The Philip DeFranco Show - Trump’s Government SHUTDOWN Plan is Worse Than You Think...

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show. You daily dive into the news. It's Wednesday, and we've got a lot to talk about today, but first, an exciting announcement. I just launched my brand new podcast crashing out with Philip DeFranco and Alex Perlman. It's a weekly Wednesday show, in addition to this daily one that I'm doing, where, you know, if the Philip DeFranco show is 90% news and 10% reaction and opinion, this new show, it's kind of the inverse of that, which I know a vocal minority of y'all have really been wanting. So, hey, go subscribe to the YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcast.

Starting point is 00:00:27 It's in the top links in the description and the comments. The first episode is now up. You should watch or listen after today's show, but that said, we have a lot to talk about in the here and now, starting with this. It's official. The government is shut down. The Dems, they had a proposal to fund the government until October 31st, but their version had provisions to permanently extend enhanced ACA health insurance premium subsidies and restore nearly a trillion dollars in Medicaid cuts. But that got shut down with no Republicans voting for it. Right. And then, Senate Dems voted against a GOP bill to keep the government funded at the current levels for a few more weeks until a long-term spending deal could be reached. With that, getting a vote of 55 to 45, though, of course, that failed to break the 60-vote filibuster. And it also was an entire side for, entire side against, though it was very close. You had three Democrats joining Republicans and voting in favor the legislation and one Republican voting against. And, you know, all of this, it kind of felt inevitable. Because, well, there's often a lot of back and forth and everyone's concerned about the

Starting point is 00:01:15 government shutting down. Like, especially here, it seemed like neither side was going to give into demands. Right, because, well, Democrats, they said, you know, we're not going to support any legislation that doesn't roll back Medicaid cuts and extend key Obamacare subsidies. You also had Republicans refusing to negotiate or make concessions. And so now with the shutdown actually happening, we've seen both sides continuing to point fingers at one another. And, you know, while this blame game thing is pretty common, this time it is also a bit different, right? You have experts noting that we're witnessing the Trump administration do things that they've never seen before.

Starting point is 00:01:40 We've seen numerous agencies and their leaders joining in on the blame game and using official channels funded by taxpayer dollars to do so. And maybe one of the most notable examples was the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which currently has a massive banner on the homepage of their official government website that reads, The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government, HUD will use available resources. to help Americans in need. And that was also echoed in public statements from other agencies, like the Department of Veterans Affairs, also issuing a partisan statement ahead of the shutdown,

Starting point is 00:02:05 saying, radical liberals in Congress are trying to shut down the government to achieve their crazy fantasy of open borders, transgender, for everybody and men competing in women's sports. Right, and that, as you had DHS Secretary Christie Nome writing, the Democrats will be forcing over 150,000 officers and nearly 50,000 members of the military are front line of defense to continue protecting our nation without pay.

Starting point is 00:02:24 And it's also been widely reported that employees across numerous departments have received various iterations of an email from the White House Office of Management and Budget saying that a shutdown would be the fault of congressional Democrats. Right. And me saying this to you, you're probably like, okay, I'm not surprised, but it is a standout thing. Executive agencies and their leaders, they're usually not sharing these kinds of partisan messages. And in addition to ethics experts saying they've never seen anything like this, many have also argued that both the public statements and the internal communications appear to run up against federal lobbying laws and may

Starting point is 00:02:51 even violate the hatchack. Right, a federal statute that limits the political activities of federal employees and banned civil servants in the executive branch from engaging in most political activity while on duty. And so that it's its own messy battle. It's kind of just playing out on its own. But also as far as how Trump himself has responded, the president, at least as a recording, has been unusually quiet. But he really hasn't given any kind of public comment or even made one of his kind of all caps posts on truth social. But that is, there are plenty of people doing the job for him. Or the official White House X account, it's been going balls to the walls. But now tons of pose blaming Democrats for the shutdown, mocking Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and repeating the false claim pushed by many

Starting point is 00:03:24 Republicans, that Democrats are the ones that block the Republican bill because they want to give free health care to illegal immigrants. Right. And you also had JD Vans going on the offensive and echoing those narratives in an interview with Fox and Friends this morning. But let's step back for a second because I think it's important for the American people to realize that the far-left faction of Senate Democrats shut down the government because we wouldn't give them hundreds of billions of dollars for health care benefits for illegal aliens. It's actually not even all Senate Democrats. This is basically Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer, he's worried he's going to get a primary challenge from AOC. And so he's shutting down the people's government to give in to

Starting point is 00:03:57 sort of the left-wing coalition and their party. And it's craziness. And people are going to suffer because of it. Now, of course, like we talked about, his claim that Democrats want to give billions of dollars in health care to illegal immigrants. It's just simply untrue. Right, illegal immigrants are ineligible for federal health care programs and Obamacare subsidies. And Democrats aren't trying to change that. Right, at most, one of the things that Democrats are trying to do is restore a subsidy for certain lawfully present immigrants that Republicans cut in their tax bill. But then also, beyond that, you would AOC herself hitting back at Republican attempts to somehow blame her for the shutdown. And I saw some Republican members of Congress saying, oh, well, if we have this shutdown,

Starting point is 00:04:30 it's because of AOC. Well, if that's the case, my office is open and you are free to walk in and negotiate with me directly because what I'm not going to do is tolerate four million uninsured Americans because Donald Trump decided one day that he wants to just make sure that kids are dying because they don't have access to insurance. That's what's not going to happen. And so if those senators think that we're having a shutdown because of me, they're free to enter my office and negotiate

Starting point is 00:04:59 because what we're not going to do is allow all of millions of people in this country to not be able to afford their insulin and their chemotherapy. You're also seeing Schumer out there defending his decision to lead his party into the shutdown, arguing that this is about a fight for health care. And with that, you had Schumer saying, it's the Republicans' fault that we're in a shutdown now. So you have him calling it Donald Trump's government shutdown and saying that it's the Republicans refusing to protect America.

Starting point is 00:05:21 American's health care. With them adding in another post, health care premiums across the country are doubling and Republicans shut down the government instead of fixing it. And so that's a point that we've seen many other Democrats also make it. Arguing that they don't trust that Republicans will actually negotiate with them in good faith if they agreed to the stopgap bill. So they need to make their all or nothing stand now. And with that, they claim that it's evidence by the fact that Republicans refuse to even negotiate with them before trying to pass this bill. And because of that, Republicans are the ones responsible for the shutdown. And you also had California Governor Gavin Newsom honing in on reports that construction on Trump's new

Starting point is 00:05:48 White House ballroom is going to continue amid the shutdown, what Newsom's press office saying. Trump, Marie Antoinette, says, no health care for you, peasants, but a ballroom for the queen. Or basically, saying he cares more about his ballroom than Americans, though, according to the White House, this project is being funded by private donors. But for now, who really knows what's going to happen? Right, it's unclear how lawmakers are intending to get out of this hole and end the shutdown. I mean, today, you had Republican leaders in the Senate forcing another vote on the same exact stop-get measure that failed to pass yesterday, and wouldn't you know it, it failed again? Same votes, nothing changed.

Starting point is 00:06:18 And so for now, there's two kind of main battles that are playing out. One is gonna be who the public blames here and how that might affect the midterms, even though that's still so far away. And two, while the government is shut down, what sort of impact do we see? Right on agencies, on their workers and the services that they provide. Right, especially because we know that Trump has said that he wants to use a shutdown to fire federal workers instead of furlowing them like usual during a shutdown. And yesterday, it appeared that he said he'd even target Democrats specifically.

Starting point is 00:06:41 When you shut it down, you have to do layoff, so we'd be laying off a lot of people that are gonna be very affected, and the Democrats, they're going to be Democrats. Now, today you had a reporter asking pants about those comments, and he responded. We're not targeting federal agencies based on politics. We're targeting the people's government so that as much of possible of the essential services can continue to function. Let's be honest, if this thing drags on for another few days or, God forbid, another few weeks, we are going to have to lay people off.

Starting point is 00:07:09 We're going to have to save money in some places so the essential services don't get turned off in other places. But also with the same press conference, you had press secretary Caroline Levitt seemingly contradicting Vance's claim that there would only be layoffs if the shutdown dragged on. Unfortunately, because the Democrats shut down the government, the president has directed his cabinet and the Office of Management and Budget is working with agencies across the board to identify where cuts can be made. And we believe that layoffs are imminent. They are unfortunately a consequence of this government shutdown. This is a very fluid situation. It's one that's going to change as the shutdown drags on.

Starting point is 00:07:42 And for now, I'd really love to know your thoughts, opinions, and reactions. But then next up, in the news, are drug prices about to get a lot lower for Americans? With that, it's what many are asking after President Trump promised just that yesterday in an announcement with the head of Pfizer saying, A major reason is that the American consumers have been subsidizing research and development costs for the entire planet. They put all of that on us, and yet they were the beneficiaries. Right, and then you had Pfizer CEO, Albert Borla, adding, I think today we are turning the tight, and we are reversing an unfair situation.

Starting point is 00:08:13 And well, this is going to apparently affect medicine. The Medicaid pricing, the news that really grabbed a lot of people's attention was the government-run pharmacy, TrumpRX.gov. Though I wouldn't head over there yet because the website doesn't actually lead anywhere, and it's not expected to until at least 2026. The Trump, he claimed that direct consumer pharmacy for those without insurance would lead to reductions of 14, 15, 1,600%. So to be clear, that is, that is Trump math and not real math, because a reduction of 1,600 would mean that you would be getting paid by the government to get pharmaceuticals. And so later, they clarified that this could be upwards of a 50% discount.

Starting point is 00:08:47 So with this, you know, all of this, it sounds great on the surface, but you have many experts saying, you know, the devil is in the detail. And currently, we know pretty much none of the details, other than this would be for people without insurance currently. And so one, if as explained, this could be obviously great news. So this also is, too, it might not be a widespread win. And that in part because you had an official anonymously telling outlets that in the end, those with insurance won't have their prices affected and will still be paying less.

Starting point is 00:09:10 Not to mention that Medicaid already has relatively low pricing, so it's unclear how much this is actually going to affect them. But the whole situation that we find ourselves in before we actually see the full impact, it's not a surprise. Right, the Trump administration has not been shy about making threats to the pharmaceutical war. Earlier this year, they sent a letter to drug makers warning them that they had 60 days to lower their prices or face tariffs. In Pfizer, they ended up being the first to bend the knee, and in return, they got a three-year grace period for many tariffs. Also, as far as we're seeing with this recent news online, the reactions generally been positive, despite, you know, this move, possibly not moving money. in the grand scheme. We even had Mark Cuban, who's been extremely critical at Trump and runs his own low-cost pharmacy saying on Twitter, to the admin's credit, they have some great people working on this project. Chris Klopp knows his stuff,

Starting point is 00:09:50 cold, so does his staff. They put people first. So I give the program and what we know as of today a grade of B. And adding, why not an A? The stock prices of pharmaceutical benefit managers didn't get crushed, which means so far, no one expects much change for them. Now also as far as the reaction online, you have some kind of mocking Trump about this whole thing. Right in that, because, you know, a government-run business is kind of maybe more in line with progressive policies and right-wing ones. But as many have also pointed out, it's not really so black and white. And in many cases, right-wing governments also have embraced government control of businesses as a means of control. But again, as we often say on this show, and as this is very important in life, words or words, and actions or actions, and we're going to have to see what

Starting point is 00:10:26 happens here, though we fully won't see that until 2026. And so personally, I'm just kind of left hoping that whatever the result is, Americans should be getting life-saving pharmaceuticals for cheaper. If that ends up being the actual result, it's something that I'll cheer on. But this world has also trained me to be, if not cynical, at least skeptical. And so I'll always, I'll always at least be that. And then there's even more that we've got to dive into, but first, let me say, you know, have you ever had earbuds so bad that they make you want to just listen to silence instead? Because listen up, today's sponsor, Raycon, they're having an anniversary sale, which means that they're essential open earbuds, they're 30% all. And these things have become my go-to for the daily

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Starting point is 00:11:29 They've even got multi-point connection so you can swap from your laptop to your phone without rage quitting Bluetooth. Plus, let's be real, Raycon gives you the premium sound that you want at half the price of the big brands. Right, over 3 million customers already know what's, stop and they back it with a 30-day happiness guarantee. So hey, click the link in the description, scan the QR code, or head to buy raycon.com slash DeFranco Open for 30% off the essential open earbuds. Where my quick take is I use them and you should too. But then next up in the news today, the war between Donald Trump and Harvard University just entered the you're totally full of

Starting point is 00:11:56 shit stage. And you know, just a quick refresher to talk about today. Back in April, the White House accused Harvard of allowing anti-Semitism to flourish on campus and they issued a list of demands including enforcing so-called viewpoint diversity. Harvard then refused or the White House rose over $2 billion in research grant funding. They tried to ban all international students from attending and threatened Harvard's accreditation status. And all of this, it's been getting sorted out in the courts for months, but now it's being reported that Harvard wrote a 28-page letter, basically calling Trump out on his bullshit, right? Because at the center of this is an investigation by the Health Department's Office of Civil Rights, which has been used as the justification

Starting point is 00:12:27 for everything that the administration's done. But according to this letter, the evidence in that probe is paper thin, and it ignores the other evidence that points in the other direction. So, for example, the so-called evidence reportedly includes anonymous posts on the third-party app side chat, which Harvard isn't even affiliated with, as well as a survey from one half of 1% of the student body, which the letter says HHS drew sweeping conclusions from. And in fact, it claims that the only specific incident that if true would show anti-Semitism disrupted a student's access to education wasn't a firsthand account. Supposedly, it was an anonymous account from a single student who alleged that, quote, other students stopped going to a class because

Starting point is 00:12:59 those other students did not feel safe. Right. And that is that incident didn't even come from the health department's investigation. It came from Harvard's own probe into itself. Now HHS did cite another incident of apparent anti-Semitism, but it too is less simple than it appears. The claim is that an Orthodox Jewish student reported her Mazuzza had gone missing from her dorm door. You would harbor noting that it was found in the hallway three doors down, suggesting that it fell off the door because the adhesive tape gave way. And how, even the student herself, though she believed that there was an act of anti-Semitism, penned an op-ed for the U.S. News and World Report, saying,

Starting point is 00:13:30 her experience should not be used to justify defunding the university. Writing no one from the administration ever contacted me to discuss what happened. No one from Washington asked what would make me feel safer at school or what policies might help Jewish students on campus. And with all that said, right, whether Harvard's policies around anti-Semitism could be improved, that's not really in dispute, right? Even the university admits it's not perfect, but it also argues that imperfection isn't the same as illegal. And specifically here for a title six violation, which is what the White House is alleging, five things would have to be proven in court.

Starting point is 00:13:58 The harassment of members of a protected class was severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive. That harassment denied students' access to education. Harvard had actual knowledge of it. It happened within the university's programs or activities, and Harvard's response was clearly unreasonable. But in Harvard's letter, Harvard argues that zero of those conditions were actually met. With the pointing out that even for the pro-Palestine encampment on campus last year, and we will free for the team. We will free Palestine. That was temporary, mitigated without concessions to the activist, and did not block students' access to education.

Starting point is 00:14:30 And that is viewed the university citing its active reporting system, sanctions against pro-Palestine student groups, and determination of employees involved in allegedly anti-Semitic conduct, as evidence of a good faith response. Right, if anything, the university, it paints the government as acting in bad faith, noting it chided Harvard for failing to hand over documents that it never actually requested. They also pointed out the apparent contradiction and using Harvard's own investigation into itself as evidence that Harvard's not taking anti-Semitism seriously enough.

Starting point is 00:14:55 And then, according to Harvard, the Health Department referred it to the Justice Department before even giving Harvard guidelines to come into compliance. Well, apparently, at least one federal judge agrees because earlier this month, she ruled that the funding freeze was illegal and rebuked the White House for for ignoring Harvard's concrete actions to comply with federal law. But despite all that, on Monday, HHS referred Harvard to the federal suspension and debarment process. And if you get to barred, you're basically blacklisted. You can't get any more funding or contracts from any federal agencies.

Starting point is 00:15:21 And that, it would be an enormous hit for the university, which got 11% of its operating budget from federal research dollars last year. But then, just a day after HHS took that step, you had Trump saying that his administration is close to striking a deal with Harvard. We're in the process of getting very close and Linda's finishing up the final details and they'd be paying about $500 million and they'll be operating trade schools. They're going to be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things. Engines, lots of things, you know, we need people in trade schools. So we're getting contradictory signals about where things actually stand with Trump and Harvard right now. But also, this is just one facet of Trump's war on higher education.

Starting point is 00:15:57 But on another front, we got news from a federal court yesterday where a Reagan-appointed judge ruled that Homeland Security Secretary Christine Nomen, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, violated the First Amendment by targeting pro-Palestinian students for deportation. Or with the judge also specifically calling out Trump, writing, the president's palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans' freedom of speech. And in a chilling sign of the Times,

Starting point is 00:16:20 he attached a threat that he had received via postcard at the very top of the ruling, with it reading, Trump has pardons and tanks, what do you have? To which the judge responded, alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, we the people of the United States, you and me, have our magnificent constitution. But then next up, in the news, we need to talk about the abortion pill. Right, and that in part because a new study shows that it might be more important to reproductive health care than ever, but it's also under attack. And that also is maybe over the past day or so you've seen the headlines. But for the first time since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortions in the United States declined.

Starting point is 00:16:50 Right, and those numbers come from the Goutemacher Institute, which just published research finding that nearly 519,000 clinician provided abortions happen in the first six months of 2025 in states without total abortions. So you're looking at a 5% drop compared to the same time last year. And then on top of that, travel for abortions to states without total bans declined by 8% over the same time, which might lead you to believe that abortions are down nationwide, though, it's also not that simple. Right, because Goopmacher only collected data from providers who can give in-person and online care in states without bans. So what that means is that self-managed abortions weren't counted.

Starting point is 00:17:20 Neither were those who got abortion pills from community networks or other online means, and most importantly here, it does not count abortion pills that clinicians in shield law states mail to patients in abortion ban states. Right, in shield laws, they're one of the most crucial access points for abortion care right now. If you're not familiar with this, several blue states pass these shield laws explicitly allowing providers to remotely prescribe and mail abortion pills to patients no matter where they are in the 50 states and then make sure that they're protected from out-of-state prosecution. So what that means is that a doctor in a shield law state, let's say California or New York, they can prescribe the pill to someone in a state where

Starting point is 00:17:50 abortion is totally abandoned. That patient, they don't have to leave their state to get care. Right, and they can do that all from home. And these laws, they started popping up in 2023 following Rose reversal and they've really changed how abortions can work in the country. So with that in mind, you had a senior research associate at Guttmacher telling Time magazine that this study does not necessarily reflect abortion rates nationwide, but instead highlights that shield laws, I think, are a critical option that people are making use of. But also here, I think it's worth noting that different states at different stories. Right, Florida, they used to be crucial for abortion care in the South, accounting for one out of every three abortions in the area, but since the state enacted a

Starting point is 00:18:22 six-week ban in May last year, that is no longer the case. There was a 27% drop in clinician provided abortions in the first half of the year compared to last year. And that drop, it accounted for more than 40% of the national abortion decrease. In Florida's ban also likely contributed to an increase in travel to New York for abortions, which clash with the national trend of travel going down. And with that, you had the study also noting that the decline in out-of-state travel for abortions significantly contributed to the overall state-level declines in abortions. And again, noting that shield laws allow people to get care without traveling, and some estimate that the amount of abortions provided via these laws increase between the beginning and end of

Starting point is 00:18:55 2024. So you had that senior research associate adding, this is an innovation of the last couple of years that I think has been incredibly important, and it's important that policymakers and advocates continue to protect and expand these provisions because it's clear that they've been incredibly important to the abortion access landscape in the U.S. But of course, a really huge thing is that those shield laws cannot work without the pill, which is the most common method of abortion. Right. And so with that, you have many arguing that this just underlines the importance of the pill and the law is protecting them. But the pill, it's facing some questioning from RFK Jr., who just last week announced that the FDA is launching a safety review of Miffa Pristone,

Starting point is 00:19:26 which is one of the two drugs commonly taken for medication abortions. Right, and that is a big thing because there are already over 100 studies that have concluded that the drug is both safe and effective. But still, he's pushing forward with a review due to a non-peer-reviewed report from a conservative policy center that's gotten a lot of attention from Republican lawmakers. And so with that, you had many including Axios, noting that if the FDA enacts new restrictions to the pill, those could potentially include in-person prescriptions, which would then prevent those in abortion ban states from getting the drug via telehealth and shield laws. Now, that said, you do have some thinking that there's a chance that nothing actually comes from this review,

Starting point is 00:19:56 that RFK Jr. is just simply doing this to buy time to appease conservative AGs across the country who have been pressuring him about the pill. But this also, as you had one advocate arguing, this is political interference designed to rip away our freedoms. The California's Attorney General calling the review unnecessary and baseless and some fearing it could get the Tylenol treatment. But ultimately, we're going to have to wait to see where this goes. And in the meantime, I'd really love to know your thoughts, opinions, reactions, and maybe even your experiences with this over the past two years, let's say, whether it be first hand or second hand. And then we've got more we've got to dive into, but first let me say, you know, WhatsApp

Starting point is 00:20:27 literally said, we're secure and hackers basically went, hold my beer. Right, because a newly patch flaw let attackers chain bugs in both WhatsApp and iOS to quietly steal data from targeted users. Or which is exactly why I don't trust apps to keep me safe. I used today's sponsor, nor to VPN to lock down the rest of my digital life. And here's a scary part. This wasn't random. Fewer than 200 people were hit over 90 days, meaning that someone somewhere pick them out on purpose. And even secure apps can become surveillance tools overnight. And if you rely on them without backup, you're basically leaving the door wide open. But NordVPN, they deadbolt that door with strong encryption, shielding your traffic from snoops, hackers, and even your own ISP. And their threat

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Starting point is 00:21:39 situation in Russia occupied Ukraine. Because what you had is that it was disconnected from the power grid for the past week, which actually made it the longest, most alarming of the several outages that had taken place since Russia seized the facility in the first weeks of the 2020. to invasion. And even though the plant right now isn't actually producing electricity, it does need power to keep the fuel and the reactors cool and stop a meltdown from happening. And that, it's being done with the help of diesel generators because it doesn't have external power. And so then with that in mind, you had Ukrainian President Zelensky claiming yesterday that the generators and the plant were not designed for this and explaining they, quote, have never operated in this mode

Starting point is 00:22:09 for long and we already have information that one generator has failed. And he was Zelensky going on to say it is Russian shelling that prevents repair of the power lines to the plan and the restoration of basic safety and adding, this is a threat to everyone. No terrorist in the world has ever dared to do to a nuclear plant, what Russia is doing, and it's right that the world does not stay silent. And then along with that, you had the head of Ukraine state nuclear regulatory inspector at saying in a statement that the current situation poses great threats to nuclear and radiation security and that all of this could well lead to the worst case scenario. But that's also not to say that we have another Chernobyl on our hands. You've got the International Atomic Energy Agency reporting

Starting point is 00:22:42 that the plant is operating eight diesel generators with nine units in standby mode and three in maintenance and also noting that the site still has fuel reserves or more than 10 days of operation. And you've got the head of the agency saying there is no immediate danger as long as the generators keep working, but then also adding, it is clearly not a sustainable situation in terms of nuclear safety. Neither side would benefit from a nuclear accident. And so with that, you also had him saying that the IAEA was working with both sides to restore the external power and that both sides have pointed to military activity as an obstacle to making the necessary repairs. But notably with that, Ukraine has repeatedly offered to repair a backup power line that was disconnected in early May,

Starting point is 00:23:15 but Russia has declined to take them up on it. And that is, as far as Russia, the plants Russian-installed communications director said that the situation remains under control. And then you had a spokesperson from the Kremlin pointing the finger at Ukraine, claiming, the station in nearby facilities are subjected to constant attacks by the Keeve regime, and saying it would be, to say the least, absurd to accuse the Russian side of shelling a station that it itself controls. And then actually, you also had that same spokesperson slamming EU plans to build a so-called drone wall along its borders with Russia, which is also something we got to talk about because you had EU leaders gathering in Denmark today. to talk about. And they see this conversation as being increasingly urgent in light of the fact that

Starting point is 00:23:49 they keep seeing more and more unidentified drones flying all over the place right into their airspace. I mean, just talking about Denmark, several airports were closed there last week due to unexplained drone sighting. Some were even sited over the country's largest military base. Actually, the Danish military announcing today that there will be an increased presence of foreign troops and equipment in the country with 10 allied nations, including the United States, reportedly providing some form of anti-dron and surveillance support. But again, it's not just Denmark. There have also been unidentified drones over Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, and northern Germany. And while there's not definitive evidence of Russian involvement, European leaders fear that

Starting point is 00:24:21 this is all part of Russia ramping up its hybrid war on the continent. Or this also being linked to recent Russian incursion into the NATO airspace, including over Poland and Estonia. And so again, with this drone wall, wouldn't be an actual physical wall, right? It would be a network of sensors, signal jammers, and other technologies aimed at detecting, tracking, and intercepting drones. And one of the big things here is you actually had Ukraine offering up expertise that it's gained over the past few years of having to deal with Russia.

Starting point is 00:24:44 But it's all seemingly early stages, right? It's not clear exactly what this drone wall would look like, how much it would cost, or when it would be completed. But that's also not the only thing being talked about in the meeting in Denmark today. Because it's also the first opportunity for EU leaders to actually debate a proposal to abuse frozen Russian assets to fund a major loan to Ukraine, which is an idea that the Kremlin has condemned as pure theft. And so yeah, that as well as Russia hitting back at the news that the U.S. is considering

Starting point is 00:25:06 Ukraine's request to sell them Tomahaw cruise missiles, which would allow Ukraine to strike as far is 1,500 miles into Russia. It's easily far enough to hit Moscow. And so a lot, we're going to have to keep our eyes on, right, whether it be conversations or activities, but we'll have to see how this plays out. But then from that, you know, finally today, let's end with a congratulations and one last thing. Starting with a congrats to Wilbur M, right, Seekeek's latest weekly winner who just scored $500 in tickets and is going to go see Mana.

Starting point is 00:25:30 For the rest of y'all, that's right. Seekeek is still giving away $500 in tickets and you should definitely answer today if you haven't already. I mean, you could be the next winner and snag $500 towards seeing your favorite artist, sporting event or play. I mean, there's like over 70,000 events to choose from. And remember, all you got to do is add code DeFranco to your Seek app profile for a chance of the weekly $500 prize, no purchase necessary. So do it. It's a win-win. But that brings us to the final thing today. And that last thing today is a little piece, a little tease of my new podcast crashing out

Starting point is 00:25:54 with Philip Franco and Alex Perlman. The links now for YouTube, Spotify, and Apple all work. They're in the description and top comment. And I think it gives you a little taste of a confused and panicking film. Oh, we got, you know, a new Epstein guy before Grand Theft Auto 6. We didn't even cover the new The new Epstein guy? Wait, what are you talking about? The New York financier with the sex dungeon? No. What are you talking? There's a new Epstein guy, Phil. What are you talking about? What do you mean? What am I talking? Are you saying that there is, is there another guy named Epstein? No, no, no, his name's not Epstein. I don't remember what his name is, but him. Or he's involved in the Epstein case. He is not involved with Epstein at all. He is not involved with Epstein. He is a New York

Starting point is 00:26:33 financier whose assistant would collect women that he brought. to New York where he would electrically torture them in a soundproof dungeon and he has been arrested and he has ties to George Soros. So it's like it's got a little bit of everything for everybody. I feel like you're making this up. I'm not. That's what's wild is I'm not. There's another Epstein guy. And that it brings us to the end of this video though. There's even more click away. You've got my brand new podcast crashing out with myself and Alex Perlman. The first episode's up. I think you're going to love it. It's a great time and maybe it's because of of or in spite of it going off the rails at times, and or you've got my newest Philip DeFranco

Starting point is 00:27:12 show that you haven't seen right here. I've even got links to both in the description, whether you want to get filled in on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube, wherever. But no matter what, let me say, thank you for watching. I love yo faces and I'll see you right back here tomorrow.

The Philip DeFranco Show - Trump’s Government SHUTDOWN Plan is Worse Than You Think...

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