The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 6.14 SHAME ON YOU ETHAN KLEIN & HASAN PIKER! Nicki Minaj, MET Gala Backlash & Controversy, More

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

Shoutout to Keeps! Go to https://www.keeps.com/defranco to get 50% off your first order of hair loss treatment. Watch More News: https://youtu.be/gbm8CvOIDGw TEXT ME! [phone] Get More Phil: https://linktr.ee/PhilipDeFranco -- 00:00 - Nicki Minaj Tweets About Vaccines 03:04 - AOC Wears “Tax the Rich” Dress 04:40 - 9/11 Parade Float Prompts Outrage 06:04 - Sponsor 06:51 - MA Activates National Guard 08:16 - Docs Show Instagram’s Harm to Teens 11:38 - Larry Elder’s Voter Fraud Claims -- ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ Nicki Minaj’s Blasts Off Series of Vaccine Tweets: https://roguerocket.com/2021/09/14/nicki-minaj-vaccine-tweet/ AOC’s “Tax the Rich” Dress Sparks Conversation Online: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/14/aoc-defends-tax-the-rich-dress-met-gala Parade Float Featuring Smoking Twin Towers Prompts Outrage: https://www.nj.com/news/2021/09/911-parade-float-in-indiana-featuring-smoking-twin-towers-sparks-outrage.html MA Activated the National Guard to Address School Bus Driver Job Shortages: https://roguerocket.com/2021/09/14/ma-bus-drivers/ Internal Facebook Docs Shows How Dangerous Instagram Can Be for Teens: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739?mod=hp_lead_pos7 Facebook Allows Prominent Users to Break Rules: https://www.axios.com/facebook-allows-prominent-users-break-rules-1c04b99d-f1fe-414d-a843-2cd1bd4b8fb0.html Larry Elder Maks Premature Voter Fraud Claims: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article254078633.html ✩ STORIES NOT IN TODAY’S SHOW ✩ Kansas Lawmaker Accused of Kicking Teen in Groin Receives Suspended Sentence: https://roguerocket.com/2021/09/14/kansas-lawmaker-suspended-sentence/ More Than 500 Chinese Students Were Denied U.S. Visa Over Security Concerns https://roguerocket.com/2021/09/14/more-than-500-chinese-students-were-denied-u-s-visa-over-security-concerns/ —————————— Edited by: James Girardier, Julie Goldberg, Maxwell Enright Art Director: William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Cory Ray, Brian Espinoza Production Team: Zack Taylor ———————————— #DeFranco #NickiMinaj #AOC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup you beautiful bastards, welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show. Hit that like button if you want me to punch you in the throat and or just to feed those algorithm gods to get these videos in front of more people. And while you do that, I'm just gonna jump into it. You know, the first stories and news that we have to talk about today involves the Met Gala, which I get that it's for charity, but it always is such a weird thing. Like it always just comes off to me as this look at me, look at me, elit, bullshittery parade with people dressed up like citizens of Pan Am and the Capitol. But actually one of the stories that blew up the most regarding the Met Gala involves someone that did not go. With a lot of the focus being on Nicki Minaj,

she put out a barrage of tweets and regarding the Met Gala she wrote, "'They want you to get vaccinated for the Met. "'If I get vaccinated, it won't be for the Met. "'It'll be once I feel I've done enough research. "'I'm working on that now.'" To which we saw the likes of Hasan Piker responding, "'The world awaits your wonderful contribution to the scientific community.

And possibly in response to that, just minutes later, we saw Nikki sharing a rather remarkable story, writing, My cousin in Trinidad won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married. Now the girl called off the wedding. So just prey on it and make sure you're comfortable with your decision, not bullied. We ended up seeing a whole slew of dismissive responses to both this and the previous tweets, including YouTube's own Ethan Klein tweeting, eagerly awaiting Nicki's peer-reviewed study

on the various vaccines efficacy. And y'all, I try to keep my emotions out of stories most of the time, but I wanna say something to Ethan Klein and Hasan Piker. You disgusting libtards, you Fauci fuckboys. Leave Nicki Minaj alone. If you actually tried the bare minimum, you did just an inkling of research, you would know that Nicki's trying her best. And I know this firsthand because Nicki, I, and an elite team of barbs have been working countless hours over the last six months trying to figure this shit out. Running the

numbers, following the leads, checking the balls. balls you dismiss her story you dismiss her truth as Probably some guy in Trinidad cheating on his girlfriend getting an STI and trying to explain it away Does that make more sense than Nikki's version of events? Sure. And is that probably what actually happened fine? But I don't I don't know how to end this bit. It's so stupid This is such a weird stupid story that has resulted in Nicki Minaj misleading and misinforming millions of people. Though, if you were a person that Nicki Minaj's opinion was a thing that like knocked you off the fence,

like I don't know if there's much hope for you. But really, isn't that the most American and patriotic thing that Nicki Minaj could do right now? Using a weird anecdotal story that's gone through several rounds of a game of telephone as equal to or greater than scientific research. And Googling and texting until you find things

that validate how you feel rather than caring about the actual facts and reality of the situation. Oh, it's so stupid. Like I just had to watch Dr. Fauci on national TV be questioned about this and his response, I'm paraphrasing. There's no evidence that COVID vaccines cause reproductive issues and this is the dumbest bullshit. And also it's kind of fun with this sort of misinformation

is it's not the kind of stuff that gets removed from social media. The Twitter spokesperson telling The Verge that her posts are not in violation of the Twitter rule, which is most likely because Twitter doesn't actually know if some random dude in Trinidad has giant balls. And if he does, how he got them. But yeah, that's that story.

You have any thoughts? Also, in addition to the Nicki Minaj focus, there was a lot of attention on people that went and the controversies or backlash associated with that. With representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez definitely at the center of a lot of stories, wearing a dress that said tax the rich. With a number of people mocking her attendance and outfit,

including the likes of Ted Cruz and Barstool Sports' Dave Portnoy, who tweeted tax the rich. But first I'm gonna go have the time of my life partying with them all at the most extravagant over the top party of the year that is essentially a celebration of richness. Though on the other side of this,

you had AOC describing the story behind this dress on Instagram, saying the medium is the message, adding that she worked with Aurora James, who was a black woman immigrant designer who focuses on sustainability and saying, the time is now for childcare, healthcare, and climate action for all. "'Tax the rich.'"

And yes, before anybody starts wiling out, New York City elected officials are regularly invited to and attend the Met due to our responsibilities in overseeing our city's cultural institutions that serve the public. And regarding whether or not the medium was effective in communicating her message, you had AOC sharing a story showing,

"'Searches for people looking up tax the rich' "'skyrocketed and noting that this surge leads "'to more discussion about America's tax code and how to fix it. But still very much so you had people very split on the sum saying that her reasoning here was bullshit, saying that she's a hypocrite, others saying, no, she's great, she's driving the conversation

and awareness on important issues. AOC ended up responding to this herself on Instagram, writing that she thought about the criticism she might receive as she has faced it since her election, but saying she decided that even though some people would hate it, the important thing was that, quote, "'Y'all had a conversation about taxing the rich in front of the very people who lobby against it

and punctured the fourth wall of excess and spectacle.'" And so what I'd love to do with this story is pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts here? Let me know what you're thinking and why regarding this AOC situation. Then in news that has me, you know, thinking, I'm a boss, I'm a team lead.

There've been numerous times in meetings that I've said the phrase, y'all, there's no such thing as a bad idea. And today I, Philip DeFranco, would like to denounce that sentiment. I would like to retroactively take that statement back because of this news coming out of Porter County, Indiana, that's making headlines. If you haven't seen yet,

they had their 40th annual popcorn festival. It landed on September 11. For this, the Valparaiso City Republicans decided to sponsor a float that they said was intended to show love, respect, and sorrow for all the 9-11 victims, the soldiers who died in Afghanistan, and our first responders.

But they and their float ended up receiving a ton of backlash because this is the float. A little up. What the? Are you? because this is the float. A little up. What the? Are you? Because you know, the best way to honor murder victims is to recreate the murder. While yes, there were people in person and online

that applauded the memorial effort, many called it tasteless. Watching in disbelief and leaving some not too happy comments, which resulted in the Republican group limiting comments on its social media posts. We also saw the county's GOP chairman eventually saying that they wish no disrespect and regret that the tribute was perceived in bad taste.

Yeah, I guess the two main points of the story, one, there is such a thing as a bad idea if no one calls out the bad idea. Two, that stupid thing you did in the last week, not the dumbest thing that someone's done in the last week. So that's a positive? From that, I'm gonna take a second to pay some bills and thank the fantastic sponsor of today's show, Keeps.

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And then let's definitely talk about the ongoing job crunch happening here in the States over these last few months. We've talked about how it's hit sectors like food and hospitality, as well as retail teaching and even the medical field, but it's not just them. Another massive shortage that we're seeing is with bus drivers. And in fact, the problem is so pronounced

that in places like Massachusetts, yesterday we saw Governor Charlie Baker calling in the National Guard, calling in 250 National Guard members to fill in those positions. And according to him, starting today, 90 Guard members will be dispatched to four different cities where they will undergo training to drive children to school

in 10-person passenger vans. The superintendent of one district saying that he expects the program up and running by the end of the week and adding, "'This relationship will continue "'until we can fill all our buses and vans "'with permanent school bus drivers.'" And actually looking into the situation further,

it turns out the school districts all across the country have struggled for years to maintain their bus driver populations. But now with the coronavirus, it's accelerated and exacerbated those problems like never before. Turns out they are a particularly easy group to lose. Many are retirees, putting them in an age bracket

that's more vulnerable to COVID. And on top of that, there's still no vaccine approved for kids under the age of 12. So many bus drivers are like, fuck that. Even if the kids are most likely to be fine, they could spread it, I'm a very vulnerable person. Which is also why we're seeing in states such as Montana and Michigan,

they're actually offering signing bonuses of up to $4,000 to be a bus driver. With one charter school in Delaware in particular, even promising to give parents $700 for each of their children that they can drive to school for the entire year. And so this is really gonna be an interesting one to watch both in Massachusetts as well as other states, right?

Do they deploy national guards? Do we see monetary incentives? Then in one of my favorite kinds of news, let's talk about the dangers of social media while on social media. And this because internal Facebook documents obtained and published this morning by the Wall Street Journal show exactly how toxic platforms like Instagram can be

for teens mental health. According to the outlet for three years now, Facebook's been conducting studies into how Instagram, which it owns, affects minors. Saying repeatedly the company's researchers found that Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage of them, most notably teenage girls. In fact, one slide from a 2019 presentation,

even reportedly flat out says, "'We make body issues worse for one in three teen girls.'" With another reading, "'Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate "'of anxiety and depression. "'This reaction was unprompted "'and consistent across all groups.'" On top of that, 13% of British users

and 6% of American users who said that they've had suicidal thoughts directly trace their reasoning back to Instagram, with many reporting that they feel like they aren't attractive or don't have enough money or friends after scrolling through the app. Related to that, teens specifically called out pressure to conform to stereotypes and to match the money

and body shapes of influencers. With others setting the need for validation through views, likes, and follows. There's also the bullying, hate speech, the over-sexualization of girls and inappropriate advertisements. Right, and so with this, you have a lot of people going, wow, how interesting.

These internal documents appear to be very, very different when you compare them to Facebook's public messaging. For example, back in May, Instagram head Adam Masseri saying that the research he'd seen showed that the app's effects on teens' mental health were quite small. And while we don't know what specific research he's claiming to have seen or had,

these internal documents show one in five teens outright claiming that Instagram makes them feel worse about themselves. And yes, that's technically a minority, but that's still an incredibly significant number of people. I mean, you're talking about tens of millions of teens. Also, notably in direct response to this article, Instagram's head of public policy,

Karina Newton said this morning, "'While the story focuses on a limited set of findings and casts them in a negative light, we stand by this research,' and claiming, "'It demonstrates our commitment to understanding complex and difficult issues young people may struggle with and informs all the work we do

to help those experiencing these issues. With that saying that Instagram is considering, quote, finding opportunities to jump in if we see people dwelling on certain types of content. But in the end, a lot of this comes down to you. What's your opinion? Do you trust Instagram and Facebook to develop features that meaningfully create a positive shift?

Is this just lip service? Do you land somewhere in the middle? Do you think that any attempts is really gonna largely be futile? Is this just lip service? Do you land somewhere in the middle? Do you think that any attempts is really gonna largely be futile? Is this just gonna be an aspect of social media no matter what you try and do when people are sharing and consuming? But also that was just one of the pieces of news stemming

from these internal documents. Where the rules for me, but not for the aspect with Axios explaining, the internal documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal paint a picture of a company that allowed millions of politicians, celebrities, and other high profile users to break rules without consequence. This despite Facebook for the most part saying publicly

that they apply the same rules to all posts. With Axios explaining Facebook's X-Check program established to make sure that content reviews of posts by high profile users were handled with extra care, often gave VIPs a free pass to violate the company's rules, saying some were white listed and allowed to post whatever they want, for others content issues were passed along

to separate teams, which often failed to take action or sometimes even follow up on reports. Reportedly, it wasn't just a few people. By 2020, there were 5.8 million accounts included in this program. According to the journal, Facebook was aware that this was a problem with a confidential internal review in 2019, finding that the practice was both widespread

and not publicly defensible. Reportedly, Facebook's response to all of this was that assessment is kind of fair, but also not fair. Claiming that a lot of the internal material is outdated information stitched together to create a narrative that glosses over the most important fact that Facebook itself identified the issues with cross-check

and have been working to address them. Right, saying the company is phasing out the practice of white listing. And then finally today is the day, the California recall. Today we will see if California decides if Governor Gavin Newsom keeps or loses his job. With right now, two of the most likely outcomes being either Gavin Newsom maintains his job

or he gets recalled and he ends up, because of the state's bizarre recall system, losing to someone who got a fraction of the vote. But the top polling challenger by far being conservative talk radio host, Larry Elder, who prior to this recall, maybe you've seen him pop up in the news. It's usually connected to his, let's call it, special opinions and points of view. When you mentioned that the UK was ahead

of us, they were. Do you know that the slave owners were compensated? After they lost their quote unquote property, the government compensated slave owners. I didn't know that. Yeah. And so when people talk about reparations, do they really want to have that conversation? Because like it or not, slavery was legal. And so their property, their legal property was taken away from them after the Civil War. So you can make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just black people,

but also the people whose quote property, close quote, was taken away after the end of the Civil War. Cool, reparations for slave owners. And there's a whole fun montage of Elder I could include here, but for the sake of time, what I'll mention is most recently and really very, very expectedly,

like it's Trump's playbook verbatim, is Elder is pushing baseless voter fraud claims. Claiming last week, Democrats are going to cheat, we know that, and around the same time, saying that he believes that there might very well be shenanigans as there were in the 2020 election. And yesterday we saw his campaign launch a new website, encouraging his supporters to report voter fraud,

urging them to sign a petition calling on the state legislature to investigate the twisted results of the recall and adding, statistical analysis used to detect fraud in elections held in third world nations, such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, have detected fraud in California, resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom

being reinstated as governor. But understand, one, we have no results yet, and two, there's been no evidence of voter fraud in the California recall. You do have Republicans pointing to an incident in a Woodland Hills neighborhood last week, where some people who came up to vote were told that they had already cast their ballots.

But despite attempts to politicize that, the Los Angeles County Registrar's Office said that there was a very simple explanation. It was an error caused by settings on their computer systems used to check in voters. With the office also saying that all the people affected were allowed to cast provisional ballots until their eligibility is determined.

But also understand, it's not just elders sowing mistrust and misinformation while simultaneously telling their voter base to go vote in the recall. You also understand it's not just elders sowing mistrust and misinformation while simultaneously telling their voter base to go vote in the recall. You also got California Republican party officials trying to spread this narrative that the state's election security cannot be trusted. With this including Harmeet Dhillon,

the Republican national committee woman for California, who when asked by reporters refused to say whether California's election will be safe and secure and adding, there will be a lot of questions and potentially litigation after this election about the sloppy at best treatment of people's ballots and their right to vote.

With her continuing rumors spread like wildfires based on facts. Those facts are there are errors in voting in Los Angeles County. People see that online and decide it's not worth it to vote. Also beyond California officials, we saw Trump who never misses an opportunity to spread misinformation about elections chiming in

and saying, does anybody really believe the California recall election isn't rigged? Millions and millions of mail-in ballots will make this just another giant election scam. No different, but less blatant than the 2020 presidential election scam. And right now the strategy very much appears to be a short-term loss with a long-term win.

What I mean by that is a point that was hit on. When you have people saying that the election is rigged, most likely you get people to not show up and vote. I think that's something we saw with the Georgia special election, where all of a sudden you got two Democrats voted in. When you had Trump as president saying, "'The whole thing's rigged,'

why would you go out there and vote?" And so it was widely believed that he actually diminished Republican turnout. So as far as why Republicans would do it, in this election, according to new polls, it shows that Newsom is very likely going to keep his seat. There was definitely a time in the state where recall yes or no polling was very, very close.

But as more and more Democrats became aware of this recall election, the efforts being made, the polling is really now favoring Newsom. Right, and so if you're gonna lose anyway, why not continue the big lie? Right, preemptively undermine the democratic results of a free and fair election. And it gives you a riled up base feeling like they're wrong.

Thus more and more people are gonna support when Republicans limit voter rights. And not if, but rather when Republicans take back Congress, maybe they get back the White House, whether it be in 2024 or 2028 or so on, you then have all this political will and this political capital to crack down on people that you have, even though the facts are not there,

people that you have deemed cheaters. It's really unfortunate. It's very scary, especially in a world where you can do your own research until you find something that emotionally feels like it validates what you think is happening. Yeah, I guess the main point is I think in a few years, maybe I should move to Norway.

Norway, can I come? Can we be best friends? You know, ultimately with this story or, you know, honestly anything else that really stood out to you today, I'd love to know your thoughts in those comments down below. And of course, as always, thank you for watching, like and subscribing to the videos, join in the family. My name's Philip DeFranco.

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