The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 2.7 WOW! Joe Rogan Deletes 100+ Podcasts After Slur Scandal. What Really Happened?

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Shoutout to Keeps! Go to https://www.keeps.com/defranco to get 50% off your first order of hair loss treatment.  News You Might Have Missed: https://youtu.be/h0Vlr7D6gww TEXT ME! [phone] Get More Phil: https://linktr.ee/PhilipDeFranco – 00:00 - Spotify CEO and Joe Rogan Respond to Latest Wave of Controversy 08:07 - Sponsor 08:51 - Spirit and Frontier Airlines Plan to Merge 10:19 - U.S. Estimates 50,000 Casualties if Russia Launches Large-Scale Invasion 11:09 - Ottawa State of Emergency Declared Amid Trucker Protests – ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ Spotify CEO and Joe Rogan Respond to Latest Wave of Controversy: https://roguerocket.com/2022/02/07/spotify-ceo-joe-rogan-memo/ Spirit and Frontier Airlines Plan to Merge: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/frontier-and-spirit-to-merge-creating-5th-largest-airline-in-us.html U.S. Estimates 50,000 Casualties if Russia Launches Large-Scale Invasion: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/05/ukraine-russia-nato-putin-germany/ Ottawa State of Emergency Declared Amid Trucker Protests: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/protest-against-vaccine-mandates-paralyzing-canada-capital-mayor-says-2022-02-06/ ​​✩ STORIES NOT IN TODAY’S SHOW ✩ National Archives Reportedly Recovers Documents Trump Improperly Took to Mar-a-Lago:  https://roguerocket.com/2022/02/07/national-archives-documents-trump-mar-a-lago-strong/ ——————————     Executive Producer: Amanda Morones Produced by: Cory Ray  Edited by: James Girardier, Julie Goldberg, Maxwell Enright Art Department: Brian Borst, William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Maddie Crichton, Lili Stenn, Ben Wheeler Production Team: Zack Taylor, Emma Leid ———————————— #DeFranco #JoeRogan #TheRock ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup you beautiful bastards, welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show more specifically a Monday show Which is always interesting because I try to stay away from the internet for three days when I'm not doing this show and then I Come back Monday, and I'm like why is everything on fire again? Oh cuz it never stopped being on fire And so on that happy note hit that like button Otherwise, we'll punch you in the throat and let's just jump into it You know the first thing that we're gonna talk about today is this Joe Rogan controversy that has now morphed into this other thing I mean, it's still connected, but yeah. Right, so oversimplified TLDR

to kind of get you to this point. Neil Young asks for his music to be pulled from the platform due to misinformation on it, specifically citing Rogan. Spotify ends up pulling that music. Other artists start speaking up, removing theirs. That leads to Spotify saying it'll add content labels to podcasts discussing COVID, along with a few other steps to address misinformation.

And Rogan, for his part at this time, said, "'Hey, I agree with the labeling. Also, I'm gonna try to invite people with more balanced and differing opinions on the show. But since then, the controversy has now gone past just the misinformation aspect. And this because musician Indie Ari likewise said, hey, I want my music taken down from Spotify,

but in an Instagram story announcing this, sharing a clip of Joe Rogan appearing to use the N-word over 20 times. But the clip, also including him talking about seeing the film Planet of the Apes in a predominantly black neighborhood, and of this, he says, says, okay, take me to 20 times. But the clip also including him talking about seeing the film Planet of the Apes in a predominantly black neighborhood. And of this he says, says, okay, take me to this one.

And the guy goes, okay, goes, is that in a good neighborhood? He's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Guy barely speaks English. He takes us there. We get out and we're giggling. Ooh, we're gonna see Planet of the Apes. We walk into Planet of the Apes.

We walked into Africa, dude. We walked in the door and there was no white people. With Ari saying, hey, she respects the artist leaving Spotify over misinformation, but these clips were the reason for her leaving. And going into the weekend, podcast listeners started to notice that Spotify had seemingly removed 70 episodes

of the Joe Rogan experience. And speculating that those episodes contained the use of the slur, with some reports saying the number of podcasts taken down has gone up even further. And actually on Saturday, Rogan then posted another video to Instagram addressing all of this, starting with a compilation video.

It's a video that's made of clips taken out of context of me, of 12 years of conversations on my podcast, and it's all smushed together, and it looks horrible even to me. Now, I know that to most people, there's no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word,

nevermind publicly on a podcast. And I agree with that now. I haven't said it in years. And saying that for a long time, if the word came up as part of the conversation, he would say it, claiming that in many clips, he was saying it in reference to someone else who had used the word explaining.

I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing, but it's not my word to use. I'm well aware of that now, but for years I used it in that manner. I never used it to be racist because I'm not racist, but whenever you're in a situation where you have to say, I'm not racist, you've f***ed up, and I clearly have f***ed up. Regarding things he said were taken out of context, he talked about the Planet of the Apes story. I did not, nor would I ever say that black people are apes, but it sure sounded like that.

And I immediately afterwards said, that's a racist thing to say. Planet of the Apes wasn't even in Africa. I was just saying, there's a lot of black people there. But then I went on to talk about what a positive experience it was and how much fun it was to go to see this movie in a black neighborhood. It wasn't a racist story, but it sounded terrible.

And with that saying that he can't go back and change what he said as much as he wishes he could and added. But I do hope that this can be a teachable moment for anybody that doesn't realize how offensive that word can be a teachable moment for anybody that doesn't realize how offensive that word can be coming out of a white person's mouth in context or out of context. My sincere and humble apologies. And following the new controversy and Rogan's response,

obviously a lot of people had a lot of opinions. Many of Rogan's supporters saying, "'Hey, Joe, you're fine. "'We can see this is a witch hunt.'" Some saying, "'Hey, way to own your words and grow.'" Others saying, "'Hey, don't even apologize. But others on the other side saying, hey, the whole context thing, that's bullshit.

Accusing Rogan of addressing a few of the instances and not the 70 plus videos that have been removed. With many sharing a specific clip where Rogan is egging on his guests to say the N word. But main thing, you have people firing from all sides, this seeming like the current culture war. What I will say, because we're in the responses and reactions aspect of the story,

one of the most interesting things to me is really the only person that seems to be 100% bulletproof in this story is Joe Rogan. Like everyone else of a certain size seemingly has something to lose and people have been getting hit left and right. For example, I think Spotify is kind of fucked no matter what they do.

We already have a ton of people saying, "'Hey, Spotify doesn't support free speech. They're removing Joe's episodes." Though I'll note something there in a second. The main thing there, let's say they actually did de-platform Joe Rogan. I mean, that reaction's only gonna be amplified. And Rogan, I imagine, would still get paid out

from his contract because he's of such a massive size. I imagine he has no like morality clause in his contract. Like I'm just a fraction of his size and I even get that removed from contracts when people propose it. And then he could just move to another platform, whether it be a mainstream one or something like a Rumble and probably still make crazy money.

In fact, just this morning, Rumble CEO published an offer to Joe saying, "'How about you bring all your shows to Rumble, "'both old and new with no censorship "'for 100 million bucks over four years?' And then on the other end, if they keep him on the platform, right, because they gave him $100 million,

people are gonna say, hey, that's Spotify endorsing that language. They're endorsing the misinformation. They're endorsing insert blank. And so for me, that's why it was so interesting to see Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, try to navigate this situation. Sending out a memo to employees addressing the controversy

and yes, confirming that episodes of the Joe Rogan experience have been taken down, but saying that this was actually Rogan and his team's decision after they had a conversation. Saying among other things, there are no words I can say to adequately convey how deeply sorry I am for the way the Joe Rogan Experience controversy

continues to impact each of you. Not only are some of Joe Rogan's comments incredibly hurtful, I want to make clear that they do not represent the values of this company. And adding, while I strongly condemn what Joe has said, and I agree with his decision to remove past episodes from our platform, I realize some will want more. But then making one point very clear,

I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer. We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are across, but canceling voices is a slippery slope." He then hits on a criticism, but then really doesn't land on a response, saying, another criticism that I continue to hear from many of you is that it's not just about

the Joe Rogan experience on Spotify, it comes down to our direct relationship with him. And so with that saying, if we believe in having an open platform as a core value of the company, then we must also believe in elevating all types of creators, including those from underrepresented communities and a diversity of backgrounds.

And with that saying, I am committing an incremental investment of $100 million for the licensing development and marketing of music, artists, and songwriters, and audio content from historically marginalized groups. So while not saying it's seemingly trying to match $100 million that Joe Rogan reportedly is getting. But also that is not where this story ends,

because like I said, I think the only person that is 100% bulletproof in this story is Joe Rogan. For example, you had Dwayne Johnson, right? The Rock plastered all over social media, right? Drawing backlash previously because he was supporting Joe Rogan. A lot of people saying, wow, Rock, really? But then after the video circulated

with Joe Rogan saying the N-word, he kind of walked that back saying on Twitter, I was not aware of his N-word use prior to my comments, but now I've become educated to his complete narrative, learning moment for me. With him also issuing some individual apologies, but then from that, people dug up old videos from his time in the WWE saying anti-trans things,

anti-Asian things. People also taking swings at Howard Stern, who has spoken out about Joe Rogan, sharing a bunch. There was really no shortage of offensive Howard Stern content, including when he did blackface. Though Stern has also hit back on this saying, "'I've evolved since then. I've grown as a person.'" But then on the other side, you had people taking hits

like Whitney Cummings and Andrew Yang. Whitney tweeting, Comedians did not sign up to be your hero. It's our job to be irreverent and dangerous to question authority and take you through a spooky, mental haunted house so you can arrive at your own conclusions. And so with that, you had tons of people pushing back,

saying things like, the quote, It's a comedian's job to say whatever we want crew sometimes seems to forget that it's the audience's job to tell the comedian when what they have said sucks. And as far as Andrew Yang, he tweeted and then deleted, "'I don't think Joe Rogan is a racist. "'The man interacts with and works with black people "'literally all of the time.'

"'And do I know black friends of Joe's "'who would swear by him? "'Yes, I do.'" With people hitting Yang there saying, "'This is just a slightly different version "'of the I can't be racist, I have a black friend argument.'" But Yang, after deleting those tweets, posting a thread, but it starts with the main point.

"'I like to believe the best of people, "'especially if I've met and spent time with that person. Sometimes it makes me miss something. I think we should have the capacity to forgive people, whether a podcaster or a mayor, if they mess up. Maybe it's because I mess up too. And oh my god, we finally made it through the story. So one, I'd love to know your thoughts on any and all aspects of this story. I know that we talked about a lot that has happened. But also two, I will say it's gonna be very interesting to see how long this situation continues. And I mean, does it hit a resolution point?

But from that, I wanna take a second to thank the fantastic sponsor of today's show, Keeps. Did you know that two out of three guys will experience some form of male pattern baldness by the time that they're 35? And maybe you have that friend or the family member that's dealing with hair loss right now, and you don't just have to wait to sit around

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go to Keeps.com slash DeFranco, or just click that link in the description down below to receive 50% off your first order. And then in mathematics, most of us know that two negatives can equal a positive, but the question is, can the same be true in the world of business? And we may get an answer to that soon

because this morning Spirit and Frontier Airlines announced that they will be merging. Now it's still unknown which brand their planes will fly under or who will even take over in the $6.6 billion merge. But together these airlines will overtake JetBlue and Alaska Air in the number of miles flown by passengers. Though notably this doesn't even put them close

to the upper echelon of US air travel providers. That's still being controlled by American, Delta, United and Southwest, which together account for 80% of America's air traffic. And as far as what sparked this merger, I mean, simply put the companies were like, okay, we suck, but maybe together we could suck less.'" With this morning, Spirit reporting a loss

of $440.6 million in 2021, which surprisingly was actually good news, because in 2020, they lost $719.6 million. Frontier not faring much better, losing 299 million in both 2020 and 2021. But these companies are not necessarily doomed. Together, these two airlines' revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021 was down just 2%

from their final three months of 2019, pre-pandemic levels. But will this be enough? Because once again, they know they suck. With both of these airlines ranking among the worst to fly with and are known to nickel and dime customers for everything, completely offsetting their low fares, which is why it wasn't a surprise that we saw tweets like, breaking, Frontier and Spirit to merge,

passengers will be responsible for executing the merger, and frontier and Spirit are merging, giving fans twice the options to be stranded in an airport. Plus there are concerns that there's a chance that this will be blocked by federal antitrust regulators, with the Biden administration having just blocked a merger between American and JetBlue. Although once again, Spirit and Frontier

are a fraction of the size American is. Then as far as updates regarding Russia and Ukraine, you have the US military now estimating that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could cause 50,000 Ukrainian casualties, 5 million refugees, and the Kyiv would fall within two days. And those estimates coming as 83 Russian battalion tactical groups are on the Ukrainian border

with reportedly 14 more on the way. Also, according to the Latvian defense minister, Russian troops on the border are allegedly suffering from poor conditions and a large COVID outbreak, which for some experts is concerning, because if true, they say this could likely force Putin's hand on deciding whether to back down or invade. And actually on that note,

reportedly the US has intercepted communications from Russian officials expressing worry that an invasion would be far costlier and far more difficult than Putin believes. And all of this happening seemingly as Russia is going to have this show of force, right? Russia usually holds its nuclear exercises in the fall, but they're now holding them this month,

likely to coincide with a potential invasion or at least the threat of invasion. Yeah, you know, super chill, fun times that we're living in right now. And then the mayor of Ottawa has declared a state of emergency. And this move coming Sunday after more than a week of unprecedented protests by truckers and other people

that have shut down Canada's capital city over COVID rules. As you might recall, the law that sparked these protests was won by both the US and Canada, which mandated that foreign truckers entering either country be vaccinated or get tested and quarantined if not. It's been dubbed the freedom convoy with hundreds of truckers blocking city streets

and blaring their horns, and some members of the general public also joining in, especially as things have now morphed into these broader demonstrations against Canada's COVID-19 policies in general. And something of note with these demonstrations is there's a lot of conflicting information about how big this actually is.

Because while at these protests, you see thousands of people there. You have Justin Trudeau saying, "'This convoy just represents a small fringe minority.'" With the prime minister noting things like around 90% of the country's cross-border truckers and 79% of the general population have received at least two COVID shots.

Though we've seen critics push back against that saying, "'You know, those numbers don't equal people "'that support or don't support. "'There are people who have been vaxxed "'that do not support the mandates.'" There's also been debate and disagreement about how bad these protests actually have been. And this because if you look at the demonstrations as a whole, they have largely been peaceful.

But also you see things and reports coming up saying, you know, police have noted that they've been overwhelmed by the crowds, adding that the disruptive protests pose a real threat. Or because in addition to Ottawa City Center effectively being blocked off for an entire week, and people having to kind of day and night hear horns blaring because they live there, we've also seen reports of dozens of arrests related to the protest, mostly for things like mischief or vandalism, though also some for hate crimes.

We've also seen some people alleging that they've been assaulted because of anti-mask sentiment, though for now, those claims have not been backed up by police. Also, in addition to things we've talked about in the past, like reports of swastikas and Confederate flags, reportedly there's also been an increase in calls to the city's hate crime hotline,

with police saying they're looking into over 200 incidents. Also, with all of this going on, the protests have sparked accusations that foreign groups and individuals, particularly those from the US, have been fueling the protests. With that, also bringing us to another controversy connected to this.

Right first, there you have the GoFundMe page that the platform took down on Saturday over concerns of, quote, unlawful activities and saying in a statement, we now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity.

With that decision receiving a ton of pushback from many including American politicians like Ron DeSantis who tweeted out, "'It is fraud for GoFundMe to commandeer $9 million "'in donations sent to support truckers "'and give it to causes of their own choosing. "'I will work with AG Ashley Moody "'to investigate these deceptive practices.

"'These donors should be given a refund.'" With Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also tweeting, "'Patriotic Texans donated to Canadian truckers worthy cause using GoFundMe this BLM backing company went woke froze the funds and failed to deliver Texans money today I assembled a team to investigate the potential fraud and deception Texas donors will get justice although to be clear reportedly anyone who donated will be Getting a refund regardless of DeSantis or Paxton's threat right GoFundMe saying no, we're not taking the money We're just giving it back to the people that were trying to donate. But either way, part of the frustration here

is that it just fueled concerns that forces outside of Canada were affecting its domestic affairs. Especially as a recent poll by Abacus Data said they found that 68% of Canadians said, quote, "'They have very little in common "'with how the protesters in Ottawa see things.'" But ultimately, all of that brought us to the big news.

Yesterday, we had the mayor issuing a state of emergency in the city, with Mayor Jim Watson calling the demonstration the most serious emergency our city has ever faced, calling on other jurisdictions and levels of government to help put an end to the total disruption of life in the city. And while he didn't specify what measures might be taken

under the state of emergency, it could help police get supplies and equipment faster. Also on the note of supplies, you had police warning that anyone bringing support such as gasoline to the truckers who have been blockading areas near parliament could face arrest. But ultimately, as far as what happens from here, we're gonna have to wait to see. Ottawa is still effectively shut down.

Some Canadian politicians have called the entire situation a national humiliation. As far as the protesters, there's no reason to think that they are going to leave. Though you do have public safety minister, Marco Mendocino, saying the federal authorities are putting more boots on the ground. And so of course, until we see what happens next,

I'd love to know your thoughts on this whole situation. But ultimately that is where that story and today's show ends. As always, thank you for watching, hitting that subscribe button, joining the family for these daily dives into the videos and those bonus quickies I do. Where I'll leave you is my name's Philip DeFranco,

you've just been filled in, I love yo faces and I'll see you tomorrow.