The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 2.20 Andrew Tate Threatens Accuser For $300M, Leaked Texts Expose Fox News, Livvy Dunn, OXFAM vs Davos

Starting point is 00:00:00 Andrew Tate's threatening alleged victims with a $300 million lawsuit, new Libby Dunn creepiness, more kids books are being censored, new leaked text just exposed, all the liars over Fox News, the creepy part of Japan is changing, we're gonna talk about all of that and so much more on today's brand new Philip DeFranco show shot from a nondescript bedroom.

Starting point is 00:00:18 So buckle up, hit that like button to show love for still putting out a show on a travel day, and let's just jump into it. Starting with a huge update around Andrew Tate, some describing the situation as him pursuing justice, others saying it's his desperate ploy to intimidate his alleged victims. Because reports are coming out that Tate and his brother Tristan sent a cease and desist back in December to at least one woman who claims that the brothers trafficked and raped her, and saying that if she didn't retract her claims, they'd sue her and her parents for 300 million dollars. Now what's currently unclear is whether this letter was sent before or after the arrests. With that happening back on December 29th, and currently, both brothers are still behind bars

Starting point is 00:00:51 in Romania, authorities identifying six potential female victims so far. But of course, throughout all this, we've seen the Tates repeatedly claiming over and over that they're innocent. And this latest news appearing to be one of the steps in kind of the narrative that Andrew Tate was being framed. Because according to the BBC, the brothers are now actively pursuing those defamation claims against that woman. Though, and it's really important to note here, the woman's lawyer has argued that this letter is just a bold-faced intimidation tactic, saying that the Tates just want to shut her up and keep her from spilling damning testimony at their trial. And with that, another one of the lawyers representing two of the witnesses in this investigation said they've already been the target of slut-shaming,

Starting point is 00:01:21 doxing, and even death threats by Tate's followers. And that lawyer adding, they're scared to death. They're both in hiding. They feel they can't settle anywhere because people are trying to find them. But for now, that's where we are. We'll continue to keep our eyes on this and wait for what's really just been a continued slow trickle of information. But with that, I will ask, what are your thoughts regarding the $300 million lawsuit? And then, has Bokeh gone too far or are people just losing their minds? That's the question that people are debating with this whole Roald Dahl controversy that exploded over the weekend. Rizadal is the famed children's book author who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda.

Starting point is 00:01:51 And recently, when the new editions of all his classics hit bookstores, readers noticed something was different about them. And as it turns out, publisher Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Random House, they retrospectively edited the dead author's work to make him less offensive for modern readers, with most of the changes relating to race, gender, weight, and mental health. For example, Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was previously called enormously fat, now he's just called enormous.

Starting point is 00:02:12 Also, every mention of fat as well as ugly has been removed from the books. You have any reference to females being removed with women being put in its place, gender-neutral terms often being preferred instead, so now oompa-loompas are small people, not small men. But they also didn't just change wording, In some cases, they even add entirely new sentences. Like in The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs now ends with the line, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. Now, in its defense, Puffin says it hired so-called sensitivity readers to comb the

Starting point is 00:02:40 text and that any changes were small and carefully considered, adding that it's normal to re-release later editions with revisions, and they're seeking to make Dahl's work more accessible to all readers. But with this, many people are up in arms, with big literary names like Salman Rushdie tweeting, Another person arguing, kids liked Roald Dahl because he's the weird kid in the playground who wants to show you a box full of worms and slugs. Trying to rewrite him into a preacher of didactic virtue is going to ring inevitably falls to the spirit of the books. And so with that, of course, I'd love to know your thoughts. Personally, I think the censorship and the changes are stupid. Like, I understand the

Starting point is 00:03:19 desire to make something more accessible, but you're changing what it is. It is a story who was written by a certain person at a certain place at a certain time. I think in general, I think this is the edge of a coffee table that doesn't need to be padded. But that said, I'm just one guy, so I want to know your thoughts. What do you think about the situation, whether you agree or disagree with me? And then Japan started to catch up with the rest of the developed world. And to clarify, I don't mean things like standard of living or economic success or public transit. Oh my god, their trains are so cool. But rather, I'm talking about some of their laws.

Starting point is 00:03:48 Because a panel from the Japanese Ministry of Justice is moving to recommend that the country's age of consent be raised to 16. Because, creepy fact about Japan, it currently has the lowest age of consent in the developed world at just 13 years old. And so this decision is part of a plan to overhaul the country's sex laws, and also includes provisions that would criminalize grooming. Also, to be fair, it's not a completely black and white situation, because while 13 is the national age of consent, most prefectures have ordinances in place that ban lewd acts with people that young. However, and this is a key thing, it was not a rape charge and carried a far lower prison sentence. These changes will also finally, finally expand the definition of rape to include acts committed by drugging someone or getting them way too drunk. And that's an absolutely massive step forward because the law as currently written, it requires the victims to not only prove that they did not provide consent, but also demonstrate

Starting point is 00:04:32 that there was an assault or intimidation that made it completely impossible to resist. And so what all of this also means is that it will now be seven EU countries that have the lowest age of consent at just 14. Although again, to be fair, many of those explicitly ban sexual activities between minors and adults outside of a certain age gap, right? The so-called Romeo and Juliet laws. And it'll be interesting to see how things continue to change, right? If you look at most U.S. states, the number is around 16, though that is slowly shifting towards an 18-year-old standard.

Starting point is 00:04:57 Also, with this story, I do want to be clear, if you see this and you just start looking up the age of consent laws in different places because you want to prey on minors, you're a fu- Weirdos doesn't even cover it. You're a predator. People like that are actively pursuing people who are not mature enough to fully understand what it is to consent. And so to jump back to the main story, Japan, at the very least, please pass these fucking laws. 13? Are you fucking insane? And then, I think most of us know that most Fox News is bullshit.

Starting point is 00:05:23 Even the people that are peddling the bullshit. These leaked messages, actually seeing them, like it puts your jaw on the floor. It's that these text messages come in the weeks surrounding election night 2020 when Fox made itself one of the first outlets to call the election for Biden, which of course enraged Trump and his followers who jumped to more extreme competitors like Newsmax and OAN instead. So to bid to win those people back, Fox hosts turned on the fire hose and let the bullshit fly. With stars like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham either promoting conspiracy theories themselves or uncritically platforming guests who would. And one bullshit theory in particular, the Dominion voting machines were rigged. It bit them in the ass later as

Starting point is 00:05:57 Dominion sued Fox for defamation. And so now that $1.6 billion lawsuit is still unfolding and the filings have already revealed how many Fox hosts disbelieved privately what they were feeding their audience publicly. With Hannity saying of Sidney Powell, a guest frequently brought on to smear Dominion, that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second. And then adding about Trump, he's acting like an insane person. As for Tuck, fuck, he texted Ingram that Sidney Powell is lying, by the way, I caught her, it's insane. Also adding that she is a, quote, fucking bitch. And Ingram saying Sidney is a complete nut, No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy. To which

Starting point is 00:06:28 Tucker responds, our viewers are good people and they believe it. But Tucker then gets even more cynical when he sees a tweet by a Fox reporter fact-checking Trump's false claims about Dominion, with him texting his co-host saying, please get her fired. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It's measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. And then shortly afterward, like magic, poof, the tweet disappears like it never happened. You also have Bill Salmon, Fox's managing editor in Washington, quoted as saying, it's remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things. As well as Fox president Jay Wallace saying about Hosaloo Dobbs, the North Koreans do a more nuanced show than him. And a producer also saying of Dobbs, Jesus Christ,

Starting point is 00:07:03 does anyone do a fucking simple Google search or read emails? And another producer texting, this Dominion shit is giving me a fucking aneurysm. With it finally going all the way to the tippity-top to Rupert Murdoch, head of the Fox Corporation, who called Trump's election denialism really crazy stuff. So if you're ever wondering whether some right-wing pundit or politician actually believes the insane bullshit they are spewing, you now know the answer for probably a majority of them. It's fiction over fact because it's money over values. And then Elon Muskification of social media is underway, with Mark Zuckerberg over the weekend announcing that the company is rolling out MetaVerified, which he described as, quote, a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts

Starting point is 00:07:42 claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support. With that service set to start at $11.99 per month for web users and $14.99 a month for iOS. It'll be rolled out this week in New Zealand and Australia, and other countries will follow soon. But I met a spokesperson saying it'll be expanded to the US in a matter of weeks. And I call this the Muskification of social media because, of course, you know, you have Twitter Blue, Elon Musk launching that after he took over the platform, charging people for the blue checks to get certain features, also now to hold onto certain features, which on that note, it'll be interesting to see

Starting point is 00:08:07 if it's as much of a clusterfuck launch with Zuckerberg at the helm as it was with Musk and Twitter. But regardless, we are seeing a trend here. Social media companies that have for so long been free now asking people to pay for their services, as well as, like I said, just holding onto things. The reason I mention that is that Twitter just announced

Starting point is 00:08:22 that it's going to start making everyone pay for two-factor authentication via text message. Only people who pay for Twitter Blue will have that. And I think it also shows more and more, and this isn't a new thing, that social media companies see themselves as something that allows for everyone to be a user-generated content machine who wants to get the views, who wants to get the attention, rather than a thing you just keep up with your friends on. I've always felt like to a certain degree that's kind of always been the case, at least for people under a certain age. Kind of the reason why I think Bo Burnham is so accessible, once again, for people under a certain age, because in general, there is a performer

Starting point is 00:08:51 mindset ingrained because of social media and the internet. Right, because while we gained access to it at different times, like it became just part of who we were. But yeah, for now, we'll have to wait and see if it's adopted and successful or a dumpster fire. And then, I'm not your mommy. That quote is at the center of one of the weirder and random stories that people were requesting over on the text line this weekend. And that line being said by LSU gymnast and TikToker Liddy Dunn. Right, if you're not immediately familiar with her, you may remember we've talked about her recently. Or things like because she's so famous, there were a mob of fans descending on a meet that

Starting point is 00:09:19 she wasn't even participating in. LSU having to announce that it was amping up security, future away meets. And Liddy speaking out and asking people, please do not do this. And while luckily, or at least it appears that way because it's not being talked about as much, it seems like that part has calmed down. There has been general online creepiness on display, to a point that even Fox News was covering it. One of her fans writing mommy on a TikTok she posted, but Dunn reportedly stitching it saying, no, I'm not going to crush your skull with my thighs, also I'm not your mommy. But she then deleted that after it unleashed a whole barrel of monkeys because and this is part of the reason why a lot of creators don't speak about like the really fucking weird and creepy

Starting point is 00:09:52 shit that happens it led to tons of fans spamming her with messages trying to get her to respond you know there was part of my brain when people were recommending we cover this story i was like this is kind of a nothing stupid story but also at the same time it does add another spotlight to the to the weird creepiness of trying to navigate parasocial relationships. If she doesn't speak on it, oh, she's probably fine with it. But if she does speak on it,

Starting point is 00:10:12 some people are gonna think she's overly sensitive. Others are gonna go, oh my God, this is actually a two-way street. And then the creator ends up being on the receiving end of even more of the stuff they were trying to stop, which is why, sure, this is a Livy Dunn story, but it's also not. It's a far more standard story than maybe people realize.

Starting point is 00:10:27 And then, for any of you focused on getting your business off the ground, creating a place to share your homemade goods, new favorite hobby, current obsession, or even a personal blog to get all those thoughts out of your head, I've got a great solution for you thanks to today's fantastic partner and sponsor of the show, Squarespace. You know, I've been partnering with Squarespace for years now, and I have to say, it is easier than ever. There's nothing to install, patch, or upgrade ever. Creating a beautiful website with Squarespace's all-in-one platform has never been so simple. It's incredibly intuitive and easy to use. And a huge thing is with their mobile-optimized websites, your content automatically

Starting point is 00:10:55 adjusts so it looks great on any device. Plus with Squarespace, you get access to all their marketing tools and analytics and their award-winning customer care team via email or live chat 24-7. So go check it out and see why so many others love it see if it's right for you and start your free trial today over at squarespace.com slash phil when you realize you love it make sure you enter an offer code phil to get 10 off your first purchase and then are billionaires at davos farming thousands of lab grown babies in matrix style incubators well fortunately no that's a conspiracy theory that was spread by nutjubs on twitter who got so much traction, Reuters actually had to do a fact check on it. With the origins of it being this video that turns out just to be a concept idea by a filmmaker.

Starting point is 00:11:30 But Davos, on the other hand, is less of a conspiracy theory and more of a conspiracy fact. If you're unaware, it's a yearly conference where a bunch of billionaires, central bankers, heads of state, and Fortune 500 CEOs meet at a luxury ski resort in the Swiss Alps. And there, they discuss how to address all the global economic and political challenges facing our world. But the most recent meeting happening last month, and it went at kind of how you'd expect a hotel full of rich people putting their brains together to go. You had a panel that was basically an infomercial for the Saudi crown prince, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema high-fiving over their support for the filibuster, a group of executives proposing better company culture as the solution to worker discontent rather than, I don't know, paying them more. And despite Davos supposedly being committed to the

Starting point is 00:12:04 Paris Climate Accords, a recent Greenpeace report exposed its gross hypocrisy, finding that about 500 private jets flew in and out of last year's summit, and half of those were short-haul flights under 750 kilometers that could have easily been done by train instead. And my personal favorite, the single shortest flight

Starting point is 00:12:19 being just 13 miles. Motherfucker could have biked there. But the organization that got the most attention for skewering Davos was Oxfam, which released a world inequality report titled Survival of the Richest to coincide with the opening day of Davos, a straight shot across the bow. And it's packed full of mind-boggling facts. So to kind of get a sense of where humanity is at in 2023, we spoke with Nabil Ahmed, Oxfam America's Director of Economic Justice. And he told us that in the decade before the pandemic, the global 1% soaked up roughly half of all new wealth created.

Starting point is 00:12:47 But then COVID arrived, and in the years since then, that number has gotten so much worse. The world's richest one. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.

Starting point is 00:13:10 So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Have grabbed two-thirds of all new wealth created in the world. Do you know what that means? That means they've grabbed twice as much money as the rest of humanity,

Starting point is 00:13:33 the 99% of us put together. That's truly extraordinary. Just to put that into perspective, the top 1% got $26 trillion and everyone else got $16. Or to put it differently, that's $1.7 million in their pockets for every dollar the bottom 90% earn. Which is why Nabil says this level of inequality hasn't been seen in decades, possibly even surpassing the roaring 20s. But it's also important to note that inequality comes in many forms. You've got not just class, but race, gender, nationality. And on inequality between nations, or what Nabil calls colonial inequality, he said things are just getting worse there too. Because, you know, for hundreds of years, we saw the gap

Starting point is 00:14:08 between rich and poor nations widen as a result of that horrific era of slavery and colonialism. Then in the wake of liberation earlier in the 20th century, we saw that gap begin to start to close. And do you know what's happened now as a result of the pandemic? We're seeing that gap between rich and poor nations widen again. Much of that inequality is rooted in the history he just described, which left poor countries dependent on their former colonizers through mechanisms like financial obligations, for example, with absolutely huge chunks of their already meager national budgets used to just pay off the interest on foreign debt rather than go towards health care, education, infrastructure, and other public services. Which

Starting point is 00:14:47 isn't to say like all these countries don't have their own upper crust as well. They do, and more middle-income ones like India, China, and Brazil have their own billionaires. So inequality is everywhere and depending on who you ask some might actually say it's a good thing. We've all heard that metaphor that a rising tide lifts all boats, meaning the wealth trickles down to the poor as well, but Nabil says otherwise. For the first time in 25 years, we've seen extreme wealth and extreme poverty rise simultaneously. Even before the pandemic, we were seeing poverty starting to rise in some places around the world. We were also starting to see the actual rate at which poverty was being reduced.

Starting point is 00:15:25 We were seeing that decelerate. We're putting the alarms out. But to be honest, too few governments around the world took it seriously. We heard a lot of talk. We got a decade of lip service. And then comes the pandemic. Now, according to Oxfam, roughly 820 million people are going hungry, those disproportionately being women and girls. With the cost of living going up, you're seeing that problem get worse and worse, with at least 1.7 billion workers in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, which Oxfam argues is driven by that very inequality. It estimates that excess corporate profits have produced at least half of inflation in the US, UK, and Australia, with Nabil adding that inequality is literally killing people.

Starting point is 00:16:02 Inequality is not academic. We've shown through our work as well that yes, inequality leads to less safe, less healthy, less happy societies. But you know what? Inequality also kills. Inequality contributes to one death every four seconds. So what exactly are the causes of this huge upsurge of wealth to the very top in the last few years?

Starting point is 00:16:26 Well, there, Nabil gave us a few answers, starting with the fiscal and monetary measures taken by governments to revive national economies. Number one, we saw this injection of trillions of dollars into our economies to keep them afloat. But without the guardrails existing in our economy to share that wealth fairly, so much of those trillions ended up lining the pockets of the very rich through a stock market boom, through an asset boom. That's number one.

Starting point is 00:16:53 Then we saw what Nabil calls a corporate smash and grab for profits with opportunistic companies exploiting the rise in prices. Ninety-five food and energy corporations have actually doubled their profits in 2022. At one point, we saw some of the big pharma companies making $1,000 in profit a second. And finally, the pandemic accelerated long-term trends like the weakening of labor unions and the strengthening of monopoly capital. So all of this raises the question, well, how do we get the hell out of this mess? Well, if you ask the Oxfam report, the answer is taxes, taxes, taxes. Though not even across the board. Its recommendations are as follows. First, one-off wealth taxes and windfall taxes to though not even across the board. Its recommendations are as follows. First,

Starting point is 00:17:25 one-off wealth taxes and windfall taxes to end crisis profiteering. Two, permanent taxes on the richest 1% income and capital gains. And three, direct taxes on the wealth of the rich, including on inheritance, property, and land. We're going to talk about that last one because Oxfam actually worked with three other organizations to crunch the numbers, and Nabil told us what they found. Just to give you one example, wealth tax of up to 5% on the world's multimillionaires and billionaires, that could raise about $1.7 trillion. That's enough, to illustrate, to lift about 2 billion people out of poverty. Saying this is a problem not just of political will, but also of imagination. But here's the thing, since the pandemic, none of that's happened.

Starting point is 00:18:03 And in fact, we've slid backwards. As well, our research shows that 95% of countries froze or cut tax rates on the very richest and on corporations during the pandemic, a time when governments needed that money. Now, I know in this story, I've thrown a lot of numbers at you, and it can be very hard to fathom what $26 trillion really means. Which is why I want to give you the words of one of the world's richest men himself, Warren Buffett, who remarked many years ago, there's class warfare all right,

Starting point is 00:18:30 but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war and we're winning. And on that happy note, that's where this Monday show ends. Thank you as always for being a part of my daily dives in the news, being subscribed to the channel. For more news, you gotta know, click here.

Starting point is 00:18:41 But as always, my name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love yo faces and I'll see you tomorrow.

Your Ad Here

The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 2.20 Andrew Tate Threatens Accuser For $300M, Leaked Texts Expose Fox News, Livvy Dunn, OXFAM vs Davos

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.