- 'Sup ya beautiful bastards.
Hope you're having a fantastic Tuesday,
welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show.
Buckle up,
hit that like button,
let's hope my voice lasts the entire episode
and ugh...
Let's just jump into it.
The first thing we're gonna talk about today
is Peloton.
And Peloton, if you don't know,
is a company that sells smart indoor exercise bikes,
treadmills, they have a subscription service,
right, with trainers, whether they be live
or video-on-demand, walking you through an exercise.
But main point, the reason that we're 'bout them
is that they released an advertisement
that has gone viral for not the best reasons.
And here, let's walk through it together.
All right, you have generic ad mom coming down,
it seems like Christmas morning
and she's just absolutely blown away,
look at that face!
She's like, Greg, I thought you didn't love me anymore
but you bought me this beautiful bike,
and then proceeds to vlog herself
going on her first ride
where she genuinely looks terrified.
It continues, she's surprised she's kept it up.
At first she hates waking up at six a.m.
but then she's like, it's worth it.
Then she's absolutely blown away
that one of the trainers said her name,
then continues to vlog, saying, you know,
a year ago I couldn't believe how much this would change me,
thank you.
And she's watching and then presenting this vlog
to the man that gave her this gift the next Christmas.
And scene.
And since this ad was released almost two weeks ago
it was gaining more and more attention.
Definitely blowing up in the past 36 hours,
and the reaction has almost been universally negative.
Whether you're looking on their official YouTube channel
and you're looking at the likes to dislikes
or on Twitter where it's seemingly united people
in dunking on the company,
albeit, for a number of different reasons.
One criticism of the add is that
it pushes sexist ideologies.
This is because it portrays a husband giving his wife
a gift aimed to improver herself
as well as the woman just seeming to lack confidence
in any way in most of the scenes.
Others are ridiculing it because the woman's physique
doesn't seem to change at all.
All right, she's already a slender woman
at the beginning of the ad,
it appears that she's the same size at the end.
Additionally, the video's receiving backlash
for portraying seemingly well off people
in an expensive looking home,
right, which is a common thread throughout Peloton ads
to the point that its even been memed.
Which, on that note, there is a fantastic Twitter thread
that I will link to down below.
But also on the note of who they're marketing to
it is probably people with more money.
Peloton bikes start at $2,245
and that's not even considering the subscription.
And as far as my reaction to the story,
I don't think this is actually bad for Peloton
even though everyone's dunking on them.
One, with this being so openly mocked and memed
it's gotten in front of a lot of people
that it would otherwise not have,
two, when it comes to selling something
you don't need everyone to love it
you just need a certain group of people to buy it,
and three, as Yahoo! Finance noted,
even with the release of this almost two weeks ago
since the Thanksgiving holiday,
Peloton's stock traded up 14.6%.
Over the past month it's up 37%.
That said, it'll be interesting to see where it ends
a week or two from now.
Yesterday while this was blowing up it went up about 5%,
it dropped overnight.
Personally, if I were to guess
I think it's gonna drop even further before bouncing back,
but hey, really, if there's one note that I can hit on,
it is only OK to buy someone fitness equipment,
I don't care if it's a Peloton, a TRX Band,
a whatever,
is if they have specifically mentioned
they really want that thing.
Otherwise, it is the rudest thing you could possibly do.
The only thing that is worse
is something that I almost did, which was,
I think it was five or six years into dating my now wife,
I was initially not going to be able to spend Christmas
with her and her family.
I decided, hey, you know what,
I'm gonna fly there, I'm gonna surprise her,
I need to get her a gift,
I went to the jewelry store,
I decided I was gonna get her a ring.
Not an engagement ring,
just a ring
and I am so thankful that this jeweler
was willing to tell me how much of an idiot I was.
He was like, you're going to fly cross country,
surprise this woman on Christmas,
while she's surrounded by all her family
and then you're going to present her a ring box
and you think that that's gonna go over well.
Who dropped you on your head?
But yeah, ultimately that's the story.
I'm gonna keep my eyes on this
because I'm really interested to see, you know,
what happens with the public reaction
and then as far as company success.
'Cause I think this story is an interesting insertion point
into the debate on, is there such a thing for a company
as bad press?
Right, in the past we've seen examples of, like,
company does offensive thing,
this is not so much as offensive
as much as it's probably, like, detached from the regular
life experience of Joe and Jane Blow.
We'll see, and also with this story,
I'd love to know your thoughts in general.
Do you think that this whole mess is gonna have a good
a bad, a neutral reaction,
or really just anything.
And then, let's talk about Veronika Didusenko,
who, if you don't know,
was crowned Miss Ukraine back in September of 2018.
She won a ton of money and opportunity to represent
her country in the Miss World competition
at the end of 2019.
But then, just four days later
she was stripped of her title,
they took her monetary award because, it turns out,
she has a five year old son.
And, it turns out that it's actually against the rules
of the Miss World competition to take part
if you have a child.
All right, so essentially they have a no MILF policy.
Also, if you've been married or previously married
don't even try.
You've been touched, you are unclean.
Now as far as why we're talking about it today, right,
it's more than a year after being disqualified,
it's because Veronika is now taking legal action
against the competition organizers in an effort
to get them to change the regulations.
- [Veronika] There is no place for them in 21st century
when women can successfully balance their careers
and parenting.
Now as far as if Veronika was aware of this rule,
she said that she saw the ban one time
while she was filling out her application,
admitting that she falsely checked the box
indicating that she had no children
in order to submit it,
so and also saying that she thought that the rules
just didn't make any sense.
But main point, she wins then she's disqualified,
she said worldwide she just received so much support
and ultimately what we're looking at now
is her lawyer said that they've written to the
Miss World organizers who are based in the United Kingdom
threatening legal action on the basis
that the pageant rules are discriminatory.
Specifically, arguing that the regulations
are contrary to the Equality Act 2010,
an act of UK Parliament that serves as the foundation
for Great Britain's anti-discrimination law.
Veronika's lawyer also telling BBC that they received
a holding letter from the Miss World legal team
on Friday, so they now plan to intend to file a complaint
with the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
With Veronika saying, essentially, the main goal here
is, I want Miss World to change those rules
to make beauty pageants inclusive for everyone
because inclusive competitions can help to break
gender stereotypes, create professional opportunities
for contestants, and can help to empower women.
And I guess, as far as my opinion here,
it's hard to see this as anything other than
weird, old, discrimination.
All right, the competition is called Miss World,
not Miss Unmarried Childless Woman.
Right, if that was the name of the competition I'd,
well one, I'd be like, that's very specific,
but also, two, I'd be like, you know,
it's in the name and there's probably a
attractive married mom thing, competition.
But with it being Miss World, right,
its just a competition around women.
It feels very odd and wrong to disqualify women
who have had a different life experience.
As if marriage or giving birth to a child
has somehow ruined them.
Just saying it out loud sounds weird.
You're gonna disqualify a woman for doing something
only a woman can do.
I don't know.
I don't generally care about competitions like this
but all of this just feels wrong,
but also maybe that's just me.
I'd love to know your thoughts on this one.
But from that, I wanna share some stuff I love today,
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And the first bit of awesome today is
I just wanted to pimp out Yogscast Jingle Jam,
it's streamin' for a month on twitch.tv/yogscast
and with this stream and Humble Bundle,
they're raising money for a number of charities.
It only just started December 1st
and as of recording this video
they've raised over $1.3 million.
And so shaky voice be damned,
I wanted to make sure that I gave 'em a shout out.
So yeah, after today's show check it out,
watch some good, buy some good, do some good.
Then we got a brand new trailer for "Black Widow,"
then we had How to Drink giving us
Buddy the Elf's coffee.
The Infographic Show giving us
how to actually survive a crocodile attack.
We had Binging with Babish giving us
some awesome from the office,
we got Cartman's guide to love,
First We Feast gave us another episode of
"Gochi Gang."
Nikki Glaser gave us a lie detector test with friends,
and if you wanna see the full versions
of everything I just shared,
the secret link of the day,
really, anything at all,
links, as always, are in the description down below.
Then in quickie 2020 election news
we got the news today that Kamala Harris
is officially dropping out
with Harris writing an email to supporters saying,
"I've taken stock and looked at this from every angle,
and over the last few days have come
to one of the hardest decisions of my life.
My campaign for president simply doesn't have
the financial resources we need to continue.
I'm not a billionaire.
I can't fund my own campaign.
And as the campaign has gone on,
it's become harder and harder to raise the money
we need to compete."
So what I'll say here is this is where things,
I think, start to get more interesting
as you have people dropping out.
Granted, while Kamala Harris had, kind of,
a bump after the first debate
she was really in the single digits now.
Right, and so as people leave the race
there's the question of, well,
one, who would they back?
And two, are the supporters for a certain candidate
going to go to one of the other candidates
or were they, you know, the kind of hard core
this person or nothing, kind of people?
So as we see more and more people dropping out
it'll be interesting to see if we,
all of a sudden, have a different front runner.
And then let's talk about President Trump,
French President Macron, and the NATO summit.
And for those that don't know,
NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
is a military alliance between 29
North American and European countries.
It was established back in 1949 and right now
members are in London for a summit
and to celebrate the 70th anniversary.
Right, and so along with all the other leaders
Trump is currently there at the summit
and he's been making a lot of headlines.
Now for some quick context here,
Trump has a long history of being critical of NATO.
Trump has argued that the United States
is being treated unfairly by other members
because they don't spend as much on their militaries
as the United States does.
NATO members are required to spend at least 2% of their
GDP on their own national defense and Trump has claimed
that many members are not meeting that goal.
Trump has also called NATO obsolete in the past,
though he has backtracked on those comments.
And there have also been multiple reports
that Trump has threatened to pull the United States
out of NATO all together.
Right, and so going into this summit
a lot of people really didn't know
what to expect from Trump, which,
on that note, the summit is still ongoing
as we're recording and there's also a second day
of meetings tomorrow,
but still, we have some highlights so far.
Right, Trump's first meeting was a press conference
with the Secretary General of NATO earlier today.
Now, Trump talked about a lot of things at this meeting
which lasted over 50 minutes,
but we're mainly gonna be focusing
on the things that he said relating to NATO
and NATO members.
All right, so because this was in London
there was some talk about the upcoming British election,
and when asked why he was staying out of the election
he said...
- Cause I don't want to complicate it.
I can, look, I've won a lot of elections
for a lot of people.
If you look just over the last few months,
two elections in North Carolina I won,
I helped the Governor of Kentucky.
So, ah, I'll stay out of the election.
You know that I was a fan of Brexit,
I called it the day before.
I think Boris is very capable
and I think he'll do a good job.
- And so that was a stand out for two reasons,
one, you had people saying Trump was repeating
a lie saying that he predicted Brexit
the day before. In the past he's said, you know,
the day before Brexit I was in Scotland,
I was like, it's gonna happen.
He wasn't actually in Scotland until the day after
the Brexit vote but I also kinda think
that's splitting hairs, right.
In March of 2016 he did say..
- I think that Britain will separate from the EU.
- But then, yeah, also more notably,
two, you had people saying,
you said you were gonna just stay out of the election
but then you just, one,
said you were a fan of Brexit,
and two, complimented Boris Johnson.
Really, some of the biggest moments
from this conference thus far concerned France
and, specifically, French President Macron.
One of the things that experts and leaders
were anticipating for this summit
were tensions and possibly even transparent conflict
between Trump and Macron.
This especially after the U.S. just yesterday
threatened to put new tariffs on on $2.4 billion
in French products,
this including wine, cheese and yogurt.
With Trump's chief trade negotiator saying
that the tariffs would be responding
to a French digital service tax
that the United States believes
discriminates against American internet companies.
All right, so at the press conference
Trump was asked about Macron,
one reporter specifically asking Trump
about a comment that the French President had made
in an interview last month.
In that interview, Macron said that NATO
is experiencing brain death,
this because America's commitment to the organization
has been called into question under Trump.
And when asked how he felt about that criticism
Trump responded.
- I know, and then, Turkey responded by saying
that he was brain dead, which is interesting.
Now, NATO serves a great purpose,
it got to be unfair for the United States
because the United States was paying
a disproportionate amount and I heard that
President Macron said that NATO was brain dead.
I think that's very insulting to a lot of different forces.
It's a tough statement though,
when you make a statement like that,
that is a very,
very, very nasty statement to, essentially,
28, including them, 28 countries.
I think that, you know, you have a very high
unemployment rate in France,
France is not doing well economically at all.
They're starting to tax other people's products
so, therefore we go and tax them.
That's just taken place right now on technology
and we're doing their wines and everything else.
They've had a very rough year,
and you just can't go around making statements
like that about NATO.
It's very disrespectful.
- Right, and so all of that was, I mean, really notable.
You had a lot of people saying,
yes, he was going after Macron
but Trump was really defending NATO in a way
we really haven't seen before.
And so then, after that press conference
Trump heads directly for a meeting with Macron
and thereafter, saying that the United States
was going to tax France in the first press conference,
we saw him open by saying...
- And we do a lotta trade with France
and we have a minor dispute,
I think we'll probably be able to work it out,
but, ah, we have a big trade relationship
and I'm sure that within a short period of time
things will be looking very rosy.
- Trump also went on to say that some NATO members
were not paying enough in defense spending
but he also added that the organization had gotten
a lot more flexible since he assumed office.
Now as far as Macron, for his part,
he defended his earlier statements
about NATO being brain dead and said he stood by it
but then things began to get heated
when they started talking about ISIS
and the situation with Syria and Turkey.
Now we talked about this a lot on the show a while back,
but for some quick background here,
Trump and his administration has frequently claimed
that ISIS has been defeated in Syria,
which was a big part of the justification
for Trump's decision to remove troops
from Northern Syria and to step aside
to let Turkey launch a military operation
to clear Syrian Kurdish groups at the border.
Like we talked about on the show a number of times,
Turkey considers those troops to be terrorists
but the U.S. and many other NATO members
consider them key allies who have fought along side
the United States to combat ISIS in the region.
And this was another topic
that was expected to come up at the summit,
especially because Turkey is a member.
And the whole situation around Turkey there is odd.
The Turkish President Erdogan is already in hot water
with NATO over the Turkish incursion in Syria
as well as the fact that Turkey recently purchased
an anti-aircraft missile system from Russia,
which goes against NATO commitments not to buy
Russian systems.
This largely because Russia is not part of NATO
and frequently tries to undermine the alliance.
But even with the tension between NATO and Turkey
we still have Turkish President Erdogan
already ask NATO members at this summit
to recognize the Syrian Kurdish fighters
as a terrorist group.
And he's also threatened to oppose
NATO's plans to update the defense of member states
like Poland and other Baltic countries
if the organization does not agree to his demands.
But the members there have largely refused.
We also saw the Turkey question appear to be
a point of conflict between Trump and Macron.
Trump claimed that most of the captured ISIS fighters
in Syria were from Europe.
- They're mostly from Europe and some of the countries
are agreeing.
I have not spoken to the President about that.
Would you like some nice ISIS fighters?
- No. - I could give 'em to you.
You can take every one you want.
- Let's be serious.
The very large number of fighters you have on the ground
are ISIS fighters coming from Syria,
from Iraq, and the region.
It is true that you have foreign fighters
coming from Europe,
but this is a tiny minority of the overall problem
we have in the region.
And I think number one priority,
because it's not yet finished,
is to get rid of ISIS and these terrorist groups.
This is our number one priority.
And it's not yet done.
I'm sorry to say that, yes, you still have fighters
in this region.
- He also condemned Turkey for fighting
against the Kurds and said the situation today
has led to more ISIS fighters in the region,
which then resulted in this interaction.
- This is why he's a great politician,
'cause that was one of the greatest
non-answers I've ever heard.
- To say this is a European responsibility,
I'm sorry to say that.
We have some of our people
but if you don't look at the reality of the situation
that is number one,
not to be ambiguous with these groups.
This is why we started to discuss about
our relations with Turkey.
But I think any ambiguity with Turkey
vis-a-vis these groups
is detrimental to everybody
for the situation on the ground.
- We all saw Trump say that he has
a very strong relationship with Erdogan
which is going to be interesting
to see how that's going to play out later in this summit.
But ultimately, that's what we have for now.
It is gonna be interesting to see what else happens,
what else is said.
With this story, I would of course,
love to know your thoughts on it.
And that is where we're going to end today's show.
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But, with that said, of course, as always,
my name's Philip DeFranco,
you've just been filled in.
I love yo faces and I'll see you tomorrow
as long as I have a voice tomorrow.