What A Day - How Favre We've Fallen

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Outrage continues in Iran over the death of a woman detained by that country's "morality police," and at least nine people have been killed in clashes with security forces.Former N.F.L. quarterback Brett Favre has emerged as a key figure in one of the largest welfare fraud cases in Mississippi's history, after text messages revealed his connections to state officials involved in the scandal.And in headlines: a judge temporarily blocked Indiana's near-total abortion ban, President Biden issued a disaster declaration for Puerto Rico, and Ginni Thomas agreed to meet with the House panel investigating the January 6th riot.Show Notes:Deadspin: “The media needs to treat Brett Favre like it did Michael Vick and Colin Kaepernick” – https://tinyurl.com/25ner4tnVote Save America: Fuck Bans Action Plan – https://votesaveamerica.com/roe/Crooked Coffee is officially here. Our first blend, What A Morning, is available in medium and dark roasts. Wake up with your own bag at crooked.com/coffeeFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/whataday/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

it's friday september 23rd i'm trevelle anderson and i'm priyanka arabindi and this is what a day where instead of watching don't worry darling in theaters tonight we will be busy watching the chris pine spit tape on an hour and a half long loop you know the reviews for that movie are not necessarily the best and so the spit tape has to be more interesting. There's mystery. There's intrigue. It's high stakes. We're in it. On today's show, Jenny Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, will speak to the January 6th committee. Plus, President Biden pledged to pay for relief costs in Puerto Rico for a month. But first, an update on the protests in Iran, which have been underway since last weekend. Clashes between Iranian security forces and

protesters who took to the streets following the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody have left nine people dead so far, though Iranian state TV suggests that the death toll could be as high as 17. Okay, you mentioned this on the show earlier in the week. Can you recap what sparked the protests? Yeah, so earlier we told you about the death of Masa Amini. She was a Kurdish woman who was taken into custody by Iran's morality police last Tuesday for supposedly wearing her hijab, which is the headscarf worn by some Muslim women, too loosely. Iranian police claim that she died of a heart attack, but reports say that she suffered multiple blows to the head before she died, and her family says that officers beat her in the police van right after she was arrested. The demonstration started last Saturday at her funeral and have

since swept across much of the country, becoming one of the biggest spontaneous acts of defiance against Iran's government in recent memory. Women are in the streets cutting their hair, burning their hijabs, all of which is incredibly risky in a country like Iran. We actually have some audio from the protests. Take a listen. Aminia's death has opened up a real outpouring of anger in Iran over basic freedoms, especially for women. And not just over that. Demonstrators are also calling attention to widespread economic issues and other longstanding grievances that they've had with their government. Let's talk a little more about this morality police. What do we need to know about them and how do they operate?

These police units are specifically there to enforce the Islamic Republic's strict dress code and to detain anybody who is, quote unquote, improperly dressed by their standards. So under Iranian law, women have to cover their hair with a hijab and wear loose-fitting clothing in public to hide their figures. This hasn't always been the case, though. So before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it wasn't uncommon to see women in Tehran with their hair uncovered, even wearing miniskirts out in the street. So very similar to, like, an American city.

But the Morality Police Force was formally established in 2005, and they have been highly criticized for their approach in the time since. Women are frequently detained and only released when a relative can come bail them out and say that they'll wear their hijab properly in the future. Other reports indicate that these units regularly beat people in their custody and subject them to cruel and unusual punishments. Horrible behavior there. Tell us a little bit more about the reaction to these protests, both in Iran and abroad. Yeah, so Iran's president, Ebrahim Raisi, is actually in New York right now for the U.N. General Assembly.

Very awkward time to be mingling with the other world leaders, most of whom are like, what the hell is going on? That is not okay. He told Amini's family that he ordered an investigation into her death on Sunday. That's a very different tune than what is happening on the ground in Iran. So back in Iran, the government has deployed massive amounts of security forces to violently crack down against these protesters. And to prevent them from spreading further, the country's largest telecom operator has effectively shut down internet access across the country. There have also been widespread outages of Instagram and WhatsApp, which are widely used by protesters to coordinate and get the word out about what's going on. So really trying to tamp down on what's happening. Globally, people have been outraged by

what's happening. The UN has condemned Iran's violent response to the protests. On Thursday, the US government imposed sanctions on the morality police and leaders of other Iranian security agencies. But whether or not these demonstrations will become a political tipping point and will change things remains to be seen because Iran really doesn't have a good track record when it comes to political dissent. Yeah, this is a story that we will be following, I'm sure. Certainly. Now on to another story. This one you've probably heard only a little bit about, Priyanka. It comes out of Mississippi and is about some financial theft, and somehow it involves Brett Favre who I'm told those of y'all in sports ball land are super into but to get us up to speed though I've

got to take you back to 2020 so two years ago about a month before the pandemic ruined many of our lives the state auditor in Mississippi accused several officials of embezzling tens of millions of dollars in federal money meant for low income folks. The former director of the state's welfare agency and four others were indicted and arrested in what was characterized at the time as the largest public corruption case in Mississippi in at least 20 years. Wow. They basically did a reverse Robin Hood there. They stole money meant for poor folks in the poorest state in the country, by the way, and they gave it to the rich, more privileged people. They used some of this money to pay for a luxury drug rehab program for a former pro wrestler. What? Yes, it's odd, Priyanka. I know it sounds like it's out of nowhere um but yeah it's been suggested that the total amount

is over 90 million dollars that was kind of funneled from the welfare programs that is the background though wild okay that's just the background now yesterday that former director of mississippi's welfare agency his name is john Davis, pleaded guilty to federal and state charges that included theft, conspiracy, and fraud. The state judge gave Davis a 90-year sentence, but he only has to serve 32 of them. Davis is 54 years old, by the way, and he's currently on house arrest until his federal sentencing next year, where he faces up to 15 additional years. Okay, I'm straight on this part. They stole from the government.

They were giving money that was meant for poor people to wealthier people. But where does Brett Favre factor into this equation? Gotcha. Well, apparently the former football star had a hand in the misuse of some of these funds. Earlier this month, text messages related to the scandal were released,

which suggests that he knew that at least $5 million of the state's welfare funds were funneled off to build a volleyball arena at the University of Southern Mississippi where his daughter was on the team. Now, the University of Southern Mississippi is his alma mater as well as the alma mater of then-Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant. I'll let you guess his political affiliation, but he also is implicated in these text messages. But beyond that, the texts also appear to show Favre plotting with the head of a nonprofit who received some of these funds meant for low-income communities. He texted back in 2017, quote, if you were to pay me, is there any way the media could find out where it came from and how much? Now, this text was about more than a million

dollars he ended up receiving for speeches he never actually gave. He also helped channel more than two million dollars in government funds to a biotechnology startup that he had invested in. That's all according to a lawsuit filed against him by Mississippi's Department of Human Services. Wow. Okay. A lot happening here. I feel like a large takeaway, not the main one, is to not put shit in writing, everybody. Please stop doing your shit over text. Stop DMing random girls on Instagram. Stop. Just quit it. Don't do that. But anyways, back to the story. How has Brett Favre responded to all of this coming to light? You know, what's he reacting like?

Yeah, well, he and his lawyers have repeatedly said that he was not aware that the funds came from a federal welfare program. But these texts are fairly damning. Yeah. One of them even shows there were plans at one point for the volleyball arena to be named after him. And so you would think he had to have known something if they were going to name the building after you. But I want to note that this story goes far beyond Brett Favre, even though his involvement has kind of made the story somewhat national news. The fact of the matter is that rather than the federal welfare program known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, helping the poor as intended, it became a slush fund for already privileged folks. That said, neither Brett Favre nor former Governor

Bryant have yet been charged with anything in this case. Yeah, this is corruption on like a level that I feel like you don't really expect in America. I don't expect but if this is wild. Anyways, I know that Brett Favre, I'm not like a huge football fan, but even I know who he is. He's a really big deal in the football world. So how has the public responded to this? Well, some have said that the story is barely making the headlines it should. Rightan phillips a reporter with deadspin he wrote a piece with the headline the media needs to treat brett farve like it did michael vick and colin kaepernick we'll link to it in the show notes but he's basically

saying that because farve is white and the victims of this crime are poor black folks not enough people seem to care which i think you know based on history right there might be some truth too yeah this is like terrible what he did this man should not like be allowed to socialize normally and like lead a normal life like this is terrible it absolutely is and it's so much money right that was meant to go to these poor folks, largely black folks. Right. Because the state in question is Mississippi. In Jackson in particular, they're still having water issues there, by the way. It's a lot happening in Mississippi. And so more to come on this story very soon, I'm sure.

But that is the latest for now. Let's get to some headlines headlines an indiana judge temporarily blocked the state's near total abortion ban on thursday just one week after it took effect as a reminder the law bans all abortions from the moment of conception except in cases of rape incest or if the pregnant person's life is at risk. The judge hearing the case ruled in favor of clinic operators who sued the state, arguing that the law violates Indiana's constitution. The ruling means the procedure is now legal again in Indiana, but only up to 20 weeks. Listen, let's make this temporary block permanent. This is good news for the people of Indiana.

Yes. President Biden issued a disaster declaration in Puerto Rico on Wednesday. This comes after Hurricane Fiona battered the island earlier this week and knocked out its already fragile power grid. Biden's declaration unlocked more federal funding for programs to help individuals and business owners recover from

the storm and it'll pay 100 of their relief and cleanup costs for a month meanwhile fiona continues to move north as a category four storm and is expected to hit bermuda this weekend somebody gonna have to pay for it after the first month yeah like one month like okay what's going on i think this is gonna have further reaching effects than that. Wishful thinking. And we've already talked about the first impact from Hurricane Maria a number of years ago that Puerto Rico hasn't yet fully rebounded from. But, you know, that's a conversation for another time. After months of negotiations, House Democrats passed four policing bills yesterday that would give millions of dollars in federal funding to local law enforcement.

Moderates in the party were eager to pass the measures ahead of the midterms to appeal to centrist voters. But progressives didn't love the idea of giving local police departments more money. And they argued that there weren't enough accountability measures for law enforcement agencies in the legislation in the first place. The bills have virtually no chance of passing in the Senate, but their approval in the House will likely help incumbent moderates facing competitive races for re-election this year. Turns out some people did manage to be productive during lockdown. Apparently, fraudsters used their time inside to steal over $45 billion from unemployment programs. That is according to a report yesterday from the Labor Department's inspector general,

who said that while millions of Americans use their unemployment checks to, you know, feed their families, scammers were busy filing billions of dollars in false claims to collect the funds for themselves. Some even went as far as using over 200,000 social security numbers that belonged to dead people on their applications. And others use the identities of federal prisoners who weren't even eligible for aid. Even worse, officials from the inspector general's office say that they aren't even done with their investigation yet and that they'll probably find billions more dollars in theft over the next few months.

You know, if you're one of those people who got one of those PPP loans that you weren't supposed to get, you're probably shaking in your boots right now. I'm just saying. That shit's going to catch up with you. It always does. It always does. Trump's legal team is learning a valuable lesson. When you mess with the deary, you get the antlers. Jeez. Geez. when they searched Mar-a-Lago. Trump's team has one week to put into writing what they believe the FBI planted,

something they might be hesitant to do as lawyers if they don't actually believe the FBI planted anything. We know the folks over there in the Trump camp like to lie, according to, you know, Letitia James' complaint, okay? Meanwhile, Trump continues to refine his explanation of how presidents declassify things this time pushing it into the metaphysical realm here he is on fox news yesterday you're the president of the united states you can declassify just by saying it's declassified even by thinking

about it because you're sending it oh no to mar-a-lago or to wherever you're sending it. Oh, no. What? That's not. What was that word salad? I'm sorry. Was I supposed to understand what any of that meant? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. That's not how that works. Love his interest in manifestation, though. Feels like he's got a lot in common with the L.A. girlies.

That's lovely for him. We love that for him, although it might get him in some trouble. Yeah. And there is an update on the only wife in the world who has zero ability whatsoever to influence her husband, Ginny Thomas, famously an election denier and a conservative activist who also happens to be married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Per her lawyer, Thomas has agreed to be interviewed by the January 6th House Committee sometime in the coming weeks. Committee members first requested an interview with her back in June after texts and emails emerged that showed her active involvement in different attempts to

challenge Biden's victory in the 2020 election. This is what I'm interested in seeing, okay? Because we've seen the text messages, we've heard her name swirling in these headlines for the past few months especially while all of this investigation has been happening I'm interested to see what she has to say for herself I'm ready I'm here for like the messy spouse stuff these days I'm happy to sit here with a bowl of popcorn and just watch it happen and those are the headlines. We'll be back after some ads to discuss a food that may never have existed known as NyQuil chicken. It's Friday WOD Squad and for today's Tim Check, we're discussing a story at the intersection of Big Pharma and Big Poultry. I'm talking, of course, about so-called NyQuil chicken. Now, you may have heard

this, but earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against what it described as the, quote, social media trend of cooking chicken in NyQuil, okay? The implication was that young people were being encouraged to do this on TikTok, a place that's full of great recipes, but also maybe the type of people who would use cold medicine as a marinade. Predictably, NyQuil Chicken captured the media's attention, leading hundreds of articles to be written and aggregated ad infinitum. But upon further investigation, it seems that there's not a single report of anyone actually doing this. And instead of shifting the spotlight

off night cool chicken the fda's warning caused searches of night cool chicken on tiktok to skyrocket by over 100 000 percent over the past few days all this has us feeling too anxious to sleep unless we eat some night cool chicken first Priyanka, what are your thoughts? Well, first, as a TikTok user, I can say that I have not seen a single thing like this. My feed has been all Adam Levine videos, not a single NyQuil chicken in sight. I don't know how this happens. Someone picks up something that is just absolutely not a thing, blows it up into like this like crazy scare.

All the kids are eating Tide Pods. Like no one's fucking eating Tide Pods. Like we're all fine we're okay contrary to popular belief not as dumb as you may think this is all one big like facepalm of course this happened to me but like Travelle what do you think about this nonsense so I'm not gonna lie when I first heard it I believed it and you want to know why I believed it. And you want to know why I believed it? Because if you go on social media, all right, every other day we see another white person discovering salt and pepper and seasoning their meat and all of that. And so I just said to myself, this might be some white folks, you know, doing some foolishness on TikTok. Trying flavor. Trying flavor.

Okay. Now I'm glad to hear that no one is actually doing this okay um but i did think it was real and i don't know whose fault that is i don't know either but i would love to know and just like that we've checked our temps they're a little a little crunchy a little like. A little like, oh, I'm not feeling so great. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, eat a normal chicken, okay? And tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just eye-popping emails from Jenny Thomas, like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter.

Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. I'm Travelle Anderson. And watch out for those antlers, Trump. Yes, feels like it's going the absolute opposite of the way he wanted it to. And we love that. We want it to be the opposite of what he intended. Absolutely.

It's finally coming back around for everyone. For the scammers, for Donald Trump, who is the world's biggest scammer. What a day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance, Jazzy Marine, and Raven Yamamoto are our associate producers. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producer is Lita Martinez. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.