The Erick Erickson Show

Latest Episodes:

S15 EP136: Hour 3 - Mike Rowe's $240K Electricians, the Data Center Boom, and Iran's Strait of Hormuz Games Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

Erick makes a full throated defense of America's data center boom, playing a Mike Rowe clip about Plano, Texas electricians under 30 making north of $240,000 debt free, debunking the Erin Brockovich water panic from Bill Maher's show, and explaining why Caterpillar is suddenly the hottest stock in the Dow. Callers Keith, Max, Chet the Jet, and Ed dig into the skilled trades gold rush, canteen empanada six figure incomes, and the non-disclosure agreements that are breeding data center conspiracy theories. He closes with breaking Iran news as Trump, Scott Bessent, and Marco Rubio claim progress on reopening the Strait of Hormuz while Tehran denies any talks and a cargo ship is struck off the coast of Oman.

Mike Rowe's viral clip: Plano, Texas data center electricians under 30 earning $240,000, debt free, poached three times in 18 months
Erin Brockovich, Bill Maher, and the data center water myth: golf courses, Permian Basin water recycling, and West Texas selling cleaned water to data centers
The degrowth movement, Chinese funded left wing groups, solar panels on farmland, cobalt mining in Africa, and the case for nuclear base load power
Caterpillar's Dow surge on gas turbine generators, plus callers Keith, Max, Chet the Jet, and Ed on the skilled trades boom, antifreeze cooling, and data center NDAs
Breaking Iran news: Trump, Scott Bessent, and Marco Rubio claim progress reopening the Strait of Hormuz as Tehran denies talks and a ship is hit off Oman

S15 EP135: Hour 1 - Mamdani's Grocery ID, JD Vance's Post-Liberal Whisperers, and the Socialist Surge Aug 03, 2026

Show notes

Erick returns from a week at Lake Burton to a world still in chaos: Iran spurns peace as Trump halts strikes, the democratic socialists surge with Texas suddenly in play (James Talarico leading Ken Paxton), and New York's Zohran Mamdani demands a photo ID to buy subsidized groceries but not to vote. He connects the dots to JD Vance's post-liberal advisor Patrick Deneen, a Wall Street Journal corporate shakedown story, and a signature monologue framing socialism as a violation of the Tenth Commandment.

Iran refuses peace as Trump halts strikes: the Strait of Hormuz leverage, Ukraine's runaway drone production, and the U.S. Patriot missile and munitions shortage
Democratic socialists surging: Texas in play with James Talarico leading Ken Paxton, Sherrod Brown rising in Ohio, Jon Ossoff, Mike Collins, and Ben Domenech's Texas alarm
Zohran Mamdani's government grocery store and the photo ID double standard, Cory Booker on New Jersey noncitizen voters, and the SAVE Act
JD Vance, Patrick Deneen, and post-liberalism: socialism on the right, the Hewlett Foundation, American Compass, and tariff corruption
Socialism as coveting: the Tenth Commandment, mandated self-checkout discounts, plastic bag bans, Scott Bessent buying Japanese yen, and Colorado's Mila Kiro dodging the communist label

S15 EP135: Hour 2 - The Source of the Antagonism Aug 03, 2026

Show notes

Back from Lake Burton, Erick breaks down Marco Rubio's Fox News interview on the funded, organized protest network tied to Cuba, China, Neville Roy Singham, and a Cox Enterprises heir, then makes the grown-up case that the left is both astroturf and real grassroots, just as the Tea Party was in 2010. He hammers Ohio's Max Miller and Florida's Cory Mills over abuse and revenge-porn allegations and demands the GOP force them out, then turns to Mike Turner on Patriot missiles for Ukraine, America's broken missile production, and a big-ideas argument for desalinating Pacific water to save Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam.

Marco Rubio on Fox News: the funded and organized protest machine, Cuba, China, Neville Roy Singham, the Cox Enterprises heir, Antifa, Code Pink, and the 2020-riots-to-pro-Hamas-to-anti-ICE pipeline the national media refuses to cover
Astroturf versus grassroots: the 2010 Tea Party wipeout, the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity, Russia and Alexander Dugin funding both the left and the post-liberal right, plus Laura Loomer's Ukraine reversal and Mike Flynn's attack
Caller Paula on the language war: gender-affirming care versus child castration, reproductive rights versus abortion, unhoused versus homeless, and the Marxist strategy of controlling the vocabulary to control the country
Get them out: Max Miller in Ohio and Cory Mills in Florida, the police report, Ed Martin's blocked arrest warrant, and how Democrats pushed damaged candidates like Graham Platner out while Republicans shrug
Mike Turner on Patriots and Tomahawks for Ukraine, why our military industrial complex cannot build enough missiles to protect Israel from Iran, Ukraine's drone output, and the case for desalination, aqueducts, and big ideas to refill Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam

S15 EP135: Hour 3 - The WSJ Corruption Story, Josh Trevino on World War II, and China vs American Leadership Aug 03, 2026

Show notes

Back from vacation, Erick sounds the alarm on a confirmed Wall Street Journal story about a Trump fundraiser pressing corporations like Apple for cash and doling out tariff carve-outs, warning his own side is now perceived like the Biden crime family while wages slip behind inflation and independents may just stay home in November. He then walks through his friend Josh Trevino's National Review essay on why we abandon the lessons of World War II at our peril, taking on Tucker Carlson, Darryl Cooper, R.R. Reno, and the post-liberalism of Patrick Deneen and JD Vance, and closes with the RedState origin story, an Apple lockout vacation saga, and a Tomahawk steak cookout.

The Wall Street Journal corruption story: a Trump fundraiser soliciting Apple and other corporations for donations and library money, insane tariff carve-outs for lobbyists, the "Trump crime family" perception versus Hunter Biden's paintings, and why a stay-home electorate hands the democratic socialists November
The economy people actually feel: wages slipping behind inflation, a 600-point market pop after Trump called off strikes on Iran, high beef and grocery and gas prices, and the 1992 George H.W. Bush versus Bill Clinton "good man out of touch" warning
Ron Fournier, James Carville, and Doug Jones in Alabama: why the DSA malignancy and the corruption issue could flip even Texas
Josh Trevino's National Review essay on World War II: Alec Ryrie, R.R. Reno at First Things, Tucker Carlson and Darryl Cooper's Third Reich revisionism, Winston Churchill, and who owns the memory of the war
Post-liberalism and American leadership: Patrick Deneen whispering to JD Vance, the liberal world order, China laying roots in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Brazil, Russia near collapse, and why our military industrial complex cannot build a Patriot missile while Ukraine floods the field with drones
Personal color: the RedState origin story with Josh Trevino, Ben Domenech, and Mike Krempasky, an Apple account lockout after a Gainesville login, the wrong-theater Odyssey IMAX dad moment, and a Tomahawk steak and front-porch bourbon cookout

S15 EP134: Hour 1 - Sophie Cunningham: Hero Jul 23, 2026

Show notes

Erick opens with a raw, personal plea for his annual childhood cancer Care-a-thon benefiting Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, sharing his wife's stage four lung cancer and the reality that some of the kids he will interview over the next 48 hours may not survive the year. He then unloads on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the progressive squad for falsely claiming the National Defense Authorization Act merges the U.S. and Israeli militaries, mounts a long defense of Sophie Cunningham and Caitlin Clark against a hostile WNBA press, and closes by branding "post-liberalism" as socialism made cute, tracing it to Harvard's Adrian Vermeule and Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt.

Topics:

Childhood cancer Care-a-thon for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta: Erick's wife's stage four lung cancer, the emotional toll of interviewing sick kids, and a heartfelt donor plea (text donate to 33777)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the progressive squad lie about the National Defense Authorization Act, claiming a U.S. and Israel "military merger" that is really a joint technology fund modeled on Ukraine's drone program
Sophie Cunningham defends girls' sports against biological men, Caitlin Clark gets ganged up on, and the hyper-progressive WNBA press pile-on
Nancy Armour's USA Today column, the Caitlin Clark race narrative, the Emmett Till geography error, ESPN layoffs, Pat McAfee's $60 million show, and Clay Travis
Post-liberalism as "communism made cute": Adrian Vermeule, Carl Schmitt, J.D. Vance, and the push for one-man executive government

S15 EP134: Hour 2 - Beat the Socialists With a Good Economy Jul 23, 2026

Show notes

Erick builds a full monologue on Nate Silver's Cooperative Election Study data showing the Democratic Socialists of America are not the poor but downwardly mobile rich kids with prestige degrees, invoking Peter Turchin's elite overproduction, Joseph Schumpeter's creative destruction, Graham Platner's fake oyster fisherman act, and Dan McLaughlin's Karl Marx versus Frederick Douglass contrast. His free market fix for Republicans is blunt: scrap the Trump and Peter Navarro tariffs, stop the government from taking ownership stakes in companies, expand school choice to gut the "progressive madrasas," and defund victimization degrees. He then pivots to the Colorado River crisis at Lake Mead and Lake Powell, arguing for water pipelines and desalination the way America builds oil and gas pipelines, before mocking the left's new conspiracy theory that Mitch McConnell is secretly dead.

Nate Silver, the Cooperative Election Study, and the DSA as highly educated, downwardly mobile "rich kids": 80 percent with bachelor's degrees, 45 percent under 60,000 dollars, 85 percent white, clustered in teaching, nonprofits, and public sector work
Peter Turchin's elite overproduction, Joseph Schumpeter's creative destruction, Graham Platner's oyster fisherman pose, and Dan McLaughlin's Karl Marx versus Frederick Douglass framing
The free market prescription: kill the Trump and Peter Navarro tariffs, end government ownership stakes in tech companies, expand school choice in Georgia and beyond, and defund gender studies and queer theory degrees
Lake Mead, Lake Powell, and the Colorado River crisis: build water pipelines and desalination plants, harness the Permian Basin's billion gallons of daily produced water, and stop the "de-growth" left from blocking energy and water infrastructure (Energy Transfer, Western Midstream, Enterprise Products)
The Mitch McConnell "death hoax": why the left now attacks Kentucky Governor Andy Beshir over a conspiracy theory, and Erick's warning that the internet is rotting brains on both sides

S15 EP134: Hour 3 - Oil Skyrockets Jul 23, 2026

Show notes

Erick argues Iran is deliberately holding the American economy hostage as Brent crude tops 100 dollars after the Houthi strike Saudi ships in the Red Sea, warning that high gas prices could sink Republicans in midterms now barely 100 days out and calling on President Trump to unleash Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis to end the Iranian regime and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He then turns to longevity guru Brian Johnson, who announced he is cloning himself to harvest organs while battling autoimmune gastritis, a plan Erick calls demonic and answers with "God is not mocked" and a nod to Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige." He closes the hour backing Scott Perry's No Kill Switches in Cars Act against Joe Biden era mandates, then makes one more emotional plea for the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta childhood cancer Care-a-thon.

Topics:

Oil prices skyrocket: Brent crude over 100 dollars after Houthi strikes on Saudi ships in the Red Sea, Iran holding the economy hostage, and Erick's demand that Trump unleash Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel to end the regime and free the Strait of Hormuz
The economy is the midterm issue: Albertsons stock sinks nearly 15 percent, CEO Susan Morris cites a cautious consumer, and Erick ties food, beef, and grocery inflation straight back to gas prices with a culinary school cost breakdown
Brian Johnson, the longevity guru, clones himself to grow organs while fighting autoimmune gastritis: "God is not mocked," a demonic vanity project, and echoes of Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige"
Scott Perry's No Kill Switches in Cars Act: repealing the Joe Biden infrastructure mandate for drunk driving detection, and nanny state safety features (backup cameras, pedestrian braking, GM Super Cruise) that price the poor and middle class out of cars
Closing childhood cancer plea for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (text donate to 33777), the nation's second largest childhood cancer research facility after St. Jude

S15 EP133: Hour 1 - The Economy and Falling Behind Jul 22, 2026

Show notes

Erick opens the week's big theme, a full diagnosis of the Democratic Socialists of America, arguing the movement is not the poor but downwardly mobile rich kids using Nate Silver's Cooperative Election Study data on elite overproduction. He hands Republicans a free market battle plan (kill the tariffs, expand school choice, end the nonsense college degrees), then turns to Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on arresting Benjamin Netanyahu and now admits he has no legal power to do it, with a hard monologue on October 7th, Hamas, and the Gaza "genocide" claim.

Topics:

The DSA diagnosis: highly educated, downwardly mobile, 85% white, earning $30,000 to $60,000, and resentful, with Graham Platner "cosplaying" as an oyster farmer
Erick's Republican playbook: drop the Trump and Peter Navarro tariffs on Canada and Mexico, expand school choice against the "progressive madrasas," and cut gender studies, queer theory, and puppetry arts degrees
Why Trump taking government stakes in tech companies is "diet coke socialism," and the anti-tariff case for lower prices and higher wages
Zohran Mamdani's sinister campaign video walking back his promise to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, the ICC warrant, and why the U.S. never joined the ICC
The October 7th case: Hamas atrocities, Mamdani's refusal to condemn them, and Erick's "daddy issues" analogy for socialists who distrust leaders who overpromise
A personal appeal for the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Carathon, fighting childhood cancer and sickle cell anemia (text donate to 33777)

S15 EP133: Hour 2 - The New Jersey Voter Registration Scandal Jul 22, 2026

Show notes

Erick breaks down New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill's admission that a motor vehicle software glitch registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens to vote (about 400 actually cast ballots) under former Governor Phil Murphy, using it to indict the 1990s motor voter law that the late Georgia Senator Paul Coverdell warned against, while pushing back on both Michael Steele's spin and the conspiracy theorists who cry mass fraud. He plays Congressman David Schweikert's warning that Washington now borrows $93,000 every second and ties fiscal recklessness to the rise of socialism, then wonders aloud, prompted by a retired Air Force caller, whether America's reluctance to unleash on Iran signals a real munitions shortage. In the hour's most personal stretch, Erick shares his wife's stage four lung cancer battle and a gut wrenching story of a young cancer patient to make the case for the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta fight against childhood cancer.

Topics:

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill: 6,600 noncitizens registered to vote by an MVC software error under Phil Murphy, roughly 400 actually voted, and why the margins cannot overturn an election
The motor voter fight: Michael Steele's MS Now spin, the late Senator Paul Coverdell's 1990s warnings, prosecuting the ineligible voters, and Erick's call for bipartisan election integrity reform
Congressman David Schweikert on the fiscal calamity: borrowing $93,000 every second, the 10 year yield, the SAVE Act, and how deficits and inflation feed socialism
The Iran question: a retired Air Force officer caller on hazard pay versus housing duty pay, missile and drone costs, and Erick's growing suspicion of a U.S. munitions shortage
A father's appeal: his wife's stage four lung cancer, the Tagrisso chemo pill, and the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta fight against childhood cancer and sickle cell anemia (text donate to 33777)
Caller wisdom on work ethic, entitlement, and marriage: Erick's own story of struggle, student loans, RedState, and why married people earn more than single people

S15 EP133: Hour 3 - What's Limiting Us in Iran? Jul 22, 2026

Show notes

Erick makes the case for letting Israel off the chain against Iran, reporting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a face to face with Donald Trump at Lindsey Graham's funeral but is being blocked by isolationists in Vice President JD Vance's office, and that America's slow, tit for tat response to Iran may be hiding a real Patriot and Tomahawk munitions shortage. He weighs the new US Saudi Arabia civilian nuclear deal with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (reported by the New York Times from Riyadh), warning that letting an Arab nation enrich uranium will only push Iran to double down, while defending MBS as a pro Western ally and delivering a fiery Pinochet versus the communists monologue. Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine warns the Senate that the character of war is changing, Senator John Kennedy doubts the Pentagon is being straight with Congress about Pickaxe Mountain, and President Trump lands in Atlanta to tout Trump accounts at Wheeler High School in Cobb County.

Iran strategy: Netanyahu blocked from meeting Trump by Vice President JD Vance's isolationist staff, a suspected US munitions shortage on Patriots and Tomahawks, and Erick's demand to let Israel and the armed Kurds finish the job without American boots on the ground
The US Saudi Arabia nuclear deal with Mohammed bin Salman, the uranium enrichment danger, tying any deal to Saudi recognition of Israel, and Erick's defense of MBS as a pro Western partner over China
The Pinochet, Ortega, and Castro communism monologue, plus Erick's AIPAC donation and a shot at Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and antisemitic conspiracy theorists; Laura Loomer's apology after seeing Ukraine firsthand
Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine's Senate testimony on funding, the NDAA, Article I Section 8, AI and drone warfare, and lessons from Ukraine; Senator John Kennedy's doubts about the Secretary of Defense and Pickaxe Mountain
President Trump in Atlanta at Wheeler High School promoting Trump accounts with Mike Collins and Rick Jackson, threats to hit Iranian civilian infrastructure and the Houthi Red Sea blockade

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected