What Will It Take For Republicans To WIN? w/ Erick Erickson

Summary

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Ruthless Podcast

Episode: "What Will It Take For Republicans To WIN? w/ Erick Erickson"

Date: May 19, 2026
Guests: Erick Erickson
Hosts: Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug (out), Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook

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Overview

In this robust and humor-laden episode, the Ruthless Podcast crew welcomes conservative radio host and commentator Erick Erickson for a sweeping discussion on the future of the Republican Party, key 2026 primary battles, candidate quality, the shifting strategies in U.S. politics, and the ongoing tension between performative politics and policy substance. The episode dives into the unique challenges facing the GOP, the political landscape in critical battlegrounds like Georgia, Kentucky, and Texas, Democratic Party maneuvers, and the pitfalls of living in an online, hyper-polarized political ecosystem. Later, Grover Norquist joins to break down tax policy and strategic state-level shifts.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening Banter & Context

• Hosts welcome Erick Erickson, reminiscing about how intra-conservative rivalries mellowed with age.
  • [05:07] Holmes: "What happened? We were the young..."
  • [05:10] Erickson: "How did we become the sane ones?"
• The crew notes how modern politics feels increasingly performative, with many lawmakers focusing more on media presence than legislating.

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2. Republican Primary Highlights: Georgia, Kentucky, Texas

Georgia: Senate & Governor's Races

• The suburban shift and candidate dynamics
  • [07:55] Erickson: "In Georgia... Republicans for the first time in a few cycles [need to] take advantage of an opportunity here and win this seat back... It is a center right state, but it has gotten jumbled."
• Key Takeaway: Suburban issues outweigh cultural ones; Republicans need to recalibrate messaging. Many black rural voters are up for grabs, but GOP often overlooks them.
  • [10:40] Erickson: “People in Atlanta care about pocketbook issues, not the cultural conservative issues...”

Kentucky: McConnell Succession & Massie Race

• Andy Barr emerges as likely Senate nominee; Daniel Cameron’s political brand collapses.
  • [13:45] Erickson: “Andy Barr has navigated it extremely well... When you run in Kentucky and make it explicitly about rejecting Mitch McConnell, it’s probably not a good idea.”
• Thomas Massie faces criticism for being contrarian and playing into Democratic/media hands.
  • [14:38] Erickson: "I gave money to [Massie's challenger] Ed and I hope he wins."
  • [16:45] Erickson: “Massie is willing to go on the attack against people who’ve been his friends... when you got Ro Khanna and The View singing his praises, that kind of tells me where you are these days.”

Texas: GOP Self-Sabotage Risk

• Ken Paxton’s polarizing candidacy is a financial threat for GOP’s national map.
  • [17:25] Erickson: "This is the test of whether Republicans are suicidal or not... If Paxton wins... the money you’d have to spend to save Texas deprives you of money in North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan..."
• General warning: The “burn it all down” wing of the party harms winnability.
  • [18:14] Erickson: “I've grown up and realized, you know, I would rather have the majority than have the minority.”

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3. The Media Environment & Political Immaturity

• Political polarization is not new; media and Twitter amplify a sense of crisis.
  • [20:03] Erickson: “People have no sense of history... There is a history. You can read books and learn about how really screwed up American politics has been.”
• Online activism and Twitter are misleading.
  • [20:45] Erickson: “Most people are not involved in politics as I am... I think Republicans actually are really in danger of being where Democrats were in 2016-2020, where they think Twitter is real life.”

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4. Democratic Party Woes: Kamala, AOC, and the Hard Left

• Kamala Harris’ 'No Bad Ideas' Tour
  • Recap and satirical commentary on Kamala’s proposal—from packing the Court to D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood.
  • [29:11] Erickson: “The Nazis didn’t wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and say we’re the evil ones. The other guys are... That’s what Democrats are doing right now.”
  • [31:51] Holmes: “In order to preserve democracy, we must ruin it.”
• AOC’s Rally Speech
  • Ruthless panel mocks the overwrought rhetorical style and disconnect with southern voters.
  • [35:28] Erickson: “No New Yorker wants to pull up to Alabama... these people don’t know anything about anywhere other than Brooklyn.”
• Democrat Trends: Kamala as the likely 2028 nominee; Democrats drifting harder left; AOC as a threat to establishment figures.

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5. Race, the South, and the Left's Narrative

• Erickson debunks the left’s accusations of systemic Republican racism, noting that black Republicans frequently lose to white Democrats.
  • [39:22] Erickson: "There is a real problem of racism in the South... they happen to be Republicans and it's the white Democrats who keep defeating them."
  • Anecdotes from Louisiana, Georgia, and Tennessee.

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6. Candidate Quality & Double Standards

• Erickson and the team express outrage at Democrats tolerating a current candidate with a Nazi tattoo (“Graham Plantner”), after years of accusing Republicans of extremism.
  • [25:08] Erickson: “The willingness of these jackasses in this city who give hell to all of us for backing Republicans... to come out for a Nazi.”
  • [41:02] Erickson: “All the people who lectured us that the Republicans were Nazis are now perfectly fine with the guy with the SS tattoo.”

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7. Performative Politics and the Right’s Identity Crisis

• Debate over conservative “influencers” shifting core beliefs for relevance.
  • [46:50] Erickson: “You get online and get addicted to the buzz... if you're not talked about, you find no relevance.”
  • Allusions to conservative-turned-anti-Trump media personalities and politicians switching sides for attention.
• Personal commentary: Erickson shares lessons from his own controversial moments and health scare, contrasting them with the attention economy of D.C.

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8. Local Flavor & Comic Relief

• Segment on self-driving Waymo cars causing chaos in Atlanta neighborhoods
  • [53:33] Erickson: “I nearly got hit by one of these sons of bitches... becoming like New York City sewer rats on the streets of Atlanta.”

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9. Variety Segment: Absurd Headlines

• American influencers arrested in Japan for a monkey enclosure stunt.
  • [58:51] John Ashbrook: “I thought we were going to see the zookeeper taking him down... the guy in the mascot uniform... would be attacked by the macaque and sodomized.”
• Restoration fail: Spanish cathedral gargoyle impaled by a copper pipe, discussed humorously at length.

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10. Grover Norquist Interview – State-Level Republican Success & Tax Strategy

• Theme: GOP’s real victories come from methodically shifting state policy, away from media drama.
  • [68:15] Norquist: “If you want to take the capital first, you take the countryside... The modern Republican Party is going through the states and getting red states to pass bills that make life more affordable.”
• Railway Safety Act: The hosts and Norquist decry union-driven legislation they see as a Democratic power grab and cost hike for consumers.
  • [75:00] Norquist: “They’re all trial lawyers... washing money through this union, which is demanding that we should...”
• Wider impact: Lower taxes, school choice, tort reform, right-to-work laws, and out-migration from blue to red states.
  • [85:01] Norquist: “When you cut taxes, you create more jobs and you create a self-employed person... We change the electorate when we create more freedom.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Erickson on Twitter activism:
  "Twitter's not real life. I think Republicans...are really in danger right now of being where the democrats were in 16-20, where they think Twitter is real life." [20:45]

• On performative politics:
  "Too many of them want to be fricking entertainers. They want their own podcast these days." — Erickson [16:50] (said, ironically, on a podcast)

• On Democratic double standards:
  "All of the people who lectured us that the Republicans were Nazis are now perfectly fine with the guy with the SS tattoo on his chest running." — Erickson [41:02]

• On shifting Republican tactics:
  "I've grown up and realized...I'd rather have the majority than the minority. Turns out you can actually do stuff when you're in the majority." — Erickson [18:14]

• Comic Relief:
  "They're becoming like New York City sewer rats on the streets of Atlanta and they just run all over the place." — Erickson on self-driving cars [53:33]

• Philosophy on change and authenticity:
  "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one's around to hear it, did it really fall? If I'm around and say something and no one cares, am I really relevant? I don't care. I got a wife and kids at home. I live in Middle Georgia. I don't need it." — Erickson [48:36]

• Norquist's strategic summary:
  "If you want to take the capital first, you take the countryside." [68:15]

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Key Timestamps for Segments

• 00:00–05:40: Episode warm-up, Erickson joins, reminisces about conservative infighting.
• 07:14–12:00: Georgia races, suburban voter analysis.
• 13:12–16:00: Kentucky race, Massie criticism, party strategy.
• 17:25–19:00: Texas, Paxton, GOP self-harm.
• 20:03–21:20: Political media ecosystem, Twitter unreality.
• 29:20–32:51: Kamala Harris’ ‘No Bad Ideas’ tour, progressive agenda satire.
• 33:34–38:40: AOC speech, team’s mockery, leftward shift.
• 39:22–41:00: Race, southern Republicans, Democratic double standards.
• 46:50–50:57: Performative politics, personal anecdotes from Erickson.
• 53:33–54:36: Atlanta’s plague of self-driving cars.
• 55:47–66:42: Variety/absurd news (punch monkey, sodomized gargoyle).
• 67:53–85:20: Grover Norquist interview: tax strategy, union politics, state-level wins.

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Tone & Style

Throughout, the tone is irreverent, biting, and quick-witted, with the hosts and guests teeing off on both Republicans and Democrats, punctuated by moments of self-deprecation, storytelling, and comedic sidebars. Erickson brings a seasoned, no-nonsense perspective with colorful language—balancing conservative critique with candor about the party’s failings and American political unseriousness.

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This summary captures all major themes, debates, and nuances explored by the Ruthless Podcast hosts, Erick Erickson, and Grover Norquist, offering a full picture even for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

[Eric Erickson]

When you look at the history of midterms, it's not that the party out of power wins so that the party in power loses. Massie is willing to just go on the attack against people who have been his friends to blast every good piece of legislation. And I mean, when you've got Rokuhanna and the View singing his praises, that kind of tells me where you are these days. He's like a non blonde, non female Marjorie Taylor Greene at this point, what

[Michael Duncan]

I can never understand is playing into the hand of the left and going on the View.

[Josh Holmes]

The job is illegitimate. Yes, at some too many of them

[Eric Erickson]

want to be fricking entertainers. They want their own podcast. These days all of the people who lectured us that the Republicans were Nazis are now perfectly fine with the guy with the SS tattoo on his chest running. Can you get elected at Maine thinking that rural Mainers are racist and lobster fishermen are terrible people? Give it a try. I don't know.

[John Ashbrook]

I think that Kamala is sort of like a leading indicator, something we were talking about just a little bit ago, of where the Democrats are headed. It is harder left in 2028 than we've ever seen before.

[Michael Duncan]

America has abundant affordable energy and real permitting reform is the key to unleashing it. Demand for natural gas has surged 50% in the U.S. but infrastructure hasn't kept up. That pipeline bottleneck is driving up costs and preventing economic growth. Real reform means stopping activist states from weaponizing the Clean Water act and stopping endless activist lawsuits. Real reform means building more pipelines and unleashing America's energy potential. Congress must deliver real reform. Learn [e-mail] paid for by Williams In

[NetChoice Representative]

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[Josh Holmes]

Today's hearing is a continuation of the committee's larger effort to get to the root Causes of why healthcare is so outrageously expensive.

[John Ashbrook]

House Ways and Means Chairman, Congressman Jason Smith.

[Josh Holmes]

Hospital prices have skyrocketed 300% in just over two decades, more than any other

[John Ashbrook]

sector of our economy.

[Josh Holmes]

Large hospital systems also manipulate the 340B

[John Ashbrook]

drug pricing program to keep steep drug

[Josh Holmes]

discounts for themselves instead of passing the

[John Ashbrook]

savings to low income patients.

[Josh Holmes]

Even worse, there is evidence that hospital abuse of 340B actually directly led to increases in Obamacare premiums. Simply put, hospitals are charging an insane amount for care. The American people are fed up with outrageous prices that seem artificially high.

[John Ashbrook]

They're right. Learn [e-mail]

[Eric Erickson]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. This program has become one of the

[Kamala Harris]

most influential podcasts in America.

[Eric Erickson]

I love the personality. You guys are killing it. I just saw your number one. So congratulations.

[Josh Holmes]

It's an honor and a pleasure to welcome the great Sean Hannity. Guys, I love you.

[Eric Erickson]

Congratulations on all your success. This is why you listen to the Ruthless Podcast, because nobody else would ask that question.

[Michael Duncan]

The only political podcast worth listening to

[Eric Erickson]

is the Ruthless Podcast.

[Josh Holmes]

It's time for our main event, the Ruthless Podcast. Good Tuesday to you. Welcome back to the Ruthless variety Program. I'm Josh Holmes along with Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook with welcome to fourth chair, as we like to do here

[Michael Duncan]

with smug on his extended Parisian maternity leave.

[Josh Holmes]

Maternity. Paternity.

[Michael Duncan]

It becomes paternity leave when he shows back up.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes, I feel like that's why. So we're welcoming a special guest, Eric Erickson. How are you, sir?

[Eric Erickson]

I'm great. Thanks for having me.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, listen, bud, it's been a little bit. You look like you're doing great.

[Eric Erickson]

I'm trying.

[Josh Holmes]

There's a lot of content to work with out here these days.

[Eric Erickson]

Great for ratings. Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

You know him and love him from the radio and everywhere else. And look, our relationship goes back longer than I care.

[John Ashbrook]

20 years, I think.

[Eric Erickson]

We're old.

[John Ashbrook]

We.

[Eric Erickson]

What happened?

[Josh Holmes]

What happened?

[Eric Erickson]

I don't know.

[Josh Holmes]

We were the young.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah. Really. And. And now, I mean, how did we become the sane ones?

[Michael Duncan]

I don't know.

[Josh Holmes]

But I mean, listen, interestingly, like, started out, man, not on the same side of a whole bunch of stuff and at each other's throats over a whole bunch of stuff. And then I think over the years, some of it just gets taken care of with age.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

And. And on all sides where we sort of like, look around like, I kind of like this guy.

[Eric Erickson]

I don't know.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't know.

[Eric Erickson]

I don't know.

[Josh Holmes]

I kind of like this guy and now I find that, you know, turns

[Eric Erickson]

out he's just fat. He's not actually a jackass. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

A lot of the stuff that you're talking about is stuff that we're talking about on this variety program and trying to contextualize the world around us that seems like it's insane.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

A good jumping off point for all of our listeners. It's a big primary day today and we've done. Throw up that map, will you, fellas? So we have this interview series where we've done interviews with all the candidates all the way through the general election. But we started with the primaries where we're getting everybody in where they can just listen to them and, and see what they think. And, you know, ultimately it's up to us. We're. We're not doing endorsements or that kind of thing. But if you sit down with the fellows and I feel like you feel like this too, if you're willing to come sit down with folks and have an extended conversation, you get better flavor.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

For this kind of thing. It's not like the seven minute sound bite ridden talking point deal that you get on cable and everything else. So you can kind of get a flavor for people a little bit better.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah. You. I do this down in Georgia for my flagship station. I used to be a local host there. So I bring them in and for an hour and it really is, who are you, why you're running, what's your big idea and why you not them. And you can figure out someone. And I mean the good people, given that amount of time, they're not going to hang themselves. And the ones who are kind of incompetent, you just let them talk. They ultimately just wrap the news around their own neck. You don't have to say, but you said this five years ago and now you're saying this. They're going to do that themselves.

[Josh Holmes]

They're going to do it themselves. And so that's the running theory here. But I know we got a big one in Georgia.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

And this is one where we started the cycle. Georgia Senate we're talking about in particular, where we started the cycle of really important that Republicans for the first time in a few cycles take advantage of an opportunity here and win this seat back. It is a center right state, there's no question about it. But it has gotten jumbled around where we have found at least Senate candidates that can't get it over the finish line. And now you've got three candidates, all of which We've talked to. Their fate is going to be determined today. What is your thoughts on all this?

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, I think just like in the gubernatorial race in Georgia is going to a runoff, probably Derek Dooley and Mike Collins.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay.

[Eric Erickson]

Collins really has the mag. There's been no endorsement by the president there. He's kind of stayed out of it. Collins is very much, I think, the MAGA guy. The question is, can he beat Jon Ossoff, who every time he's won has made the ethics of the other guy the issue. And Collins has kind of made it easy for us off to do that. Who by the way, in a state that is center right, when Trump is in the White House, it tends to be more center than rights, which makes it harder. Brian Kemp, when he ran in 2018, being Trump's guy, barely won when he was his own guy in 2022. He curbstalled Abrams. And that tends to be the issue in Georgia is they like Republicans, the base loves the the rest of the center right coalition of the suburbs, not necessarily fans. It's all pocketbook issues for them. And gas is expensive in the state right now.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. And you got a big midterm primary turnout issue.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, we do. And part of the problem is headed into the primaries, half the Republicans in the state are undecided in the Senate race. A third are undecided in the governor's race. And the Democrats are looking at this saying, oh, that means we're going to win the state in November. No, we'll have candidates by then. And the Democrats probably, by the time polls close, will have nominated the former former mayor of Atlanta who oversaw the Bernie of Atlanta for the first time since Sherman March 3rd.

[Josh Holmes]

They're not sending their best.

[Eric Erickson]

No, they're really not. I mean, I've always called her Keisha Crimeway. Bottom she literally provoked crime wave. She provoked a secession movement for the north end of the city. She provoked a crime wave. She's provoked the sacking of Atlanta the first time since the union marched through in the Civil War. And her own black voters in the city said, you know what? We don't want you to run for her second term. And she didn't. I mean, she literally handed over a Wendy's, a light, an atifa zone, and a mother's child got killed. When the woman turned around in the parking lot with her daughter, they opened fire. And by the way, the marriage said, keep the police out of that area. Yeah. So good luck running her across the state.

[Michael Duncan]

So, Eric, I have a question. We sort of alluded to it. But I have a question. What is it that you think makes Georgia unique in the Trump era of Republican politics? Because you look at a lot of places around the country where Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have put states in play that were more difficult. Look at the Midwest. You look at like Michigan, for example, places like that. And then I look at a state like Georgia, as we mentioned, that's gotten harder. That is a center right state, but is harder in the Trump era. What is it about the coalition in a state like Georgia that makes that so?

[Eric Erickson]

It's the industrial hub of Atlanta where it used to be. The outside of Atlanta area outnumbered Atlanta. You've now got 6 million in the greater Atlanta area, 5 million outside. And the people who live in cities tend to be pocketbook issues. They're not cultural conservative issues. And so the mistake that Republicans have made is they tend to run on really cultural conservative issues that a bulk of the voters in the Atlanta area, they're conservative, but they don't really care about those issues.

[Michael Duncan]

They might care, but they might not vote on it.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, exactly. So they care about boys and girls, sports, but they pay attention to their 401k. They live in Alpharetta, super wealthy suburb north of Atlanta where home values are high and they care about property taxes more than they care about anything else. And the cultural conservative voters who have come out of MAGA in the south tend not to do well on those issues. And you got to recalibrate for a suburban Atlanta base. You also, by the way, outside of Atlanta have a growing number of black voters who don't vote Democrat. And Republicans are too terrible about talking to those issues. A lot of them are farmers. And the farmers have been hurt by tariffs more than a lot of people acknowledge, particularly the soybean crop. And for Republicans to go get those voters, you've got a message for them. And by the way, they don't like the mayor of Atlanta running for governor and they're Democrats. So you've got an opening for them.

[Josh Holmes]

Are you hearing more about the governor's race than the Senate race down there?

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, I mean, the governor's race is on me. So there's a guy down there. So you got two billionaires running, Rick Jackson, businessman, Burt Jones, lieutenant governor whose father's a billionaire. They're every five minutes. In fact, I saw a great tweet the other day. Somebody said, I'm going to a Braves game. It's worth the price of admission to not see Rick Jackson and Bert Jones

[John Ashbrook]

get to miss the Commercial.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes, we understand that. I want to get your sense about sort of the rest of the map because we've got some big ones coming up. Kentucky, a big primary there. And this is to replace McConnell. It was started as a three way, I think, with a lot of people trying to figure out which way this map was gonna work out. You had Daniel Cameron, a former attorney general, previous Trump endorsement, who had made sort of a primetime speech at the 2020 RNC Convention for Donald Trump. Andy Barr, who has long been not only ingratiated well with the Republican Party as a whole, but have been a favorite of Trump. And now he has the endorsement. Then you have this guy Nate Morris, by the way, the only one that didn't come on the program. And I'm not saying, I'm just saying

[John Ashbrook]

no longer in the race.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm not saying, I'm just saying, like, you know, you come on the program, good things happen. But he has bowed out, is ostensibly gonna have some role in the Trump administration, but he's endorsed Andy Barr. It looks to see like this thing is gonna be an Andy Barr coronation today. Have you followed this?

[Eric Erickson]

I have. And I gotta tell you, even just the Cameron Bashir race and just kind of the collapse of Daniel Cameron as a brand has been shocking to me because for a while there I thought he was the future of the party.

[Josh Holmes]

Totally agree.

[Eric Erickson]

But you know, Andy Barr has navigated it extremely well, building coalitions across the entire spectrum of the Republican Party. He's going to be a formidable candidate. And you know, also, I think when you run in Kentucky and you make it explicitly about rejecting Mitch McConnell, it's probably not a good idea.

[Josh Holmes]

A couple of decades.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, a few decades exactly, of results on that.

[John Ashbrook]

But another race that's happening in Kentucky that's caught the attention of President Trump is Thomas Massie's reelection. And of course, he is facing stiff opposition in the face of this guy, Ed Gilrayne. And there's a question about who is going to win. I think it's going to be very tight because Northern Kentucky is the most conservative libertarian part of the state. It's why a guy like Thomas Massie can win over and over again, be very tight. I'm wondering if you've been watching that.

[Eric Erickson]

I will tell you, as a longtime guy who defended Massey, I gave money to Ed and I hope he wins. I don't know what's happened to Massie, but it's one thing to be a conservative, but when you become kind of like everybody on the Internet becomes a professional contrarian and he's kind of become that in Congress. And I mean, there are lots of Republican votes that were good pieces of compromise that advanced the legislation in the right direction, and he voted no. But between the Epstein conspiracy theories and the pro Palestinian genocide conspiracy theories, he's just kind of become an Internet troll and not really a member of Congress. He's like a. A non blonde, non female. Marjorie Taylor Greene at this point.

[Josh Holmes]

That's right. You got all that going on in your backyard.

[Eric Erickson]

I expect him any moment to go on Tucker Carlson to talk about the Jewish space lasers. I suspect if he loses, he'll be on Tucker by the end of the week talking about the Jews. Yes.

[Michael Duncan]

That's the thing that always boggles my mind is I can understand on principle opposing something. I can understand saying, I think the President is wrong. I think I'm being a good conservative and doing so. So what I can never understand is playing into the hand of the left and going on the View that MTG did and being that person. And it's bizarre to me. I feel like we didn't have much of this in the first Trump administration, but you have a couple of those characters now that feel totally comfortable using the playbook of the left.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes. I worked at CNN for three years before going over to Fox, and I've turned down a lot of opportunities to be on CNN now because they want the Republican who's gonna critic.

[Michael Duncan]

They want you to fill the role.

[Eric Erickson]

And I'm just. I don't want to fill that role. I'll criticize him, but I'll praise him a lot, too. They never want that. And surprise Massie is willing to just go on the attack against people who have been his friends to blast every good piece of legislation. And, I mean, when you got Rokuhana and the View singing his praises, that kind of tells me where you are these days. What's the point of having you with an R next to your name in Congress when you're going to be a reliable vote for Hakeem Jeffries?

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's true. Because the job is a legislator.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

At some.

[Eric Erickson]

Too many of them want to be fricking entertainers. They want their own podcast these days. Yeah. Yes.

[Michael Duncan]

Can you believe it?

[Eric Erickson]

It's remarkable on a podcast.

[Josh Holmes]

Selfish assholes that want these things. I want to get dropped one more race. India. It's a week later. But the Texas situation, you know, we've. We've had all three, and then we've had Paxton and corn and on for this runoff. And. And, you know, it seems to be a pretty tight thing. And Texas, it's been a while since in the Senate side we've had this situation.

[Eric Erickson]

This is the test of whether Republicans are suicidal or not.

[Josh Holmes]

It is kind of a little bit.

[Eric Erickson]

I don't doubt that Ken Paxton can beat a guy who thinks God is non binary in order to get tacos in Texas. I don't doubt that. But the amount of money that you're gonna have to spend on Paxton in Texas is gonna deprive you of money for North Carolina, it's gonna deprive you of money for Georgia, gonna deprive you of money for Ohio, for Michigan. I mean, this is a. It's a ferric victory for the GOP If Paxton wins because you're going to lose all these other races, you could win because of the amount of money you'll have to spend to save Texas.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's the age old primary question, right. Where you get to this point and you're like, well, we can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way. And when you're in a midterm election where you hold all the cards, the hard way is coming no matter what.

[Eric Erickson]

I mean, you know, when you look at the history of midterms, it's not that the party out of power wins so that the party in power loses. And a lot of times they get suicidal. And I have been on the side of let's commit suicide together. And I have, you know, I've grown up and realized, you know, I would rather have the majority than have the minority. It turns out you can actually do stuff when you're in the majority.

[Josh Holmes]

Nobody did the Irish Car bomb like Eric Erickson back then.

[Eric Erickson]

I'm telling you, I've been there. I didn't support Christine o', Donnell, contrary to legend. And that was kind of the wake up call when you got to run an ad saying, I'm not a witch, people, what are we doing? I understand wanting to burn it all down, but also I would actually rather have something other than rubble.

[Michael Duncan]

The craziest thing about that ad, I remember it is she actually said that looking right down at the camera to camera, I am not a witch. Like, who thought that was a good idea?

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

I don't know.

[Eric Erickson]

And they ended with, and your little dog too.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, she really just.

[Eric Erickson]

That was kind of the end of it.

[Josh Holmes]

Right? Right. There it is. It is interesting. And I. This is one of the reasons why I find it so fascinating to talk to and having read all your stuff over the last few years. It's like when you grow up in this sort of ecosystem, you really watch a whole bunch of different iterations of politics in the environment and how things all come together. And the maturity of it, I think, is lacking in a lot of the explanations for where we are today. Right. If you listen to the mainstream media, it's like, oh, it's just the worst, most polarized, craziest time. Like everybody sucks and. But, you know, I mean, most of that's coming from a 23 year old producer who's never seen anything outside of our current iteration. But, like, things were pretty fucked up back in the day too.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes.

[Grover Norquist]

Yeah.

[Eric Erickson]

I mean, people have no sense of history when it comes to looking at politics these days. On the mainstream media side, they got their start when Barack Obama was running for president and they think that's all there is. And on the Republican media side, a lot of is everything from Trump. There is a history. You can read books and learn about how really screwed up American politics has been. In fact, I think one of the biggest indicators of how great things are in this country is about half of voters don't vote. I mean, if this was an existential crisis like people online believe it is, you'd have everybody voting. Most people, they're not at war with their neighbor.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, right. And it turns out communities and friendships and personal relationships have some, you know,

[Eric Erickson]

I mean, you know, most people are not involved in politics as I am. And I got to remind myself, Twitter's not real life. And I think Republicans actually are really in danger right now of being where the Democrats were in 2016-2020, where they think Twitter is real life. I mean, if you go back to the autopsies of the Harris campaign and the Warren campaign in 2020, New York Times quotes from staffers for both campaigns as they were interested in winning the moment on Twitter and not the campaign. And I'm afraid a lot of Republicans are there right now.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, no, it's interesting. I mean, we've noticed, we noticed some of that too.

[John Ashbrook]

It sure is. And you know, you look at that, you look at the, you look at the way that people perceive Twitter as reality and you know that they are not focused on what you're talking about, which is basically the way people in most of this country live, which is you don't hate your neighbor, you're getting along with people who live around you, and you, you're basing your life off of things and inputs that you're not seeing online. And people in Washington and New York and Los Angeles who are living on Twitter already were living in a completely different environment than regular people in the middle of the country in the Midwest. I mean, listen, culturally, I feel like a lot of Georgia is very similar to the Midwest. I just think that's the case because you have a lot of regular people who are living their lives and doing their thing and are not interested in what the east coast and the west coast are trying to tell them how to live because they've got practice and they've got groceries and they got everything else that they've got to do. But one thing that sticks out to me, fellas, we talk a little bit about history. Gas prices is something we hear about all the time. Everybody's saying, oh, gas prices are high, gas prices are high. And I, I'm not, I think that's going to be an issue in this campaign. But I also remember in 2022 when gas prices were higher and Joe Biden's party actually picked up a seat in the Senate and the party out of power, which at the time was the Republicans, picked up nine seats. So in other words, Democrats only lost nine seats in the House. Gas prices were higher then than they are now. And maybe they come back down. You don't know. I mean, maybe the Iran war runs its course and gas prices come back down. I guess the point I'm trying to make is, is with everything that's happened with redistricting, I don't think it's over for us. Yeah, I really don't.

[Eric Erickson]

I've been saying I've got friends of mine who think we're lose 40, 45 seats. I think we're lose 15 because of redistricting. At the same time, I think there is some angst from voters of they rejected the Democrats, put in the Republicans and expected things to get better and they did and then they didn't. And so there's payback as hell from voters for that. For the Senate seats, I don't actually think we're going to lose the Senate. Also, we're more than 150 days from the midter terms. The Democrats are have nominated a Nazi. They're all, we're going to get to

[Grover Norquist]

him in a minute.

[Eric Erickson]

A terrorist sympathizer in Michigan. Candidate quality continues to matter. I do think it's not a good environment for the Republicans and that's the nature of midterms. I also think that when you have a really bad environment and the other side is running insane people, I mean, that's kind of where the Democrats were in 2022. They overplayed the MAGA crazy threat to democracy candidates. A lot of voters bought it. Yeah, well, I mean, do voters in Maine really want to figure out what C. Gale actually means?

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, this is a question firsthand testimonial.

[Eric Erickson]

I mean, it just. Okay, can I just say what. You've dropped it just. I can say the. What shit it is to watch these people who gave me hell for candidate side back to her now, like, oh, I just. I think the Nazi, he found. He found like, life and became an oyster fisherman. And. And. And we should. We should. We should bend over backwards. You gave no one any accommodation for picking bad candidates in the past who had grown up and now suddenly the guy with the actual tattoo of the Nazis who engaged in the Holocaust, you're like, pay no attention. He was through a hard life and didn't know. Yeah, the hell he did. He said he did. Good Lord, people, the willingness of these jackasses in this city who give hell to all of us for backing Republicans and their smug high horse to come out for a Nazi.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, and I don't know if you guys saw this over the weekend, but somebody found the. Looked at his two websites.

[Josh Holmes]

The buddy, we're gonna get to this.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay?

[Josh Holmes]

We're gonna get to this. We gotta take a break. But when we do, when we come back, you got more grand plan opportunities.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

So it's him. You got some aoc, we got some com la. It's a greatest hits routine right after this.

[Eric Erickson]

Fantastic.

[John Ashbrook]

As Congress does its work on the surface transportation bill over the next few days, big union bosses are once again trying to hoodwink Republicans into approving a collection of government mandates and union make work measures called the Railway Safety Act. Republicans shouldn't be fooled. The union bosses never support Republicans. The genius of Trump is that he went around them straight to the workers with policies like no tax on tips and no tax on overtime. That's the winning strategy. The conservative National Review says the RSA would drag the industry backward. Even unions pushing it admit that the RSA would have done nothing to prevent the East Palestine train accident. What the RSA would do is drive up transportation costs on everything we buy. Right. When Americans are dealing with the fuel shocks from Iran's closure of the Hormuz Strait, the RSA has earned opposition from energy, agriculture and shipping companies and basically everyone that moves around any product Americans might need. Congress should oppose the Railway Safety Act. Learn more and take [e-mail] RSA

[Josh Holmes]

okay, so like us, there has been a touch of enjoyment of just Kamala Harris's presence on the main stage. Right.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

It's like I feel like we did four years of shifting either Biden or comedy. We used to open our show every episode with a quote from one of the two of them because it was just a great jumping off point for like evening at the improv style comedy. I mean they just were just completely

[Michael Duncan]

every week it was something every week.

[Eric Erickson]

Time. Time is where we are and where we've been. Time is where we will head in time

[Josh Holmes]

100%. So. But what has been fascinating to us as you're sifting beyond the headlines of the Trump administration and both parties are doing their level best to try to figure out what's next is the Democrats really haven't figured this out at all. No. Right. And she is staying kind of close to the top of the heap here in terms of where voters are. And she every month or two rerolls something out and it never goes well. But it doesn't seem to have the same sort of. Well, we're going to see how this one goes because she's back out again and she's announced a quote, unquote, no bad ideas tour. Well, let's get the clip and react from there.

[Kamala Harris]

Say, look, this is a moment where there are no bad ideas. No bad idea brainstorm is what I'd

[Josh Holmes]

like to call it.

[Kamala Harris]

And in that no bad ideas brainstorm, we talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the Electoral College. We talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes expanding the Supreme Court. We invite a conversation about multi member districts. We talk about, look, that if we win the Senate, which we should, and we will, then the Senate Judiciary Committee should have rules that they put in place. So when these people come before as nominees to the Supreme Court and lie that they are held to account and consequence, not just that somebody goes on cable news and says they lied, but that there are rules in place to actually penalize people for lying to a Senate Judiciary Committee, that we agree that it is right to have ethics rules for Supreme Court justices and let's put those in place. Let's talk about statehood for puerto Rico

[Michael Duncan]

and D.C. real grab bag.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, I can't. There is no collection of worse ideas.

[Eric Erickson]

Oh, listen, I mean they're desperate, by the way. Also, if you've ever noticed when Kamala Harris is doing the bit where she's pointing like that, it's these are the things I don't actually believe that I want you to believe That I believe. So that you, you think that I'm going to fight for you when I'm actually the pawn of corporate America.

[Josh Holmes]

That was.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, I mean, that, that's, that's her entire. That's been her shtick forever. Is when she's doing this, she doesn't really mean it.

[Josh Holmes]

The more physically aggressive the least.

[Eric Erickson]

Can I just. Because I've talked about this clip on my show a couple of times and just really paid attention. Why the hell do you have to blur out the potted plan in the back? I mean, it actually distorted your whole face by this moving back and forward in the frame.

[Michael Duncan]

It's sort of sad, isn't it, to see a former presidential candidate be reduced to like running a zoom call HR meeting where she's like, we're going to lay out a suggestion box for everybody and then you just put it in all your ideas and we'll take them right to the top.

[Josh Holmes]

But also mildly terrifying. Terrifying in that every critique that was made about Kamala Harris in her 73 days as a candidate that she would, for example, completely break America by packing the Supreme Court or by adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, thereby giving four new Democratic Senate seats and having a forever majority in the United States Senate. Or the rest of that cattle call of progressive nonsense that she laid out that she distanced herself from entirely in those 73 days that she's back. She's like, no, I really meant all that.

[Michael Duncan]

I meant all that.

[Eric Erickson]

You know, I just, I say all the time that the Nazis, they didn't wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and say we're the evil ones. The other guys are. That's what the Democrats are doing right now. It's the other guys who are the threat to democracy. And so to preserve the democracy, we're going to pack the Supreme Court and make sure that we add our favorite states to the. To the Senate multi member congressional districts designed to make sure no one can get elected but us. We're not the threat to democracy. We're there to save democracy. It's like, what's the old East German poem that the commissars. That the people didn't like it, so they need a new people. I mean, this is kind of where they are. I mean, she really believes it, though.

[Josh Holmes]

In order to preserve democracy, we must ruin it. Yes, we must ruin it.

[Michael Duncan]

You know, the one bad idea I didn't see on her list was running for president again.

[John Ashbrook]

That's exactly right, buddy.

[Josh Holmes]

That's exactly right.

[Eric Erickson]

Exactly right. Cause it's clear. But can I just. You know, there was this thing, and I thought it was the white reporters of America who, when she was looking for vice president, they're like, oh, she and Pete Buttigieg, they would be the killer ticket. And it's the same white reporters of America now who think the man who polls at negative numbers with black voters and somehow he's gonna dominate against someone like Kamala Harris, she's probably gonna be the nominee because otherwise it's gonna be a white guy.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's Gavin Newsom. If it's not her, it seems like,

[Eric Erickson]

oh, my God, please. You know, I. I talk to Democratic strategists who are like, no, can't do it. Can't. Can't be this guy.

[Josh Holmes]

Like, we can't get him over the finish line, no matter what. Once you get that under a microscope, it's problems for everybody. Yes, I think that's right, which is why I continue to believe she's probably the one.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Until. Unless and until she retracts herself entirely from the process, she's probably going to be the one. Now, Democrats have a great track record in recent years of not leaving that up to voters. Their commitment to democracy is such that you certainly want anybody to vote for it.

[John Ashbrook]

Case in point, they're not releasing the autopsy because, you know, a 1A on the Democrats autopsy from 2024. Why they lost its terrible candidate, Kamala Harris.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, it's. Well, but again, you know, if there's another way to look other than Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris, it's this energy behind somebody like aoc.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes.

[Grover Norquist]

Right.

[Eric Erickson]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, we got a clip for her. A lot of energy, too, if we can throw up. Clip 2.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

It is time for the north to pull up to the South. It is time for New York to pull up to Alabama. It is time for all of us to come to Georgia, to Louisiana, to Tennessee, to Mississippi and let them know exactly what they have uncorked with this injustice. They think they can draw us out of power. They do not know the sleeping giant that they just awakened because it is not a coincidence. And our whole country must understand that. It was not until voting rights were ratified in this country that we got the Great Society. Because when black Americans have the right to vote and that vote is protected, our schools get funded. When voting rights are protected, health care gets expanded. When voting rights are protected, our country moves forward. In Montgomery. That's what they're actually afraid of. They're afraid of us coming together. They're Afraid of us protecting one another. Alabama is the crucible. Georgia is the crucible. Tennessee. Louisiana. Mississippi is the crucible. So if you are not from here, it is time to pull up. Because what they thought was the final blow is actually just the opening silo.

[Michael Duncan]

Silo.

[Eric Erickson]

They're gonna fire the minutemen out of those silos.

[Michael Duncan]

Silos, not silos.

[Eric Erickson]

Wow. Did Candace Owens help her write that? The architect of her speech was the architect of the idea.

[Josh Holmes]

That stage had some architecture, if you noticed. I couldn't figure out what all the columns and the stuff was all about.

[Eric Erickson]

Can I just. No. No New Yorker wants to pull up to Alabama. I mean, do you know how many guns there are in Alabama to begin with? No, no. The idea. Good Lord, these people don't know anything about anywhere other than Brooklyn.

[Josh Holmes]

Pull up. I mean, she's talking about, like a drive by. What is she talking about?

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, pull up.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't even know what the hell she said. She's going to pull up. Yeah, come pull up to Alabama. I don't think it's going to go great.

[Eric Erickson]

I don't. I don't think it's going to go great at all. By the way, make Georgia New York. Good luck. I mean, you want all those suburban voters who fled south suddenly becoming northern?

[Josh Holmes]

No, but it's. But it's. She's fascinating to me in so many ways in that she does have some Riz. And she's got sort of a finger on the.

[Eric Erickson]

I'm sorry, I'm 50. What the hell is Riz?

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, she's got charisma. I mean, she's got some. She has some ability to sort of put her finger on the pulse of this far left, you know, in my view, completely psychotic liberal movement. But she just voices what it is that they want to hear in a way that no one else on the Democratic side. Look, they're basically all, Kamala included, sitting on top of it, attempting to sort of not have it be angry.

[John Ashbrook]

I think what you just said is exactly why Kamala read off the laundry list of everything the online left ever wanted in their fever swamp. We're gonna just re. We're just gonna reshape America. We're changing everything. We're getting rid of the electoral college. We're getting rid of the Supreme Court. We're adding states where we power. Kamala knows that AOC is a threat to her ability to get the nomination again in 2028, and so she is playing to the left. The scary thing to me is what she is telling the left that she's going to deliver. And we know that the left only wants power in this country. And every single little thing that Kamala says she's going to deliver would ruin this country. And the only thing the left wants is a vessel to deliver that on their behalf. They don't care who it is. And so I think that Kamala sees her as a threat. And I think that Kamala is sort of like a leading indicator, something we were talking about just a little bit ago of where the Democrats are headed. It is harder left in 2028 than we've ever seen before.

[Eric Erickson]

I mean, the through line to all of the Democratic arguments is about the acquisition of power and not letting it go. I mean, and you've got some other writers like, well, we should. We've got the power. We should not let it go. I mean. I mean, trust the American people ultimately. I mean, people are stupid, but when they get in the voting booth, they collectively tend to do something wise, which is to reject the people who covet power as much as them. I mean, the thing with Alexandria Casa Cortez, though, is when you actually listen to the things she says, it's a word salad of vipidity that actually, there's no intellectual heft there. And yet she's an intellectual luminary of the left. And what she does is she strings syllables together and believes there's power in the words. And it's, at the end of the day, makes you dumber. When you try process what she actually just said, the amount of mental energy, you don't need ozempic. You just think about what she said, and you're gonna lose weight because your body's got to burn energy trying to process the nonsense.

[Michael Duncan]

Is it. Is it frustrating as somebody from Georgia, from the south, to constantly hear from these, you know, East Coast Democrats about how you've rigged the system against black people? Because I, you know, she's. She's mentioning this now. And I remember back in the beginning of the Biden administration, you know, when Governor Kemp passed those election reforms with some of the early voting and all this sort of stuff, and you had Biden saying that this was not Jim Crow, it was Jim Eagle, right. And destroyed democracy in Georgia. And then obviously, we know the end of that story is voter participation went up and everything was fine, the sky didn't fall. But is that frustrating?

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah. Listen, as someone. I grew up overseas, didn't grow up in this country, moved back to the south, to Louisiana, moved to Georgia. There is a real, real problem of racism in the south, major black candidates run for office. They are prominent. They have the credentials, they have the money and they continually get defeated. It's just they happen to be Republicans and it's the white Democrats who keep defeating them. I mean, the white Democrats have been defeating black people since the Civil War and they continue to scream about racism. It's. I mean, they really do get upset when black vot voters try to think for themselves and run as Republicans. Who do these people think they are? You got to have Spanberger in Virginia against Daniel, Daniel Cameron vs Andy Beshear in Georgia. There's a guy and his name is Fitz Johnson. He is the was on the Public Service Commission. Statewide black elected official beaten by white Democrat. And it's always racism when you can't get black people elected, but it's always the white Democrats stopping them from getting weird.

[Grover Norquist]

It's weird.

[Eric Erickson]

So weird.

[John Ashbrook]

And in the state of Tennessee, which she mentioned, a white Democrat will be replaced by a black Republican.

[Eric Erickson]

Exactly.

[Grover Norquist]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

What a horror for civil rights.

[Eric Erickson]

I'm old enough to remember when Bobby Jindal ran for governor the first time in Louisiana, the Democrats ran mail pieces and darkened his face in the mail pieces.

[Josh Holmes]

Remember it?

[Eric Erickson]

Well, yes.

[Josh Holmes]

This is a look. It's a biannual tradition for Senate Democrats in primaries across this country and they talk about the electability just so happens to be entirely race based from their standpoint. Yeah, no, it continues to this day. So we're not done going to get good now because we're talking back with Graham Plantner.

[Eric Erickson]

Oh, yes.

[Josh Holmes]

Who I know is a real hobby horse for. He is for us.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah. I mean, the combined. I mean, you've got all of the people who lectured us that the Republicans were Nazis are now perfectly fine with the guy with the SS tattoo on his chest running. Yeah. He's not a Nazi. It's okay, guys, he's not a Nazi. He said on Reddit he's actually a communist. So you mean the group of people who killed more people than the Nazis.

[Michael Duncan]

Eric, he just likes Nazi iconographer.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's right. It's. It's more. The symbols.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Symbolism from an ideology stand. Like more than Stalin or la.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you went from the, from the SWAT sticker to the hammer and the sickle. I mean, you got one item versus two combined into one item. I mean, clearly.

[Josh Holmes]

So New York Times has actually been doing some reporting on this, which is interesting because you know, all the rash of Graham Platner opposition research, including that tattoo that we know about. Came because Democrats had a problem and they knew they had a problem. And so the media is fairly compliant about trying to get that opposition research out there so they can quote, unquote, find somebody electable to win it. But now that it's all done, I'm surprised the New York Times has done it a little bit more. Let's check clip 3.

[Kamala Harris]

There are controversial statements also on social media. You posted over 1800 comments under the username P Hustle from 2009, November 2021. And some of them are objectively concerning. You said Romanors are racist and stupid. You said that sexual assault victims should take responsibility for themselves.

[Eric Erickson]

You look at her and say, oh, she's progressive.

[Kamala Harris]

This all came out in the national press.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah.

[Kamala Harris]

Why didn't you disclose this stuff first?

[Eric Erickson]

I mean, we did. We released all of the comments. When people came to us, they were like, oh, we've got these very. We've got a couple little ones. And we were like, I mean, there's a lot more than a couple, couple. So we just. More than a couple.

[Kamala Harris]

You did delete them though, before the campaign launched.

[Eric Erickson]

I deleted them a while ago.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, well, I deleted them, but then I showed them all.

[Michael Duncan]

Deleted them.

[Josh Holmes]

A few. No, there's a lot more than a few. But then I deleted them. I mean, and also just the way of processing all the information. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She, she's saying some of the most mild that he has said. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's more, there's more.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, we ain't heard nothing yet, lad. Let me tell you what I think about the blacks that's coming.

[Michael Duncan]

They came to me with a few of the offensive things that I said and I told them, hold on, hold on, I got a lot more.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, that was the P rizzle account. No, you should see the we hate black people account.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

You know what I mean?

[Josh Holmes]

It's like unbelievable amount of just sort of shape shifting of a candidate that Republican, Democrat, Independent. At any point in history, people would look at me like, get that the hell out of. That's certainly not representative.

[Eric Erickson]

But he fights.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, but that's where we're at. I guess that's my larger point with the Democratic Party. But he fights is basically the excuse or the permission matrix for anything.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes, he really is. At this point, the person who hates Trump the most can become the nominee for the Democratic Party. The question is, he doesn't just hate Trump, he hates Jews and black people and farmers and lobster harvesters and fishermen and the Poor and the working class. He hates a lot of people in

[Michael Duncan]

the state of Maine.

[Eric Erickson]

In the state of Maine, yes. Yes. I mean, can you get elected in Maine thinking that rural Mainers are racist and lobster fishermen are terrible people? Give it a try.

[John Ashbrook]

But Democrats rolled him out in a very different way than he's making it sound like right now. They rolled him out as an oyster farmer. They were like, oh, this guy's just this hardscrabble person. He's out there farming oysters. And somebody over the weekend is what I was referring to right before the break. Somebody over the weekend found out that he launched his Senate campaign website a year before he launched the oysterfarmer.com website.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes. And by the way, I love the whole argument from the Bulwark crowd and the like of, well, you know, he made mistakes in the past, but he's now changed. Like, he made that change right before he ran for the Senate. It's like the alcoholic who goes through rehab and now he wants to be in charge of an alcohol company.

[Josh Holmes]

He changed because I know it well.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes, exactly.

[Michael Duncan]

I attest to the product.

[Eric Erickson]

I know it's going to sell.

[Josh Holmes]

Do you find. Because, you know, I mean, you know our show, you know, we play that game King of the Hill, where we take somebody who has made a living as an evaporate conservative spokesperson in one issue or another that Trump basically broke in one form or fashion, and they seem to have disavowed all of their principles. And I wanted to talk to you about this because, look, the one thing I know about you is they're extremely consistent about the principles that you've cared about since I met you. Tactics. We may have all altered some views and how we go about what the best tactics of the moment are gonna be, but you've had your disagreements with the president, you've had your areas of agreement. You feel perfectly comfortable every day on the radio talking about what all of these are like. Tate, do you have any sense of inside the mindset of people who are like, right to life guys who are now like, yeah, women's right to choose, abortion. Like, how do you. On fundamental things that we've watched friends and colleagues honestly go through over the last 15 years, like, how do you see all that?

[Eric Erickson]

So, you know, there my claim to fame probably will. Someone will still dredge up is back in 2009, I guess, when, when Obama nominated David Souter, a buddy of mine put it in an email and he wasn't brave enough. I was the dumbass who was brave enough to Go on Twitter and say, the Supreme Court just lost its first goat fucking child molester. And that was my twee and I did it. Yes. You know what? It didn't get enough traction, so I did it a second time. And it seemed the fallout from that, by the way, and how it affected my family and my own credibility and stuff was a real wake up call that, oh, you have an audience, you should be mindful of it. But also, you know, you get online and you get addicted to this buzz and you, you want the cloud and the relationships that come from it. And, you know, I live in Middle Georgia on purpose, never moved to D.C. and there are times sometimes where I think, you know, if I had played my cards differently, my career would be on a bigger trajectory, it'd be more rapid growth and stuff. And I think there are people who, where I got real comfortable, had a very near death experience, given 24 hours to live, and thought I got to like, reprioritize my life. There are people in this town in particular who if they're not talked about, they find no relevance. They can't sleep well at night without knowing. So you take a Bill Crystal who used to hang out at the Heritage foundation all the time.

[Josh Holmes]

Time.

[Eric Erickson]

He's no longer welcome there. So he's got to create the buzz somewhere else. Because does he really exist if he's not in a space where people talk about him?

[John Ashbrook]

Brand new standard every week.

[Josh Holmes]

Him.

[Eric Erickson]

The list goes on and on, on both sides, that if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, did it really fall? If I'm around and say something and no one cares, am I really relevant? I don't care. I got a wife and kids at home. I live in Middle Georgia. I don't need it. But if you live in the city, you've got to have some level of buzz about you. And if you're no longer getting it from one side, will go get it on the other side. Would Adam, Would people know Adam Kinzinger exists if he weren't on Twitter saying these things on CNN to bash Trump? No, but he's someone who needs the buzz, so he has to flip.

[Josh Holmes]

It's an interesting psycho. Yeah, I tend to agree with all.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, I think that's depressing, but true.

[Grover Norquist]

It is.

[Michael Duncan]

Because I can't imagine, like looking yourself in the mirror every morning being like, I'm full of,

[Eric Erickson]

you know, most of those people, you know, there's a level of sociopath in them. They're not looking themselves. They're Sleeping well at night as the cash flows in, because they're getting the clicks when. These are the people who leave their sound on their phone so they can hear the pings when someone reaches them on Twitter.

[Josh Holmes]

What a great. That's a great mental image. You're right. They're like, hmm, somebody's talking about it.

[Eric Erickson]

Yes, exactly. Their phone is buzzing. They're happy. It keeps them entertained. Entertainment in their pockets right next to what was once their penis.

[Josh Holmes]

See, you still got some of that in you.

[Eric Erickson]

Listen, I was that person at one point in my life. I was literally given 24 hours to live. The same day, my wife was told she had incurable lung cancer. And I was like, this can't be the way I live.

[Michael Duncan]

How's she doing, by the way?

[Eric Erickson]

You know, she's actually in scans right now while we're sitting. We expect everything to be fine. So she's like, take the trip. No big deal. But, yeah. My wife's got stage four lung cancer. There's no cure for her lung cancer. Her lungs are riddled with tumors with all the side effects that come with it. But, I mean, thanks to Big Pharma, where people think I'm paid to shill for Big Pharma. No, they keep my wife alive. They invented a pill. It keeps the tumors from growing. And as long as they stay in her lungs, everything's gonna be fine. She was given two years to live nine years ago.

[Michael Duncan]

Wow.

[Josh Holmes]

God bless her.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, God bless her. But. But you know what? You go through that and you got kids and you're like, there's actually more to life than people talking about you online. Most of the people who I think live this life have lived soft lives.

[Josh Holmes]

I feel like. That's right.

[Eric Erickson]

They have encountered hardness in their life solely because they stood up for something. And in that hardness, they've processed it is. Well, now I need to blow in the direction of the people who affirm me. The people who affirm, for example, Bill Kristol are going to sell him out in a heartbeat should he ever change his mind, in large part because of his ethnicity. The growing anti Semitism in the Democratic Party cannot sustain a guy like Bill Kristol or many others. And, I mean, we can all ignore Graham Plantner now because the New York Times has informed us the dogs are raping people in Israel. That's going to be their big issue. These people are insane.

[Josh Holmes]

They are. They are. Well, listen, I appreciate anybody can make sense of all this in the crazy time, having gone through sort of the era that we Went through and saw the craziness of that. Like, there's some weird stuff going on right now. If you can keep your head about. You said something about where you're grounded, you know.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah, yeah. Credit to Brent Bozell. One time when I was running red state was at Eagle publishing, which was over at 1 Mass Avenue, and he cornered me in an elevator one day and he put his finger in my face like Kamala Harris. And he says, don't ever move to the city. Stay as far away from Canada. And I. I have. Turns out my wife also hates big cities, so I would have to get a new one if I wanted to.

[Josh Holmes]

It's worked out for you.

[Eric Erickson]

It has.

[Josh Holmes]

I want to play one more clip. It's going to be close to home, but we find entertainment in this way. Mos, have you followed this story?

[Eric Erickson]

Oh, yes.

[Josh Holmes]

So, like, we've been following all this because, like, honestly, self driving cars to me sound pretty good until you see

[Eric Erickson]

them in action in Atlanta.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. Well, that's what I've got for you because I want to know if you need local flavor for clip 4.

[Kamala Harris]

Video here captured several of the self driving cars just clogging up a neighborhood culdesac.

[Eric Erickson]

The people living in the northwest Atlanta

[Kamala Harris]

neighborhood say dozens end up circling their community.

[Eric Erickson]

Channel 2, Steve Gelbach is on one

[Kamala Harris]

street where they want the way mos to stop.

[Josh Holmes]

What the hell? Look at that. Every little culdes sack around our area.

[Eric Erickson]

So I think it's a real problem. Waymo after Waymo after waymo enter this dead end street usually early in the morning. I think yesterday morning we had fish.

[Josh Holmes]

50 cars that came through between six

[Eric Erickson]

and seven neighbors on battle view drive. Started seeing the autonomous driverless cars two months ago. But the groupings and large number of waymos just started circling in and out in the last couple weeks. They even shared video with us when neighbors used this little guy right out here in the street to block the waymos from getting into the cul de sac. And you can imagine what happened next. 1.8 Waymos that were stuck trying to

[John Ashbrook]

figure out how to turn around.

[Josh Holmes]

So, like, is your community being overrun?

[Eric Erickson]

Yes.

[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]

Okay.

[Eric Erickson]

I nearly got hit by one of these sons of bitches. I was coming down Peachtree street, center lane, three lanes. One was turning left and came out and didn't cut it sharp enough and nearly t boned me. And the guy in the back was like this. I mean, these things, they. You think they're fine, but they're becoming like New York city sewer rats on the streets. Of Atlanta and they just run all over the place. And I don't know why we're this neighborhood, by the way. It's one of the nicer neighborhoods inside the city. They're going to secede again from Atlanta. They want to see now because of the wave is so by the way, what they do, if people understand is they circle the city waiting for someone to summon them and they have nowhere to go. So they've been going onto these side streets and they apparently picked the wrong cul de sac. Yes. They're a menace.

[Josh Holmes]

And now people more out just attacking these things. Yeah, you're not going to wave it.

[Eric Erickson]

I'm all about automation. We got a declining population. We're going to rely on some of these. But I don't like the way most they scare me.

[Michael Duncan]

They should play that music from. From Judge that Jaws, the Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah.

[Eric Erickson]

You know, this is why it's a tragedy that Gary Larson retired the Far side. Comics would be brilliant.

[Josh Holmes]

It would absolutely be brilliant. All right, so where can everybody find you on a day to day basis?

[Eric Erickson]

You know, you can go to EricEricerickson.com the easiest way to do it for everybody is, is I have this text, it's my name, Eric E R I c k to 33777 and I will spit you back a link to everywhere. Oh, nice.

[Josh Holmes]

Pretty high tech there.

[John Ashbrook]

High tech, huh?

[Josh Holmes]

It's like a waymo of radio.

[Eric Erickson]

It is, yes. I got my little computer gremlins in Indonesia who just bang out the text

[Josh Holmes]

every time you text.

[Michael Duncan]

I love it.

[Josh Holmes]

Eric Erickson, thank you so much for coming. Coming on in here. It's great to see you.

[Eric Erickson]

Thank you guys.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, you got it.

[John Ashbrook]

Thank you.

[Grover Norquist]

Okay.

[Josh Holmes]

A big thanks to Eric for stopping on by the program. We almost like that when friends rolled by the show when they're in town.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

And that was funny.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it was great.

[John Ashbrook]

Very, very funny.

[Josh Holmes]

It's great. He's a professional. He knows what he's doing. Good commentary, great stuff. Glad. Hope everybody enjoyed it as much as we did. You guys want some variety?

[Michael Duncan]

Always.

[Josh Holmes]

No better place to start with variety than talking about maa.

[Eric Erickson]

No.

[Michael Duncan]

Did you add this to the show?

[Josh Holmes]

I didn't. You know Wolf.

[Michael Duncan]

It was Wolf.

[Eric Erickson]

He likes.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it was.

[Eric Erickson]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

You know what he's up to?

[Michael Duncan]

He likes the sexual stuff.

[Josh Holmes]

He does. He's just disgusting.

[Michael Duncan]

How dare you?

[Grover Norquist]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean look, I'm just reading the news. I'm just reading the news. Waiting for the interaction and commentary and analysis from this distinguished panel.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, this one looks like it comes from the New York Times.

[Josh Holmes]

That's exactly right, the New York Times, the old gray lady report that two Americans detained in Japan after entering Punch, the monkeys enclosure. Now you recall the Internet sensation that was Punch. It was a baby monkey. And as best I can recall, this is not in the story, but as best as I can recall on the Internet when Punch became aware to everyone it was a baby monkey that had lost like a mother or father.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. Abandoned, right?

[Grover Norquist]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

And it like took a while for Punch to get in, integrated with the rest of the monkeys.

[Michael Duncan]

And then Punch got like a stuffed animal at one point. It was a feel good story on the Internet.

[Grover Norquist]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

An adorable monkey, a feel good macaque.

[Grover Norquist]

Okay.

[John Ashbrook]

What?

[Josh Holmes]

It's outrageous. It's outrageous. Well, anyway, two men were charged with obstructing operations at a zoo, apparently as a stunt connected to a cryptocurrency.

[John Ashbrook]

I can only imagine.

[Michael Duncan]

Of course, this is like a mad lib st imagine.

[Josh Holmes]

So they denied the charges, but the Japanese police said on Monday that they had detained two men from the United States after one of them entered the enclosure of Punch, a nine month old macaque who had become an Internet sensation, and the other filmed the stunt. The authorities in Ishikawa, a suburb of Tokyo, detained Americans on Sunday on charges of obstructing operations of the city's zoo. Punch and as I told you, is an online sensation of some regard, but there is a video involved, so we're gonna have to take a look at that. In clip five, there's a dude in a cop. Is he like in a. Wow, that's quite a jump. That's quite.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh, he's in a banana suit.

[Michael Duncan]

No, it's.

[Josh Holmes]

He's lowering himself down for our audio only listeners. Oh, it's quite a. Oh, no, quite a tumble. And now he's in there and the macaques are going crazy.

[Michael Duncan]

They're not loving.

[John Ashbrook]

He put the headdress back on. The guy's not exactly.

[Josh Holmes]

It's like in a mascot's outfit.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

This seems like a Japan sort of thing.

[Josh Holmes]

It does, actually, but they say they're American. They said that they were American.

[Michael Duncan]

The hat's off again.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, he's trying to put the hat back on.

[Michael Duncan]

Not an athlete.

[Josh Holmes]

No, no, this guy doesn't have it all taken care of. This guy's filming it and he's in there now. He's like. And that's what we got. That was it.

[John Ashbrook]

I thought we were going to See the zookeeper taking him down.

[Josh Holmes]

I thought so too. I was hoping we're going to need a tranq dart to the neck of the mascot. Nothing. So starting on Tuesday, the zoo said it would restrict the viewing area at the enclosure of Punch and adding that it would install an intrusion prevention nest to institute permanent patrols. Because you can't have this kind of thing.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

You know, the net is important. We always talk on the variety program about using a banana covered Olympic sized pool to control the monkey population.

[Josh Holmes]

That's right.

[John Ashbrook]

I think that it might take a net to control the influencer population. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

The influencer population seems to be a problem here. You would kind of hope. And what I was hoping this video would show show is that the guy in the mascot uniform who lowered himself down to the enclosure would be attacked by the macaque and. And sodomized.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, it. It could have happened.

[Josh Holmes]

Maybe we just didn't get enough of it.

[Michael Duncan]

That feels like justice to me.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

I don't know. I mean the one thing they had to handle things differently in Japan, you know, of course when there was a kid who fell into an enclosure at a zoo in America they shot. They shot the gorilla. Yeah. Okay. In Japan they take out the influencer.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Shouldn't be molesting a nine month old macaque.

[Josh Holmes]

No, no. Under any circumstance.

[Michael Duncan]

That'll get you in the Epstein.

[Josh Holmes]

It'll get you anywhere. Yeah, that's just. We can't have it.

[Michael Duncan]

Can't have it.

[Josh Holmes]

Speaking of sodomization. In other news, this is according to. I don't know what the publication is on this, but we're talking about sodomized gargoyles in Spain's world famous Santiago I go Cathedral.

[Michael Duncan]

We're really playing the greatest hits today.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. What do we know what that publication is, fellas? El Pais. Okay, I'm unfamiliar but El Paella,

[Eric Erickson]

A

[Josh Holmes]

breakfast dish in many countries. Anyway, it's talked about how sodomized gargoyles in Spain's world famous San Diego Cathedral the Aberration. Only the public noticed. If you can pop this graphic up and for our audio only.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, come on.

[Josh Holmes]

This is before the restoration and that is a gargoyle. You know these are very historical things. Right. And. And they have handcrafted gargoyles on ancient buildings. Many civilizations deep.

[John Ashbrook]

Not all of them look like.

[Grover Norquist]

Like that.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, there was a con. There was a controversial restoration.

[Eric Erickson]

Was that a.

[Michael Duncan]

Is that the head that came off or something?

[Josh Holmes]

Was an ass that you were looking.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh my gosh.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

And.

[Josh Holmes]

And there was a controversial Restoration of the hostel Dos Reyes Caos. That's something Catholic in nature, I'm guessing. And considered the oldest hotel in Spain. It slipped through the administrative filter and provided. Provided an update that many of the locals find objectionable. Why don't we just pop that picture up? This is after.

[Michael Duncan]

That looks painful.

[John Ashbrook]

Suffice it to say the ancient Spaniards were just as twisted as the modern ones.

[Josh Holmes]

So that's a pipe. Yeah. So what they've done is workers renovating this hostel, a 15th century pilgrimage pilgrim hospital turned parador. Do you know what a parador is? I'm not sure I know what a parador is. Well, anyway, they installed copper pipes straight through the Renaissance gargoyles, as you can see in that.

[Michael Duncan]

Through his butt. Right, right through the poor gargoyles.

[Josh Holmes]

But leaving the sculptures visibly impaled. The images have shocked locals and specialists alike, forcing authorities into damage control mode. The public fury was instant.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, you know, I mean, well deserved.

[Michael Duncan]

It really breaks the majesty of the entire thing.

[John Ashbrook]

I don't know that majesty was the first thought in my mind. It's like if you see that on a building, you would turn and go the other direction.

[Michael Duncan]

That, that's my. My point exactly is that generally when you see a lot of this Gothic architecture and it's made centuries ago, you're like really in awe that they created this all of those years ago.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

And then you see a copper pipe rammed through the. Of a gargoyle and it takes away the majesty of the creation. That's all I'm saying.

[Josh Holmes]

And I'm guessing it's for drainage. So there's also the additional.

[Michael Duncan]

Do you think maybe, maybe that like, there's some local reg that is, you know, the pipe has to be so long so that the water falls off of the facade of the building or something, because heaven forbid, the water just roll straight out of his butthole because then you're going to get erosion over time.

[Josh Holmes]

I was just going to say there's an erosion concern.

[Michael Duncan]

That's got to be it.

[John Ashbrook]

It is Europe.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. Well, much of the anger focused on one image that quickly dominated local media. Water spout. The was shaped in the shape of a naked man who until a few years ago and since the 16th century, crouched with his genitals exposed while rainwater flowed out of his anus. It was symbolic, playful gesture by a Renaissance stonemason. That playful, playful, symbolic gesture by a stonemason. They, they are known for their playful, symbolic sense of. Of humor. Stone masons.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, I think about it, you're a Stone mason. You're like 18th century.

[Josh Holmes]

I can only have so many ducks.

[Michael Duncan]

They don't have Netflix. Okay.

[Josh Holmes]

Like I'm gonna get this thing to flow out of its ass.

[Michael Duncan]

Wouldn't that be funny?

[Josh Holmes]

It would be funny.

[Michael Duncan]

Now I'm gonna work on this project for the next three years.

[Josh Holmes]

What they didn't count on, what they didn't count on is that many generations later people would take it up a notch. And as people describe. Describe it. He's been impaled.

[Michael Duncan]

Colonoscopied.

[Josh Holmes]

Colonoscopied and sodomized by a long copper pipe installed during the multi million euro restoration of the Parador led by Spain's Institute of Tourism. So it's a state based project. So somebody signed off on that.

[John Ashbrook]

Spain, the government.

[Michael Duncan]

Look, it's a lot of copper pipe. All they need is one meth head to get. Go ahead and climb the facade and they can take that to the scrapyard

[Josh Holmes]

kind of thing. You'd hate to be standing underneath in the rain, wouldn't it? You know, it's the imagery alone. You'd want an umbrella. I know that. Just saying doesn't feel like they're, you know, like generally speaking, you get architects and you get some like artists in there to try to figure out a way around the, you know, what was obviously a sense of humor back in the 15th century, but not to just sort of like gross out the next generation of tourists. Yeah, not in Spain. Not in Spain. They wanted to take it up a.

[John Ashbrook]

Not different idea. Yeah.

[Eric Erickson]

Don't want.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. Anyway, so that's, that's the variety.

[John Ashbrook]

But you know what is.

[Josh Holmes]

I can't wait to see where this goes.

[John Ashbrook]

Someone I know often says that's different. Indifference. Bad.

[Josh Holmes]

Fair point. Fair point. Smash. Very, very good. We got to get to this interview. You'll all recall Grover Norquist being on this program. President of CEO of Americans for Tax Reform. Just a great dude. Understands tax policy better than anybody else. But it also gives us a good indication of what it is that we should be looking for. And the interview is in partnership with the Americans for Tax Reform because this is the kind of stuff that you need to know that is happening all across this great country of ours and in the federal government that nobody's really paying a lot of attention to, but Grover is, so get a load of this one. Well, there's only one guy that I trust on matters of taxes and spending and all of these kind of things. You've heard him here before. And Johnny, I know you and I work with this guy. Hand in glove for many, many years when we were on the other side of the coin in government. Because he really has got just a full network nationwide of different initiatives to make sure that your tax dollars, somebody, at least somebody is looking out for all this. Grover Norquist, everybody. How are you?

[Grover Norquist]

Good to be with you.

[Josh Holmes]

So good to see you again. I know you're working on a ton of different stuff. Stuff. It's hard in this media environment when there's an outrage of the day and everybody's sort of focused on all these various things to actually get a good grasp on what's happening under the dome both in D.C. and state. What are you focused on right now?

[Grover Norquist]

Well, if you want to take the capital first, you take the countryside. And what the taxpayer movement and the center right movement has been doing. The modern Republican party is going through the states and getting red states to pass bills that make life more affordable. We work on the income tax. We've got. There are eight states at zero income tax. Two became zero recently. There are 16 states that are at a single rate tax. Eight of those are recent things. And we've got a number of more efforts. There are 12 states that have committed to go to zero and they're, they're moving that way. Five of the 12 have actually passed a law that makes it automatic. So you're seeing every 10 years people move from blue states with high taxes and now with California and New York and Oregon and Washington, higher taxes. So they're going the wrong direction. The red states are all cutting taxes and many of them going to zero on the income tax, putting caps like Arizona and Florida and, and now our friends in Texas as well, great caps on local taxes because blue cities can bankrupt a red state if you let it. And so this is moving forward and it allows people move because they're lower taxes. Life is more affordable. The labor unions don't run things. The trial lawyers don't make everything unaffordable. You have school choice for your children. You have independent contractor law loss. You can be your own boss if you want to. All of these efforts allow us tort reform is key. Right to work in the states that people move to. And every time you do this, the Ds are looking at this and they see in 32, when the next redistricting hits and then 10 years later they're going to be in a position where so many congressional districts have moved into red states, so many electoral college votes have moved into red states that they won't be be able to hold the House or the presidency moving forward. So they have to win now, Change the rules, add a few states.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. We've heard their ideas on that front

[Grover Norquist]

and they're talking about it out loud. They're looking to add about 150013 year olds to the Supreme Court to make sure that even people get old. They're still there. And with that, you could stop this process.

[Michael Duncan]

Okay.

[Grover Norquist]

But if they don't get that, they don't. And that's why what the President's done and the Republicans in the House and Senate have done on affordability, the big beautiful bill, taking the income tax down for individuals, the rates down for everyone, the rates down for small businesses, independent businesses. When I was here with you guys last time, we were talking about a threat. Some of the Rockefeller Republicans wanted to take the top rate and move it up, which was Kamala Harris's campaign. Campaign plan.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Grover Norquist]

And yet there are some Republicans who thought that would be a bright idea.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Grover Norquist]

And. And because it was on this show and we talked about it, word got out that this was being last minute oomph. And it got stopped.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Grover Norquist]

The House and Senate leadership, you've held

[Josh Holmes]

the line on this longer than I can remember.

[Grover Norquist]

Well, it's.

[John Ashbrook]

You really have, Grover. And I mean, if you, if you're only looking at Twitter, you're only watching cable news, you'd be led to believe that national politics and the mint, you know, the mood of the moment nationally is the only thing that matters in this country. But what you've done that I think is very, very smart is take it to the states. And you were just talking about this a little bit. You talked about a lot of the successes you have had reducing state income tax rates. And a lot of that is very hard earned. I mean, you've been doing this for years.

[Grover Norquist]

Yes. It's been 13 years of steady. North Carolina went first, and we'd go state to state and say, look what happened here. And then it grew and got to be. Be where basically every Republican governor or would be governor is for phasing the income tax to flat and to zero. If they don't have a. If they have a sales tax or flat and low school choice, tort reform, the whole list of things that make life more affordable. And the reason people move to the red states, go from state to state, they look over and say, that worked, nobody died. More importantly, nobody lost an election. This is good stuff. Let's do that. And that's really moved it forward, which is why there's a real problem now with this threat of the so called Railway Safety Act. This is an effort by the left to make everything less affordable. It would raise the cost of everything that moves on rail. And they move about 500 million miles a year on rail.

[Josh Holmes]

And this is something. Just remind me, this is surface transportation, this large thing that they do every so often in the House and Senate, basically reset infrastructure priorities and everything else. But as a part of this. Right. Is this.

[Grover Norquist]

This could get stuck into the big bill. Okay, okay, okay. And one of the dangers is you have a very bad idea. There's some Rockefeller Republicans who don't know any blue collar workers, but they think you have to talk to the union bosses, the left wing union bosses, and they'll tell you what the workers want.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. Because they definitely have their best interests in mind.

[Grover Norquist]

Trump talks directly to blue collar workers. Most Republicans talk directly to blue collar workers. And no more. Paying more union dues is not on their list of things to do. And I think the labor unions should have make believe jobs because that'll make things more expensive. And then fewer people will use railroads because you've priced them out of the market. They'll go to trucks or something else. These are important project lines.

[Michael Duncan]

What?

[Grover Norquist]

There's a Wall Street Journal.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. I just saw over the weekend.

[Grover Norquist]

Yeah. Which talked about this drive to say you need two people driving the train instead of one. Europe uses one. You don't need two.

[Josh Holmes]

Their trains go a little quicker than ours too, from my understanding.

[Grover Norquist]

And the safety over the last several years has gotten significantly, increasingly better. It's not like there's a problem there. The accidents are down and all these other things are down. All the good stuff is up. So it's going well. Everything that this bill does was a union demand. A few years ago, none of them had anything to do with safety.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, so this is like predating any of the safety concerns whatsoever. This was just a list of demands.

[Grover Norquist]

And this is something the left wing Democrats have wanted forever. But I can explain to you why they want it.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay.

[Grover Norquist]

All right. Who funds the union that runs most of the railways? Let's see. I have the top 10 donors here. Okay. Top 10.

[Josh Holmes]

They're not the blue collar workers.

[Grover Norquist]

Dunn, Harrington. Trial lawyers. Trial lawyers also, that's the name of their company, the Kaplan Law Corporation. The Bresmith law firm. The Bolt, Hoffer, Boyd Law Firm. 10. They're all trial lawyers. They're all trial lawyer firms. Firms washing money through this union, which is demanding that we should. They're telling the Rockefeller Republicans who don't understand economics and don't understand middle class interests. So they imagine that when the union bosses tell them that something's a good idea, then what do they do with the money? This union that some Republicans want to.

[Josh Holmes]

I bet it goes to some kind of a workers fund or something.

[Grover Norquist]

I have a list of 10. Yes, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. These are the top 10 people receiving the money. The Democrat Senatorial Campaign.

[Josh Holmes]

Interesting.

[Grover Norquist]

The Democratic Party of Montana.

[Josh Holmes]

Real grassroots organizations.

[Grover Norquist]

Democratic National Committee services.

[Josh Holmes]

Blue collar, no partisanship.

[John Ashbrook]

They shower at night.

[Grover Norquist]

The Harris Victory Fund.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay, man.

[Grover Norquist]

And the aclu, Transportation Department.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, that's an interesting. Correct correlation.

[Grover Norquist]

Money from trial lawyers into the union out to the Democrats. Oh, I'm sorry. There's a Teamster affiliated union where the money that goes to Republican or Democrat committees. 99% to Democrats. 99%. Remember the union boss, the Teamster union boss that we invited to the Republican convention? Okay. These are the guys funding. These are the guys funding the Democratic Party. So this Railway Safety act is a way to get more money into the union, into the Democrats to. And when the Democrat unions don't just do union stuff. They're behind the pro abortion movement. I mean, all sorts of left wings.

[Josh Holmes]

They anchored almost the campus protests, all these other things. Nothing to do with the workers that they claim to represent. It dovetails with something we've talked about a lot here on Ruthless in that get out of the left. I think almost across the.

[Grover Norquist]

The board.

[Josh Holmes]

But this is a good example of. It is. It's just. It more or less just about power. It's just about power. I mean, they didn't talk about affordability. They can talk about, you know, whatever it is that they say that they're for. Although their message seems very conflated lately about what it is that they're doing or want to do for prices or all these other things. But all of this stuff is designed just like you laid out. And it's an effort to retain power in an effort of itself. And that seems to me like what you've been fighting at the state level. And all these tax. If you have a bigger budget to work with, you can dole out more to your friends. You can retain more power because they give it back to you. There's a cut for you involved for your reelection or everything else. And it's just about growing government, growing the amount of power that your political party has.

[Grover Norquist]

Yeah, well, sometimes the Rockefeller Republicans who now argue should give money, we should work with the trial or you should hang out with the labor union bosses, not the labor union members, remember, only 7% of the private sector workforce is unionized.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[Grover Norquist]

So when they talk about unions, they're saying to 93% of people with real jobs, we don't care about you. We're talking to these guys. Yeah, we're not even talking to the 7%. We're talking to the bosses of the 7% in the hopes that we can

[Josh Holmes]

get what, 3% instead of 1% back on the return.

[Grover Norquist]

I don't know, because is this. The Rockefeller Republicans used to do the same thing with the African American vote. They would talk to Jesse Jackson for permission because they didn't talk to black people, evidently directly. They talked to Jesse Jackson, Reagan, Trump. Those Republicans who relate to average citizens

[Josh Holmes]

speak to people directly.

[Grover Norquist]

Directly to people in black churches and to workers who wear blue collars or pink collars. And it's really just amazing to me that some people are falling for the old line of I will tell you what the workers think. Says the guy who makes a living off other people's work. The union boss. Left wing union bosses. And there aren't any non left wing union bosses.

[Josh Holmes]

No, there's just not. I mean, the proof is in the numbers. It's all disclosed to put a bow on the Railway Safety Act. What happens if this thing is codified into law?

[Grover Norquist]

It's several billion dollars. I mean, it's billions of dollars in higher costs paid by the consumer that

[Josh Holmes]

goes back into unions.

[Grover Norquist]

Yes. Well, this is why what President Trump has done on affordability is so important. When he cut taxes and your paycheck gets bigger because of his big, beautiful bill. Tax cuts. When you walk into the grocery store, everything's more affordable because your paycheck is bigger because of the tax cut. Tax cuts make everything more affordable. Tax increases make everything less affordable because your paycheck doesn't have as much money in it as it used to. And when you have regulatory burdens that raise the cost, when you have the kind of regulations the left likes to have on using gasoline or energy that makes life less affordable. When you want to have heat in the winter and air conditioning in the

[Josh Holmes]

summer, it's a fascinating deal. I mean, that's why we've arrived in this power construct for so long, is because, you know, if you're a Democrat and you're elected, you gotta know that there is some political liability in coming out for higher taxes or at least opposing taxes cuts. But it's outweighed consistently by having a bigger pot. If you can successfully advocate for a bigger pot, whether it's paid to Political allies. Whether it is just there for you to figure out who to reward the bigger pot seems to be the goal.

[Grover Norquist]

Well, the Republican Party, the conservative center right movement, is made up of people who want to be left alone.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Grover Norquist]

Homeschoolers, people who want their religious liberty protected, Second amendment community, taxpayers, businessmen and women just leave me alone in my zone. They're not asking for anything at anybody else's expense. Around the Democrat table are the big city political machines, the trial lawyers, the labor union bosses, the two wings of the dependency movement. Those people who are locked into welfare dependency. And the people make $150,000 managing their dependency.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[Grover Norquist]

Making sure none of them have escape and get a job and become Republican.

[Josh Holmes]

Because drug abuse and homelessness is a business opportunity.

[Grover Norquist]

Yes. They cash in on it. They get, they. They make a lot of money not solving the problem. And if you solve the problem, where would they be? These are the guys who insist on the light bulbs that convince you of glaucoma and, you know, the whole. Yeah, the whole thing. And they have a list of the. The left has the list of things you have to do and can't do that's slightly longer and more tedious than leviticus. I mean, you have to do this. You can't do this, and on and on. So they want to. That's a takings coalition where they want to tell other people what to do or steal their money. Our job is to say no new taxes so that the amount of money at the center of the table that they're sharing dwindles down. So they start looking at each other to decide. Like the scene in the Lifeboat movie at the end where they're trying to decide who to eat or who to throw overboard. If we don't give them a lot of money, then they have to go like this to somebody and push them away from the table, which would be terrific. And that guy becomes a Republican.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, it's such a good take. Well, listen, we can't appreciate what you do more than we do at the Variety program. You've been doing it successfully for a very long time. Keep us updated on this stuff.

[Eric Erickson]

I know you get.

[Josh Holmes]

You're working on all kinds of things all the time. I feel like it just gets kind of blown through with the media cycles of day and out. But this is the most important stuff anybody's can work on.

[Grover Norquist]

We really are, state by state, changing the nation, changing the electorate and people.

[John Ashbrook]

People in America are making life decisions and business decisions based on the work you're doing. They're living in a high tax state and they're moving their company and their employees and their entire livelihoods to a low tax state that exists solely because you've worked your tail off to make it a low tax state.

[Grover Norquist]

In 1953 there was a. There were riots in East Germany against the workers paradise. Right. That workers were unhappy with the communists running East Germany. And Bertolt Brecht who was left of center was asked by somebody so how do you explain workers objecting to workers paradise? And he said it's clear we need to elect a new people. Because I don't think he could quite figure out how to say something else. But we do elect the new people. When you cut taxes, you create more jobs and you create a self employed person. When you have independent contractor law and labor law that allows somebody to be their own boss Like 13 million Americans, Uber drivers and others who. I'm an independent contractor. I don't have a boss. I don't work for anybody. I work for me. That person can never be dragged back in. When somebody has school choice, try and take that away from them. Religious liberty, try and take that away. Homes and schooling used to be illegal in most states as late as 80, 1986 you could go to jail. People did go to jail for homeschooling. Now it's legal in all 57 states and they win all the spelling bees. So we change the electorate when we create more freedom so we create more people who say I want to to defend the freedom I have, not live off somebody else.

[Josh Holmes]

You're doing the Lord's work. Grover, thank you so much.

[Grover Norquist]

Thank you. Good to be with you. You guys do I tell you we killed. Look, we killed that tax increase last time we chatted. Hopefully we can stop this Railway Safety act which is a giveaway for union bosses. A bunch of money from Rockefeller Republicans who are out of touch with working men and women.

[Josh Holmes]

You're the man. Thanks, Grabber.

[Grover Norquist]

Thank you.

[Eric Erickson]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't know if you knew this but anyone can get the Same premium wireless for 15amonth Plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you

[Eric Erickson]

to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail]

[Josh Holmes]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms at Mint Mobile.

[John Ashbrook]

Listen that was a great conversation. I mean, this guy has obviously been working in the conservative movement for a very, very long time and has had a lot of success. We saw that map. You saw all the states that have zero income tax. And a lot of that is due to his great work.

[Josh Holmes]

No question about it. It's a really, really great interview and pointed us in a direction of a couple of things happening that we didn't really know about, we certainly haven't talked about.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, you don't see it on the news, right?

[Josh Holmes]

You don't, you don't. So we bring it to you, the listener of the Ruthless Variety Program, so you can be a little bit smarter than your neighbor. So thank you for listening. Remember to like and subscribe to the Ruthless Variety Program. And when you do, we read all of your comments. Get back to the very next episode with everything that you have to say. Check out some merch while you're there. And a big thanks to Erik Erickson for stopping by and Grover for giving us all of that input on the happenings of the federal and state governments around this country. With that, fellows, I think we did it.

[Michael Duncan]

I think so. Absolute banger of a Tuesday program. Let's go to Hollywood hen.

[Josh Holmes]

Another banger of an episode, folks. So until next time, minions, keep the

[John Ashbrook]

faith, hold the line and own the libs.

[Josh Holmes]

Sam.