The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 4.29 Bad News For Andrew Tate, NY DA Exposed on Body Cam, Escape From Tarkov $250 Backlash & Today's News

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Go to http://cozyearth.com/defranco and enter DEFRANCO at checkout for 35% off  ==== ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ – 00:00 - Video Shows New York DA Failing to Stop for Traffic Ticket, Berating Police 03:46 - Andrew Tate to Stand Trial in Romania  05:09 - Escape From Tarkov Faces Backlash For “Pay to Win” Package  11:20 - Sponsored by Cozy Earth 12:19 - South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Slammed For Supposedly Offing Puppy 15:44 - Europe Cracks Down on Russian and Chinese Spying  ——————————   Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg, Christian Meeks, Matthew Henry Art Department: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Star Pralle, Chris Tolve, Jared Paolino ———————————— #DeFranco #MoistCritikal #AndrewTate ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup, you beautiful bastards. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. It is Monday and we got a lot of news to talk about. Starting with, we need to talk about Sandra Dorley, the district attorney for Monroe County, New York. Because there's this absolutely wild video of her that's gone viral. And in it, body cam footage shows police pulling up to Dorley's house in Webster, New York. Sorry, I'm the DA. I was going 55, coming home from work. 55 and a 35. I don't really care. Okay.

Can you please come over here? This is on a traffic stop, ma'am. I didn't pull over. I just figured I'd drive to my driveway instead. She then goes on to call the Webster chief of police and asks him to tell the officer to leave her alone and refuses to comply with the responding officer's request, with that including staying where he's asking her to stand.

Ma'am, do not go inside. Oh, my God. Ma'am, do not go inside. Oh my God! Ma'am, come outside. You can't just go inside. This is a traffic stop. Here's your phone back. I understand the law better than you. 953, can you have a supervisor come to the scene? No. Get out of my f***ing house. This whole confrontation then continues with Dorley refusing to comply with orders,

and again admitting she knew she was speeding, prompting him to ask why she didn't just pull over when he put on his lights and siren. I didn't know you were stopping me. There was lots of other people on the road. I was right behind you. Yeah? There were other people on the road too. Okay, I was directly behind you. Just don't understand the hostility towards me. I'm doing my job. No, you're being an a**hole.

How am I being an a**hole? I am the DA of Monroe County. I understand that, but that doesn't give you a right to go 55 and a 35. And you even admitted to me that you went 50. I understand that, ma'am. I don't really care. I understand that. You know what?

If you give me a traffic ticket, that's fine. I'm the one who prosecutes it, okay? With her then implying again later that she would just pardon herself. I'm the one that's going to prosecute myself. You know what I'll do with the ticket? With her then going on to say that she's had a long day dealing with three murders and didn't care that she was speeding. With her adding she didn't think anyone would pull her over if they ran her plates. And after more back and forth you see a supervising officer arrive and she appears to admit that she did know it was her car the initial officer was trying to pull over.

I didn't want to pull over. I'm- I'm filtered. It was just- I just didn't- I figured I'd just pull into my driveway. You should know better, right? I was skating. I know that. So why didn't you just stop like you're supposed to? Because I didn't feel like stopping on Phillips Road at 530. That's not your choice. You know that.

Well, I made it my choice. Now you made it a bigger deal than it needed to be. What do you want us to do? Not do our job because it's you? No, it's fine. They said write me a ticket. But I was just saying I was not going to stop at Folks Road at 530.

Okay, well, you broke another law because of that. Right? And you should know better. That's not a traffic ticket. That's an arrestable offense. With eventually officers handing her the ticket, and she again says that she will be the one prosecuting it. And so unsurprisingly, that video got a ton of backlash,

with many calling on Dorley to resign and for her actions to be investigated by the state. With all of that leading to today, where she posted a video publicly apologizing for the incident. Last Monday, I failed you and the standards that I hold myself to. And for that, I am so sorry. What I did was wrong, no excuses. I take full responsibility for my actions. I didn't treat this officer with the respect that he deserved. All police officers deserve respect.

I am truly and sincerely sorry. By Dorley saying she had a long hard day at work and that her husband had received concerning medical news, but also adding with that that it wasn't right to take that out on the officer and apologizing to him directly. And as far as the speeding ticket saying she has pled guilty and will pay the fine. With her also claiming she's going to further take accountability by referring the whole matter to another DA for review. Self-reporting the incident at the grievance committee, disciplining herself, and taking ethics training. I've been humbled by my own stupidity, and I'm fully to blame. I will make this right. I ask for your forgiveness.

So we'll see what happens from here, but in the meantime, I'd love to know your thoughts on this. And then huge news, because there was a while where people didn't know if this was going to happen or not. Andrew Tate's trial can officially begin. Because that's what a Romanian court ruled over the weekend. With the Bucharest Tribunal saying that the prosecutor's case against him meets the legal criteria needed. But there is no official start date yet. And of course, all of this stemming from Tate and his brother being arrested back in December of 2022 over rape and human trafficking allegations, with him then later officially indicted in June of last year. And this, of course, is they've maintained their innocence and claim

that there's no evidence to support the claims against them. And with that, they filed to appeal the court's latest decision, with their lawyer saying that the ruling lacks legal basis and reasoning. And for his part, as of recording, Tate didn't have too many posts directly talking about the news. So he did appear on Aiden Ross's stream over the weekend. And that, notably coming after Andrew was arrested over claims in the UK earlier this year, and it may have been Aiden's fault. Or because Aiden said on a live stream that Andrew had plans to flee Romania, which was a tip-off to authorities. And while talking to Aiden during the stream over the weekend, Andrew was very sarcastically thanking Aiden for his support. And it feels

like this strange bit leading to Andrew then seemingly kind of snapping. If you don't come to Romania to face retribution for the betrayal you have bestowed upon your old friend, Andrew Tate, we are not going to talk ever again. You are no use to me. I do not need you in any way. You benefit my life zero.

You called me! Face justice. But ultimately, that's where we are right there. Though notably, once that trial's over, even if it goes his way, this is not over for him. Because the Romanian court said that after this trial, the Tate brothers could be extradited to the UK to face allegations there. And then let's talk about this big gamer drama and news. Because even if you're not a gamer yourself, this whole situation is very eye-opening in regards to entertainment fandoms and the relationship fans have with the people that

create the things that they like. Because what we're seeing is that fans of the game Escape from Tarkov are up in arms after Battlestate Games managed to do just about everything a developer could do to upset its fan base. At the center of this is their new $250 unheard edition of the game, which was gonna include a ton of perks for buyers, like exclusive items and a new highly anticipated

PvE game mode for a game that's normally player versus player. But right off the bat, fans were pissed at pretty much everything about the package, and there's been a lot of back and forth over the weekend with Battlestate Games trying to do as much damage control as possible. So we're not going to get into every gritty detail because a lot has changed, but an easy place to start is the PVE game mode. Because not too long ago, the company offered the $150 Edge of Darkness edition, which promised buyers access to all future additions to the game, aka DLC.

But according to the head of Battlestate Games, Nikita Buyanov, this PvE game mode wasn't DLC. Saying instead, it is just a feature and arguing in a Reddit post that, quote, DLC in our understanding is the major additions to the game, including various functionality and content that are released after the official release of the game as a themed DLC. Which I just got to say is objectively a very stupid explanation. And so we saw pretty much everyone agree that it seemed to be like a semantic game that Nikita was trying to play here. And so then we saw the company switch to saying that the game mode would be offered to everyone for six months for free. For many, that just wasn't enough, right? Those who spent $150 felt like they were lied to. And I absolutely understand why they would feel like that.

You know, I'm not alone in that feeling. And so after that backlash, we saw NikE mode will be available for free to all owners of the EOD version at the release of the game when the server infrastructure will be improved to the required capacity. There will also be options for people to buy early access to the game mode and discounts for those with the Edge of Darkness pack to upgrade to the $250 Unheard Edition. Although this didn't solve the controversy surrounding the PvE game mode availability, whereas the company said that it'd need to invite Edge of Darkness owners in waves in order to not overload the servers. But notably, no timeframe was set. You know, that alone would be a major controversy for any game developer today,

but it was just the tip of the iceberg. Because, you know, the reality is this affected a fairly small subset of players who previously spent $150. But this $250 package is something that affected everyone, new items and gear, with many feeling like this was a pay-to-win feature, which I know is something that a lot of people hate,

right, because the vast majority of people that are playing a game like this, they wanna feel like they're on an even playing field regardless of how much money they've spent. However, in a Reddit post, Nikita seemingly doubled down late last week that the $250 would still have exclusive items, but promising that regarding special items

for the UnHerd version, we plan to make restrictive or balancing changes for these items. And in a Reddit post yesterday clarifying that we will balance items perks in the unheard edition as well as provide more rewards for those who upgraded with the old price which did not really make people happy with big commentators and gamers like moist critical still blasting the decision saying in a response to that last point if that's more pay to win items i'm actually going to squeal we're going to provide more rewards for those who upgraded. Here's some more pay to win.

That would actually have me squealing. But he's just referencing that the community knows this is all pay to win, so they're going to be balancing it. The best way of balancing that, Nikita, is to take that s*** out. People don't want that in their games. No one wants to pay for an advantage, or play a game where people can pay for an advantage over those who don't. It sucks.

It's terrible for the health of your game. So just f***ing remove it and replace those bonuses with cool cosmetics or something like that. Right, and that feeling was shared by a lot of players. For example, Zizarin, who's a streamer that plays a lot of Tarkov when they're not on their main game writing. Can't we just have any paid features be cosmetic? I'm more than happy to put lots of money in the games for cosmetic upgrades, voice lines, weapon skins, anything that doesn't impact anything in the game. And in an earlier video, he mentioned, we managed to get NFTs not into gaming. And I really hope that we can start making pay to win better in games and like make it less like I am all for developers making a large amount of money. This should be

through cosmetic means, which a lot of these games can do even turco can do this but with all that said they did seem to concretely change one things that fans weren't happy about and that was priority matchmaking or pretty much people who spent 150 or more were able to get better queue times to play the game and now that's no longer a thing and so to compensate yet unspecified changes will be made to those packages you know in the, fans weren't exactly feeling confident that the company actually cared about the concerns and rather did it to avoid more controversy. I mean, even when Nikita did apologize to fans, it was a classic kind of sorry you feel this way. Saying, I would like to say that I am very sorry that fans in the game community in general are experiencing these

feelings. And there was this general sentiment that the company's credibility took a massive hit with all this and it would take a long time to rebuild that trust this was a stupid entirely avoidable situation that bsg found themselves in here their greed nearly ruined their entire game and it still might have there's probably plenty of people who have totally lost trust in tarkov and won't stick around i think there's a good chunk of players that are falling into that camp. But it does suck that no matter what Nikita and BSG did here, they are still going to be making tons and tons and tons of money from this. With all this, the fact that they'll be making a mountain of cash

by charging $250 for this package is probably the last thing that I'm going to touch on. Because there's a serious concern that despite all the backlash and the problems, that this is going to set a precedent in the gaming space and popularize that companies can charge huge, huge amounts for DLCs. Because I mean, in the past, DLCs ranged from like $5 to dozens of dollars. It just depended on how much content they provided. But $150, $250 for a single new game mode is a completely different ballpark. It's the kind of pricing that we've seen blow up for like iPhone games, where they're trying to milk the 0.1% of the community into these $50, $100 packages that they're just buying and buying and buying and buying,

which is less of a game and more of like a dopamine button for really rich fucks. And again, all this playing out is a lot of fans don't have issues tying cosmetic things to huge reward packs. For example, games like Path of Exile do it, and they have insanely popular supporter packs. But it's never tied to in-game features, which is a step a lot of gamers fear the industry is moving towards. With now all of that said, I gotta pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts with this mess? And I mean that both with this specific situation, but also the gaming space in general. And then, you know, if the mom in your life gave you her all, Mother's Day is your chance to give back at least a fraction of the love and comfort that she's given you all these years. And so get ready for the segue. I'm telling you from

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Prioritize her self-care and sleep health. She deserves it. Just go to CozyEarth.com slash DeFranco and enter DeFranco at checkout for 35% off. And really, don't forget the sleepwear. She'll be happy you didn't. And thanks again to Cozy Earth for being soft and cozy. And then, so Kristi Noem, let's talk about her. She's the South Dakota governor. She's potentially a Trump VP pick.

And she apparently wears puppy murder like a badge of honor. Let me explain. So the Guardian got a copy of her new book, No Going Back, The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward. And in it, she describes taking Cricket, her 14-month-old female wirehair pointer, on a pheasant hunting trip with older dogs to begin training her. And she says Cricket went out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life. So she then tried calling the dog, then using an electric collar, but neither worked. And then on the way home, while Gnome stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped the truck and attacked the family's chickens. They're describing it as grabbing one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.

When Gnome grabbed the dog, it whipped around to bite her. With the writing, I hated that dog. And saying that Cricket had proved herself untrainable, dangerous to anyone she came in contact with and less than worthless as a hunting dog. And so what did she do? Well, she took advantage of the Second Amendment, taking that puppy out back to a gravel pit and putting her down old yeller style writing. It was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done. Though notably, that was not the end of it, because apparently she was like, well, while I'm at it, I might as well just kill other animals, Because apparently that had been something she had been putting off recently. So next up was a goat that she described as nasty and mean because she didn't get him

castrated. Adding that he smelled disgusting, musky, rancid, and loved to chase gnomes' children. Knocking them down, ruining their clothes. So once again, she dragged him out back to the gravel pit and put a bullet in him. Notably, she fucked that one up because the goat apparently jumped at the last second and he survived the wound. They're describing the situation where you just have this animal in pain. She goes back to the truck to get more ammo, and then she finishes the job. And all of that leading to her daughter coming home from school, getting off the school bus, looking around and saying, hey, where's Cricket? And if at this point you're like, why is she sharing this story? Noam explained that it's meant to illustrate her willingness

in politics as well as in South Dakota life to do anything difficult, messy, and ugly if it simply needs to be done. But of course, with this, most people who heard this story, including Republicans, weren't convinced. With the likes of a professional dog trainer saying, The behavior described here is very typical adolescent behavior out of a dog that's been selectively bred to have endless stamina. Another non-expert just expressing simple human disgust. I would just like to point out that there are other ways, even God forbid if you have to put a dog down,

you could take it to a vet and have it done humanely and not shoot it down Breaking Bad style in a gravel pit in the fields in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but you do you. This is virtue signaling for Republicans. I, journalistically, I know that I need to sort of say, you can't kill a dog or a goat like that. It's insane. You also had Biden and Harris posting a photo of them with their very much alive dogs. And that notably, even though Biden's German

shepherd commander has reportedly bitten secret service agents at least 24 times, according to the Washington Post, which is yet another thing that proves that President Biden is weak. If he was a real leader, he would have killed that dog in the Oval Office. But instead, he just sent him out of the White House. And also, you know, this isn't just Democrats versus Republicans. You know, in this little bubble of time,

we saw former Arizona Governor Carrie Lake, who's a potential VP pick for Trump, wishing her dog a happy birthday on social media, as well as Ron DeSantis posting a video urging people to adopt rescue dogs. While all of this was playing out, Noem stood up for herself on social media, saying, we love animals,

but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years. With her then taking the chance to plug her book again, which contains, quote, more real, honest, and politically incorrect stories that'll have the media gasping. Yeah, you know, just more completely normal,

super fun times. And then, we should talk about the fact that spies just appear to be popping up everywhere in Europe lately. Just in the past week alone, six people in three separate cases have been charged with spying for China. And the week before that, Germany detained two German Russian nationals suspected of plotting sabotage attacks against military infrastructure and industrial sites in the country, including sites hosting U.S. troops. And in fact, now just today, a German army captain is standing trial on espionage charges for allegedly seeking contact with Russian officials and passing along sensitive

information. And to be clear, having this many arrests on these types of charges in such a short amount of time, it's not typical. With, for example, one researcher whose work often focuses on the German intelligence agencies telling the BBC, it's really unusual to have detentions of three networks engaged in some sort of espionage for Russia and China coming almost at the same time. And so all of that brings us to the big question with this. What the hell is going on? Well, one perspective is that these incidents have less to do with adversaries ramping up their espionage efforts than it does with European countries stepping up their responses. With Marika Ohlberg, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund, telling the New York

Times that German authorities are now, quote, more willing to call things out or no longer have the patience not to call things out. With Russia expert Andrei Soldatov saying something similar about the response to the Kremlin's operations, telling the BBC that the German government's decision to make these arrests is primarily a political decision. You know, it's about sending a message. Or because otherwise, counterintelligence agencies would prefer to just follow and monitor known spies to learn more about what they're up to. And so that sort of raises the other question of why now, right? Why choose to send a message now? And according to some experts, it's because Russia and China are becoming more brazen with their espionage and their influence operations in Europe. Soltanov, for instance, referred to the

alleged Russian operatives planning sabotage attacks in Germany and saying those plans represented a completely new level of escalation. And also with that, I should note that while a lot of this recent news has to do with Germany, this is a Europe-wide issue, with a lot of concern being around foreign influence at the European Parliament ahead of the upcoming elections in June. For example, Belgium recently opened a criminal investigation into a suspected network of European politicians being paid by a media outlet

operated by a pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch. And in fact, criminal proceedings are already underway in Latvia against a member of the European Parliament suspected of spying for Russia. And while those are Russian cases, Chinese spying is arguably the bigger threat. And actually, one of the arrests from this past week was of an aide to a far-right member of the European Parliament who's accused of repeatedly passing on information about negotiations and decisions in the legislature to China.

As well as just spying on Chinese opposition figures in Germany. And as far back as 2019, the EU's Foreign Service reportedly warned that there were about 250 known Chinese spies in Brussels. As well as 200 Russian agents. And more recently, British authorities warned that China has hundreds of thousands of civil intelligence officers worldwide, which to give you some context here, the most recent estimates, but the total number of employees of the CIA at around 21,000. And granted, while that figure is more than 10 years old, it kind of gives you a sense of the scale of Chinese intelligence operations. And so with that, even though it may seem like European authorities all of a sudden

out of nowhere are successful in foiling Russian and Chinese spying, when you consider the alleged scale of all this, you have to wonder if that's really true. If by catching this, they're like, ooh, we're eating good, but it turns out it's just the crumbs. But that is where I'm going to end today's show. As always, thank you for being a part of these daily dives into the news. My name's Philip DeFranco. You've just been filled in. I love your faces, and I'll see you right back here tomorrow.

You on my mind a lot. Don't need no time to watch. I don't know how I'll see you right back here tomorrow.