The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 7.21 WOW! DAVE CHAPPELLE CANCELLED?! What FaZe Clan’s Flop Exposes, Biden Has Covid, & More News

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

For 20% off your first order of Kradle products, go to https://kradlemypet.com/DEFRANCO and use promo DEFRANCO at checkout or visit your local Walmart to pick some up today! News You Might Have Missed: https://youtu.be/vEB1xwHTVq8 TEXT ME! [phone] Get More Phil: https://linktr.ee/PhilipDeFranco – 00:00 - Venue Drops Dave Chappelle at Last Minute 02:29 - FaZe Clan Goes Public 04:34 - Facebook Gets TikTok Facelift 06:40 - Sponsor 07:38 - Bipartisan Group of Senators Propose Bill to Overhaul Electoral Count Act 10:03 - Biden Takes Steps to Address Climate Crisis – ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ Venue Drops Dave Chappelle at Last Minute: https://roguerocket.com/2022/07/21/chappelle-first-avenue-canceled/ FaZe Clan Goes Public: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/20/faze-clan-goes-public-in-725-million-spac-a-deal-for-creator-economy.html Facebook Gets TikTok Facelift: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/21/23272536/facebook-home-feeds-tab-tiktok-algorithmic-content-recommendations Bipartisan Group of Senators Propose Bill to Overhaul Electoral Count Act: https://roguerocket.com/2022/07/21/bipartisan-senators-propose-electoral-count-act/ Biden Takes Steps to Address Climate Crisis: https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/biden-announces-steps-fight-climate-crisis-87196418 ✩ STORIES NOT IN TODAY’S SHOW ✩ Mortgage Boycotts Shake Chinese Economy as CCP Haunted by Financial Crisis: https://roguerocket.com/2022/07/21/mortgage-boycotts-sweep-china/ —————————— Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Maxwell Enright, Julie Goldberg Art Department: Brian Borst, William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Maddie Crichton, Lili Stenn, Chris Tolve Production Team: Emma Leid ———————————— #DeFranco #FaZeRug #DaveChappelle ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup, you beautiful bastards! Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. This is the final roadshow for a while. I'm back in the studio on Monday. So to celebrate a successful week of roadshows, hit that like button, make sure you subscribe for these daily dives into the news, and let's just jump into it. Y'all, first up today, the unthinkable has happened. Dave Chappelle got cancelled. But like, not in the social media way, but like actually in real life. So yesterday, he was scheduled to perform at the First Avenue Theater in Minneapolis. If you don't know, it's a significant theater. Dave has performed there before.

It's also in Prince's Purple Rain film. Many believe that it should be declared a historical landmark. But just hours before Chappelle was supposed to take the stage, the theater canceled his gig at the venue and said it would be switching it to a new location. And though they did not explicitly say why,

it appears to have to do with the backlash and criticism the comedian has faced over transphobic remarks. With First Avenue saying in a statement, to staff, artists, and our community, we hear you and we are sorry. We know we must hold ourselves to the highest standards, and we know we let you down. We are not just a black box with people in it, and we understand that First Avenue is not just a room, but meaningful beyond our walls.

And adding that the theater and its supporters have worked hard to make the venue a safe space of continuing. We believe in diverse voices and the freedom of artistic expression, but in honoring that, we lost sight of the impact this would have. We know there are some who will not agree with this decision. You are welcome to send feedback. And then, telling ticket holders they would get an email about their tickets being transferred to the new location, Varsity Theater, with Varsity Theater then confirming and following up by letting fans know that their tickets would be honored at its doors. And notably, Varsity had already scheduled to host Chappelle today and Friday, so it was the logical switch, as the venue

had already given him the green light. And as you'd expect, this has prompted a ton of conversation and questions online about why First Avenue chose to ditch the event so suddenly. Some claiming that the staff at First Avenue called out in protest that there were actually no workers to work the gig, though notably no official reports yet have confirmed and mentioned that. Others have pointed to a Change.org petition that said Dave has a record of being dangerous to trans people and First Avenue has a duty to protect the community. That petition only had around 126 signatures, so it wasn't big. But clearly, in some capacity, whether it be from staff or supporters, the venue was facing backlash big enough for a last-minute cancellation. And so now with these two venues doing two drastically

different things, both are receiving heat online. Some accusing First Avenue of embracing cancel culture, saying they're hypocrites, picking and choosing what voices they support. But on the other side, you have people upset and pointing the finger at Varsity, saying they're platforming transphobia, with the Star Tribune even reporting that a few dozen protesters went to the theater before the show chanting Trans Lives Matter. And so far, as of recording, Chappelle has not released a statement about the situation. But my thinking, while he may have feelings to a certain degree about that venue, I'm not sure. I have to imagine, in general, he's fine with this. Like, I mean, really think about it. What is the net effect of this been

for Dave Chappelle? More money, more attention, more audience? But with all that said, yeah, I do want to know your thoughts on everything, but also specifically regarding First Ave and Varsity. And then in very exciting or concerning news about the future of the creator space and the organizations that are built in it, we should talk about FaZe Clan. Right, because if you don't know, FaZe Clan is a massive, massive creator company. It has some major online grassroots names like FaZe Rug and FaZe Rain, but also over the years has gained interest and brought in people like Kyler Murray and Snoop Dogg. And the company just went public yesterday following a merger with a special purpose acquisition company or SPAC, with that deal having valued FaZe at $725 million. It's currently

trading on the Nasdaq under FaZe. It opened at $13 per share, but, and this is why I said it was exciting for some and concerning for others, the stock has not been met with a ton of excitement. So far, having plummeted roughly over 30%, now selling closer to a $9 a share price. Are you talking about an instant devaluation of hundreds of millions of dollars? With some outlets noting that while SPAC mergers

were hot during the pandemic, they quickly lost popularity, with CNBC noting that market has dried up. Many planned deals remain on hold or were canceled, and many companies that went public using a SPAC merger in the past few years have performed extremely poorly. With other outlets also noting that there may have been kind of an understanding that the market wasn't really interested, noting that the $735 million valuation that it came out with is less than the $1 billion it had when it first announced its intent to go public last year. So it's definitely off to a rocky start,

but the news of it going public is still major because it's a big step, not only for the creator and esports economy, but also because it's a young company that appeals specifically to Gen Z. With CEO Lee Trink telling the Washington Post, we've placed ourselves in the top echelon of a youth culture company.

And now, and not just this minute, we have started to shift our focus to monetizing that massive audience. I think that's really critical for this moment of going public. And adding to NBC, we think we're the our focus to monetizing that massive audience. I think that's really critical for this moment of going public. And adding to NBC, we think we're the first Gen Z native brand to go public. We're certainly the first creator-based brand to go public. With FaZe Clan claiming that 80% of its audience is between the ages of 13 and 34,

which is a very young lean. But also not surprising considering its content. But for now, we're gonna have to wait to see what happens with this company, but also the stock. Is this slow, rocky start indicative of a much larger problem? Or is it just kind of an early kink, a little snag in the plan that they're going to bounce back from? Who knows? Maybe you do. So while we wait to see what happens, I'll pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts with this story? And then, are you a normie over the age of 40 or a weirdo under the age of 40? Or rather, my question is, do you use

Facebook? Because while you or someone you know that uses it is about to have a drastically different experience, and it's about to have a drastically different experience and it's gonna be something more along the lines of TikTok. And that's because over the next few weeks, Facebook is transforming itself to more closely resemble TikTok in a bid to claw back some of the younger demographic. With a default home tab on its app

set to give you videos and posts, the algorithm thinks you'll like effectively promoting outside content creators over friends and family, as well as providing very easy access to its short form video service known as Reels and the Stories feature. And if you wanna use use Facebook in a more social, non-algorithm-driven way, you have to visit the new Feeds tab, which will show the most recent posts from friends,

family, and favorite pages and groups. With this being something you could do before, but to get a reverse chronological view, you had to fiddle around with the settings and deliberately prioritize most recent, leading to some very maddening calls from grandma and grandpa. But I mean, if you look at this, giving this feed its own tab and splitting it off from the new home tab, which is now front and center in the app, it represents an obvious move by Facebook to focus more on its TikTok-esque features while streamlining the traditional stuff elsewhere.

And understand, these changes aren't coming out of nowhere. They're coming after Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its history during the final months of 2021, which tanked its stock price. Whereas TikTok, on the other hand, has seen its American user base surpassing 110 million people. With a new survey also finding that it's the fastest growing source

of news among adults in the United Kingdom, being used now by 7% for news compared to just 1% in 2020. Which just to self-promote, if you're on TikTok, you should follow me. We've essentially gone from zero to two million and it's awesome to have a community over there too. You know, all of this could be part of the reason why Facebook is reallocating resources away from news and toward video and entertainment content in the hopes of building out a creator economy. And understand, Facebook's not the only platform being displaced, right? It's been estimated that 40% of Gen Z Americans

prefer TikTok and Instagram, notably, over traditional search tools like Google and Maps to find stuff like places to eat or things to do. Which to that point, I will say, there is nothing worse than finding a TikTok that's gone viral of one of your favorite places to eat. It's like, okay, I can't eat there for three months without a crazy line. But the main question with this story is what happens to

Facebook following these changes? Can it save them from being a platform that's really only used by the angry old? Or are these changes doomed from day one and it's just going to alienate their existing audience? While we wait to see what actually happens, I'd love to know your thoughts and predictions in those comments down below. But from that, I want to take a second to thank fantastic sponsor of today's show, Cradle. You know, research indicates approximately 40 million dogs in the US suffer from some form of stress-related behavior, and up to 16 million suffer from separation anxiety. The common sides of this including barking, howling,

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promo code DeFranco. And then we should talk about how a bipartisan group of senators have introduced legislation that would modernize the Electoral Count Act of 1887. I know, a sexy sounding story. Is it possibly too sexy for YouTube? It just might be.

But this is actually important news. Because the ECA is the law that Trump tried to use to overturn the election on January 6th. And so now this legislation, which comes after months of negotiations, broadly aims to ensure that there is a peaceful transfer of power between presidents. Something, I guess, in the past they were like, we're not gonna need that. This is a no fascist zone, baby. And there never will be because history doesn't repeat. But among the measures, the proposal would clarify that the vice president's role in Congress's certification of the election is purely ceremonial with no authority to just reject electors as Trump had pressured Pence to do to prevent Biden from assuming power. The bill would also make it harder for members of Congress to

challenge state election results when they are finalized in the chambers by raising the threshold for objections. But under the current law, only one member of the House and one member of the Senate are needed to challenge any state's slate of electors. But this proposal would require objections from at least 20% of the members from each chamber. Beyond that, the legislation takes steps to protect election certification at the state level by including provisions that would ensure Congress can identify one conclusive slate of electors from each state. Additionally, it would get rid of a provision in a separate 1845 law that state legislatures could potentially use to override the popular vote of their voters by declaring a so-called failed election, a phrase that isn't even defined in law. And while it's

overwhelmingly fucking sad and ridiculous, we even need this legislation to clarify the basic tenets of democracy. It would be very significant because as Axios explains, the bill, if passed by the House and Senate, would mark the first major legislative response to the January 6th Capitol attack and the events that preceded it. And very notably, unlike every other federal attempt to provide basic protections to the election system since the insurrection, this bill could actually pass. Right of the 16 senators that introduced the bill, 9.7 are Republicans. And by that, I mean nine are Republicans and one is Joe Manchin. Now, that said, of course, at least 10 members of the GOP would need to join all the Democrats to break the filibuster, but it seems like it could get there. While Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has yet to

endorse the plan, he has signaled he's open to reforming the ECA and echoed the need for it to be changed in comments to reporters earlier this week. This proposal is coming just ahead of the January 6th committee hearing, which is set to be the last one scheduled for the panel this summer during primetime tonight. And while the committee has said that it's continuing its investigation and could hold more hearings in the future before the final one when it releases its report,

today's hearings have been described as a sort of closing argument for the case against Trump. And so as far as what happens, both for the January 6th panel and this legislation, we're gonna have to wait to see. But till we see right now, it does appear that Congress is very, very close to actually maybe doing a thing.

And then we had President Biden in the news for two reasons. The first being that he just tested positive for COVID. I imagine after VP Harris blew it into his face like she was gold dust, then turning to the camera and saying, now is my time. Which by the way, if you were wondering where she's been, she's been in a lab putting COVID into glitter. Also, President Biden, please don't die because then people are going to come for me for these jokes. Also, because you're the president, but mainly the first thing. Oh, and also I have a heart. And two, because President Biden announced a series of executive actions regarding climate change.

And among other measures, Biden said that he would allocate $2.3 billion in funding to FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program. This to help communities increase resilience to climate change-driven weather and disasters. Expand the federal low-income home energy assistance program to set up community cooling centers and pay for people to cool their homes, as well as direct the Interior Department to take steps to boost the domestic offshore wind industry in the Gulf of Mexico.

But, very notably here, while Biden described the climate crisis as an emergency, he also stopped short of actually using his authority to officially declare a national climate emergency, which would expand his power on this front. This, including by giving him the ability to significantly ramp up renewable energy projects and transition away from fossil fuels.

Whereas many have noted while Biden's latest actions will help Americans impacted by climate change, it does almost nothing to actually offset it. And saying that his failure to announce an emergency comes amid increased pressure from activists and lawmakers in his party to do so after Joe Manchin said last week he wouldn't support climate change legislation in the Senate. With essentially just Manchin single-handedly undermining Biden's climate agenda and seriously gutting his broader economic package being debated in the Senate right now. All of this is also coming after a recent Supreme Court ruling that massively limited the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, making it much harder for not only Biden but also future administrations to curb emissions. Notably here, multiple administration officials and other top lawmakers who have spoken to Biden have said that he will likely declare an emergency at some point, and he's just figuring out the scope of it right now.

And the scope there matters because pretty much any action he takes on that front is almost certainly going to face lawsuits from Republican-held states, which could effectively undermine them entirely. But at the same time, there is a lot of pressure here from the party and its voters ahead of the midterms. And with Biden right now having record low approval ratings and facing criticism for lack of executive action on other key topics like abortion, it's going to be very important to watch what he does here but ultimately that is where that story and today's show ends as always thank you for watching like and being a part of that conversation down below being subscribed for these daily dives into the news and if you want some more news you can click these floating boxes around my head or in the links in the description

down below but as always my name's philip defranco you've just been filled in i love yo faces and i'll see you next time