The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 5.20 H3H3 vs Keemstar & Pokimane Situation Sparks A Massive Debate, Vote by Mail Fight, & More

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

Start your free trial today: http://www.Squarespace.com/Phil & enter offer code “Phil” to get 10% off your first purchase! My PODCAST is BACK! Watch NEW Ep w/ Casey Neistat: https://youtu.be/uQH-Ugcd1pg -- 00:00 - Announcement! 00:44 - Keem/Ethan/Pokimane 05:35 - TIA 07:07 - National Guard 12:09 - Mail-In Voting -- 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 BUY our GEAR, Support the Show!: http://ShopDeFranco.com ✩ FOLLOW ME ✩ ✭ TWITTER: http://Twitter.com/PhillyD ✭ INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/PhillyDeFranco/ ✩ SUPPORT THE SHOW ✩ ✭ Buy Merch: http://ShopDeFranco.com ✭ Lemme Touch Your Hair: http://BeautifulBastard.com ✭ Paid Subscription: http://DeFrancoElite.com ✩ TODAY IN AWESOME ✩ ✭ Captain Tom To Be Knighted!: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/beacon-of-light-capt-tom-moore-to-be-knighted ✭ Justin Roiland Breaks Down His Career: https://youtu.be/5fCLJqgViYQ ✭ Hailee Steinfeld Crashes Her Own Fan Watch Party: https://youtu.be/QyniugeW3lQ ✭ 13 Reasons Why: Final Season | Official Trailer: https://youtu.be/poUq9ypynKs ✭ Secret Link: https://youtu.be/u70kLPTgDQY ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ Ethan Klein’s “Content Nuke” On Keemstar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3gXcIifc3o National Guard Deployments to End Just One Day Before Benefits Kick In for Thousands: https://roguerocket.com/2020/05/20/national-guard-deployment/ Trump Threatens to Withhold Funding From Michigan and Nevada Over Mail-in Voting: https://roguerocket.com/2020/05/20/trump-michigan-nevada/ ✩ STORIES NOT IN TODAY’S SHOW ✩ Ruby Rose Exits The CW’s ‘Batwoman’ After 1 Season: https://roguerocket.com/2020/05/20/ruby-rose-leaves-batwoman/ Florida Scientist Says She Was Fired for Refusing to Manipulate Data: https://roguerocket.com/2020/05/20/florida-manipulate-data/ ——————————     Edited by: James Girardier, Julie Goldberg Produced by: Amanda Morones Art Director: Brian Borst Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Lili Stenn, Maddie Crichton, Cory Ray, Neena Pesqueda, Brian Espinoza Production Team: Zack Taylor, Luke Manning ———————————— #DeFranco #EthanKlein #Pokimane ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wait, we saw this. We're here to jump into it today. Sup, you beautiful bastards. Hope you've had a fantastic Wednesday. And actually, a quick note before we get started. After today's show, if you're looking for more to fill that empty space in your heart, I just put out a brand new podcast with my buddy Casey Neistat. And you can watch it over at youtube.com slash acw or listen to it over at lynxhole.com.

And two, second note here, today's Philip DeFranco show was originally 30 minutes, and so as to not be several hours late and to not have a ridiculously large show, I removed one of those stories. And so tomorrow morning, you will be getting an extra bonus 10 minute news video on this channel. So look out for that. For those that are subscribed,

make sure you have that bell rung to turn on notifications. But with that said, oh boy, buckle up, hit that like button and let's just jump into it. And the first thing we're gonna talk about today was easily the most requested story, and that is the situation around a huge creator by the name of Ethan Klein, and another large creator by the name of Daniel Keen.

Now, before moving forward, I know that a number of people that want me to cover this story, want me to cover it so that I kind of egg on some drama or take shots at someone. That is not what this video is. If you've watched me kind of over the last, especially the last one or two years,

I don't try to kind of egg on drama for no reason. I try to talk about things from a business or a legal standpoint. And at most with this story, I'll just mention one thing that Ethan mentioned in his video as a way to get to the thing that I actually wanna talk about. So, Ethan makes this video titled,

"'Content Nuke' Keemstar." And this is essentially a partial highlight reel of not so great things that Daniel Keem has done over the course of his career. Things as recent as Daniel claiming that Ethan and his wife actually kinda scammed fans with a deal with Payday 2. Ethan even getting someone from the game to be in his video to say that is not true at all.

And including things that Daniel has done in the past, like falsely accusing an old man of being a pedophile to his audience. Also noting that Keemstar acknowledged and apologized things that Daniel has done in the past like falsely accusing an old man of being a pedophile to his audience. Also noting that Keemstar acknowledged and apologized for that mistake but also featuring a video from Keem later where it appears that he is but he's not telling the old guy to go fuck himself. Once again, even me describing that, it's very surface level

if you wanna understand kind of the full claims, the full clips, you can watch Ethan's video, I'll link to it down below. In general, Ethan's video has been overwhelmingly well received, I mean link to it down below. In general, Ethan's video has been overwhelmingly well received. I mean, as of recording this video, it has 333,000 likes, only 17,000 dislikes. But with this video, one of the debates I saw pop up

involved sponsors. And the reason for that is over the course of the video, Ethan multiple times mentions that Daniel Keem has a sponsorship with G Fuel. And for Daniel, this is kind of a staple sponsor. I mean, he promotes them so much, I genuinely thought that he must have already been like an equity owner of it.

But I guess maybe not because of what we saw happen. After Ethan released his video where he says stuff like, how is G Fuel still sponsored this guy, by the way? G Fuel brought to you by false pedophilia accusations. Chuck it G Fuel. You start seeing people say that Daniel Keem's code no longer works on the G Fuel website. It appears that images of him on the website

are also now gone, and the cotton candy flavor associated with him is no longer on the site. So it resulted in people saying it looks like he lost the sponsorship, lost the relationship. Here, you essentially had a number of people saying, "'Good, screw that guy,' but others saying "'it's actually very concerning "'to go after a creator's sponsors.'"

Right, essentially saying that it's a slippery slope, though I will say this is not a new tactic. It's just that essentially saying that it's a slippery slope. Though, I will say, this is not a new tactic. It's just that often we see it in a different medium. The two that come to mind are when people went after, I think it was like Laura Ingraham's sponsors, Bill O'Reilly's sponsors, Hannity. People flooding those brands with emails and phone calls saying, hey, do you know what you're actually supporting?

Or how dare you support this? And sometimes you see brands drop, some staying. But here, some claiming that Ethan's helping open the door for this to be kind of a part of the way that creators go after one another. And this debate is in my head because it's not the only example we've seen of this this week.

There was another large creator and streamer by the name of Pokimane in the news. Well, for a number of reasons. One, more recently, she accidentally showed porn on her stream. That's a whole other story, but pertaining to this story, there was a video that she was not a fan of. A video that took aim at her that she described

as essentially 20 minutes of just calling her a thot. And she said this about the brand. If I ever see you in my inbox, on-site. Like no company should do that just about ever. Oh, is this a video where some random dude behind a VR machine calls a girl a thot for 20 minutes? Really wanna put my logo on that one! Now following that, the other creators said because of this they've now lost another deal.

As far as if that part's true, I don't know, but it still kind of plays to the point and debate of what do you think about people going after sponsors? And kind of expanding on that, we've seen other creators not going after brands, but specifically mentioning other creators who have worked with this person. For example, we saw a streamer by the name of GoldGloveTV tweeting, so all those content creators who have been supporting slash playing in Keemstar's tournaments should have a lot to say

about the recent H3H3 Productions video, right? Which, if you don't know, a lot of the top streamers in the world are a part of Keemstar's events that he puts on now and then. Right, so while GoldGlove did not specifically mention individual creators, it does create this environment of, okay, well now that so many people are notably feeling this way, do we see those creators stay silent

on this topic? Do we see them stay and potentially defend Daniel Keem? Do we see them all of a sudden drop out? I don't know. It's all just a very messy and also developing situation. I mean, one of the reasons I'm not deep diving into all the individual claims is that right now Daniel Keem is responding. Releasing part one of his video today

where also an update to the thing that we actually talked about. Regarding G Fuel, he said he called them, saying he walked away from G Fuel so they don't have to deal with the hate. But that said, while I'd love to know your thoughts in general about that situation, specifically to the story we're covering,

I'd also love to know your thoughts regarding the idea of going after sponsors or other creators who work with other creators. For you, is it kind of a blanket? Yes, it's okay, no, it's completely wrong. Or is there a kind of a specific line in the sand depending on what the actions are? Let me know what you're thinking and why

in those comments down below. And then the last two things I wanna talk about today are things that are affecting actual everyday people and also pertains to the future of this country. This is the Philip DeFranco Show. We cover a variety of topics every day. So first here, we need to talk about the National Guard, retirement benefits and the GI Bill.

And the reason we're talking about this is because right now thousands of troops are set to be kept from earning their benefits. So here's the situation. More than 40,000 members of the National Guard have been deployed across 44 states, three territories and the District of Columbia. This to help with testing people for the coronavirus

as well as to trace the spread of infections, also to help decontaminate nursing homes and set up field hospitals. Notably, all of that has been a massive godsend to understaffed and underfunded state public health agencies trying to contain outbreaks. Just so you understand the scale here, this is actually the largest domestic deployment

that we've seen since Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. But the federal order that they're serving under is set to end next month on June 24th. And in a call made last week and now obtained by Politico, according to a senior FEMA official, the Trump administration will reportedly put a hard stop on deployments on that date. And because of that specific cutoff date, June 24th,

many National Guard members will have earned only 89 days of active duty. However, to qualify for things like early retirement, as well as education benefits granted under the post 9-11 GI Bill, you need not 89 days of active duty, but rather 90. So not only would states see an abrupt loss of crucial frontline workers,

but the Trump administration is also likely to face questions about shortchanging them. And look, according to Politico, in this call that FEMA official admits as much, reportedly telling dozens of colleagues that this move would require a delicate messaging strategy. Reportedly saying, "'We would greatly benefit

from unified messaging regarding the conclusion of their services prior to hitting the 90 day mark and the retirement benefit implications associated with it. Now, if you're thinking to yourself, well, just one day, why can't those troops just pick up an extra day of work so they can get those benefits? Well, that's because those 90 days of required active duty all need to be from federal deployment.

So for example, Guard members must serve 20 years before they can qualify for pension at age 60. However, for every 90 days that they've served during a federal emergency, they can move up that retirement by three months. But of course, that key phrase there is federal emergency, right? So state deployments do not count, right? So that means that even if the states decide they need to keep these troops around after June 24th, that's still not a federal deployment, right? So the guard members wouldn't end up seeing their benefits. And so now, one of the main questions here, because the story's out there,

is will the Trump administration issue an extension so troops can see these benefits without having to wait who knows how long? And I mean, you already have multiple governors and lawmakers from other states all asking the White House to extend its federal order, arguing that pulling the National Guard out of states too soon could contribute

to a possible second wave of infections. Also, a thing I wanna note here is that the Trump administration has actually already issued an extension once, so this would actually be a second extension. Right there we saw Trump's original order set to expire May 31st, but in early April we saw lawmakers

from states like New Hampshire, Connecticut, West Virginia, and Illinois all seeking an extension through the fall. Then near the end of last month we saw Colorado's entire congressional delegation asking Trump for an extension through the rest of the year. While Trump did issue that extension on May 8th, it was only actually for 24 days, which very unusually here, that meant that the deployment

was scheduled to end in the middle of the week. And in fact, according to retired Brigadier General and President of the National Guard Association, J. Roy Robinson, it seemed kind of weird to me. It's a Wednesday, and it also coincides with 89 days of deployment for any soldiers who went on federal status at the beginning. I was getting all kinds of calls about it,

and I said, it's probably just a coincidence. But in the back of my mind, I know better. They're screwing the National Guard members out of the status they should have. We've also seen US Representative from New York and National Guard Captain Max Rose blasting Trump, saying, intentionally ending orders one day short of a deadline for National Guard soldiers

to receive benefits for their heroic sacrifices is the definition of heartless. In peacetime, we should never balance our budget on the backs of our soldiers, so why anyone would think this is okay to do in the middle of a wartime effort is beyond human comprehension. This decision must be reversed,

not only because it is deeply unpatriotic, but also economically unsound and puts our gains against COVID-19 at risk for some short-term, foolish, budgetary gimmick. Now, while top National Guard and other federal officials on that call did not dispute the June 24th cutoff or bring up the possibility of an extension, a spokesperson for the National Guard has now said that a decision to extend deployments could still be made in the coming weeks. But at the same time, you also

seemingly have the National Guard's Hall countering by saying that the 90-day threshold is cumulative. Right, essentially going back to that argument of, hey, you can get that extra active duty day whenever the next federal deployment is. Right, essentially saying they're not losing out, they're just not getting it now. Also, one of the last points I wanna hit here is that, like I mentioned earlier, yes, states do technically have the ability to continue using the troops after the deadline,

but it should be noted, especially at a time where money matters for every individual and also for states, it is incredibly expensive. Reportedly, it is $9 million a month for 1,000 troops. Right, and so because of that, you have the National Guard Association warning that without federal orders and funding most states won't be able to support significant Guard deployments. And that also might be another problem because for the members that states can't support they may actually be taken out of the field before June 24. And that's because National Guard members will have to self quarantine for two weeks before returning to civilian life.

But ultimately that is where we are with this story now. It is gonna be interesting to see what happens. We're gonna keep our eyes on it. With this, of course, I'd love to know your thoughts here. Do you feel like the members of the National Guard are being screwed? If so, do you think that it was intentional or it just happened to be an accident? Or no, you think it's set up this specific way for this specific reason? It all makes sense. And then, as I touched on, the last thing that I want to talk about is really, it touches on the future of our country. Once again, we cover a wide variety of topics on the show. If you're new here, subscribe.

So where I'm gonna start here is this morning, we saw President Donald Trump making threats against Michigan and Nevada. You know, and as we've talked about a few times before, Trump has frequently opposed expanding mail-in voting, sometimes by falsely claiming that the process is riddled with fraud and corruption. All right, so early this morning, we saw him tweet,

"'Breaking, Michigan sends absentee ballots "'to 7.7 million people ahead of primaries "'and the general election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue secretary of state. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this voter fraud path. With him then following that up with state of Nevada

thinks that they can send out illegal vote by mail ballot, creating a great voter fraud scenario for the state and the US. They can't. If they do, I think I can hold up funds to the state. Sorry, but you must not cheat in elections. Right, so just to start off here, one of the problems is that those claims about Michigan,

they're not true. Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, said on Tuesday that she plans to mail an absentee ballot application to voters, not an actual ballot. With her noting that in a response to Trump herself, where she also pointed out that several Republican-led states plan to do the same thing.

Right, so there's that situation in Michigan, where I do think it's important to point out that the president here is either lying or misleading or misunderstanding the situation. And actually, little update here, as I was recording, Trump has actually now deleted that Michigan tweet and then reposted the exact same message. So it now says absentee ballot application, but still seemingly not acknowledging his previous false claim. So that's the situation in Michigan. And then you have Nevada where on the other hand, they will actually send out mail-in ballots to active registered voters for the state's entire mail-in primary on June 9th.

But still, Trump's attack on Nevada had a lot of people confused. And that's because the move to switch to an almost entirely mail-in election was made by Nevada's Secretary of State, who is a Republican. And interestingly enough, it's actually something that Democrats in the state have been pushing back against and even suing over.

This because they don't want every single in-person polling location to be closed and they want all registered voters, not just active voters, to be sent ballots. But that's also not the only weird thing here. Michigan and Nevada are only two of the numerous states that have started to expand vote by mail during this pandemic.

This even including states like Georgia, even cities like Milwaukee, which have already said that they will do the exact same thing that Michigan is doing with sending vote by mail application. And actually a lot of these efforts are supported or even led by Republicans. I mean, just two days ago,

the chair of the Republican National Committee said that she's fine with absentee ballot applications being sent to registered voters. Though I will note, she did say she didn't like the actual ballots themselves being sent. And once again, understand a lot of this has to do with health concerns. In fact, the CDC specifically recommends states

encourage mail-in methods of voting if allowed in the jurisdiction given the coronavirus threat. Also we're seeing reports like this from Axios saying a new study found that Wisconsin counties which had higher numbers of in-person voting per voting location during its primary earlier this year had a higher rate of positive COVID-19 tests two to three weeks after the election compared to counties

with relatively fewer in-person voters. And so that's why too many, including myself, it appears like the president is trying to suppress the vote. Even his choice of specifically singling out Michigan and Nevada makes that clear. Those states are likely to be contested in the 2020 election.

If we look back to 2016, Trump barely won Michigan. He actually lost Nevada by less than three points. We've also seen Trump in the past even say that voting by mail means Republicans won't get elected. And while there, I will note that there is this new study by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research that found that there is no evidence that vote by mail benefits one party over another.

I would say based off of other polling and the current situation we're in, that may not be true. I mean, you look around, you see poll after poll that in general, Republicans are less scared about COVID-19 than liberals. And if there's still a fear about COVID-19 in November, that could change who's gonna actually turn out and vote in person.

So if mail-in ballots aren't widely available, it feels like there would be an affected lean. Also, an incredibly important note to hit on here, you've seen the president talk about election fraud numerous times over the past four years. As many experts and reports have pointed out, cases of election fraud in the United States are actually rare.

In fact, a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice said that the rate of voter fraud in the United States was somewhere between.00004% to.0009% of all votes. And an exhaustive analysis it conducted of all known voter fraud cases only identified 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud from 2000 to 2012. Literal billions of votes were cast during that time. And once again, to kind of jump back to it,

I think it's important to know that Trump's attacks on mail-in voting, they have largely been targeted at states with little history of large numbers of people casting absentee ballots like in Wisconsin. But he has not addressed this in states where it has long been popular, such as Florida and Arizona and where it's been used to great success by Republican campaigns.

Now as far as the specific funds that Trump is threatening to withhold from Michigan and Nevada, that's unclear right now. He is likely referring to the election security grants provided under the CARES Act. Those are basically funds that are supposed to help states deal with the coronavirus as it relates to the 2020 election cycle.

Michigan there received $11.2 million in funds and plans to use some of that on absentee ballot applications. Nevada receiving 4.5 million and wanting to use that to transition to a system where registered voters automatically receive a ballot. So basically, both of these states are using the money for the purposes laid out by Congress,

which makes it easier to cast votes during a pandemic. And also, according to reports here, election officials have said that the money is already out the door on the way to states. But ultimately, that is where we are with this story. It's gonna be very interesting and important to see what happens next. It's really, no matter what here,

it is a concerning situation. Whether he needs to or not, because we don't know how people are actually going to vote, he is setting up the groundwork for him to have a card in his back pocket to go, I don't know if these results are real. This is not the first time he's done it, and it's not gonna be the last time.

He's gonna keep hitting those words, scam, fraud, but what's crazy is while the instances of voter fraud are rare, one of the most serious and credible allegations of absentee ballot fraud in decades was actually designed to help a Republican. It was back in 2018 in North Carolina's 9th congressional district.

We talked about this on the show. It was a Republican operative charged with election fraud after rounding up absentee ballots for the Republican candidate, Mark Harris. State election officials refused to certify the results and held a redo election in 2019. However, experts also use this case as an example that fraud big enough to sway an election outcome

will likely be detected. But that's that story, what a show. As always, thanks for watching, hitting that like button on this video, being a part of the conversation in those comments down below. Also, if you're new here, thanks for hitting that subscribe button,

then definitely tapping that bell to turn on notifications. Also, if you're looking for more to watch right now, we have that new podcast with Casey Neistat, or maybe you just missed yesterday's show, you wanna catch up, you can click or tap right there to watch either of those. But with that said, of course, as always, my name's Philip DeFranco, you've just been filled in,

I love yo faces, and I'll see you tomorrow. I hope you like this video. Subscribe if you like it.