The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 1.22 New Phone HACK Claims, Tulsi Gabbard SUES Hillary Clinton For $50 Million, Jeff Bezos, &

Episode Date: January 22, 2020

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Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you're having a fantastic Wednesday. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. Buckle up, hit that like button, and let's just jump into it. And the first thing we need to talk about today is why Jeff Bezos is in the news. This is a story that kind of starts out salacious, then has escalated, and has really hit an incredibly concerning point. For some of this, we're going to have to backtrack through the last year so we really understand the weight of today's report. But you have Jeff Bezos. He owns Amazon, the Washington Post. the last year, so we really understand the weight of today's report. But, right, you have Jeff Bezos. He owns Amazon, The Washington Post. And last year, you might remember,

we talked about the National Enquirer leaking text messages between Bezos and a woman named Lauren Sanchez, who he was allegedly having an affair with. Right, and after that, we saw Bezos himself put up a Medium post where he argued that the leaks were a politically motivated hit job because he owns The Washington Post. And so with this, he accused the National Enquirer

of extortion and blackmail. And in this post, Bezos described the relationship between President Trump and David Pecker, who owns AMI, which owns the National Enquirer. And as you might remember, AMI was the company that bought former Playboy model Karen McDougal's story, alleging that she had an affair with Trump for $150,000, and doing so so the story wouldn't go out,

otherwise known as catch and kill. Bezos also mentioned that Pecker and his company have been investigated for various actions they've taken on behalf of the Saudi government. Also citing a New York Times excerpt that said that Trump invited Pecker to a White House dinner and Pecker brought a quote guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia.

Bezos then goes on to say that because of his ownership of the Post, people the newspaper covers might conclude I am their enemy, adding President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, the post's essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.

Also adding that there were several investigations into how his texts were obtained and that he was also launching his own investigation, writing, several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is apoplectic about our investigation. For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve."

Bezos then continued saying that AMI told him that they had more of his messages and photos and they would publish them if he didn't stop his investigation. He then provided what appeared to be a series of copy-paste emails from AMI, one of those emails describing the content they would leak, this including a dick pic and a naked selfie

in a bathroom of Bezos, as well as several personal pictures of Sanchez, and also including another email containing a list of proposed terms from AMI, which basically said they would not publish a content if Bezos agreed to a number of things. Things including making a public statement affirming that they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AM's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces. But of course Bezos refused to both end his investigation or back down from the claim that AMI's coverage was politically motivated. And so we ended upzos refused to both end his investigation or back down from the claim that AMI's coverage was politically motivated.

And so we ended up seeing as the end of last March, Gavin DeBecker, the man Bezos chose to lead his investigation, published an op-ed in the Daily Beast. And there he said he had concluded the investigation and handed it over to federal officials. And while he wrote that he would not disclose details, he did confirm one key fact from the investigation,

saying, our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos' phone and gained private information. As of today, it is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details. But he did say that when AMI was threatening to release the photos and texts, they sent him a contract that would require him

to publicly say that his investigation had concluded that there was not, quote, "'any form of electronic eavesdropping or hacking' in their news gathering process." And after the Medium post, the Op-Ed, Saudi Arabia denied the allegations and so did AMI, with AMI specifically telling CNN in a statement that it only had one source, Sanchez's brother,

and that there was no involvement by any other third party whatsoever. But Lauren Sanchez's brother, Michael Sanchez, has repeatedly denied giving AMI all of the pictures noted in the email, specifically the naked selfies of Bezos. With all of that, it brings us to the reason we're talking about this today. This morning, United Nations human rights investigators

said in a statement that they received information that suggested a WhatsApp account belonging to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS or Mohammed Bonesaw, some call him. Not me, not I, it's 2020, it's all positivity for me. That account belonging to that man was used to hack Bezos in 2018. In the statement, the investigators said,

"'The information we have received "'suggests the possible involvement of the Crown Prince "'and surveillance of Mr. Bezos in an effort to influence, "'if not silence, the Washington Post's reporting "'on Saudi Arabia.' They say these allegations support reports of targeted surveillance of received opponents by the Saudis.

These allegations are relevant as well to ongoing evaluation of claims about the Crown Prince's involvement in the 2018 murder of Saudi and Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, and adding that the report was based on forensic analysis from Bezos' and De Becker's investigation, with the experts also calling

for further investigations of the matter. And in an analysis of the report, the UN experts found that in April of 2018, Bezos and MBS exchanged phone numbers that corresponded with their WhatsApp accounts. And then a month later, a message from the Crown Prince account is sent to Mr. Bezos through WhatsApp.

The message is an encrypted video file. It is later established with reasonable certainty that the video's downloader infects Mr. Bezos' phone with malicious code. And reportedly, according to the assessment seen by the UN experts, a massive amount of information was exported from Bezos' phone starting within code. And reportedly, according to the assessment seen by the UN experts, a massive amount of information was exported from Bezos' phone starting within hours

of the video being sent. And adding that the data spike continued undetected over some months and altogether, more than six gigabytes of data was stolen. The report then continues to go through the timeline of events, noting Khashoggi's death on October 2nd, 2018, and writing that a month later, a single photograph is texted to Mr. Bezos

from the Crown Prince's WhatsApp account along with a sardonic caption. It is an image of a woman resembling the woman with whom Bezos is having an affair months before the Bezos affair was known publicly. All right, so that is a massive deal, right? The details of the affair aren't public yet. It seems like MBS could have gotten the information

from Bezos' texts with Sanchez. While it doesn't directly tie AMI or the National Enquirer to the hack or to the Saudis, if true, it would mean that MBS had in his possession text messages and photos sent between Bezos and Sanchez, this including potentially incriminating photos like the ones mentioned in the AMI email. Now, of course, important to note,

that doesn't rule out the fact that AMI did receive the text from Sanchez's brother, like they claim, but it does, at the very least, raise some serious red flags given Pecker's relationship with Saudi Arabia, especially when paired with Bezos' allegation in his medium post that AMI was trying to kill this sort of Saudi Arabia angle of the story.

But hey, let's say even without AMI, the claim of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia hacked Jeff Bezos and potentially tried to blackmail him. This because of the post coverage of the Khashoggi killing, it's huge on its own. Following these reports coming out, Saudi Arabia of course has denied the allegations. It's on the Saudi embassy tweet.

Recent media reports that suggest the kingdom is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos' phone are absurd. We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out. Yeah, ultimately that's where we are right now. I mean, as far as my opinion, I think we just take Saudi Arabia's word for it. It feels like their government has been really upfront

and honest about any kind of international scandal. Let's see if it follows the same path as Khashoggi. Remember they went from like, who's that? I don't know, was he even there? To, okay, yeah, he definitely got murdered, but MBS wasn't a part of it? So in this case, what would that go? It would go from, this claim is absurd.

Okay, someone did it, but they grabbed MBS's phone. Okay, yes, MBS did install a virus, but it wasn't to steal anything. It was just to send Bezos memes, sneak memes on his phone, you know, a joke. MBS stands for Muhammad Bean Silly. That's stupid. Anyway, this story is genuinely horrifying.

And if anything, I think it really does shine a spotlight on just how vulnerable, not only people, but whole institutions can be. Yeah, of course, with this story, I would love to know your thoughts. And then let's talk about Netflix and a story I think that touches on the streaming space in general.

Yesterday, Netflix shared their fourth quarter earnings report, which may not sound that interesting or exciting unless you're Anna Akana getting hyped about Netflix on Instagram. But even if you're not a Netflix stockholder or a Netflix customer, some of the updates they threw in their report were very interesting. First off, and this seems like a massive red flag to me,

Netflix said that it would be changing the way that it counts views. Right now, they count a view based on an account watching 70% of a single episode of a series or of an entire film. Right, so like if you watched most of the movie Sixth Sense, but you had to stop before the end and you're like, ah, I can't wait to see what happens in this movie

about a totally alive child psychologist. Right, your view still counted, even though you technically didn't get to the end. But Netflix says that they believe that this model no longer makes sense when they have so many titles that vary dramatically in length, right? This includes shows that are as short as 15 minutes

and movies over 130. And in their letter, they say, we are now reporting on households that chose to watch a given title. And in the letter, they say that they're changing a view to when an account, quote, chose to watch and did watch for at least two minutes, long enough to indicate the choice was intentional'

"'is the precise definition.'" And they then compare this model to the way BBC iPlayer, the most popular section of the New York Times, and YouTube views are structured. Right, but still a massive and dramatic turn for the company. And while I do think the argument can be made

that it kind of brings Netflix in line with others, it feels like the larger move here is to inflate their numbers. Right, they even include an example saying that on the old metric, 33 million people watched their original docu-series, Our Planet. But with the new metric, that number goes up to 45 million.

That's meaningful, it's substantial, it happens to coincide with Netflix sharing more and more of their view counts on series and movies. You know, until recently, Netflix has notoriously not shared numbers, then kind of cherry picked. Now they're sharing more and more, but they're also changing the system.

And part of that may also be connected to the increase in actual competition in the streaming space. And understand, I'm not saying like Netflix is wounded. Looking specifically at customer growth, Netflix did well overseas, adding 8.8 million users, well over their forecast of 7.6 million.

But in the United States and Canada, where they're more saturated, they didn't fare so well. They were projected to add 600,000 subscribers, but only added 420,000. And they say this is quote, probably due to our recent price changes and to US competitive launches. And as far as what they're referencing there, they're these small indie companies,

I think it's called Apple and Disney, that launched their own streaming services in November. And so you have Netflix admitting this could be why their growth here in the United States wasn't so strong. Right, and with these two, you had Apple TV Plus sort of being the smaller of the two competitors regarding success. Though, they still did have decent success

with the morning show. But as of right now, the bigger and much more obvious threat is Disney Plus. I mean, according to reports, they ended up signing 10 million subscribers on the first day. They've already also had a fan hit with the Mandalorian. Baby Yoda coming for Netflix's throat. Although, you know, just to be fair, the numbers from Disney Plus aren't as clear yet,

especially in a way to show a concrete comparison to Netflix. But this study from Parodanalytics does put the success of the Mandalorian into some perspective. Right, just by mid to late November, the show was in higher demand than several Netflix hits like The Crown and even Stranger Things. Though, it seems like Netflix isn't too afraid

of studies like this and in their own report propped up their own content. For example, a lot of their pride resided in their new show, The Witcher, which came out on December 20th. In the report, they say the show is, quote, "'Tracking to be one of our biggest season one TV series ever' with 76 million member households

choosing to watch it in its first four weeks." But an important note here, that appears to be under Netflix's new metric of view count, so at least two minutes. They then, and I'll say kind of in advance, it feels awkward and misleading that they did this. They shared and compared Google Analytics of searches for their show, The Mandalorian,

The Morning Show, and Jack Ryan. One, it's misleading because as Forbes points out, it compares worldwide interest when The Mandalorian is only available in a handful of regions, whereas, you know, Netflix is just worldwide. And as Forbes points out, when you change the parameter to just the United States, you get a far different chart. Also, if anything, when you look at these charts,

it feels like there's another argument to be made. Maybe releasing an entire season, right, something that people are going to binge might not be the best model. As a consumer, I love it. But just looking at the data, right, the Mandalorian got weekly releases. And yeah, if anything, it feels like this highlights

how big of a success the Mandalorian was for Disney. Yeah, ultimately, that's a story, that's a change. It's gonna be fascinating to just kind of watch this space over the next few years. I mean, you have new competitors still trying to come out. With that said, what are your thoughts on this? Do you feel like this is just Netflix trying to fluff things up,

or it actually is bringing them in line? Any and all thoughts, I'd love to hear from you in those comments down below. Then, in a quick update around a story we covered yesterday about the new outbreak of coronavirus. According to reports, the number of confirmed cases in China is now up to 470 and the number of deaths is at 17. Also, as far as what's being done to try to contain this situation,

it's being reported now that Wuhan, which has an estimated population of anywhere between nine to 11 million people, is having its transportation shut down. According to reports, bus, subway, ferry, and long distance transport networks will be suspended. Those living in the city have been told not to leave and the airport and train stations will be closed

to outgoing passengers. We've also seen China advising against travel to Wuhan. And as far as any other international restrictions or reactions, right now we're waiting. As we mentioned yesterday, the World Health Organization's Emergency Committee is meeting today in Geneva. So right now we're waiting to see if they think

that this situation constitutes a public health emergency of international concern. But that's where we are now. Obviously this is still a developing situation and we'll be keeping an eye on it. And then do not check your calendar. It is not 2016, it is still 2020, but we have more Hillary Clinton news.

Of course, yesterday we talked about Hillary's interview, that documentary, the Bernie bashing. Following the public reaction, she kind of sort of snarkily walked her statement back, tweeting, I thought everyone wanted my authentic unvarnished views. But to be serious, the number one priority for our country and world is retiring Trump.

And as I always have, I will do whatever I can to support our nominee. But the Bernie stuff is not why I'm talking about Clinton today. Rather, it is now the Tulsi Gabbard stuff. As of this morning, Representative Gabbard is suing Hillary Clinton for defamation and is seeking $50 million.

And as far as what the document says or the defamatory statement, it includes on October 17th, 2019, Clinton was a guest on a podcast and Clinton stated the following regarding, quote, "'Somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary "'who they are grooming to be the third party candidate.' "'Quote, she's the favorite of the Russians.

"'They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. And that's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she's also a Russian asset. Yeah, she's a Russian asset. And then adding the next day, October 18th, Clinton doubled down on the defamatory statements, noting a CNN reporter asked Clinton's official spokesman,

Nick Merrill, whether the defamatory statements were about Tulsi. Clinton's spokesman responded, quote, "'If the nesting doll fits.'" And he continued, "'This is not some outlandish claim. "'This is reality.'" Now regarding these claims,

it does feel appropriate to look back to what Nick Merrill said after this story initially came out. And essentially he had responded that news outlets had been misreporting about the podcast, tweeting, "'On Friday, the New York Times did a piece "'about a podcast Secretary Clinton did with David Plouffe.

"'They incorrectly quoted her saying that the, quote, "'Russians were, quote, grooming a candidate running "'in the Democratic primary. "'They rightfully fixed it to reflect "'that she was talking about the GOP.'" Right, so essentially the response was they was the GOP, not Russians, though seemingly standing by what they're saying is a separate statement

that she is a favorite of the Russians. And Nick Merrill in this Twitter thread goes on to say, and yeah, she, in reference to Hillary Clinton, said that certain fringe members of the Democratic and Green parties are assets to the Russians. Well, guess what, folks? That's true. She didn't call anyone a spy,

as some are wrongly asserting for their own political gain. Right, and so that was part of the response then. As far as his response now, he responded to the lawsuit saying, that's ridiculous, in reference to the lawsuit. Yeah, ultimately, that's where we are with the situation right now, right?

It was just filed today. I wanted to provide some background, what both sides are claiming. And of course, I'd love to know your thoughts regarding this latest development in those comments down below. And that is where I'm going to end today's show. Thank you for watching my little daily weekday news show.

Also, if you're looking for more to watch, maybe you missed yesterday's show. We're just kicking things back up again this year. You can click or tap right there to watch that. Or maybe you want some more news, click or tap right there. 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.