The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 05.30 They're Boycotting Chik-Fil-A, BUT YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHY! Texas' New Civil War, Halle Bailey & More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Sup, you beautiful bastards! Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show, your daily dive into the news, and actually a quick thing right here at the top. In about two weeks, we have our next big beautiful bastard drop, but there's an awesome shirt and hoodie that I want to release that doesn't really fit into that set, so I thought it'd be fun to do a few days only exclusive drop right now, starting at this moment, with a limited run of the Are You Taking Care of Yourself gear, available in navy or coral, as well as our super comfy maroon and navy embroidered hoodies. Again, this is only going to be available for a few days because I wanted to squeeze this in before the next drop. So get it while you can, but we got a full show for you today.

Starting point is 00:00:30 So buckle up, hit that like button, and let's just jump into it. Starting with, you know how there are all those articles and those headlines coming out being like, Chat GPT just passed the bar. Watch out for your job, lawyers. Well, as Steven Schwartz, a New York lawyer, just found out, it's not quite there yet. And this guy, who's been practicing law for more than 30 years reportedly represented a client suing the Colombian airline Avianca over injuries that he claims he got when a serving car bumped into a mid-flight. It's described as a pretty run-of-the-mill case. Schwartz submits the brief,

Starting point is 00:00:56 but there's a problem. In the brief submitted to a federal judge, it includes the things you'd expect, right? References to previous cases, precedent, quotes. Turns out ChatGPT just made cases up, right? ChatGPT was like, yeah, McGillicuddy v. Finn. Finn obviously was in the right, except that case never actually happened. But the judge happened to call out what they referred to as six bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citation. And so now you've got Schwartz facing a sanctions hearing on June 8th. And in an affidavit he submitted, he said he greatly regrets having utilized this. He also claimed this is the first time he's ever tried to do this. And he also submitted screenshots where you see that he asks the chat bot, hey, is this a real case? With chat GBT incorrectly again,

Starting point is 00:01:33 confirming that it is a real case. Let's just use this as an example of while AI is going to do a lot of the stuff people say it's going to do, it's not quite there yet. Be careful, you fucking dummy. And then we've got a weird mishmash of hate bombing and culture war boycott backlash stuff going on. So let's talk about two of the most high profile ones. The first involving the live action version of The Little Mermaid starring Halle Bailey. It debuted over the weekend, making $118 million over the long weekend in the States, which is bad news if you're not a fan of these live action remakes, because it pretty much guarantees that Disney is just going to make more of them, especially with this being the fifth biggest Memorial Day opening for a film of all time. Though it did see a less impressive run overseas, raking in only $68 million internationally,

Starting point is 00:02:12 with The Hollywood Reporter saying that the racist backlash to a black actress playing Ariel may have had an effect on those markets. Though you also might remember there was a massive uproar in general when the casting was announced. And I mention that because it brings us to the second major reason that there were a ton of headlines about the film this weekend, with it appearing to get review-b bombed for seemingly those same reasons. In fact, apparently it was so prevalent, IMDb had to respond to it, saying it detected unusual voting activity on this title, so it applied an alternate weighting calculation to preserve the reliability. And if you go on the site, you can see that it's weighted because out

Starting point is 00:02:37 of 34,000 reviews, 40% gave the movie just one star. But even with those numbers, overall, the movie's sitting at a 7 out of 10. And some saying a lot of the negative attacks seem to be concentrated in europe and potentially coming from bots which i will say i hate the general review bombing in general because it removes any conversation that you can have about the film whereas i watched it and i was like wow this movie was completely unnecessary with it also feeling like there were a lot of dark scenes to hide the amount of cgi maybe i don't know it was just not an enjoyable movie to watch i will say none of that rests on hallie bailey's shoulders because she was actually kind of the highlight of the film. But with all the review bombing going on, it feels like it takes away the ability to like genuinely critique the

Starting point is 00:03:11 movie. Meanwhile, on another culture war battlefront, you have some people saying Chick-fil-A has gone woke. Yeah, apparently this is a very real concern. A number of conservatives have right now and some even saying they want to boycott the restaurant. So how did Chick-fil-A going from a place that people boycotted because of its homophobic history and ownership to what now not being bigoted enough? Yeah, a lot of right wingers right now are fully losing their shit online today over the company's diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Now, it's unclear exactly when this campaign started, but according to LinkedIn, the current VP of that department has been working in that section since 2020. For whatever reason, many of these conservatives are big mad about it today and

Starting point is 00:03:43 pointing to a page on the chain's website that notes that it is, quote, committed to being better at together. With the passage adding that the goal of the company is to glorify God by having a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A and adding, we're early on in our journey, but we're honored by the opportunity to steward our organization's greatest asset, our people, and are energized by the road ahead. Message also including a message from Eric McReynolds, the VP of diversity, equity, and inclusion with him saying, modeling care for others starts in the restaurant and we are committed to ensuring mutual respect, understanding, and dignity everywhere we do business. Right, and to you listening and watching right now, you might go, these sound like the most generic, bland

Starting point is 00:04:16 statements about diversity and inclusion of all time. Right, if anything seems more about emphasizing the company's commitment to God. But that does not matter because if you go online right now, you have no shortage of people saying things like, Chick-fil-A bowed the knee to the woke mom. We have a problem. Chick-fil-A just hired a VP of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is bad. Very bad. I don't want to have to boycott. Are we going to have to boycott? And even our beloved Chick-fil-A has fallen to the DEI cult. It's the same agenda that's turning our beloved military woke. It's becoming an epidemic that even Christian companies are being strong-armed to participate in. Some even sharing an old clip of then Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy speaking on a panel about racism during the summer of 2020, where he notably

Starting point is 00:04:52 talked about repentance and saying that if you ever see someone who needs their shoes shined, you should do it. And then he walked over to a black person on the panel and shined their shoes. There's a time in which we need to have some personal action here. Maybe we need to give him a hug, too. And some stock in Chick-fil-A. I bought about 1,500 of these, and I gave them to all our Chick-fil-A heart, of a sense of humility, a sense of shame, a sense of embarrassment, begin with an apologetic heart. I think that's what our world needs to hear today. Right. And that clip caused a stir back when it happened. But now you have conservatives

Starting point is 00:05:36 freaking out about it even more, claiming that he said that all white people need to get on their knees and shine the shoes of black people out of shame, even though we all just watched that together. That is not what he said. What he said seemed very performative and very cringe, made even better by the fact that he didn't seemingly respond to the joke about Chick-fil-A stock, but he did say what a lot of people are saying he said. But that hasn't stopped people from calling him a woke, anti-American, anti-white BLM bootlicker. And so while all of that's happening over here, you have people who haven't been supporting Chick-fil-A going, what are they talking about? What planet do they call home? With some responding,

Starting point is 00:06:07 as someone who hasn't eaten there in years due to donating to anti-LGBTQ hate groups, this is going to be hilarious to watch. As well as conservatives starting a boycott against Chick-fil-A to kick off Pride Month would be one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Yeah, I guess we're going to see how all this plays out. And you know, I'm a big believer in sometimes you just let stupid people tire themselves out. Grab some popcorn, watch the show. And then you're all losers. And that's exactly why we love you. That is the message coming out of Vegas right now. I think it's a generally understood common sense thing that Vegas makes more money than they give out. Right? A lot of us got that friend that has a system, but then that system is them just going to the

Starting point is 00:06:38 ATM several times because the next one's going to hit. But seeing the actual numbers is very eye-opening. Turns out in 2022, gamblers lost nearly $1 billion at casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. And even more notably, that is reportedly the second highest amount lost on record. With those casinos bringing in more than $8 billion in gambling revenue, which is more than 25% higher than before the pandemic. So what's happened? What's changed? And there, if you look to MGM Resort and Caesars,

Starting point is 00:07:02 the two largest casino operators on the Strip, they're changing the nature of the games themselves. Starting with blackjack. Typically, when a player gets blackjack on a casino table, they're paid three to two, meaning that if you bet $10, you get paid 15, commonly referred to as time and a half. But many tables on the strip

Starting point is 00:07:15 have now changed that payout to six to five. So if you make that same $10 bet, you're getting paid $12 for a blackjack. And they're not alone there with now more than two thirds of blackjack tables on the strip using six to five payouts. And those changes increase the house's edge, which is the average amount that a casino stands to win from a player. It also goes beyond just blackjack, right? Even roulette has seen a shift in favor of the house. For those of you non-degenerates out there

Starting point is 00:07:33 that do not know this, an average roulette wheel has 38 slots for a ball to drop into. 18 red, 18 black, two green zeros. But now those greedy fucks in Vegas are adding triple zero wheels, making it even harder for a player to win and boosting the house's advantage. And we've seen these wheels quickly growing more and more popular. But it's also not just the payouts. On the other end, many casinos are also hiking up table minimums,

Starting point is 00:07:51 or the minimum amount you can bet in order to actually play the game. With the Caesars Entertainment CEO explaining, you're bringing in higher value customers and we're already full, so you're kicking out the lowest end. I see no reason that needs to stop or would stop. And with all this,

Starting point is 00:08:02 you see casino executives responding to questions about it saying, hey, we can't afford to pay our staff. Think of the labor cost of table games is just too high for the casino to maintain the lower bed options. They're saying that's why they had to hike table minimums, which is an absolutely ridiculous argument coming from an industry bringing in billions and billions of dollars a year. And I mean, a good chunk of dealers, for example, their income just comes from tips. But also as a way around the labor is expensive problem, many casinos are introducing electronic versions

Starting point is 00:08:25 of the popular table games. No human dealer, the game's completely automated. Those versions also typically offer lower table minimums. However, those are technically classified as slot machines, which brought in a record revenue of $4.6 billion on the strip last year. With all the changes that we're talking about, not everyone's on the same page

Starting point is 00:08:40 of if this is guaranteed success. You've got some experts saying that casinos using this model could actually risk losing business over time. With one casino consultant explaining very simply, if you go into a casino and gamble and you lose your money fairly quickly, almost every time, you don't feel like you're getting the bang for your buck. So I'll wait to see how everything plays out. I got to pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts on this one? Especially if you're a frequent gambler or you just work in the industry. And then, you know, sadly, there are people out there who live to find ways to scam us. Using our data for

Starting point is 00:09:04 phishing attacks, getting passwords, committing identity theft, I can go on. So the biggest question is, are you protecting yourself? Because thanks to the fantastic sponsor of today's show, NordVPN, or more directly, nordvpn.com slash philly d, you can start protecting yourself and loved ones today. Here on the team, we try to make sure everyone's protected up by NordVPN. And one reason is the number of foreign sites we have to access to research to bring you the news. And using the NordVPN proxy extension makes it a no-brainer when browsing those sites. Their proxy extension is a lightweight VPN that helps protect your privacy, bypass censorship, and keep you safe while browsing the internet or even playing browser games. It's also not only foreign

Starting point is 00:09:35 websites. There are a lot of internet shops abroad that offer products that you can't get here. And with the proxy extension, it's automatically there when Linzer and myself are shopping. It loads faster and takes fewer resources from logging into an app, and NordVPN doesn't collect activity logs. Your business is your business. So protect your privacy now and go to nordvpn.com slash phillyd to get a huge discount on a two-year plan plus an additional four months free. That's nordvpn.com slash phillyd. It's all risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. And then there's an all-out war going on within the Texas Republican Party that we gotta talk about, right? This is connected to last week when we talked about how a battle was brewing after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called for the Speaker of the House, Dade Phelan, to step down.

Starting point is 00:10:10 That, notably, after he presided over the floor while seemingly drunk out of his mind. But then, boom, just a few hours after that, the Republican-led General Investigating Committee announced that they had actually been investigating Paxton for months. And just two days later, the committee unanimously recommended that Paxton be impeached and removed from office. And over the weekend, we actually saw the House officially vote to impeach Paxton. And this is absolutely massive for two main reasons. First, because it's just insanely historic. In Texas's nearly 200-year history, only two public officials have ever been impeached, with the most recent being around five decades ago. And the second is that the vote to impeach had a huge margin, 121 to 23. There was a metric ton of bipartisan support. And in fact,

Starting point is 00:10:46 a majority of Republicans actually voted in favor of impeachment. And the reason we're talking about this now isn't just to get you up to speed, but also because just yesterday, the Texas State Senate adopted a resolution outlining how the impeachment trial will play out there, specifically stating that the lieutenant governor who will preside over the trial will set a date for proceedings to start no later than August 28th. So with that, we know the what's next, but also I want to dive deeper into why Paxton has been impeached. And with that, I will say buckle up because there are a lot of layers to this.

Starting point is 00:11:10 And what we talked about last week just barely scratches the surface, right? Because in total, there are a full 20 articles of impeachment against the AG, including bribery, abuse of public trust, dereliction of duty, and more. And while there is a wide, wide range of allegations, many of them first surfaced in October of 2020.

Starting point is 00:11:27 That's when seven of Paxton's top aides published a letter that they sent to the AG's director of human resources, accusing him of several crimes. And with that, asking the FBI to launch an investigation, which it did. And the staffers claimed that Paxton had abused his office to benefit Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer and friend of Paxton's, who also just happened to donate $25,000 to his 2018 campaign. And specifically, many of the impeachment articles concern Paxton's alleged efforts to try and protect paul from an fbi investigation he was facing in 2020 this including attempting to interfere in foreclosure lawsuits and issuing legal opinions that benefited paul improperly obtaining undisclosed information to give him and violating agency policies by appointing an outside attorney to investigate baseless claims

Starting point is 00:11:59 and issue subpoenas to help the developer and his businesses among other things with the impeachment articles claiming that paxton engaged in bribery because in exchange for all that legal assistance, Paul helped him out by hiring a woman that the AG was having an affair with and paying for expensive renovations to Paxton's home. And beyond Paxton's relationship with Paul, many of the impeachment articles also concern how the AG handled the letter published by the seven aides. This including violating Texas's whistleblower law

Starting point is 00:12:19 by firing four of the staffers who reported him in retaliation, misusing public funds to launch a sham investigation into the whistleblowers, making false official statements in his response to the allegations, and trying to conceal his wrongdoing by entering into a $3.3 million settlement with the fired staffers. And that last part is very, very important because, as we mentioned last week, the whole reason the House launched the probe into Paxton was that he asked the state legislature to approve taxpayer money to pay for that settlement. With all that really being the meat and potatoes of the impeachment articles, but there's also other things worth noting,

Starting point is 00:12:46 including several charges relating back to a securities fraud case that Paxton was indicted for in 2015 but has not been charged in. Those including lying to state investigators and obstructing justice as well as allegations that he lied on financial disclosures among other accusations. And in fact, I'm going to link to a description of the articles in the description below. The main headline, this is a whole fucking mess of legal issues. But Paxton, for his part, has denied the allegations and created further divisions with his fellow articles in the description below. The main headline, this is a whole fucking mess of legal issues. But Paxton, for his part, has denied the allegations and created further divisions with his fellow Republicans in the House,

Starting point is 00:13:08 issuing a statement claiming his impeachment was illegal and a politically motivated scam. But as far as what happens next, you have Paxton being suspended from his duties as AG, pending the trial. And there, in order for him to be convicted, his removal will need to be supported by two-thirds of the state Senate,

Starting point is 00:13:20 which notably is composed of 19 Republicans and 12 Democrats. And very interestingly, one of the Republican senators is in fact Paxton's own wife, and another is named in the impeachment articles for helping Paxton in an alleged illegal activity. So this is going to be insanely messy and massively divisive for the Texas GOP. Maybe even messier and more divisive by the fact that you have huge names like Trump and Ted Cruz weighing in to support Paxton. So we're going to keep our eyes on this one because it is going to be a ride. And then one of the ways you can tell something's really fucked up is when you have President Joe Biden and Senator Ted Cruz agreeing on something.

Starting point is 00:13:48 That's exactly what's happened thanks to this new anti-gay law out of Uganda. Because the law there sentences those convicted of homosexuality to life behind bars and those found guilty of, quote, aggravated homosexuality to death. And while that second one can refer to assaulting vulnerable people like children or the disabled, it's also defined as a same-sex relationship involving an HIV positive person. And even attempting same-sex activities can get you between 10 and 14 years in prison. With President Joe Biden condemning this law, saying the shameful act is the latest development in an alarming trend of human rights abuses and corruption in Uganda. Also saying, I've directed my National Security Council to evaluate the implications of this law on all aspects of U.S. engagement with Uganda, including our ability to safely deliver services under the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

Starting point is 00:14:28 and other forms of assistance and investments. Even threatening to look into sanctioning Uganda over the law, and Cruz largely agrees, saying this Uganda law is horrific and wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality is grotesque and an abomination. All civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse. And well, yeah, I'll be one of the first people to say this is an incredibly low bar for Cruz to clear. Unsurprisingly, many of the responses to Cruz's tweet are horrible. Either trying to veil their feelings by saying, you know, the U.S. is just not even common on other countries' problems.

Starting point is 00:14:58 It's the people full mask off just flatly supporting Uganda's law. Either way, just to be clear, it is a shit law. And if you are in support of this law, you are the fucking worst. You're just the worst. I want to say other stuff, but then this video gets suppressed. You're the fucking worst. And then one of the very few constants that I have found in life is that if you want to get into a fight or a passionate conversation with someone in a city that you are visiting, just start talking about how good or bad the tap water is. Just try it and get back to me. Let me know how it goes. But I mentioned that because in the news right now, you have Uruguay. And unless you're in a place like Flint, Michigan, chances are right now your tap water is way better than Uruguay's.

Starting point is 00:15:30 And that's because thanks to ever-increasing temperatures and a massive drought, the capital of Montevideo has a few days of fresh water left. Its main reservoir is only 5% full, or with how I view the world, 95% empty. In fact, it's such an issue that the government approved adding nearby salt water to the reservoir despite the legal limit, where there now being 421 milligrams of sodium per liter in the public drinking water, which is notably twice the limit the World Health Organization recommends and a similar proportion of chloride. So that means that the water is noticeably salty and people with heart problems or strict low-sodium diets are essentially forced to buy bottled water. Although it should be noted even at that level, it's considered relatively safe for healthy people. And while the climate is certainly a major factor, many citizens are also blaming the government and president, claiming that he should have known that this

Starting point is 00:16:06 was coming and done more. He'd done things like building dams or desalination plants. And right now, we really don't know how bad it's going to get there. And that's where I'm going to end today's show. Thank you for watching and being a part of my daily dives into the news. And of course, my name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love your faces, and I'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 05.30 They're Boycotting Chik-Fil-A, BUT YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHY! Texas' New Civil War, Halle Bailey & More

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