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

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