The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 10.19 ACE Family Leak, Dixie D'Amelio, MrBeast, Jeffrey Toobin "Exposed", & Hunter Biden

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Go to https://NordVPN.com/phil and use code PHIL to get 68% off a 2 year plan plus 1 additional month free. It’s risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee! WATCH my podcast with Jon Cozart...: https://youtu.be/ibHoyBkB-pY Follow me off of Youtube: https://linktr.ee/PhilipDeFranco -- Voting Resources:  http://Vote.org https://www.axios.com/how-to-vote-by-state-2020-307c3d17-ee57-4a1b-8bad-182ca1cdb752.html https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/how-to-vote-2020/ https://nationalvoterregistrationday.org/  -- 00:00 - MrBeast Trivia Controversy 01:59 - ACE Family Leak 04:24 - Toobin Whips Out New Kind of Incident 06:21 - TIA 08:00 - The Hunter Biden Drive -- WATCH Full “A Convo With” Podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/ACW  LISTEN On The Podcast Platform Of Your Choice: http://LinksHole.com WATCH the ACW Clips channel!: https://youtube.com/ACWClips ✩ SUPPORT THE SHOW ✩ ✭ BUY our GEAR, Support the Show!: http://ShopDeFranco.com ✭ Lemme Touch Your Hair: http://BeautifulBastard.com ✭ Paid Subscription: http://DeFrancoElite.com  ✩ TODAY IN AWESOME ✩ ✭ Game recommendation: SpiritFarer: https://thunderlotusgames.com/spiritfarer/  ✭ (Some of) The Best of Sam Jay: https://youtu.be/2xj6MrvmxrY  ✭ Doctor Mike Day In The Life: https://youtu.be/_nvTtRj0z6E  ✭ Minions of Midas Trailer: https://youtu.be/CQdv8ZTUYOE  ✭ How to Cook the Ultimate Teriyaki Burger: https://youtu.be/IeHu2x4JXSo  ✭ Secret link: https://youtu.be/cUy4dAO2n2g  ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩  Mr Beast Defends Charli and Dixie D’Amelio Following Tournament Win Backlash: https://roguerocket.com/2020/10/19/mr-beast-defends-charli-and-dixie/ Ace Family “Fight” Accidentally Aired: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/austin-catherine-mcbroom-respond-as-ace-family-fight-disturbs-fans-1435460/ New Yorker Suspends Jeffrey Toobin After Zoom Incident: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/business/media/jeffrey-toobin-new-yorker-suspended.html  Hunter Biden Emails https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/new-york-post-insiders-slag-flimsy-hunter-biden-stories.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/business/media/new-york-post-hunter-biden.html https://nypost.com/2020/10/18/unverified-is-a-false-excuse-for-ignoring-hunter-biden-scoops/ ✩ STORIES NOT IN TODAY’S SHOW ✩ Pelosi Says No Stimulus Before Election If Deal Isn’t Struck By Tuesday: https://roguerocket.com/2020/10/19/pelosi-stimulus-election/ ——————————     Edited by: James Girardier, Julie Goldberg, Maxx Enright Produced by: Amanda Morones Art Director: Brian Borst  Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Cory Ray, Neena Pesqueda, Brian Espinoza Production Team: Zack Taylor, Luke Manning  ———————————— #DeFranco #AceFamily #MrBeast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you've had a fantastic Monday. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. Buckle up, hit that like button, and let's just jump into it. And where we'll start today is with a batch of quickie news before we ultimately get to our big deep dive. And first up, we had our fair share of entertainment slash entertainer controversy news. Starting with, you know, we had Mr. Beast Creator Games 2 taking place this past Saturday. Though this time, instead of being rock, paper, scissors, it was actually a trivia tournament where 24 creators competed against one another to win $300,000 to give to their subscribers. And contestants there included massive creators
Starting point is 00:00:30 like Addison Rae, Bretman Rock, KSI, Safiya Nygaard, Jaden Animations, and of course 19 others. With Charli and Dixie D'Amelio ultimately being declared the winners. Which ultimately resulted in controversy. You had a lot of people not happy, some saying that they cheated. And this in part because most all the other creators
Starting point is 00:00:46 were there by themselves. You had Dixie and Charlie able to be there as a team. And then they also brought their parents along with them. Though only Dixie competed in the final round to trivia against comic book artist and YouTuber ZHC. But still, many felt that these four-on-one matchups just were not fair. And some even suggested that there may have been
Starting point is 00:01:01 some cheating going on through the use of phones or people off camera. Now, eventually we did see MrBeast tweet out and try to defuse the situation saying, "'I see some people mad that I let multiple people compete "'on a single team in the trivia tournament. "'Honestly, the tournament was just for fun "'and to bring the community together
Starting point is 00:01:15 "'and I'd appreciate if you were to get mad at anyone, "'get mad at me. "'It was my decision, lol.'" The criticism is noted and I'll definitely keep all the teams the same size next time, 100% my bad. Which is also a sentiment we saw a number of the other creators express, that this was all just for fun.
Starting point is 00:01:28 Because ultimately that money is expected to go to the fans. And also that still didn't sit well with a lot of people who said, yeah, the money can go to the fans, but ultimately what these people were competing for was to get even more audience. You had at times a million people concurrently watching this knowing full well that whoever wins is gonna be giving away money to fans,
Starting point is 00:01:44 so they may go and subscribe. But yeah, with that said, I do wanna pass the question up to you, what are your thoughts on this? Because this is ultimately a story that ends in the court of public opinion. Right, do you think this is a big deal or not? Was there cheating involved? Was it just kinda doesn't matter, it was all for fun?
Starting point is 00:01:57 Right, let me know what you're thinking there. Right, so you had that, and then the other bit of creator controversy involved the Ace family. If you're unaware, they have an absolutely massive channel with over 19 million subscribers. And it features former college basketball player Austin McBroom, his wife, Catherine Pais, and their children. And over the years, they've cultivated a super family-friendly channel, though they've had their fair share of controversies. And now, their most recent controversy involves a video that they posted last week. This, because it appears that some footage that was meant to be cut out was left in and kind of gave an accidental behind the scenes.
Starting point is 00:02:26 Ooh, ooh, look at my hair. Good thing I don't have to, no I'm gonna say it, good thing I don't have to be on camera today. Okay. God. My hair looks up, I'm not filming like this. So just go. Okay.
Starting point is 00:02:40 Okay, one, two, three. Hey ASM! Welcome back to our channel, guys. What's going on, Avery? Ooh, look at my hair. Good thing I'm not gonna be on camera today. All right, baby. Today I'm gonna-
Starting point is 00:02:53 Yeah, it appears that this clip was accidentally left in. It was later cut out. Though, of course, the internet is the internet. The clip itself then began to spread on social media. So instantly, a lot of fans, and just people in general who came across it, very angry with how he was speaking to her, essentially saying it's very telling that he's so
Starting point is 00:03:07 short barking orders, kind of cursing in front of the kids. And then all of a sudden he has this on-camera personality resulting in people leaving comments like, "'Can't wait for the day Catherine from Ace Family "'leaves Austin and starts her own channel. "'She deserves better.'" Some fans also thinking this clip was left in as kind of a secret message, right?
Starting point is 00:03:21 That video in particular was supposed to be a day in the life of Catherine. And then all of a sudden this clip gets accidentally left in. People were also upset be a day in the life of Catherine, and then all of a sudden this clip gets accidentally left in. People were also upset that this was done in front of the children with one user writing, "'It's scary how the oldest daughter just looks at them "'waiting for them to finish so that she can do
Starting point is 00:03:33 "'the ace family bit. "'She's already trained.' "'This bit was quote accidentally left in a vlog "'about what a day in Catherine's life is like. "'How fitting. "'It's now edited out of the video.'" With people also sharing a ton of compilations showing what appears to be Austin
Starting point is 00:03:44 just being irritable all the time. Though, it should be noted you had a number of their fans defending them, saying, this isn't too serious, y'all are crying about nothing. For their part, the couple defended themselves on Twitter, writing, I hope you guys enjoyed today's super chill vibes, something different, and yes, Austin and I get frustrated
Starting point is 00:03:57 with each other sometimes, it's called marriage. I wish people would stop expecting people to have a perfect life, it's just not realistic. And no relationship is perfect, but the love Catherine and I have for each other makes up for all the small imperfections. And once again, with stories like this, it ultimately ends up being the court of public opinion.
Starting point is 00:04:11 Is that glimpse, that snippet of off-camera personality and conduct, does it highlight something far more nefarious or troubling? Or is it much smaller? Is it just a small glimpse at marriage frustrations, snippiness? So here as well, I would of course love to know your thoughts on this.
Starting point is 00:04:24 And then in I have so many questions news, let's talk about this headline. New Yorker suspends Jeffrey Toobin for Zoom dick incident. Which I will say in a time where it feels like everything has been invented and discovered, it's cool that Toobin decided to make a whole new kind of incident. Right, and if you're unfamiliar with Toobin,
Starting point is 00:04:40 he's a reporter as well as CNN's chief legal analyst. As far as what we know, according to Vice, sources told them he was suspended because he exposed himself during a Zoom call last week between members of the New Yorker and WNYC radio. With Toobin saying in a statement to Motherboard, "'I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake "'believing I was off camera.
Starting point is 00:04:57 "'I apologize to my wife, family, friends, and coworkers.'" With him adding, "'I believed I was not visible on Zoom. "'I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. "'I thought I had muted the Zoom video. And with this, you had a New Yorker spokesperson saying that Toobin was suspended while they investigate the matter. Notably, he has not tweeted since the 13th.
Starting point is 00:05:12 His Condé Nast email has been disabled. Although he did appear on CNN this last Saturday. CNN now saying that Jeff Toobin has asked for some time off while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted. And once again, with this story, I have so many questions. I wanna know what comes from this investigation. How did this happen?
Starting point is 00:05:28 Like think about where your laptop camera is pointing. Was he only dressed from the waist up? And then he was like, oh, I gotta go get a coffee. And then he stood up or was he like walking around his room and he didn't realize? Or did he, thinking the camera was off, like purposefully put it in where it would have been in frame and some sort of weird power, is that even a power move?
Starting point is 00:05:44 Or I guess technically there is a third option that in a completely psychotic move, he just did it and then was like, I thought my camera was off. I don't know, I'm just so confused. I have so many questions, but I think if there is a place that we can end here, I think from now on, we call any Zoom dick incident, pull in a tubing. And actually a literal last minute update to this story
Starting point is 00:06:02 that this just broke as I was about to export today's show. Maybe the phrase pull in a tubing was accidentally too on the nose because the vice article has now been updated with claims that he was actually masturbating during the call, which if true, what the fuck bro? My guy, what? Yeah, that was a thing.
Starting point is 00:06:19 There's probably a better way to end the story, but that's where I'm ending it. And the last thing that we're gonna talk about today is this situation around Hunter Biden. Did we just get blocked or suppressed? So things with this story that you've probably heard, it's real, it's completely fake, it's misinformation meant to meddle with the election.
Starting point is 00:06:33 Also social media sites are trying to censor it and scrub it off of their platforms, but here let's try and start at the beginning. Right, and that brings us back to this last Wednesday when the New York Post publishes an exclusive article titled, "'Smoking Gun Email' Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian Businessmen to VP Dan.'"
Starting point is 00:06:46 And that article makes a few key allegations. The first claim being that in April of 2015, Hunter Biden introduced his father, who was then vice president, to a top executive at Burisma Holdings. Right, one of the largest independent natural gas producers in Ukraine. And that would be notable because of the information
Starting point is 00:07:00 that we already knew before this article. At that point, Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma. Also, because Joe Biden, under the direction of then-President Obama, was the point person in charge knew before this article. At that point, Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma. Also because Joe Biden, under the direction of then President Obama, was the point person in charge of US policy toward Ukraine. And by December of that same year, Joe Biden had begun pressuring Ukrainian officials to fire Ukraine's prosecutor general,
Starting point is 00:07:16 who had inherited an investigation into Burisma after taking up the position. And while many Ukrainian and US officials said he had basically let that investigation fizzle out, he did say that he had made specific plans to investigate Burisma that included interrogations and other crime investigation procedures into all members of the executive board,
Starting point is 00:07:31 including Hunter Biden. With that prosecutor being eventually fired in March of 2016, in part after Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine. Though notably, his removal was also something that many other world leaders had been pushing for. And in fact, according to reports, Biden was just carrying out an established foreign policy that had been developed by the State Department
Starting point is 00:07:48 and coordinated with the European Union and other international institutions. And this over concerns that the prosecutor was not aggressively pursuing investigations and was protecting corrupt oligarchs. You even have the former foreign minister of Ukraine saying, "'I heard it in every meeting "'with the international financial institutions,
Starting point is 00:08:03 "'especially the IMF and World Bank. It was not just Biden, clearly. As far as how the Post says that they obtained the information that Biden had met with a top executive, they cited an email where an advisor to the board of Burisma thanked Hunter for giving him an opportunity to meet Joe Biden. The Post then went on to call this a blockbuster correspondence, since Joe Biden has consistently denied any claims of a conflict of interest, and even publicly responded to questions about the accusations with, I've never spoken to my son about drugs.
Starting point is 00:08:28 With the post also saying that the email was contained in what they called a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop, which they said included among other things, a video that appears to show Hunter smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, numerous other sexually explicit images, as well as other photos from Hunter Biden's childhood and vacations.
Starting point is 00:08:44 According to the post, that laptop also contains several other notable emails, including one from 2014 that appears to show that same advisor from that first email attempting to persuade Hunter into using his political leverage to help Burisma, as well as another from 2014 that the post says is evidence of Hunter leveraging connections with his father to boost his pay from Burisma.
Starting point is 00:09:00 Now, regarding that laptop, the post claims that it was dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware in April of last year. Notably here, they claim that the person was dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware in April of last year. And notably here, they claim that the person who dropped off the laptop never came back for it, even though the owner told the post that he had repeatedly tried to contact them. Also saying that while the owner said
Starting point is 00:09:13 that he could not positively identify if the customer had been Hunter Biden, he said the laptop did bear a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation. Right, so the post seemed to suggest that Hunter Biden was the person who dropped off the laptop. With the post saying that the shop owner then alerted the feds of the existence of the data on the laptop and in December, the FBI seized the computer.
Starting point is 00:09:29 However, the shop owner also says that he made a copy of the hard drive that he then gave to Robert Costello, who is Rudy Giuliani's lawyer. Former Trump advisor, Steve Bannon, then reportedly tips off the post about the existence of this hard drive in late September. And on October 11th, Giuliani reportedly provides the post with a copy.
Starting point is 00:09:44 And the timing of all this is incredibly notable because this information and these claims went public only a few weeks after a Republican led Senate investigation cleared Joe Biden of any wrongdoing whatsoever relating to how he handled US policy in Ukraine while his son was working for Burisma. Right, the worst that could be said from this investigation was that Hunter cashed in on his father's name
Starting point is 00:10:03 to get the lucrative Burisma job. With Republicans claiming that that led to awkward situations with career diplomats in the region who needed to be aware of his job. Although all 10 witnesses that were part of this investigation disputed that characterization. And while it was found to be unclear if Hunter's role at Burisma affected US policy in any other ways,
Starting point is 00:10:19 again, the Republican led investigation concluded that Joe Biden didn't do anything improper. You know, with the release of this article, almost immediately doubts began to surface. One of the most focused on reactions though, was we saw both Facebook and Twitter taking steps to limit the spread of this article. With the Washington Post even noting how unusual
Starting point is 00:10:35 of a move this was because rarely have those platforms sanctioned a traditional media outlet. For example, Facebook originally reduced the story spread while it was checked by independent fact checkers. And after surging to number three on its US trending page, Twitter marked the link to the article as potentially unsafe before blocking it altogether. They then went several steps further,
Starting point is 00:10:52 temporarily locking the accounts of the post, as well as White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany and the Trump campaign, saying that those accounts violated its rules on publishing hacked material. And it very much appears that a lot of this response is tied to how social media sites, especially Facebook and Twitter fumbled when handling the 2016 Hillary Clinton email dump, right?
Starting point is 00:11:08 Both of them likely worried about disinformation swaying the election and being complicit in the spread But with all this we saw people like President Trump saying so terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of smoking gun Emails related to sleepy Joe Biden and his son Hunter in the New York Post It is only the beginning for them There is nothing worse than a corrupt politician.'" With Trump also adding that the law which allows social media companies to remove content from their platform should be repealed.
Starting point is 00:11:30 Right, Trump here essentially chalking this up to politically motivated censorship in an attempt to protect Joe Biden. With Trump campaign spokesperson, Tim Murtaugh, also saying, "'This was a breathtaking level of political meddling "'and nothing short of an attempt to rig the election.'" Now, with all of that said,
Starting point is 00:11:42 we should also talk about the actual doubts surrounding this article. For one, so far, as of recording this video, the New. Now, with all of that said, we should also talk about the actual doubts surrounding this article. For one, so far, as of recording this video, the New York Post is the only media outlet that has obtained the data from this alleged hard drive. This because requests to access the hard drive have not been granted to any other outlets. And as the Washington Post notes,
Starting point is 00:11:57 the New York Post published PDF printouts of several emails allegedly taken from the laptop by the quote, smoking gun email. It shows only a photo made the day before the story was posted. With a disinformation expert telling them there is no header information, no metadata. All right, so that's a red flag to many
Starting point is 00:12:11 and we're in this situation where no other source has had the chance to independently verify any of this information. And on top of that, you also have people who are skeptical pointing back to that alleged email the New York Post said was evidence of Hunter leveraging connections with his father to boost his pay. And there they note that Hunter appears to contradict
Starting point is 00:12:25 the idea that he could influence his father saying, "'What he will say and do is out of our hands.' In other words, it could be a really good thing or it could end up creating too great an expectation. We need to temper expectations regarding that visit." Also in a separate article, the New York Post alleges that a public relations company that worked for Burisma was allowed to take part
Starting point is 00:12:42 in a conference call about an upcoming 2015 Ukraine visit by Joe Biden. However, as critics have said, it's not like the details of that call are a secret. A full transcript of that call has been on the White House website since 2015. You also have a campaign spokesperson for Joe Biden saying that a review of Biden's schedules from 2015 show no record
Starting point is 00:12:57 of any such meeting between him and the Burisma advisor. With Michael Carpenter, Biden's former policy advisor in 2015 saying, "'I was with the vice president "'in all of his meetings on Ukraine. "'He never met with this guy. "'In fact, I had never heard of this guy "'until the New York Post story broke.'"
Starting point is 00:13:10 Similarly, the Post cites another email where that advisor tells Hunter Biden that he was going to share information with the US embassy in Kyiv, as well with the office of then special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, Amos Hochstein. However, since the publication of this alleged email,
Starting point is 00:13:23 we've seen Hochstein saying, "'I know for a fact he never contacted me or my office. "'I provided every record to the Senate investigation "'and no mention of this guy was ever made. "'No emails, no correspondence. "'I know almost every player in the energy sector in Ukraine. "'I never met this guy.'" Now, even with all of that,
Starting point is 00:13:38 let's just pretend for a moment that Joe Biden did meet this Burisma advisor. The thing there is that the context of how they met would be critically important. And as multiple critics of the post have noted, it is possible that Joe Biden shook hands with or briefly met that advisor while in an event. In fact, in another situation altogether,
Starting point is 00:13:52 Hunter Biden once helped arrange for a potential business partner to shake hands with his father in the lobby of a Beijing hotel. Right, and so a big part of what they're saying here is that if Joe Biden did meet with this advisor, which as of right now, they're saying he didn't, it would also be important to consider any context of the situation, how long they talked,
Starting point is 00:14:06 if what they talked about was anything substantial. And all of that criticism, the doubts, they were then compounded yesterday when we saw multiple outlets reporting that this smoking gun article, it was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it according to two Post employees.
Starting point is 00:14:19 With that reporter allegedly being Bruce Golding, who has been at the Post since 2007. With him reportedly refusing to allow his byline, specifically because he had concerns over the article's credibility. But reportedly, it wasn't just him. At least one other person aside from him also refused to put their name on the story.
Starting point is 00:14:32 Now, just looking at the article, the byline does show two authors, Emma Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge. Notably, Morris is a deputy politics editor at the Post, with this being her first byline at the paper since she joined this year after leaving as an associate producer on Sean Hannity's show on Fox News.
Starting point is 00:14:46 And the other author, Fon Rouge, reportedly had little to do with the article and only found out her name was on it after it was published. Also, according to the New York Times, many Post staff members questioned whether the Post had done enough to verify the authenticity of the hard drive's contents,
Starting point is 00:14:58 with reporters for the Post telling the Intelligencer, "'I think it was very flimsy. "'It's not something that meets my journalistic standards.'" The second reporter adding that the piece should not have been published. You also had other staff members voicing concerns about the article's timing and the reliability of its sources, right?
Starting point is 00:15:11 Those sources of course being Bannon, who's facing federal fraud charges. Giuliani, who said he chose the post because either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out. Which I will say, just kind of sit on that quote for a moment to really drink it in.
Starting point is 00:15:27 They want to fact check claims? Rubbish. In fact, just this morning, we even saw reports that Giuliani first approached Fox News with this story. However, according to two sources who spoke to Mediaite, Fox's news division chose not to run the story until the sourcing and authenticity of those emails could be properly vetted.
Starting point is 00:15:42 That said, for their part, the New York Post has tried to defend their piece. Yesterday, releasing an article titled "'Unverified' is a false excuse for ignoring the Post's Hunter Biden scoops." Their defense, including the fact that multiple outlets have interviewed the computer repair shop owner that got access
Starting point is 00:15:54 to Hunter's alleged hard drive in the first place. Although, of course, no other outlets have been able to access any information from the hard drive directly, which is a pretty key step in independently verifying the information. However, the Post says that this is not an excuse because they posted other images not related to Ukraine. Right, things from Hunter Biden's personal life
Starting point is 00:16:09 that they claim is enough proof that they have access to the hard drive. With the post then calling out other outlets saying that they hide behind anonymous sources. It's particularly rich that the New York Times has fixated on the unverified excuse since it spent much of the Trump era offering supposed dirt from anonymous sources,
Starting point is 00:16:23 which by definition makes the info unverifiable. Now, with all that said, of course, it brings us to the big question of, well, why now? Right, I mean, well, the obvious reason is that the election is now just two weeks away. So you have critics pointing out that this could be intended to be an October surprise, whether real or not, right?
Starting point is 00:16:37 Because regardless, if this is just misinformation, it could impact the election, even if after the election it was found to not be valid. Right, and with this, there are of course, a lot of questions regarding the timeline. Right, and with this, there are of course a lot of questions regarding the timeline. Right, if Giuliani got this hard drive before the Senate investigation into Biden had finished,
Starting point is 00:16:50 if everything on this hard drive was real, it proves something on Joe Biden, why would he just sit on it and then ultimately give it to the Post? And like, that doesn't actually sound like something that makes sense to do. Also, the fact that this came from him at all is a red flag, right?
Starting point is 00:17:02 As has been noted, Giuliani has regularly interacted with a Ukrainian lawmaker who was recently sanctioned by the US Treasury Department as an active Russian agent for over a decade. Notably, the Treasury also pointing out that this lawmaker has engaged in an influence operation to affect the 2020 election. And that's important because the FBI
Starting point is 00:17:16 is now reportedly investigating whether this hard drive is part of a disinformation campaign being pushed by Russia. But to be clear, that news comes from an anonymous congressional source. And currently the FBI has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the investigation and has actually refused to discuss the topic. But still, those allegations were echoed by House
Starting point is 00:17:32 Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, with him claiming over the weekend that this was all part of a Russian smear campaign. But on the opposite side of that, while speaking on Fox News this morning, Trump's Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, disputed that claim. Let me be clear, the intelligence community doesn't believe that because there's no intelligence
Starting point is 00:17:48 that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden's laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign. However, according to a senior intelligence official who spoke to the Daily Beast, the feds are still working to determine
Starting point is 00:18:01 if this laptop is part of a Russian disinformation campaign. And beyond that, other intelligence officials have also said that the way that the Hunter Biden materials have been packaged, it is fully in line with something the Russians would do to create chaos in the election. With a spokesperson for Schiff also noting that the intelligence community has publicly said that Russia is trying to interfere in the election to help Trump. And adding, the new wave of attacks we are seeing are consistent with the false and unsubstantiated narratives that the president, his personal lawyer, and a sanctioned Russian agent have been pushing
Starting point is 00:18:28 for well over a year. And to that point, we have also seen Ratcliffe's own record being attacked, being called by some as a Trump loyalist who has come under withering criticism from intelligence veterans for manipulating intelligence to aid his boss's reelection. Others also noting that Trump had withdrawn Ratcliffe's nomination for DNI back in 2019,
Starting point is 00:18:43 but then Trump re-nominated him in 2020 after he served on Trump's impeachment team, with many pointing to the fact that the reason his nomination was withdrawn in the first place was because Senate Democrats and members of the intelligence community said that he was too partisan for a nonpartisan position, with several Democrats specifically accusing him
Starting point is 00:18:58 of actively spreading information that the intelligence community had deemed to be false regarding Russia and the 2016 election, as well as promoting debunked conspiracies about the following investigation and calling for the prosecution of Trump's political enemies. But ultimately that is where we are with this story
Starting point is 00:19:12 as of right now. It is something that I'll be keeping an eye on though, reporting on a slight delay. As important as it is to talk about things, it is also important to not accidentally use your platform to promote things that are not verified. Everyone in this industry has, or will at some point be burned by jumping on something too soon.
Starting point is 00:19:27 But yeah, with all that said, I then want to pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts on this? And that is where I'm going to end today's show. As always, thank you for being a part of my daily dives into the news. Also, if you're new here, you want to join the family, hit that subscribe button, tap that bell.
Starting point is 00:19:40 Hey, maybe even text me at 813-213-4423. But with that said, of course, as always, my name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love yo faces and I'll see you tomorrow.

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