The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 4.1 Stokes Twins Exposed After Disgusting Prank, Lil Nas X Hit, Wasted Vaccines, NFTS, & More

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

To get up to a year's supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D + 5 individual travel packs, both FREE with your first purchase click here! http://athleticgreens.com/defranco  I’M MOVING (Vlog): https://youtu.be/g_r_SMptnAs -- SUBSCRIBE to our newsletter!  http://www.DeFrancoDailyDownload.com WATCH Mike Birbiglia Podcast: https://youtu.be/9_KEN-lrEKQ  -- 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 -- 00:00 - Stokes Twins Sentenced For “Prank” 02:13 - Nike Blocks Sales of Satan Shoes 03:32 - Walgreens Vaccinations, Microsoft’s New Military Contract, and NFT Quickies 06:43 - Sponsor 07:42 - Good and Not So Good Vaccine News 09:57 - New Healthcare Benefits 11:37 - Companies Speaking Out Against Georgia Voter Bill -- ✩ 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’S STORIES ✩  Stokes Twins Sentenced to Community Service: https://roguerocket.com/2021/04/01/stokes-twins-sentenced/ Nike Gets Restraining Order Over Lil Nas X Satan Shoes: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nike-restraining-order-lawsuit-lil-nas-x-mschf-satan-shoes/ Pharmacies Stand to Profit from Vaccine Rollout: https://fortune.com/2021/03/26/cvs-walgreens-vaccine-rollout-rollout/ Microsoft Wins Army Contract for Augmented Reality Headsets: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/microsoft-wins-contract-to-make-modified-hololens-for-us-army.html Ongoing Trial Shows Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Remains Highly Effective After Six Months: https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/01/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine-efficacy-six-months-bn/index.html  Factory Mix-Up Ruins Up to 15 Million Doses From J&J: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/us/politics/johnson-johnson-coronavirus-vaccine.html New ACA Subsidies Start Today: https://roguerocket.com/2021/04/01/new-healthcare-benefits/  Companies Get in on NFTs: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/01/funko-shares-soar-after-toymaker-strikes-deal-to-enter-nft-market.html https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/31164860/dapper-labs-creators-nba-top-shot-get-305m-funding https://www.axios.com/nfts-slowdown-digital-art-e35ee913-f95c-40b8-a456-193c8d773124.html Companies Speak Out Against Georgia’s New Voting Restrictions: https://roguerocket.com/2021/04/01/ga-companies-kemp/ ——————————    ✩ SPONSOR ✩ Athletic Greens is multiple nutritional supplements bundled into an ultimate all-in-one nutritional formula. With 75 vitamins, minerals and whole food-sourced ingredients focusing on immune support, gut health, energy and recovery.. It’s an extremely absorbable multivitamin and multimineral with the extra benefit of having pre- and probiotics, digestive enzymes, super greens complex adaptogens and more without the need to take multiple products and/or pills. You would be hard-pressed to find more high quality nutritional content in one place, making Athletic Greens one of the MOST COMPLETE products on the market. It’s daily formula has the perfect amount of micronutrients, absorption and taste to jumpstart our daily health routine.  Athletic Greens is also available in the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy April Fool's Day, aka the day 70% of the population says an unfunny lie and then they're like, I'm kidding. I'm a little bit of a jokester myself. No, you're not, Greg. And honestly, I wouldn't be a friend if our wives weren't friends. Also, no one says chillax anymore, nor should anyone have ever. Anyway, welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. It is Thursday, April 1st, 2021. Subscribe to the channel, hit that like button, and let's just jump into it. And actually, for the first story today, while we're on the note of bad jokes and pranks, we need to talk about the TikTokers slash YouTubers,

Alan and Alex Stokes, known as the Stoke twins, because they are back in the news. And this, because it appears that they have finally been handed consequences for a fake robbery prank that they filmed back in 2019. And if you're like, why are you saying consequences? They'd actually been facing a maximum of five years in jail if convicted for a video that they put out,

but the punishment was far less, but we'll get to that in a second. As far as the video in question, if you don't remember, the brothers filmed this prank video over the course of three days that involved them running around the Irvine, California area, acting as if they had just robbed a bank. You see them dressed in all black, wearing a ski mask,

lugging around duffel bags, spilling cash everywhere. At one point, as you might remember, they call an Uber as a getaway car, but the driver becomes uncomfortable. He kicks them out. That incident reportedly prompts a bystander to call 911, thinking they're actually seeing bank robbers attempting a carjacking.

Things then continue to escalate from there. Actually, it results in the police ordering the Uber driver out of his car at gunpoint. The police go on to give the boys a stern warning, but then still just four hours later, the twins continue to film their prank at a nearby university. That said, the reason we're talking about it today

is the twins have actually pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and two counts of falsely reporting an emergency. And as it turns out, in exchange for that guilty plea, an Orange County judge reduced their original felony, false imprisonment charges to a misdemeanor. So instead of getting any jail time, remember there was a maximum of five years

that they were facing, they were instead sentenced to 160 hours of community service, ordered to serve one year of formal probation and required to pay an unspecified amount of restitution. But the brothers also reportedly agreeing to stay away from UC Irvine, where part of the prank was carried out.

And they agreed to quote, "'Stop making videos that mimic criminal behavior.'" So, you know, consequences though, not the same consequences if they were Joe Blow, but the consequences because they are young, dumb, famous, and rich. Although I do want to point out because they look very young, they're not 16, they're 24 years old.

They're old enough to know better. Then let's talk about how the battle and backlash over Lil Nas X's Satan shoes is actually still continuing with Nike just getting a big win in court. You know, we talked about this among other things on Monday with Lil Nas X partnering with Mischief to make these Satan shoes that each apparently have a drop of human blood with a limited run

selling out in under a minute. And the shoes there were modified Nike Air Max 97s, even having the swoosh logo, but of course, Nike denied having anything to do with the collaboration. Then Nike of course filed a lawsuit citing trademark infringement. And as of yesterday, a US district judge approved their request for a temporary restraining order against Mischief,

meaning that as of right now, Mischief cannot legally fulfill any orders of the shoes. Though, that may prove to just be a temporary win, and maybe even just a win in name only, with Mischief claiming that all pairs of the shoes, except for one that had been saved for a giveaway, have been shipped, with them also trying to argue that because there will be no further distribution

of the shoes, Nike won't suffer harm requiring a restraining order. With them also arguing that these shoes provide artistic social commentary. But regarding what will happen in terms of long-term and permanent decisions with this shoe, I mean, we're gonna have to wait and see. Though I will say, given how fast they got these shoes out,

it feels like this may have also been part of Mischief's plan. And I mean, really, unless there's some kind of massive, unexpected monetary penalty, this whole situation some kind of massive, unexpected monetary penalty, this whole situation has kind of worked in their favor. We've gotten so much free counterculture press from all this. Then, because we haven't done it in a while

and I'm not gonna see you for a few days, so let's load you with as much information as possible, let's do some quickie news. We got the news that Walgreens alone has vaccinated over 8 million Americans. Though, before you blow them and the other retailers where you can get vaccinations kisses, you should know this situation

has been incredibly profitable for them. According to reports, retailers are expected to administer half of the vaccination shots, with the shots being pretty much all profit because they do not have to pay for the vaccines, neither does the customer. The government is footing the bill, with the government actually announcing this month

that they'll be raising the vaccine payment rate. You pair that information with things like last month, CBS forecast 400 to $500 million in profit from COVID tests and vaccines in 2021. And a ton of states are about to open up vaccinations to everybody. You also had Microsoft in the news because they won a US Army contract

for augmented reality headsets. And according to reports, this is gonna be worth up to $21.9 billion over 10 years. And this story is kind of amazing to me because I think years ago I went to, it might've been E3 and I got to test out the HoloLens and they did this like Minecraft or, I forget what it was. It was this thing in front of me

and I was kind of left going, ah, is this really the future? Right, remember when they were promoting it, they were like, look, look at how Minecraft could look. And now we're seeing tens of billions of dollars being spent to militarize it. And as for the usages here, according to the reporting, they referenced a prototype that a CNBC reporter

tried out in 2019, where they displayed a map and a compass. They also had thermal imaging revealing people in the dark. The system could also show the aim for a weapon. Yeah, I guess Microsoft has it covered from Minecraft to warfare. Then we're seeing more and more big established brands jumping into the world of NFTs, which, not the most shocking thing.

There's just so much money being thrown around right now. I mean, just looking at NBA Top Shot, you have hundreds of millions of dollars being thrown around for what essentially are video highlights that have been minted. You've got Dapper Labs, the creator of NBA Top Shot, reportedly getting $305 million in funding with reportedly some of the funding coming from people

like Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Kyle Lowry. And so with that happening, we're seeing things like an announcement this morning where Funko, right, the collectible figure maker, they announced that starting in June, they'll begin launching $9.99 NFT offerings, with new ones being introduced weekly. And also this appeared to send their stock soaring.

I mean, since the announcement and as of filming, we've seen Funko's price jump from around $19.50 a share to a high of $25. Funko's CEO also noting, "'Our ability to combine Funko Pop digital NFTs with exclusive Funko Pop vinyl figures has the potential to be a game changer. By backing the rarest of the Funko NFTs

with exclusive redeemable Funko Pops, we are poised to enter the NFT market in a very unique manner.'" Right, and I think if NFTs are gonna go more and more mainstream, I think this kind of NFT, real physical product, we're gonna see more and more of that. Right, like Atari, for example, another massive company has jumped into the NFT space.

Right, one of the most exclusive NFTs they're gonna be offering is a 3D model of a Centipede arcade cabinet bearing the digital signature of co-creator Donna Bailey, but reportedly bundled with that, they'll also be including what they call a beautifully restored and working original centipede coin up physical cabinet.

But at the same time, there's also some concern with the NFT market, because you're seeing reports like this one from Axios, the daily sales volumes has dropped to about $3 million down from a peak of $19 million. So there is a question of, are we seeing the space in general cool off, or is this kind of just a natural ebb and flow that we're going to see

with something that's so young. Then let's talk about good and not so good COVID news. The good news, we're seeing really good reports and data regarding the effectiveness of the already released vaccines. This, including new details released today from the ongoing phase three clinical trial of the Pfizer vaccine.

Those findings saying that the two dose vaccine remains more than 91.3% effective in preventing symptomatic cases for at least six months. And arguably even more important, it is working even better at preventing severe cases over those six months, showing 95 to 100% effectiveness, depending on the definition of severe disease being used. And this also coming a day after the company revealed

that their vaccine is 100% effective when administered to kids between the ages of 12 to 15, with reports saying that they'll soon be submitting that data to the FDA in hopes of getting emergency authorization to open up vaccine eligibility to those groups in the near future. So that was the good COVID news. And then the not so good is reportedly up to 15 million

Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccines were ruined after factory workers at a plant in Baltimore accidentally mixed up ingredients several weeks ago. The plant in question here is reportedly run by Emergent Bio Solutions, a manufacturing partner of both Johnson & Johnson, as well as AstraZeneca. Both of the vaccines, like many other inoculations,

use what is known as a vector, which is basically a safe version of the virus that stimulates the immune system to make antibodies. But key thing here is that while both J&J and AstraZeneca use this technology, their vectors are different and cannot be used interchangeably. So according to the New York Times,

the mix-up ended up happening in late February when one or more factory workers accidentally confused the two vaccines, with a mistake not being discovered until later during routine quality control checks. Now, very notably here, because if you just read the headline, all of a sudden there's gonna be more vaccine hesitancy,

people worried, oh, is this actually gonna be effective? This issue does not affect any of the J&J shots that have already been sent out. None of the doses in the contaminated batch ever left the plant. But it's still a very big deal because I mean, one, in addition to the now 15 million doses that were reportedly ruined,

also two, other doses of the vaccine were supposed to come out from that plant. And now the incident has prompted federal regulators to delay the authorization of the plant's production lines, thus delaying future shipments. But while negative news, you do not need to panic. According to the Times, federal officials still expect the US

to have enough doses to meet President expect the US to have enough doses to meet President Biden's promise to have enough supply to vaccinate all US adults by the end of May. And actually, despite the delay, both Pfizer and Moderna are ahead of schedule, with Moderna actually set to close being approved to deliver vials of the vaccine to have 15 doses instead of 10.

Then, and do not confuse this with any April Fool's joke, starting today, new healthcare benefits will be available to tens of millions of Americans, including many who had been previously uninsured. And this because the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that was passed in early March includes billions of dollars in new healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Right, and so according to reports,

nearly everyone with an ACA health plan can qualify for more financial help. Also, about 3.3 million Americans who buy their insurance outside the marketplace, as well as millions more who are currently uninsured. And in fact, according to a new government analysis, more than 6 million Americans will be able to find plans that won't cost them anything in premiums, which will be fully paid for by the government. Which is huge, because that's about 3 out of 5 uninsured eligible Americans. Also, regardless of that, the savings will still be quite significant for many people. As the New York Times notes,

a 64 year old who earns $30,000, for example, would see monthly premiums dropped to $85 from 195 for a mid-level plan. And noting a family of four that earns $40,000 would go from paying a $136 premium to nothing at all. Right, so I share all of this, not just to be like, yay, isn't that cool? Because if you or someone you know is one,

currently enrolled in Obamacare, two, does not have any health insurance, or three, just wants to see if you qualify for the subsidies, please go to healthcare.gov and create an account or log in. The sooner, the better, though, while the enrollment opportunity usually only happens for a short period in the fall,

this year, people actually have until August 15th to enroll or switch plans. And very big note here, if you are one of the existing 8.2 million enrollees, these benefits will not be automatically applied. You have to log into your account and re-enroll. Though, according to the times, if you do not re-enroll, you will still get the subsidy.

It just will be rolled into your 2021 tax return. But then you're talking next year rather than monthly savings this year. And then finally in this section, let's talk about Georgia. And specifically it's kind of the business and corporate world's take on the voting restrictions that we're seeing pass now in Georgia. We're seeing things this week, like on Tuesday,

a group of more than 70 black executives urged corporations across the country to take action against the GOP led efforts to restrict voting access. With Georgia specifically, we're talking about the kind of just in your face, ridiculous restrictions. In the past, we kind of broke down the full list, but things like seriously limiting drop box locations

for some counties, as well as drop boxes being shut down on the last four days of voting. And even now being a misdemeanor to directly hand out food or drinks to voters who are waiting in lines at polling sites. It's also concerning because Georgia isn't alone here. At least 42 other states have been working to restrict voting access.

But the big news is we are seeing corporations speak out, though differing degrees here. Right, previously you had some Georgia based companies like like Delta, Coca-Cola, and Home Depot offering kind of general statements in support of voting rights, though not taking a specific stance on the bills. Though we have seen updates like Kenneth Schnault, the former CEO of American Express, speaking out. You also had Delta yesterday after facing calls for a boycott for not taking a stronger stance on the Georgia voting bill, releasing a statement from its CEO saying, "'Since the bill's inception,

"'Delta joined other major Atlanta corporations "'to work closely with elected officials from both parties "'to try and remove some of the most egregious measures "'from the bill,' and adding, "'We had some success in eliminating the most suppressive "'tactics that some had proposed. "'However, I need to make it crystal clear "'that the final bill is unacceptable

"'and does not match Delta's values.'" And since then, we've also seen the CEOs of Coca-Cola and Apple speaking out against the bill. We also had the executive director of Major League Baseball saying that he's considering whether or not to move the league's all-star game out of the state, something that President Biden yesterday said that he would strongly support.

You also had the likes of ViacomCBS speaking out and saying they stand against this law today. Though we also saw the likes of Tyler Perry, who actually has a studio in Atlanta, Georgia, standing against the law, but also saying, "'As some consider boycotting, "'please remember that we did turn Georgia blue "'and there is a gubernatorial race on the horizon.

"'That's the beauty of a democracy.'" But also with this story, and unsurprisingly, because we've seen something similar happen in the past, there has been political pushback against Delta now. For example, you had Georgia Governor Brian Kemp saying yesterday, specifically for Delta, they did not express any reservations

about the final products of this bill. It wasn't until a couple of days after we signed it that after the political pressure that Ed Bastian is now putting out a statement that quite honestly, nothing he said yet is pointing to any specific points in the bill that are causing suppression or any of those things because it doesn't exist. Right, notably that point of, I haven't seen any specific claims

is something that Kemp hammered on repeatedly. Even though CNBC's anchors directly cited specific complaints from that coalition of black executives. We're also seeing reports now, and it feels like it's history repeating itself. Georgia House threatens Delta's tax break. But for now, that is where we are with this story. And it will be interesting to see what,

if anything, this does. And ultimately with this story, and honestly, anything else that stood out today, I'd love to know your thoughts in those comments down below, because this is the end of the show. Thank you as always for being a part of my daily dives into the news. Subscribe and hitting the like button, all the good stuff.

Also, if you're looking forward to watching it, covered with some more news or maybe some behind the scenes right here, you can click or tap right there or top description down below. But with that said, of course, as always, my name is Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in.

I love yo faces and I'll see you next time.