Morning Brew Daily - Trump Indicted for 4th Time & 'Blind Side' Star Says Story Was a Lie

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

Episode 125: Neal and Toby break down the details of former President Donald Trump being indicted for the fourth time in Georgia on Monday night. The guys also discuss Michael Oher's petition that he was not compensated for his life story that was portrayed in the movie 'The Blind Side'. Plus, the historic climate case win for kids in Montana and children in Illinois can now make money off influencer deals. Toby shares his favorite trend of the week and what AI job will pay you $900k? Finally the guys take a look at Dunkin' Donuts' boozy new drinks. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Listen to the Our Future Podcast Here: https://chartable.com/podcasts/our-future-looking-beyond-with-michael-sikand Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning, Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's pod, a historic climate ruling for Gen Ziers in Montana, and we're going to make you regret not studying machine learning in college. Then I break down what girl math is for Neil in today's Toby trend. Plus, Illinois just passed a law that will help funny toddlers cash in on the internet clout. They earn their parents. It's Tuesday, August 15th.

Let's ride. Before we get into our bread and butter business news, a lot went down in Atlanta last night. that we should let you know about. Just down the street from where Beyonce was playing her show, former President Trump and 18 others were indicted for their efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Among other charges, they were accused of violating the state's racketeering law, also known as Rico, which has historically been used to take down mob bosses and gang leaders.

So the DA in this county alleges that they were effectively running a criminal enterprise to mess with democracy and ensure Trump won the state, even though he didn't have enough votes. According to the indictment, which was 98 pages long, and I did not read it all before this show, their efforts to overturn the election include Trump calling Georgia's secretary of state to find him enough votes to win, harassing a state election worker just trying to do their job, and one of his lawyers trying to mess with voting machines and steal data from a voting machine company. So some pretty serious anti-democratic stuff. Big picture, for Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination,

it is his fourth indictment in five months. He's pleaded not guilty to the other criminal charges, and he called his Georgia indictment a witch hunt. He and the other defendants have been told of voluntary surrender by noon on August 25th. I just don't know how he's going to campaign and keep up with these legal troubles at the same time. He's already spent $40 million so far on legal bills, and the indictments just keep coming. you mention it, but he's been indicted in New York, Georgia, D.C. in Florida. He's on his own heiress tour of indictments. My question is, when is the 1989 indictment dropping? But all right, Neil,

let's jump into today's top story, which truly rocked my world when it broke yesterday. Remember Michael Orr, the offensive tackle lifted out of poverty by a benevolent southern family called the Tewis in a story that was first immortalized by Michael Lewis in his book called The Blindside, and then in a Hollywood blockbuster starring Sandra Bullock. Well, it turns out that story is not as happy and uplifting as we all expected. According to a 14-page petition filed in probate court, Michael Orr says that the Tewis never actually took him in and adopted him. Instead, he alleges that right after he turned 18, they tricked him into signing a document

that made them his conservators, which any Britney Spears fans know, gives them legal authority to make business decisions in his name. And while the dad, Sean Tui, told a local newspaper yesterday that he was stunned by Orr's allegations and that they didn't make any money off the film, people remain unconvinced. Neil, I really hate to use this pun right now, but I think I have to. This story totally blindsided me. Right. So, Orr... Sorry. It's okay. We're all there. So Orr has expressed his regret about the movie in the past few years saying that he did not like how he was portrayed in it. But these allegations are completely new that he was not adopted. He never said he didn't live with the family and that they didn't take him in.

But he said that, you know, this is the first time we're learning that he claims he was not adopted. And Sean Tui, the dad also agreed with it. But the crux of this is the fact that he said he was exploited by the family for their influence. Richmond over the movie and future proceeds. The mom is now a motivational speaker and has a foundation and continues to use the fact that they, or claims that they adopted him to kind of advance her foundation and her career as this motivational speaker. And this movie made a ton of money, so there was a lot of money at stake. Yeah, it made $300 million. And then according to the legal filing, the movie paid the Tewis and their true birth children each $225,000 plus two and a half

percent of the film's defined net proceeds, but since he was a conservator and not actually an adopted child, he saw none of those proceeds. Then also there's this really shady document that was reportedly signed in 2007, where Orra appears to give away to 20th Century Fox Studio the rights to his entire life story without any payment whatsoever, or says he has no memory or no recollection of signing that document. And here's where it gets even shadier. The lawyer listed on that. that document is Deborah Branahan, which is a close family friend of the Tewis. And so it is just like, once you start putting the pieces together, you can see how maybe this wasn't just a innocent mistake.

Like it was a friend of the family who drafted up these documents. So it does get a little bit sketchy. And we should say the dad, yeah, you mentioned gave this interview yesterday where he said he would gladly end the conservatorship. He didn't really explain why it existed in the first place. but he disputes the claim that Michael Orr never got any money from this movie. He said there was only a flat fee paid to the family, and they all split it five ways between their two kids, the two parents, and Orr.

So that is the main dispute here is that Orr says he never saw any of the money. And the dad says, yes, like, we split this evenly. Meanwhile, I didn't know this, but apparently the dad made more than $200 million selling fast food franchises. So that's- Remember, that was a big portion of the movie where they, like, he takes them to to the, yeah,

I don't remember that part of the movie. I was like, oh, damn, like $200 million. So his contention was like, I don't even need this money. But there's also been more scrutiny on Michael Lewis,

who is the journalist, who wrote the book in the first place, and it's like, dude, you are snooping around, like, you are supposed to uncover truth about this case

and the fact that you didn't even discover the fact that he wasn't adopted because that is not disputed. Even Sean Tooie said, yeah, we didn't adopt him. There was a conservatorship. The fact that Michael Lewis

never uncovered that as he wrote the book. What is a little disconcerting to people, given that Michael Lewis has a ton of bestselling books. Right. Yeah. I mean, big year for conservatorships, though. We mentioned Britney Spears, but I do think that her work and her publicity

probably led to Michael O'R also looking into his legal arrangement. So I do think there is a bit of a through line between the two. So just a big year for conservatorships. All right. Moving on, Jen Ziers got themselves a huge sleigh in historic climate change case in Montana yesterday. That was probably worse than your blind side one, I think. In a first of its kind ruling, a judge decided that Montana's fossil fuel policies

infringed on the rights of young people as laid out in the state constitution. It is a decision that will give similar climate change cases playing out across the U.S. a major momentum boost since the ruling affirms for the first time in the U.S. that a government has a duty to protect its citizens from climate change. We discussed this case when it was on trial about two months ago. So here's a quick recap. 16 young people in Montana sued the state over a policy that restricted projects from evaluating factors like greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts when getting permits.

The use said that allowing greenhouse gases to proliferate unchecked is illegal in Montana. And that is because Montana is one of just three states where in the Constitution, it literally says you and future generations have the right to a clean and healthful environment. the young people argued that Montana's government was not adhering to that rule, and they won their case in what one legal expert from Columbia Law School called the strongest decision on climate change ever issued by a court. I remember when we first covered this story, and our kind of asterisk that we attached to it was, this is probably not going to pass.

It's great that it actually made it to court, but now this is going to step beyond. And the fact that they won definitely caught a lot of legal experts by surprise, because remember, a lot of these cases were to disdiscount. missed before they even made it to court. And now the judge kind of put their foot down and said, listen, this is going to be a thing that is, we're setting a new legal precedent and that these emissions do affect these kids. And so I do think it's a new era of kind of climate legal action. Yeah. So we just mentioned what the opposition said. This is the state. And, you know, this is a big fossil fuel state in Montana where they have a lot of coal, a lot of natural gas.

but the opposition was like, look, Montana's small in the grand scheme of things. How is, you know, how are our emissions compared to China, India, actually impacting climate change? They're not really. But then the judge just said that, look, any additional greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is, you know, in violation of our Constitution, which says we owe kids and their descendants and everyone living in the state a healthy environment. So we'll see what happens. I think legal experts were like, look, you know, this is a great ruling for climate change. And it really put a face to the issue.

But it's up to the state now to enact the policy. The state's going to appeal it. So it may have, you know, not so many immediate effects in the year or two. But it's definitely like a huge kind of rallying cry for these efforts across the country. For sure. All right, Neil, let's move on to our next story, which actually also involved. the youth in a legal case. Starting next year, a new Illinois law says that child influencers can sue their legal guardians if earnings from their content aren't set aside. So we've all seen the

videos, Neil, of new parents parading their kids around for likes and views. And there's nothing wrong with that if that's the path you choose for your family. But it always didn't quite feel right that the kids, often the stars of the show, had no part in reaping the financial rewards from that content. So lots of states have laws for other forms of entertainment like TV and movies that ensure money is set aside for minors. But this Illinois law that comes into effect next year is the first to especially target social media. Neil, this feels like a no-brainer. What do you think about this new law? I want to focus on how it began, how this law came into being, which was that there's this third, there was a 13-year-old named Shreya Nalamothu, who was scrolling on TikTok during the

pandemic board and just saw all these videos you were talking about. And she just thought to herself, wait, who is looking out for these kids? And she used the word, I thought it was innocuous at first. And I was like, a 13-year-old just said the word innocuous. Like, you've got to be kidding me. She is brilliant. Anyway, so she petitioned her local legislature and got this legislation started going. And so she was really the impetus from it. And it was just because she was looking at social media videos and thinking, look, these kids did not consent to this. They're being paraded around. Their parents are making a boatload of money from them through sponsorship deals, and no one's looking out for them. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it is super invasive too,

because these parents are sharing very intimate details of their children's lives, like their first steps, potty training, whenever they get in trouble. Like, there's all these very intimate details that they have no ability to consent to. And so you do feel like there should be some protections in place. And it's just so easy to film your kid because you're already filming them. And your kid is doing funny stuff. And so like the temptation to put them online, like, again, I'm not, I'm not hating on anyone who decides to do this, but it does feel like we're entering like this next wave of people kind of waking up to the fact that maybe, one, I shouldn't be putting everything my child does on the internet. I mean, remember Bobby Altaf, who is the big

podcaster who's done podcast with Drake, Mark Cuban. She's been around social media. You've probably seen her face. She got her start filming her kids and then recently decided to wipe all of their content from the internet, citing privacy concerns. So it does feel like parents are waking up to the fact that maybe they shouldn't be parading their kids around like this. I don't quit understand why this is compelling content. I mean, I love my friends. They show me pictures of their kids and, you know, I'm kind of bored after 15 seconds of looking at their kids. kids, so I don't know why anyone would want to watch more, but I'm just like, anyway, I do want to mention that this is modeled after another law that was started in California in 1939, which

is called the, it's colloquially called the Jackie Coogan Law, after a child star named Jackie Coogan in the silent film era, who basically all of his money was lost by his parents, and he sued them. And so this is, that was kind of the first rights given to, you know, young people who starred in videos and a lot of the, and that's, that's spread to a bunch of other states. It's not called the Jackie Coogan Law in other states, but that requires that an employer set aside 15% of the actors' earnings in a trust initially so that they have some in the bank so their parents can't squander at all. The use, man, the use are racking up Ws, as they might say. All right, Neil, before we jump into the next story, we're going to take a quick break.

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with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at AKA.m.m.S. College PC. All right, Neil, we are back with another edition of Toby's trends where I, a terminally online Gen Zier, educate you, and also pretty online millennial about a trend I've had my eye on recently. And that trend is girl math. So girl math is a phrase first coined by a couple of New Zealand

podcasters, and it's essentially a new ideology behind how a person, usually a girl, justifies various purchases. It comes with its own set of logic and rules. For instance, if you don't buy something that is $50 at the store, you then save $50 and can spend it elsewhere. If something is on sale for at least 30% off, you're actually losing money by not buying it. If you preload your Starbucks card with cash, then buy a drink, that drink is free. Anything under $5, free. Buy tickets for a concert in advance, that concert is free. So you get the picture.

It's a way of assigning a certain type of logic to justify purchase that otherwise might be psychologically or physically. stressful. Neil, have you wrapped your mind around what girl math is? It sounds like something I don't know. I feel like I kind of have a similar view. If it's under $5, I'm like, all right, well, it's not costing me anything. And then, you know, if you have a flight or a ticket to a concert way in advance, you know, you're thinking that. I already have it. I don't know. Maybe I'm not a girl, but maybe I've been using girl math all of these years. Like, what do you think it's, does you think it speaks to anything larger in our society? It is definitely like a lot of people do we've talked about like this psychological phenomenon behind how you justify some purchases.

And I feel like this is just putting a label on something that a lot of us have felt deep within ourselves. This is also just part of a broader trend of, I mean, call it a girl trend summer because we've also, this is kind of a successor to girl dinner, which has also been this huge trend. And girl dinner is basically assembling a bunch of snacks kind of chaotically, but also a little artfully in order to have kind of a filling, but also not traditional dinner in some way. And so I do think that if we want to blow it up into a very large trend, it is something that a lot of people, it's putting a label on something that a lot of people do. Everyone's like thrown together stuff from the fage. It's not actually a dinner. It's more snacks, but it fills you up.

That's girl dinner. So it's the summer of the girl trend. Lazy girl job. Right. Lazy girl job is there's just been this growing use of the word girl this summer. I think it's very unmistakable. And, you know, I'm curious about why that is. But after, you know, you didn't hear the word girl a lot in the past couple years. And then all of a sudden, every single thing is like Barbie, Taylor Swift, lazy girl dinner, girl math. It's the summer of the girl. Yeah. And it's been very fun summer. I will say that. So maybe there's some... Even for a non-girl, yeah, just watching it. I'm happy for them. All right, let's hit our next story. For everyone who doesn't want to disappoint their parents, but isn't interested in being a doctor or a lawyer,

there is another profession where you can make a ton of money and restore the family name. It is not a UPS driver, though that is probably a good option. It is an AI engineer. Companies are offering extraordinarily high salaries for top AI talent since they see these people unlocking major cost savings and efficiencies for them in the long run, according to a new Wall Street Journal article.

Here are a few examples. The dating app Hinge is offering a VP of AI, a base salary of up to $398,000 per year. Amazon is paying a senior manager of Applied Science and Generative AI, a top salary of $340,000. And recently, Netflix went viral for posting an AI job with total compensation of up to $900,000 annually. And while AI job postings are still far below

more traditional software developer roles, they're growing really fast. AI job posts on the Work Marketplace Upwork have jumped more than 1,000% in Q2 over the same period last year. The bottom line here, there is an arms race for AI engineers right now. And if you've got the qualifications, I see a house with a three-car garage in your future. I mean, this is just simple market economics, right, supply and demand, where it's not like we suddenly, we have this immense demand,

and then there's not enough supply to meet it. Like, these AI engineers aren't appearing out of thin air. So, of course, there's this arms race for who can get the best ones. a lot of companies have just said, hey, we can't hire people, so we're either going to acquire smaller startups and just bring all those AI people under our umbrella or they're training people internally because there just simply isn't enough people out there who are trained to do these jobs. And one reason for such frenzied demand for these is that it's not concentrated to a single industry. It isn't just big tech hiring AI companies. It's Walmart. It's Procter and

Gamble. It's Goldman Sachs. It's real estate companies. like JLL, everyone is looking for a similar role of someone who can unlock the mat, like a sorcerer, an AI sorcerer who can unlock the cost-saving magic of AI. And so all of those companies hiring for AI talent is definitely putting pressure on the labor market. Like you said, there's just not enough people. So although one thing that recruiters have had their eye on is people trying to game the system where they are seeing people who are just normal candidates in data science or engineers. They've begun inserting AI into their existing job titles just so they get flagged or are more eye-catching. So there is a little bit of gaming the system on both sides where it's kind of

the joke of proficient in Microsoft Excel. The new thing is going to be proficient in AI. And everyone goes, okay, we'll give us a prompt or something. I think a lay person would not know the difference between what a regular software developer does and what an AI developer does. I mean, I think in some cases they are the same. Regular software developers use AI and machine learning. It's part of their skill set. And so I don't see why they can't put AI over there. But I think it's funny in the first place that AI is leading to a jobs boom right now, right?

Because everyone's like, oh, AI is going to take our jobs. AI is taking our jobs. And maybe it will in the long term. But for now, it's leading to an overall net positive gain in jobs because people need to design the systems that will eventually take people's jobs. Yeah, it is a little bit ironic. And if you do see the graph of the amount of job listed, it is truly up. It's a banana. Yeah. All right, we've arrived at the last story of our show in which we all need to pray for the people of Massachusetts, my people. Duncan announced yesterday a new line of alcoholic drinks,

spiked iced tea and spiked ice coffee in an effort to slide into the growing ready to drink market. It spiked iced tea will be 5% ABV and come in flavors like slightly sweet and strawberry dragon fruit, while the coffee will be 6% ABV and have flavors like caramel and mocha. Caramel? What do you say? Caramel. Okay, we're on the same page. This isn't really a shock. Duncan has already partnered with Harpoon Brewery, also New England, on various beers and everyone in their mother is getting into this can spike beverage space, which is growing 7% each year. But I wouldn't necessarily consider this a guaranteed home run either. Twisted tea dominates the spiked ice tea market and many brands have failed to come up with a successful spiked coffee line. Do you really think that people

will be into alcoholic coffee that isn't an espresso martini? It is very hard for me to see a world where this truly catches on and become mainstream because yeah, it's not a very relaxing beverage. It's definitely something that you would need to, it feels like you're splurging on, feels like a treat because I don't understand where it fits in in the grand scheme of things. Like maybe if you're starting out like a big drinking day, if you're tailgating, you start with a spiked. Really weird. In the industry, it's called Sessionable. Yeah, right. So like a Session beer is low ABV where you can just kind of chill with many of them all day. This is the exact opposite of that. This is not sessionable. The thing is, it only has 30 milligrams of caffeine. A regular coffee has 100 milligrams. So it's, you know,

not going to get you super buzzed in both ways. Although I do love this. So Duncan President Scott Murphy told CNN that the logic behind creating this drink means that you can start your day and every day with Duncan. So I don't know, maybe he is envisioning it as like a nightcap. I do think the espresso martini, there is a espresso martini wave that we're currently in. It's that a lot of people love that kind of late at night.

So maybe this could fill that gap of, all right we're trying to get back up for a night out let's get a little hit of that caffeine and then also have the alcoholic content so you imagine showing up to a pre pregame and just having like six if it if it catches on in things right that could be a thing um i i think it's absolutely hilarious though i do think the the teas have a better chance of catching on twisted tea dominates this market it is boston beer company is best selling product but i don't think anyone has a crazy affiliation with twisted tea. Like, their brand isn't that strong.

I think the Duncan brand is much bigger. And I think that Duncan could easily supplant twisted tea in that market. Because I don't know anyone who drinks twisted tea or is like, I love twisted tea. Yeah. But people love Duncan. Yeah, people love Duncan and the flavors are pretty interesting for Duncan, too, where you have some slightly sweet and some half and half and some less sweet ones.

So I think that the tea, the tea, even though. Duncan is... Spillity. All right, so we are bull. I think we're agree. We're bullish on the tea. We are not bullish on the coffee. We should try one before tomorrow show and see...

We're going to try one. Is it in New York? It's only in two... It's only about a dozen states. Even if it's not New York, we'll travel. All right. Bring it back. We'll go.

All right, that is our show for today. I hope everyone has a wonderful Tuesday. We love getting emails from our listeners, so please write in to Morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Someone wrote a huge essay about whether we should be spreading aerosols into the sky to deflect the sun's rays and cool the planet. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I cannot wait to dive in this morning. Let's roll these credits.

Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Bellas and Raymond Lue are our associate producers. Isabel Wynne is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and makeup is returning their Oscar for the Blindside in light of new revelations. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. All. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari.

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