On the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, Erick Erickson opens not with the news but with Welles Crowther, the 24 year old equities trader on the 104th floor of the South Tower who tied a red bandana around his face, carried an injured woman down 17 floors, and went back up the stairs again and again until he died alongside firefighters in the lobby. Prompted by a question from his daughter Evelyn about whether Americans have turned misery into a way of honoring the day, Erick draws a hard line between grieving and honoring, reads the names of the 2,977 dead, and argues that the unity of September 12 was cheap unity because fear is free. He revisits Todd Beamer and Flight 93, the 343 firefighters and 71 police officers, Article 5 of NATO, Cantor Fitzgerald's 658 employees, President Trump's posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for Crowther, and the algorithmic outrage industry that now profits from keeping Americans sorted into factions.

• Welles Crowther, the red bandana, the 78th floor sky lobby, and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation touring the South Tower stairwell as Trump awards him the Presidential Medal of Freedom
• Erick's answer to his daughter Evelyn: grief fades with time and is private, honor is public and chosen, and a country that only knows how to grieve on September 11 has made an idol of the day
• Why the post 9/11 unity was cheap: Gettysburg 1913, British poppies, the 2000 Florida recount, Jim Jeffords, and unity that only shows up when a building falls on your neighbors
• Todd Beamer, Flight 93, "let's roll," the Pentagon, Article 5 of NATO, and the 2,977 names Erick challenges listeners to scroll through
• Caller Mark in Jacksonville on why America came together after 9/11 and tore itself apart over COVID, plus Erick on Albany Georgia, the conspiracy theorists who still claim controlled demolition, and the algorithm that pays people to divide us
• Erick's own September 11 memory in a middle Georgia law office, the out of town lawyer who insisted the deposition go forward, Adam Milani and Oklahoma City, and the moment he stopped wanting to be a lawyer

Erick Erickson takes apart the Politico story out of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas claiming panic over the Senate map, siding with Chris LaCivita and walking through why a five point Democratic polling bias in September means Republicans in Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Maine, Alaska, and Texas are actually ahead, not drowning. Then the August consumer price index lands at 3.4 percent, Mark Zandi and Thomas Ryan warn the Federal Reserve may raise rates next week, the 30 year mortgage hits 6.76 percent, and Erick issues a direct challenge to President Trump: take every tariff to zero between now and Election Day and run the experiment.

TOPICS

• The Politico "doom in Dallas" story, Meredith Lee Hill and Aaron Daugherty, and why Erick sides with Chris LaCivita over the anonymous Republican strategists
• The 2020 comparison: Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, Roger Marshall, and John Cornyn were all "toss ups" at this exact point and all won comfortably
• Erick's forecast: the GOP loses the House, loses Georgia and North Carolina, but holds the Senate, with Ken Paxton surviving in Texas and Susan Collins preferable to the unvetted alternative
• August CPI at 3.4 percent, gas up 27.4 percent, airline fares up 23 percent, and the Iran war as the energy shock economists including Joe Siedel at JP Morgan blame for it
• The tariff challenge to President Trump, wages running beneath inflation, the 10 year Treasury pushing mortgages to 6.76 percent, and why used car and auto insurance prices are the only things falling
• Caller Alan on broken trust, forty trillion in debt, and a country that has not felt this pulled apart since the Civil War

Erick Erickson closes the 25th anniversary of September 11 by playing the sound a camera crew heard at the World Trade Center that afternoon, more than 300 firefighter PASS device alarms sounding under the rubble, then turns the overwhelming weight of the news into practical advice out of Jeremiah's letter to the exiles in Babylon: seek the welfare of the city in which you live, because Washington is not coming to help you. From there it is an Open Line Friday run through the Lindsay Clancy trial twist, where juror Paula Devlin told Gayle King on CBS that the lone holdout who wanted a guilty verdict was the only black man on the panel, plus Ted Cruz and Dave McCormick warning about a red green alliance of communists and Islamists at the Republican convention, President Trump's wardrobe jab at Ken Paxton, and the $5,000 Trump dividend that landed like a lead balloon with congressional Republicans. Erick ends where he began, with Welles Crowther, the red bandana, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

• The PASS device audio from Ground Zero, the 300 plus firefighters lost, and Erick's answer to feeling overwhelmed by inflation, China, Russia, Iran, the Sahel, and fentanyl all at once
• Jeremiah 29 and the Babylonian exile as practical living rather than theology: volunteer at the food bank, read to kids at the elementary school, spend money locally, know your city councilman, because Washington did not storm the towers and is not coming for you
• The Lindsay Clancy jury twist: juror Paula Devlin, Gayle King saying she has to sit with that, the white jurors who wanted not guilty by reason of insanity, and Erick's shot at the online racists who assumed the opposite
• Ted Cruz on the red green alliance, Dave McCormick on socialism returning from the dustbin of history, Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laughing during the reading of the names, and the al Qaeda volunteer headed to Congress from New Jersey
• Why Israel has not finished the job in Iran: Erdogan, the Turks, the Kurds in northern Iraq, and a president who took his friend's phone call over the war plan
• President Trump on Ken Paxton's wardrobe, the $5,000 Trump dividend Congress does not want, caller Jim at 80 on his schizophrenic brother-in-law and the case for reopening Milledgeville and the mental institutions, and Welles Crowther climbing back up the stairs

1. The Bond Market Warns Washington

   Treasury yields are rising as investors question whether America's fiscal future is secure. Higher yields could lead to higher mortgage rates, credit card rates, auto loans, and borrowing costs for the federal government.

2. Inflation and a Possible Federal Reserve Rate Hike

   Diesel and energy prices are putting additional pressure on the economy. With employment still strong and inflation above the Federal Reserve's target, markets are increasingly expecting interest rates to rise.

3. Iran Rebuilds Its Ballistic Missile Program

   Intelligence reportedly shows that Iran has access to materials needed to resume production of ballistic missiles. The development comes amid growing concerns about Iranian aggression against American forces in the Middle East.

4. Houthis Seize a Strategic Red Sea Port

   Iran-backed Houthi forces have reportedly captured the Yemeni port city of Mokha, increasing their control over a critical shipping route. The development could threaten global trade, shipping, and oil prices.

Despite the troubling economic and national security news, there is still reason for hope. All things work for the good of those called according to God's purposes.

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Erick opens on President Trump's Dallas convention promise of a $5,000 "Trump dividend" to every adult citizen if Republicans hold the House and Senate, and calls it what it is: a bribe funded by the tariffs listeners are already paying, with JD Vance out on Fox News defending it. His counteroffer is zero income tax for married couples with kids earning under $200,000, money people keep instead of money the government prints and hands back. Then the real story of the hour, the Republican midterm message of common sense versus crazy, as James Talarico scrambles to walk back six genders and a non-binary God, Abdul El-Sayed runs from his 9/11 problem, John Fetterman cuts an ad for Dave McCormick, and a new Tony Fabrizio poll shows Talarico beating Ken Paxton in Texas by four.

• Trump's $5,000 dividend pitch in Dallas, the never-delivered $5,000 DOGE check, and why Erick calls it bribery and "unicorn farts"
• JD Vance on Brett Baier defending tariffs as the funding source, and Erick's rebuttal that American workers pay tariffs through flat wages and higher prices on beef, coffee and bananas
• The better plan: zero income tax on married couples with children under $200,000 instead of a Biden-style $2,000 COVID check that reignites inflation
• Common sense versus crazy: James Talarico backpedaling on SB 14, transgender surgeries for minors and "God is non-binary," plus his Charlie Kirk dodge
• Mike Rogers, Abdul El-Sayed and the 9/11 attack line in Michigan, John Fetterman's ad for Dave McCormick, Jake Tapper on tied Senate races, and the Fabrizio poll red flag with Talarico up four on Ken Paxton

Erick opens with the hard economic numbers Republicans keep trying to spin past: the Atlanta Fed says a household now needs $124,674 a year to afford a median priced home against a median income just over $80,000, wholesale prices rose 0.4 percent in August with the producer price index running 5.4 percent annually, diesel surged 24.1 percent, and West Texas crude sits above $101 a barrel with Brent at $106. His argument is that President Trump should stop spinning and level with people, because Iran is deliberately wrecking the American economy to elect weak Democrats and win a nuclear weapon. Then the story of the hour: Erick walks through the case that Jacob Coxon's dramatic resignation from Anthropic after six weeks is not organic at all, but a funded operation to regulate American AI into oblivion.

• The Atlanta Fed housing math, the August producer price index, 24.1 percent diesel, oil over $100 a barrel, and why the Federal Reserve interest rate decision next week still points to a hike
• Trump's claim that the war ends immediately after the election, and Erick's case that Iran is holding the American economy hostage to install Democrats who will let them go nuclear
• Erick's frustration with the tariffs and the Canada trade war, and his pitch to blame Joe Biden's economy while running on common sense versus crazy
• The Jacob Coxon story: six weeks at Anthropic, a Wall Street Journal exclusive, a Twitter post 18 minutes later with 149 million views, and Anderson Cooper and Brett Baier interviews demanding an international body to control AI
• Following the money, from Extinction Rebellion and Newspeak to Jan Tallinn, the Survival and Flourishing Fund, Encode AI, the AI Policy Network, the AI Futures Project, Dustin Moskovitz and Bernie Sanders' bill to ban artificial superintelligence, with Elon Musk, Dylan Loomis and Parker Thayer questioning whether any of it is organic

Erick opens the final hour on Eva Moskowitz's Washington Post op-ed and the Success Academy lawsuit against New York education commissioner Betty Rosa, filed after the state blocked US News and World Report from reporting aggregate AP exam results, dropping one Success Academy high school from 11th in New York to 196th overnight. Then the news of the hour: the United Kingdom has formally requested the extradition of Andrew and Tristan Tate on 59 charges, including 15 counts of rape, and Erick names the right wing influencers who elevated them anyway. He closes on the eve of the 25th anniversary of September 11 with George W. Bush at Ground Zero, the 537 votes in Florida, the USA Today recount that would have cost Bush the presidency under his own hanging chad standard, and a hard argument about Islam, Charlie Hebdo, and the post liberal right.

• Eva Moskowitz, Success Academy charter schools and the federal lawsuit against Betty Rosa over New York hiding AP exam data, plus regents exams curved down to 29 of 82 raw points
• Teachers unions, whole word reading versus phonics as a revenue play, Mississippi outperforming California and New York, and the Georgia speaker pushing the Mississippi plan
• School choice, Bibb County school closings decided by race instead of academics, and Erick's defense of good teachers stuck babysitting kids the state forces through the door
• The United Kingdom's extradition request for Andrew and Tristan Tate, 42 charges against Andrew and 17 against Tristan, and the Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson wing that promoted them
• The 25th anniversary of September 11, George W. Bush's bullhorn moment and Yankee Stadium pitch, Bush versus Al Gore and the 537 votes, Saxby Chambliss beating Max Cleland, and why Erick says Islam as practiced is incompatible with Western free speech
• The post liberal right, Patrick Deneen, JD Vance's advisers, and Erick's case that attacking classical liberalism is socialism with a church pew

Erick opens the midterm stretch run by dismantling the Republican panic over Senate polling, using Patrick Ruffini's study of 3,312 polls showing Democrats are overstated by an average of 3.7 points, with the high water mark landing right at Labor Day. Then, as the Republican convention opens on the week of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, he argues the GOP should embrace the nationalized election and run on it, pointing to the Great Lakes PAC ad hitting Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race. Plus Trump's Presidential Medal of Freedom for the Man in the Red Bandana, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declaring "I am the house now."

• Patrick Ruffini's polling error data: Democrats overstated 3.7 points on average, 73 percent of polls, peaking at 5.9 in late July
• The 2020 echo: Lindsey Graham, Steve Bullock, Cal Cunningham, Roger Marshall, John Cornyn, Joni Ernst, Cindy Hyde-Smith, and every panic that fizzled
• Race by race averages in Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, with Ken Paxton and Michael Whatley the real trouble spots
• 9/11 at 25: Erick's daughter Evelyn on remembrance versus a macabre idol, TSA opening gate access again, and the Man in the Red Bandana Medal of Freedom
• Mike Rogers versus Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, the Great Lakes PAC ad, and Erick's case for nationalizing the election on 9/11
• Scott Bessent at SMU: "I am the house now," the yen intervention, and the tripled Treasury buyback of 10 and 20 year notes

The GOP convention puts Trump at the center of the midterm fight as Treasury yields add pressure to the housing market.
A deadly Miami cargo-plane crash raises questions about landing procedures, while Iran threatens a wider war.

The September 9 edition of 4 Things covers the Republican convention in Dallas and the debate over whether a Trump-centered message can bring disaffected Republicans back to the polls. Rising 10-year Treasury yields following a $6 billion buyback also put mortgage rates, housing affordability, and the national debt in focus.

In Miami, the discussion centers on preliminary information about the landing of an Amazon-branded cargo plane. Questions about the crew's actions and the aircraft's braking systems remain subject to the NTSB investigation. A final determination of the cause is still pending.

Iran's stated threat to escalate the conflict raises concerns about additional targets across the Middle East. Economic pressure, oil restrictions, and the potential responses of the United States and Israel are central to the discussion.

Text ERICK to 33-777 for "Show Notes" and to stay updated on all things Erick Erickson.

www.erickerickson.com

https://www.youtube.com/@ewerickson 

https://rumble.com/ewerickson 

Stay grounded, stay informed, and keep the faith