The Erick Erickson Show

If you've followed political media for as long as I have, it's blatantly obvious that mainstream media outlets are struggling to accurately report the interworkings of most Republican campaigns. Just this week, Puck News - a publication that purportedly gives its readers the inside scoop - reported that DeSantis is mulling the option of not running until 2024. This simply isn't true. Puck News relied on a political consultant that was passed over by the DeSantis team for a job and had an axe to grind. There are multiple reporters from mainstream outlets that I have a great deal of respect for. But a growing number are simply ideologues who candidates are leaning they cannot trust. As Republicans interact with mainstream media outlets less and less, all of us should be wary of the reporting from these publications. The dynamic is a reminder that mainstream media outlets have earned every bit of skepticism shown them by Republicans.

I went to breakfast with Herschel Walker last year after he secured the GOP nomination but before the general election. I knew after leaving that Herschel had no chance of beating Warnock. In his defense, Walker surrounded himself with some of the best people in politics and improved as a candidate as the campaign progressed. However, Herschel Walker was a deeply flawed candidate on a myriad of fronts and Republican primary voters didn’t seem to care. Similarly flawed candidates like Kari Lake in Arizona or just this week, Dan Kelly in Wisconsin, flushed away winnable seats by singularly focusing on the purity of winning the primary without the hassle of broadening the base in the general. While it falls on the candidate and the campaign to define a message that wins more than just hardcore primary Republicans, voters must also support candidates who have a history of appealing to more than just the hardcore partisans.If we don’t, Democrats will continue to dominate swing-state politics.

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By now, you know that Donald Trump has been indicted by a New York grand jury and will appear for arraignment on Tuesday. What you may not know is that Donald Trump’s path to reelection just got a whole lot easier. With an economy heading down the drain and every Republican lining up behind him, Donald Trump will fully fund his presidential campaign by selling autographed pictures of his mug shot for thousands of dollars. A dim-witted county district attorney is helping to reelect the man his party fears most.

After helping to craft the Inflation Reduction Act and providing the key vote for its passage, Joe Manchin took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal today to bemoan the Biden administration's implementation of it. While many on the right took this as a chance to slight Biden, the real story here lies with Manchin and The Wall Street Journal. Since his first Senate term in the early 2000s, Joe Manchin consistently runs as a Democrat for the first four years followed by running as a Republican for the final two. Manchin has made a living conning the constituents of West Virginia with performative stunts like this in hopes of them forgetting about the progressive votes he cast before. Manchin is a progressive at heart but without fail, the nation’s most trusted editorial board has been happy to oblige the performance.

Hundreds of technology leaders including Elon Musk, Andrew Yang, and Steve Wozniak are calling on OpenAI to pause the advancement of the artificial intelligence used in the company's future products. This group believes OpenAI poses a risk to society by displacing workers and potentially allowing artificial intelligence to "replace us". While AI programs like GPT-4 will inevitably replace some jobs, when has the American spirit deemed efficiency a bad thing? Farming was the predominant industry until technological and scientific advancement allowed for fewer and fewer people to be required to supply the same amount of crops. Do we still have a large number of workers unemployed because of the advancements in farming? No, the majority of these people in the early 1900s moved to the city and found better work and higher-paying jobs. This letter strikes me as an odd sign that a large group of smart, accomplished people have forgotten the history of what capitalism is all about. However, if you dig a little deeper, you will find that almost to a person, this group of technology leaders is almost singularly comprised of atheists. Here’s why that matters in the AI discussion.

My wife has an incurable form of stage four lung cancer. Every day for the past six years she takes a pill that keeps the tumors at bay. The pill was supposed to quit working four years ago. With metronomic regularity, her lungs are scanned every three months and by God’s grace, the tumors have not grown. I am regularly asked by genuinely curious non-religious friends, “how can you believe in a God that would allow this to happen to your wife?” The church we attend is a PCA church, the same denomination as the Nashville school that saw three students and three faculty members senselessly murdered yesterday. I see the same question asked, “how can you believe in a God that would allow this to happen?” Here’s why:

Do you know what the US Attorney General, Federal Election Commission, Robert Muller, and the Biden administration all have in common? All four entities decided not to prosecute Donald Trump for the campaign finance violation the Manhattan District Attorney is currently preparing charges. The Democrats' obsession with putting Trump behind bars is blinding them to the flaws in this case and the unintended consequences. Let me explain.

I think a backlash is coming. There's never been accountability for Democrats picking so many winners and losers and using the middle class to bail out the wealthy. The right candidate with the right message from the right can provoke that backlash.

A CNN poll shows Republicans would rather a candidate agree with them than beat Biden. We're seeing this play out with Ron DeSantis. He articulated a vision to defend Ukraine, but said fighting there is not in our national interest. So everyone is melting down.

The top story leading every news publication today is the collapse of an obscure bank you’ve probably never heard of before. As of an hour ago, Silicon Valley Bank is the largest bank to close its doors since 2008 and the 16th biggest in the country. Banking and legal experts tell me SVB went heavy on short-term bonds that collapsed in value as interest rates continue to rise. To make matters worse, SVB specialized in tech deals that have essentially become nonexistent as the fed pushes forward with additional rate hikes. The question every pundit on tv is asking: Is this the beginning of a financial collapse like we saw in 2008? Probably not. The bottom line is while SVB is likely not the last bank to face serious problems, the big banks and your local bank are likely fine. Here’s why.

USA Today published an odd story claiming the majority of Americans have a favorable view of the term “woke.” The editors were kind enough to offer a blanket warning to Republicans that attacking such a favorably viewed term may be a bad idea. However, the problem for USA Today is this poll was conducted online by voluntary participants. The statistical significance of this is akin to posting a question to your buddies on Facebook and inferring the data on the country as a whole. What I find more telling about the country’s true view on the term woke comes from standup comedians who make a living saying out loud what their audience is thinking. From Chris Rock to Dave Chappelle to Bill Burr to Neal Brennan, almost every progressive comedian is ridiculing woke ideology on progressive platforms like Netflix and Hulu. Republicans need to pay attention to this. Let me explain:

Democrats are furious with Joe Biden over his recent political pivot back to the middle ahead of a reelection announcement. Biden recently sided with Republicans to killed a DC crime bill that would empower criminals as violent crime runs rampant in the city. Just this week, Biden floated the idea of returning to the Trump era immigration practice of holding illegal immigrant families in detention centers instead of releasing them into the country. Perhaps most offensive to the progressives is Biden’s renewed talk of reigning in government spending ahead of a debt ceiling showdown. The shift to the center has nothing to do with personal beliefs but with polling numbers that has the President below Donald Trump at this point in his first term. Here’s everything you need to know: