Erickson HR 2 09-15-25

Lift-off, we have a lift-off. is 8779773-745. Should you wish to be on the program, I would be absolutely delighted to have you with me. Text Eric, E.R. I C-K to 33-777. Should you wish to be on the program? I've gotten, y'all, y'all, the amount of emails and text messages and direct messages and private messages I have gotten. In the last hour, where are my show notes? We sit the show notes. I promise. I promise. We sit the show notes. The computer server is having all sorts of issues, and the emails are going out very, very slowly. However, if you text Eric, E-R-I-C-K, to 33-777, click on the very top link, and you will be able to go see your precious show notes, and they actually are very precious. You can see them online. I don't know that we're having technical difficulties here. You know, I mean, I can see how many people subscribe to the show notes. It's 70 some odd thousand people subscribe. And that's a very abstract number until you get 70,000 people all emailing you at once. Say, where are my show notes? I'm glad you all read them. I'm glad you do. They're there. I want to talk about the political left right now. This is, I guess you could say, the philosophy segment of the day. There's actually a lot I want to talk about this hour, including how do you fight people who clearly hate you? Because it's very obvious. A lot of people in the left hate you and me. I did not have Charlie Kirk's profile. He was an effective campus organizer. He was very well known. I go into markets where I am, and I get recognized on occasion, but he was at a different level. And I honestly, I will tell you guys, I am a Presbyterian. I grew up Southern Baptist. I am reformed in my outlook on Calvinist. And my philosophy is the Stonewall Jackson philosophy that I am as safe on the battlefield as I am on my bed until the moment God decides it's my time to go. And of course, several years after he said that, it was his time to go on a battlefield. But that's kind of my... view. I don't get worked up about security threats. People in my life do, and they are paid to. And if I die, well, then they all have a financial ruin. I got a good life insurance policy for my family and the office and all that. But, yeah, it's not something I try to. And, you know, it's not healthy. I don't think to dwell on it. Other people do.

In fact, my boss this morning called and he was like, oh, we got to talk about security and your security and traveling and all of that. Yeah, I know. But you know what? At the same time, I'll be real honest with you. A lot of the security that has to be paid for has to be paid for by me. And I would rather pay my staff and take care of expenses than pay for security for me, but now they're going to make me do it. So this is all a great way to say if you text Eric to 3377 and subscribe to the show notes and take the paid option, you'll help me pay for my security. Is that a little crass? Maybe so. But you know what I mean? Look, I'm taking it seriously. I am, but I don't view myself. Ben Shapiro, honestly, is the one that I really worry about. I worry about Ben more than I ever worried about Charlie Kirk. Ben Shapiro, because he's Jewish and conservative, gets all sorts of hate. And I know we were texting this weekend. I know I like Ben very much. He was on Bill Marr. On Friday, we were talking about that. Bill Marshall has not had me on in a number of years. I think I'm too boring for him at this point. But Ben was on. He does a great job, and he gets hate from the anti-Semites. He gets hate from the left. He gets hate from the neo-Nazis. He has to pay for security all the time. But what I find on the left is they really take this level of virtuousness to a new level. I want to go back to something I said at the last hour. What happened after Charlie Kirk's assassination was a concerted effort by social media influencers on the left. by reporters, journalists, and news organizations, and more to suggest that Charlie Kirk's assassin was on the right, to suggest that a white nationalist assassinated Charlie Kirk. to suggest essentially that there's no way that anyone on the left could have done this. And the reason they want to is because they can't imagine a lack of virtue on their side.

Democrats, you're at war. You must get comfortable doing things you otherwise would not do. Getting, killing people on the other side is something that you get comfortable doing when you're at war from what I'm told. And Chris Murphy says they're at war and must get comfortable doing things otherwise would not do. If Donald Trump said that CNN would be wall-to-wall coverage with people on their denouncing Donald Trump. Where the hell are the people denouncing the Democrats for their rhetoric other than both sides do it? Let's focus on Mike Lee's mean tweet and see. What does Mike Lee's tweet have to do with killing Charlie Kirk? The left wants to view themselves as virtuous at all times. And CNN... plays into that by covering this the way they're covering. I'm not telling them not to cover both sides. I think they should. But I am telling them that I know, and Mark Thompson, I've seen this for myself as a former employee of your network, that when right-wing violence happens, don't talk about the left. It's all about how the right must be held accountable. And when it's left-wing violence, don't talk about it, talk about how both sides do it, and the right probably inspired it. And the fact that the people at CNN, the anchors at CNN, the producers at CNN, the leadership of CNN is not willing to acknowledge that bias and double standard. And Mark Thompson, if you don't believe me, you can go to LexisNexis yourself and do what I did. You are far more likely at CNN to have the word FAR, F-A-R. put in front of the word right than left. You are far more likely to have the word controversial used to describe the Republicans' policies than a Democrat's policies. Those are editorial choices made within CNN, a network that claims to be middle of the road. fair and balanced, straight and narrow and honest, and yet the editorial opinions and decisions at that network contribute to the violence we're seeing from the left, because CNN's editorial position overall is that the left poop does not stink, and if it stinks, it's Donald Trump's fault. So where does the left go to have any accountability for left-wing violence? There's only Fox News, and they won't go to Fox News. So the entire media echo chamber, including you people at CNN, is designed to protect the left from ever having to acknowledge you have festering violence on the left. When you have the anti-Semitism covered on college campuses, it's never tied to the progressives. When you have the Antifa violence out west, we're told Antifa is not really an organization. It's just a coming together of various people. When you have any left-wing violence in the United States, it either is both sides did it or it's Donald Trump's fault, and that's the way it's covered across the media, most especially at places like CNN, that try to claim that they're neutral. The left spins a great deal of effort to pretend it's virtuous. And anyone the left doesn't like is a Nazi.

And Nazis, we all agree are bad. Therefore, we must agree that this person who the left doesn't like is bad because the left decides that this person is a Nazi, even though they're not. They just happen to disagree with their views. You have two ideas that have poisoned the left that news organizations like the New York Times, the Washington Post, U.S.N. A. CNN and others have contributed to. One is the refusal to deal with the idea that words are violence. I was on CNN Friday night with Anderson Cooper, and Jonathan Haight came up repeatedly. Jonathan Haight has regularly written about the role that cell phones and access to the internet and social media are playing and tainting kids' brains. Go back to 2017. Jonathan Haight actually said in 2017, writing in the Atlantic, that... it becomes very dangerous when we teach people that words are violence, and it's happening more and more on college campuses, he pointed out, in 2017. If you teach people that words are violence, the response to words can be physical violence. And that's what we're seeing. And there's been no pushback in the media to this idea that words are violence. The other thing we see, if you believe that words are violence, Words you disagree with are violence. Therefore, the people you disagree with are violent, therefore they're evil. And we've seen this repeatedly now cropping up an intellectual thought, not just the thought of morons, but of supposedly thoughtful people on the left, that Charlie Kirk actually was bad because he disagreed with the left on transgenderism. He disagreed with the left on gay rights. He disagreed with the left on their worldview. And because he disagreed with the left, he was bad and needed to be stopped. And then they'll say, not murder, but he needed to be shut. up because unless you're willing to agree with the left, you're evil, according to the left. And news organizations should be pushing back on this idea, but so many of them are from the left. It's not just that many of them believe it, but also they don't want to go out with their friends and family and be lectured about normalizing violence because they're normalizing people on the right whose words the left believes are violent. So you get these pretentious morally preening leftists who can't even acknowledge that a leftist assassinated Charlie Kirk because they've convinced themselves through their news networks and echo chambers. People on the left don't do that, despite the left becoming in the real world increasingly violent. 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. Giving you the truth, not the talking points. It's the Eric Erickson Show.

Greetings, welcome. It is Eric Erikson here. I got to say that I was impressed this weekend by a lot of reports from friends around the country about packed church services. One of the many things Charlie Kirk called for, probably the best thing Charlie Kirk called for, was get married, have kids go to church. And on Saturday, I put out a piece emailed out to all my subscribers with links to various denominations and put it on social media and said, you know, going to church on Sunday is the decision you make on Saturday. And a great way to honor Charlie Kirk is to go to church, find a church. And it's not easy in some cases to find a church. But I will tell you this, there are plenty of churches. There are synagogues and temples as well. If you're Muslim mosques, you can go to around the country and find a community that is not online. If there are two things that we as society could do to improve our society, one would be to spend less time online, more time outside. And the other would be to find a faith community to which we belong and build a community relationship with. You will be better off mentally, physically, spiritually. If you go find yourself a church community to get involved with. And the data bears that out. And I would encourage you if you're sitting out there, even if it's not something you would normally do, it's well outside your comfort, or you're not even a believer. You might be surprised what you find when you go if you're just willing to make the effort on a Sunday to go to church. Swiss America has been the trustee's leader of precious metals in this country for 40 years now. They're rated A Plus by the Better Business Bureau. They've been warning people about a secret war on cash, and they would love to give you their free report about the secret war on cash. All you have to do is call or text 800-289 2646. Completely free report from Swiss America. Call him and give my name, Eric, E-R-I-C-K, to 800-289-26-40-60. All that war on cash includes digital forms of currency. The government is working over time to try to figure out what you're spending your money on and how they can control you. Get the report for free from Swiss America. Just text Eric, or call them and say, Eric, sent me. 800-289-26. Yes, you can text Eric 200-289-289-286. 646, follow the link back, or go to Swissamerica.com slash Eric. Swissamerica.com slash E-R-I-C-K. Swiss America will get you the report completely for free. Message and data rates may apply. Hello, America. Welcome. It is Eric Erickson here. The phone number is 877977-9373425.

Should you wish to be on the program? I see someone, Benjamin Netanyahu, on social media saying, wow, man, I started listening because I respected your moderation, but you've jumped the shark. Nope, you just haven't been listening. You've been hearing what you wanted to hear. The fact of the matter is, I feel very strongly that the left puts itself in a protective bubble where the left convinces itself it is purest driven snow and everyone else is a Nazi. So now I want to talk about how do we on the right fight the left. I wrote about this some this morning because I'm a little bit concerned with some thinking creeping in, and I'm going to cite Matt Walsh for this. Let me read you his tweet. I cannot unite with the left because they want me dead. They will spit on my grave when I die and laugh in the faces of my wife and children. There can be no unity with such people, but I will unite with anyone on the right. I hereby discard any grudge or personal feud I may have had with anyone on my side. Maybe we will pick up those arguments sometime in the future. Now we have to stand together. Sounds like a great sentiment, right? What about the anti-Semites? What about the anti-Semites? Because they exist on the right. The Candace Owens is of the world. What about them? What about the neo-Nazis? The Nick Fuentes Groopers, the white nationalists, they support Donald Trump. They're not on the left. Now, what's going to happen is some people on the right are going to say, well, they're on the left. No, they're actually on the right. Are you going to be quiet about them? See, one of the problems with this thinking is that you're not paying attention to why the left has gone insane and why we've been winning. You do realize we control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and a majority of the states, we have a trifecta in more states that do that is complete control of the legislature and the governorship. Why? Redistricting plays a role in, and we'll get to that, but also... The left has gone completely insane because they haven't policed their own side. See, the left has embraced this thinking, no enemy to the left of me. It's actually a philosophical statement. I forget who came up with it, but it was embraced years ago by the left that no one to the left of me is my enemy. And as a result, the left has embraced more and more crazy. And that has emboldened black and Hispanic voters to move to the right. When the left gets more and more crazy, they're welcome to their anti-Semites, they're welcome to their own racists, they're welcome to their paternalist white folks who say, well, we need illegal aliens to take care of my grandmother because I don't want to. That turns off black and Hispanic voters and they move to the right.

So now if you take Matt Walsh's position, I don't mean to pick on Matt. He's just the one who articulated it. I like Matt, but he's the one who articulated it. If you don't police the anti-Semite to the neo-Nazis on your side, what are the black and the Hispanic and the Jewish voters where they get to the right going to find? A whole lot of people who hate them just like on the left. So push the bad elements out of the Republican Party, police your own side, and don't wind up crazy like the left. I want to give you two stories to back me up here. I know a number of people, including a lot of women who were pro-abortion advocates, they became pro-life because they were affected by the quiet Christians praying outside abortion clinics, some of whom were willing to walk with them in life. Witness to them, minister to them, pray for them and take care of them. I know women who went to Christ's pregnancy centers who wanted abortions, who were shown the heartbeat of their child and became pro-life through the quiet work. of the pro-life community, walking with them, loving them, not hating them, not judging them, they turned a lot of people to the cause. I also know people who became militantly pro-abortion after violence at abortion clinics. shootings of doctors, bombings. Some of the most ardent pro-abortion advocates in this country are people who couldn't have cared about the issue until an abortion clinic was bombed or a doctor was murdered by an insane, zealous person from the right. The violence that was done did more harm than good. Think about Charlie Kirk. How many Charlie Kirk's woke up on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? Because they saw violence. They saw a man, a father, a husband, assassinated solely because of his political views. Because someone hated his political views. Charlie Kirk was assassinated. How many people woke up over the weekend and said, you know what? I'm Charlie Kirk now. Radicalized to the right because of the hate from the left. Now there are people on the right who say, I'm going to go out and I'm going to do the left where the left is done to me. Instead of the golden rule, I want to, I'm going to do to them what I want them to do to me. You're using the, I don't know, the black-hearted rule of I'm doing to them what they've done to me. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. You know, it is a human rule. Vengeance, revenge is part of humanity. Christianity actually says, turn the other cheek, God's going to take revenge for you. Let God take revenge. You go love your neighbor. It's very counterintuitive. Very counterintuitive. You want to go take revenge, and if you're a Christian, God says, no, no, I'm going to take revenge for you. You go love your neighbor. Let me tell you another story. There's a very famous black radical in American history.

In fact, he wrote in his biography that he, in his autobiography, that he was such a black nationalist radical. He wore out the pages of the autobiography of Malcolm X. He read it over and over and over and over. Became sympathetic to the Black Panthers, the black militant movement in the country, hated white people, went to Catholic University, and by the time he got out of this Catholic university, hated white people, had a chip on his shoulder against society, went off to Yale Law School and was going to take on the white privilege of the world. He was going to be in the vein of Third Good Marshall, but more radical than Third Good Marshall. He was going to take on the Malcolm X philosophy in life until one day he lost his wallet. Now, if you're a poor black student from the South in the world of Kay Ivey League white privilege and you lose your wallet, you've lost your world. You've lost everything. His whole world was in his wallet.

And a conservative white student, the antithesis of everything this black radical hated in life, everything he was the antithesis of this guy. He was the enemy to this black radical, a white conservative Christian, everything he hated. was this man who found his wallet. And what did this white conservative Christian student do? Tracked down the black radical and gave him his wallet back with everything in it and didn't want a reward or anything else. And it was that small act of kindness that began stirring in that guy's heart. Can you imagine how American history would be different had Clarence Thomas never found his wallet that day? Yeah. The black radical who wanted to live his life like Malcolm X, you know him as Justice Clarence Thomas. And the man who found his wallet, you know as Ambassador John Bolton. now being investigated by the federal government over classified intelligence. That makes for a funny side story there. But yeah, it was John Bolton, white Christian conservative student who found Clarence Thomas's wallet, gave it back to him, and Clarence Thomas realized that not all white people must be as evil as I thought. And it began working in his heart, and he became a devout Catholic. Left behind black radicalism and is now the most conservative member of the United States Supreme Court would not have been that way had his wallet not gotten lost and then found by someone whose worldview collided with his own. There are people on the right who think we need to meet violence with violence on the left. No, you meet violence with love. It's completely counterintuitive. Don't be like the left. I keep hearing people say, we need to be like the left. I don't know if you all paid attention or not, but we've been winning a lot by not being like the left. We've policed our own. We've shunned the anti-Semites. We've condemned them. We've shunned the neo-Nazis of the world. We've shunned them, alienated them from the party. Now is not the time to welcome radicals into the right. We've been winning without them. We will become like the left if we start embracing this. Everyone to the right of me is my friend and everyone to the left of me is my enemy. When you treat the left as your enemy, and by the way, they do hate us and they're fine with us dying, when you treat them the way they treat us, there's no way for you to enact in any of their hearts something like what happened to Clarence Thomas. When you're praying for them, praying for your enemy, God tells you to pray for your enemy. When you pray for your enemy, you might convert them. Think of all the women who became pro-life because of the activists who prayed for them at abortion clinics. They didn't beat them up. They didn't harass them. They didn't yell at them, baby murderer. I know a lot of people who say, the other side is evil. I'm like, they think you're evil. What about abortion? I think abortion is evil as well. I think abortion is absolutely evil.

But I also think that I'm a sinner too. And I think that when I look at the other side like they do to me and say, well, they're evil, that's what they're doing to me. I look at them and say, yeah, you people are evil, but I, like you, am a sinner fallen and gone astray. I'm not going to hate them the way they hate me. So what do we do? Well, first of all, I think that there is every incentive for Republicans now, given the level of hate and contempt we're seen from the left, to work like hell on redistricting. I do not want these people back in power. They need to wander in the wilderness for a good long time. to see just how radicalized they've become and how hateful they are. So we need to redistrict every Republican state possible to make sure that we have patted our margins for the coming midterms to hopefully keep these people from taking back the House of Representatives. And we need to rally like hell to find really good candidates for the U.S. Senate. It's one reason I'm not a big fan of Ken Paxton running in Texas because I think he can win the primary, but I think he's going to alienate a lot of people in the general with his corruption and his adultery and everything else. I think that we've got an easier time with John Cornyn, even though I don't particularly care for John Cornyn. I don't think he's much of a fighter for the right. I frankly think that Ken Paxton's going to cost us so much money to get him elected. And by the way, we can get him elected, but all the dollars that we've got to spend to get Kid Paxson elected is going to be dollars. We can't spend defeating Jon Ossoff in Georgia or Roy Cooper in North Carolina or picking off other states. We've got to hold the Senate. We have to play our cards right. We've got to find good candidates in these states. We've got to... rally behind these candidates. We've got to turn out the vote. And frankly, I think Charlie Kirk needs to be a rallying call. All these young voters who are sitting on the sidelines, do you really want the people who cheered on the assassination of American in power? You need to go vote for the right. Because I do think the left right now, in fact, I'm watching it on the TV screen behind my camera, behind my microphone. I'm watching on CNN playing up well all the hate on the right. And look, I mean, Donald Trump does this too. Donald Trump did not assassinate anybody, a left-wing radical assassinated Charlie Kirk, and there's a concerted effort to deny that a left-wing radical is who assassinated him. We've got to redistrict these people out of power. We've got to demand justice. We've got to demand justice. We've got to make our streets safe. We've got to show the American people on the fence that we're not violent like the left and we can govern unlike the left and we can keep them safe unlike the left. And by the way, side note here, that's one reason I'm worried about the economy because there are a lot of weakness undercurrent and a lot of it tied to tariffs and many people on the right don't want to acknowledge it. They refuse to admit it. The economy goes bonkers. The left gets an advantage next year. That's why I think we've got to do everything to stabilize the economy. And Donald Trump's first term policies were far more stabilized and economically helpful than the second term policies with tariffs. I'm really scared about a lot of people who only care about their comfort. And if the economy goes belly up for some reason, they're going to vote for the left, crazy and all. That's why I'm worried. And wish the president would change course on that.

Friends, you win more friends with love than hate. You attract more with honey than vinegar. The left is full of vinegar right now. I don't think we should allow onto our side the hate that is there that does exist on the right. We should be clear-eyed and truthful about it. There is hate on the right and on the left. The left thinks it's only on the right. And the left refuses to police itself and it's festering. and drawing out violent tendencies, the anti-Semites, the assassins of people who disagree with them. That's why I think we should be encouraging people, businesses, to fire those who cheered on the assassination. You may not like Charlie Kirk, and I don't care if you said something not nice about Charlie Kirk, but to say he gets what he deserved, no American deserves death for views you disagree with. That should be, like, foundational to American society. And anyone who thinks so, particularly a teacher, I don't want you near my kids. A doctor, I don't think you should be near patients. The way to fight, though, is not the way the left fights. It's to fight smarter, to fight differently, to fight better, and to fight with hope. And give people hope that we're not like the left, and we will continue to beat the left at the ballot box, which is where this country's future must be decided, not with bullets, but with ballots. And we can win that fight. When the truth seems hazy, Eric will clear the way. It's the Eric Erickson Show. Text Eric to 33777 and get the four things you need to know podcast. Eric tells you the four things to pay attention to after the show. Also available on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. Yes, yes, you can. Every afternoon you get the four additional things to know after you have gotten through this radio program because there's always news that happens at the end of the show. We try to capture it with that podcast. You can text the word, Eric, E, R-C-K. to 33777. Get all the links back. We've still got more to go on the show today, and I will take your phone calls as well at 877-97-973-7-4-25. If you wish to be on the program, be patient with me. I will get to your phone calls in the next segment in the next hour. Also, we need to talk about the algorithm. There are growing in terms, you know, Governor Cox from Utah talked about it a lot last week. The algorithm. I think social media is increasingly poisoning us. And, you know, it's poisoning us also in ways that people don't understand. And part of that is isolating us. We know that the Kirk assassin got a computer as a teenager and started spending more and more time. on his computer. Wasn't just playing video games, but he was going to websites and down rabbit holes and...

poisoning his mind and isolating himself from everyone else. It's something that we as a society need be more mindful of. How do we deal with the algorithm? I have some thoughts when we come back. But first, I got to tell you if you actually need a computer, you can go to Vision Computers.com or call them at 404 compute and see if they can help you. Let me talk to you. I saw somebody at local coffee shop this morning who was having problems with their computer. I had to go over and help them, and thankfully it was a Mac. I could do it, but a Windows PC is out of my league. And what if you're in that situation? You're in a gig economy and you need computer help and you can't afford the downtime because you're an independent contractor, a sole proprietor. Vision can help you for just $1.99 a year. They can be, they can take over your computer, remote into it, fix it, whatever you need. 404, Vision Computers.com. They can do it for an entire company as well. Your company can let Vision be your managed IT provider, and there are no IT tickets. You get a phone number. The guy at the local Starbucks gets the phone number. You call them, 15-sex or less, somebody answers the phone, and they take care of you. 404 compute, visioncomcom. They keep you online. They keep you up and running. They minimize your downtime and they can build you a brand new computer and save you money or upgrade your existing computer. 404 compute or visioncom. And if you tell them Eric sent you, you might save even more money. 404 compute.