The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 9.16 Anti-Vaxxer Harassment Campaign Gets Weird, KSI vs Logan Paul Sputters, & More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Sup you beautiful bastards, hope you're having a fantastic Monday. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show. And a quick note before we get started. Today, after years of demand, the Have a Great Fucking Day shoes and slip-ons are back. And one, this exclusive limited pre-order is currently up on ShopDeFranco.com. And two, if you snag them now, you're one of the first to grab them. We're gonna throw in a pair of our badass socks for free. But yeah, snag them all you can over at ShopDeFranco.com, link down below.

Starting point is 00:00:23 But with that said, strap in, hit that like button, and let's just jump into it. And the first thing we're gonna talk about today is weird anti-vaxxers, and I mean weirder than normal. Okay, so in California last Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a couple of bills. Bills aimed at making it harder for parents to get medical exemptions for their children's vaccinations,

Starting point is 00:00:39 something that we've talked about being exploited. And those bills came after growing concerns about the number of unvaccinated children in the United States. And as you've probably seen in the news, we've seen bouts of measles outbreaks bills came after growing concerns about the number of unvaccinated children in the United States. And as you've probably seen in the news, we've seen bouts of measles outbreaks. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting over 1,200 cases this year,

Starting point is 00:00:52 which is a massive spike in cases from previous years. In California, the immunization rate for kindergarteners has fallen below 95%, with 16% of California counties reporting their immunization rates are actually under 90%. And all of this is important because 95% is the standard threshold for herd immunity to be effective. And all of that coming in spite of messages from doctors

Starting point is 00:01:09 that vaccines are safe and effective for the overwhelming majority of people. And so one of the big concerns here was, are doctors in California handing out too many medical exemptions? Which one of those bills signed by Newsom addresses. And so with that new law, the California Department of Public Health

Starting point is 00:01:22 will investigate any doctor who grants more than five medical exemptions in a year. It will also allow the state to revoke any medical exemptions it deems inappropriate. But notably here, before signing that bill, Newsom actually demanded a companion bill be introduced, which will work a little something like this. So right now, children must submit vaccinations

Starting point is 00:01:37 at certain checkpoints in their education, those being kindergarten, seventh grade, or if they change schools. However, this new law will allow any child who received a medical exemption before 2020 to keep that exemption until the next checkpoint. Right, so basically if you have a first grader right now, they can keep their exemption

Starting point is 00:01:50 until they start the seventh grade, or if you have a child who's in the seventh grade this year, they can go through the end of high school without vaccinations. Also a few other aspects of the legislation, it limits temporary exemptions to one year, it allows the Department of Health to review medical exemptions at schools

Starting point is 00:02:02 where the vaccination rate is under 95% and at schools that do not report their vaccination rates. Right, so a big change and seemingly a way to target. Right, but one of the big reasons we're talking about this today is because of the reaction we've seen. While those bills were being debated in the legislature, you had a number of people outside the Capitol

Starting point is 00:02:16 in Sacramento protesting the bills. With one of the main arguments being that the bills could damage doctor-patient relationships and make doctors too hesitant to give out exemptions. And on that note, there was an example of a doctor echoing those concerns with one pediatrician who reportedly specializes in holistic medicine saying, I do not believe I will be writing any more exemptions

Starting point is 00:02:32 even when I feel like they would be appropriate. I do not believe anyone else will either. I have had to put a complete moratorium on medical exemptions due to the nature of this legislation. However, it is incredibly important to note here, especially after giving that quote, this bill was co-sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the California Medical Association.

Starting point is 00:02:48 And this is the situation that's created when you see the vaccination rates that we have, and you see the stories about these private Facebook groups where people are like, hey, if you wanna get that medical exemption, wink, wink, here's this doctor, you'll be set. Right, but main point, you had people protesting, a huge number of those people protesting

Starting point is 00:03:02 were with anti-vax groups. Before the bills were passed, reportedly you had a number of protesters blocking entrances, which temporarily shut down the chamber floors. You also had a number of people being arrested. And even after the bills were passed, you had protesters again shutting down the floor

Starting point is 00:03:14 while reportedly chanting things like, "'Protect our children.'" And from there, things just took a swan dive into weird. For example, Friday you had a woman hurling what appeared to be blood onto senators from her seat in the chamber's visitor gallery, reportedly yelling, that's for the babies. Investigators later determined

Starting point is 00:03:28 that she threw a menstrual cup, but we do not know if the red liquid was real blood, which even just the fact that that is a sentence is horrifying. But main point, that woman now faces assault charges. But also, even before Friday, I wanna backtrack to an event on Wednesday night. There was a vigil held by an anti-vax group,

Starting point is 00:03:44 and I'm talking about that vigil because they used a series of photos depicting children that they claimed had either been killed or harmed by vaccines. And there was a notable name included, Ethan Lindenberger, who you might remember we actually covered back in March. Back then, we told you about how when Lindenberger turned 18, he turned to Reddit,

Starting point is 00:03:58 asked for help on how to get vaccinated. His parents were anti-vax, but he ended up getting himself vaccinated. Lindenberger then went on to speak in front of the US Senate, talking about his personal experience and the misinformation about vaccines on social media Like Facebook. Yeah, then on Friday Lindenberger noticed that his picture had actually been used in this vigil writing in a Twitter post It would seem that an anti-vax rally on 9-11 had a candlelight vigil for dead children and my picture was included then because we're talking About the internet and the anti-vax movement, Hugh, a bunch of backlash directed at Lindenberger. We had people accusing him of photoshopping the

Starting point is 00:04:28 image or selling out to big pharma. Notably though, in that example, it appears that they have just literally cropped the photo. So because of all this, we actually reached out to Lindenberger, who it turns out was at the global vaccination summit in Belgium when he first heard about this. And regarding his photo being included here, he told us, I was just really confused because i'm looking through this photo that this anti-vaxxer sharing and they're totally like look at all these dead people and i'm there and so part of me was like this is this is wild so i went through their their history see if they were a troll nope totally legitimate person and then i shared it

Starting point is 00:05:01 to some of my facebook groups asking where this was. They were like, this was an actual event. Like, this is not, this is actually a thing. And so my whole mindset was like, this is just so wild and proves how Kathy's kids might not actually be dead. And it was just, it was so frustrating, but also so, this was like a comedy show. Like, this is not real life. This can't be real life. Which actually, on the note of the other children, just a couple of rows above Lindenberger

Starting point is 00:05:27 was a stock photo of a baby getting a vaccination. But the thing that'll end on here is something that Lindenberger said. He stressed that he believes that most anti-vaxxers mean well but are the unfortunate targets of misinformation campaigns. These people aren't bad people. They're just like misinformed.

Starting point is 00:05:40 And even though this digital was hosted by some people that obviously had no idea what they were doing and are just trying to convince people that all these children are dying, a lot of people are just asking questions. And that's why it's important to engage with them and just be kind and try and answer questions, even if it's frustrating. Now, I will say I personally think that is him taking the high road, being as positive as one can be. To repeat something that I saw someone tweet regarding this incident is, I don't know if these people are recruitable to reality.

Starting point is 00:06:08 And obviously I think intent behind actions, it does matter. But when you're talking about a situation where the net result is more damage, a further spread, and it's something that's not limited to the people or the children of those people. The final result and the greater threat greatly overshadow any positive intent. But yeah, for now that is where this story ends.

Starting point is 00:06:26 And of course, I pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts around all of this? And then we had two pieces of online entertainment business news. The first being an update on the very anticipated KSI versus Logan Paul rematch. Of course, the last time these two mega popular creators fought, it was just massively successful.

Starting point is 00:06:40 There was a ton of attention, a ton of pay-per-view buys. There's also been a good amount of excitement for this rematch because this time they're not wearing head guards, they're wearing smaller gloves. I see a lot of people craving and excited for that knockout and or both guys hurting each other because there's also people that kind of

Starting point is 00:06:55 just don't like both of them. And the update for this story is that over the weekend they had a press conference and I have to say, and I say this as, and I feel like if you've watched me for the last kind of year or two, you know that I don't shit talk for the sake of shit talking. I don't know if I've experienced this before, but after watching that press conference,

Starting point is 00:07:09 I'm actually less excited about the fight. It was weird and awkward and clunky, and to kind of like oversimplify it, you had Shannon Briggs, who I guess is coaching Logan Paul, saying, let's go champ, enough times to make you wanna slam your head against the wall until the noises stop. Logan Paul mentioning KSI's family drama. You had KSI mentioning Logan Paul's dog

Starting point is 00:07:28 being eaten by a coyote. And to fully summarize the event, to use Logan Paul's own words during that event. This was weak! Yeah, yeah. Right, so you had that, and then you add in the fact that the rest of the fight, right, the undercard is nothing but professional fighters.

Starting point is 00:07:40 And so to me at least, it feels like as time goes on, it's becoming more and more apparent that this is gonna be maybe one of the worst compromises as far as an event. I think you're gonna still have boxing purists feeling like their sport is being disrespected and made a mockery of because you have YouTube personalities being the main card.

Starting point is 00:07:54 Where there is a legitimate title fight on the undercard. And as far as the YouTube community is concerned, I feel like a lot of people feel like Eddie Hearn putting on this event, only having professionals on the undercard, it feels like the heart has been kind of taken out of the event. Which I will say, as someone that did very much enjoy

Starting point is 00:08:08 the entirety of the last event, a lot of it was kind of the story, the you didn't know what to expect sort of nature of it. And I mean that for almost all of the fights from that night. And I don't just mention this because it's like, let's talk about people's feelings. You know, I really do wonder,

Starting point is 00:08:21 how is this going to affect the pay-per-view buys? Based off of the anger and frustration we're seeing more of as time goes on, will this lead to an increase in the number of stolen streams? Because on the pro boxing side, you might have people that don't want to support something they think that is making their sport a mockery. And on the YouTube side, you might have a number of people going, do I really want to buy a whole event if I just want to see one fight?

Starting point is 00:08:38 So it's gonna be kind of interesting to see what happens from this kind of grand experiment, this merging of genres. I'd really love to know your thoughts and predictions regarding this event. And the other bit of online entertainment news is actually an update to a story we previously covered, and it's a massive change that's going to affect the likes of BTS, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift.

Starting point is 00:08:56 And that is that YouTube has now said that it will no longer count views from paid advertising in its calculations for YouTube music charts and 24-hour debut records. And as you might remember, this move comes after YouTube did not congratulate Indian rapper Badshot for seemingly breaking the single day viewing record.

Starting point is 00:09:09 Now the Indian rapper did admit to paying for promotional ads, but several media reports also found that the practice was actually common. Although according to a Bloomberg report, we had not previously seen such a heavy campaign. YouTube in a blog post saying they're doing this to provide more transparency. Now according to YouTube, these changes will not affect

Starting point is 00:09:23 the existing 24 hourhour record holders. And so what that means, one, is if we're kind of seeing buying paid ads as cheating, if you cheated before this, then you got in. Everyone else, though, is kind of screwed. And also, two, that means that the number one spot

Starting point is 00:09:35 remains in the hands of BTS, the group with the best fandom in the world. And I'm not just saying that and pandering because they say really nice things about me on Twitter afterwards. Yeah, the title does remain with that K-pop group because according to a YouTube spokesperson regarding bad shot based on our longtime criteria Bad shot did not qualify for our 24-hour debut records list so you know in general this could be seen as a meaningful or a less than meaningful change and I say less than meaningful because

Starting point is 00:09:59 I mean honestly even if you were in the top 100 that you're huge you probably don't care But also, you're huge. You probably don't care, but also, anytime you can become number one on any sort of popularity list, that results in free advertising because all these people talk about, "'Hey, guess who's number one now?' Yeah, army, you can rejoice. Everyone else, let's just move along."

Starting point is 00:10:15 And then let's talk about massive news regarding Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Now, the last time we talked about Iran was back in June, where their government announced that they had significantly ramped up their enrichment of uranium, which notably here would soon pass the amount that they could stockpile under the 2015 nuclear deal.

Starting point is 00:10:29 That nuclear deal, which put limits on Iran's nuclear program was originally signed by the United States and five other countries, but as you might remember, President Trump pulled the United States out of that agreement last year because he believed that it was a bad deal. And so instead we saw Trump slapping devastating sanctions on Iran.

Starting point is 00:10:42 After a year of sanctions, it really tore into Iran's economy with their government announcing that they would start pulling back on other parts of the deal, unless European countries did more to counter the sanctions. But those nations have been relatively deadlocked on Iran. So what we've seen since is kind of what we expected.

Starting point is 00:10:55 Iran slowly lifting more limits on nuclear development, functionally dismantling the deal piece by piece. All the while tensions between the United States and Iran have continued to escalate. Notably, back in June, we saw things like Iran shooting down a US surveillance drone that they say had flown into their airspace.

Starting point is 00:11:08 United States later confirming that that drone had been shot down, but arguing that it was an international airspace. A few days after that, we saw President Trump saying on Twitter that the United States was quote, "'cocked and loaded to retaliate with airstrikes against Iran," but that he had decided to stop the attacks 10 minutes before the strike was set to launch

Starting point is 00:11:23 because the casualties, he said, would not be proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. Right, so in part, you could kind of go, well, that's like an Omo story, right? Nothing actually happened. But of course, notably, you're talking about lives and you're talking about a huge deal in general because launching a first strike on Iran

Starting point is 00:11:35 could be considered an act of war under international norms. But you know, it didn't happen, and while a lot has happened over the last few months, many experts have said that the warlike rhetoric between the United States and Iran has settled down. But because we're talking about it today, you know it has not remained that way. On Saturday, reportedly, a group of drones

Starting point is 00:11:49 set off a massive attack on oil plants in Saudi Arabia, in what some have argued is one of the most significant military operations against Saudi Arabia's critical infrastructure ever. According to reports, the attack wiped out nearly half of Saudi Arabia's oil production, right, which is huge because Saudi Arabia produces about 10% of the world's oil.

Starting point is 00:12:04 So that means that as reported, the attack single-handedly knocked out 5% of global oil supplies. Now shortly after this, Houthi rebels in Yemen issued a statement claiming that they were behind the attacks, which the war in Yemen is a whole other story, though I do recommend you go back

Starting point is 00:12:16 and check out our deep dive on it. I'll link to it down below. But for some quick key context here, since 2015, Yemen has been engaged in an incredibly violent civil war between Houthi rebels backed by Iran and the Yemeni government backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States. As you may have seen, Saudi Arabia has received a lot of international backlash for launching airstrikes in Yemen that have killed thousands of civilians, also prompting many to question the U.S.'s relationship with Saudi Arabia. So now, Houthi leaders are describing Saturday's strike on Saudi oil plants as their right to retaliate the airstrikes that have targeted their civilians.

Starting point is 00:12:43 But, despite the fact that the Houthis claimed responsibility for the attacks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took to Twitter on Saturday to blame Iran. Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia, while Rouhani and Zarif, the President and Foreign Secretary of Iran, pretend to engage in diplomacy. Amid all the calls for deescalation,

Starting point is 00:12:59 Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world's energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen. And then adding, we call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran's attacks. The United States will work with our partners and allies to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied

Starting point is 00:13:13 and Iran is held accountable for its aggression. And the next day we also saw President Trump respond to the incident, though at that time he did not directly blame Iran like Pompeo did, writing, Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the kingdom

Starting point is 00:13:29 as to who they believe was the cause of this attack and under what terms we would proceed.'" But then, just this morning, we saw President Trump reference the drone incident from June, writing in a tweet, "'Remember when Iran shot down a drone, saying knowingly that it was their airspace when in fact it was nowhere close? They stuck strongly to that story,

Starting point is 00:13:43 knowing it was a very big lie. Now they say they had nothing to do with the attack on Saudi Arabia. We'll see. And with all of that said, Iran for its part have denied any involvement in the attacks. With Iran's foreign minister seemingly responding to Pompeo's claims in a tweet on Sunday writing,

Starting point is 00:13:55 having failed at quote, max pressure, Secretary Pompeo is turning to max deceit. US and its clients are stuck in Yemen because of illusion that weapons superiority will lead to military victory. Blaming Iran won't end disaster, accepting our April 15 proposal to end war and begin talks May.

Starting point is 00:14:10 Then just this morning it was reported that a Saudi military spokesperson had said that Iranian weapons had been used in the strikes on oil facilities. US officials have also confirmed to the media that they are operating on the assumption that the strikes did not come from inside Yemen, with a number of officials and experts also claiming

Starting point is 00:14:22 that Houthis do not have the capabilities to initiate a strike of this scale on their own. With some other officials also telling reporters that they do not believe the strikes originated in Iraq, debunking an earlier theory. We also saw Iran's president respond to Saudi claims that Iranian weapons were used in the strike, saying, Yemeni people are exercising their legitimate right of defense. The attacks were a reciprocal response to aggression against Yemen for years. Now notably, as of right now, recording this video at least publicly, neither the United States nor Saudi officials

Starting point is 00:14:46 have provided evidence that Iran did launch the strike or that Iranian weapons were used. But also notably, on the other side of this, Houthi leaders have also not provided any evidence that they carried out the attack. So as far as what happens now, it's just a lot of speculation. Reportedly, senior US officials are deliberating

Starting point is 00:15:01 on how to respond. You also have a number of foreign leaders warning the United States not to get drawn into a war. Your leaders in both Britain and Germany condemning the attacks on Monday, but not directly blaming Iran. With the British foreign secretary saying in a statement in terms of who is responsible,

Starting point is 00:15:13 the picture is not entirely clear. I want to have a very clear picture, which we will be having shortly. Germany's foreign minister saying in a news conference that his country was working out to find out who carried out the attack. China's foreign ministry also warning world leaders against naming a culprit without conclusive facts.

Starting point is 00:15:25 The Russian foreign ministry saying that the United States was jumping to conclusions. But no matter the specific details there, what we're seeing from many experts here is that the attack appears to be successfully undermining any kinds of hopes for diplomacy between Iran and the United States. Though to be fair there,

Starting point is 00:15:38 those chances were fairly slim before this even happened. And actually while we were recording, the Wall Street Journal reported that sources familiar with the matter had told them that US intelligence quote, "'Indicates Iran was the staging ground for the attack.'" But notably the journal also reported that Saudi officials said that the US didn't provide enough proof to conclude that Iran was the staging ground

Starting point is 00:15:55 and didn't blame Iran. But yeah, for now we're gonna have to wait and see what happens next. And of course, like with everything we talk about, I'd love to know your thoughts here. And that's where I'm going to end today's show. And hey, if you liked this video, hit that like button. If you're new here, you want more of these videos

Starting point is 00:16:07 on the daily, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Definitely ring that bell to turn on notifications. Also, if you're not 100% filled in, you can check out my last podcast with Casey Neistat, or maybe you just missed the last Philip DeFranco 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,

Starting point is 00:16:21 my name's Philip DeFranco, you've just been filled in. I love yo faces and I'll see you tomorrow.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 9.16 Anti-Vaxxer Harassment Campaign Gets Weird, KSI vs Logan Paul Sputters, & More

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