- Today, we're talking about what really happened
with that heart-pounding runaway baby stroller video,
this nasty Creator Clash iDubbbz drama,
Clarence Thomas being a sugar baby, and so much more news.
Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show,
and let's just jump into it.
Starting with, you may have seen this video
over the last two days, but the details
that we've now learned
frame it in a whole new interesting light.
So this happened in Hesperia, California.
A powerful gust of wind blows a baby stroller
directly into high-speed traffic,
with the baby's great-aunt, who's in her sixties,
collapsing to the ground twice, trying to scramble after it.
But that's when, with no time to don a cape,
or even think about it, Ron Nessman, a former truck driver
who tragically lost his girlfriend back in 2018,
who then spiraled into homelessness for years
from the heartbreak, who just so happened to have
recently moved back to Hesperia, California
to reconnect with his family,
and he just happened to be sitting outside a carwash
after a job interview with Applebee's,
leapt into action, dashing for that baby
just moments before it would've been greeted
by several tons of steel on the road.
And then, also, another bystander running over
to help the fallen woman,
and Ron escorting the child back to safety.
And so now Ron is rightfully being hailed as a hero
by thousands of people online,
though he said he doesn't need the fame,
saying all he really wants is to turn his life back around,
and hopefully this moment is a pivotal one.
But to Ron, I gotta say that's too damn bad
'cause you are our BAMF of the day.
People are calling you a hero
'cause that's exactly what you are, sir.
'Cause if we lived in a world without you,
we'd live in a world without that baby.
You're now one of the few people on the planet
to know how the world would be different
if you weren't here.
So thank you, Ron Nessman, you are our BAMF of the day,
and I'm rooting for you.
And then, in internet drama news,
let's talk about this iDubbbz situation.
This is a pretty requested story, which makes sense.
There's a lot of different discourse, let's call it, online.
And pretty much all of it is stemmed from a controversy
around the influencer boxing event, Creator Clash.
Creator Clash 2 happened a few weeks ago,
by all accounts seemed successful,
but a few weeks prior to the event,
there was this big controversy because iDubbbz,
or rather, I'll call him Ian,
he and the organization make what seems to be
a last minute decision to drop
one of the fighters and creators, Froggy Fresh.
And at the time ,there was tons of speculation
about why exactly this happened.
Something that had to do with Froggy's beef
with iDubbbz's wife, Anisa, and her mom.
Others wondering if it had to do with his ties to Sam Hyde,
who's a highly controversial personality,
some describing him as an anti-semitic troll
or an alt-right nazi.
But the main thing is that it was just this public unknown.
But now, we all have an answer because Ian made a video
listing his reasons why this happened.
- The main reason Froggy was kicked from the card
was for collaborating with Sam Hyde.
And, you know, for anyone who's been following the story,
that's, you know, fairly obvious.
- iDubbbz then playing clips of remarks
Sam Hyde made about Anisa.
- I don't think so, Anisa, bitch.
Ho.
Fuckin' Anisa, what an ugly piece of shit.
Everybody hates him and his wife's a slut.
- And with all that, saying why on earth
would he wanna associate with someone who says that,
or anyone who supports those comments?
Also saying that on top of all that,
Froggy himself was involved in
insulting people involved in the Creator Clash.
And Ian claiming that he initially tried to look past
a lot of Froggy's indiscretions,
and instead wanted to work with him on those issues,
and saying he even asked Froggy just to wait
until after Creator Clash to post Sam Hyde content.
With that, you had Froggy saying he was upset,
he thought that it was an inappropriate request,
to which iDubbbz responded...
- Okay, you don't think it's appropriate
that I set boundaries.
I don't think it's appropriate that you are hanging out
with a guy who doesn't think women are people.
- But Ian also going further,
saying it's not just that Froggy worked with Sam Hyde,
instead saying that Froggy also appears to harbor
some of those same misogynistic views.
- Even if you didn't do any of the Sam Hyde stuff,
why would we want you at our event?
Like, if you're just gonna blatantly disrespect
sex workers, and women, and other fighters?
I think it's just pretty clear
that he holds similar opinions to Sam Hyde,
and similar opinions to Sam Hyde fans.
- But even with all that,
Ian saying that this doesn't just have to do with
him and Anisa feeling personally insulted by those remarks.
- There are a lot of people who don't want anything to do
with Sam Hyde who are fighting on our card.
There are a lot of people who are our fans
who want nothing to do with Sam Hyde.
So we're trying to protect them,
we're trying to protect the environment that we're in.
- Depending on what part of the internet you went to,
you saw drastically different reactions.
Some watched that video and were like,
"That's an entirely reasonable explanation
of why you wouldn't want someone
to be a part of your event."
With people saying that it looked like
Ian and Anisa were trying to work with him,
but he just didn't wanna work with them.
But then you'd go somewhere else,
and it was just people dogpiling Ian,
calling the decision dumb or pathetic.
And so with all that, I wanna pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts with this whole mess?
Which camp do you land in and why?
And also, if you want a clearer picture of it,
I'm trying to make this consumable.
If you wanna watch the full video,
I'm gonna link to it down below,
like I do with pretty much everything I cover on this show.
Yeah, I'd love to know your thoughts.
And then, so bad news for weed smokers.
According to a new study today,
published in Psychological Medicine,
as many as 30% of cases of schizophrenia
among men aged 21 to 30 could have been prevented
had they avoided cannabis use disorder,
with reportedly young men who use potent marijuana
frequently having an increased risk
of developing schizophrenia,
with co-author Nora Volkow,
who's also the director of the National Institute
on Drug Abuse, saying, "While the Danish population,"
which is the source here
because they got 7 million Danish health records,
"Doesn't have as much diversity as the US
and genetics play a role in schizophrenia risk,
the findings should concern people
of all ethnic backgrounds."
Also calling the evidence sufficiently strong,
and so strong that you should be cautious,
especially if you have schizophrenia running in your family.
Though notably, with all this,
the data appears to show that women are less affected
by the use, at least comparatively.
And this study is notable for a number of reasons,
but one of them is also timing.
Currently you have many US cannabis companies
increasing the potency of their product.
In fact, so much so, that we're starting to hear
more and more voices, whether it be in the US
or in other countries like Germany saying,
"Hey, maybe we need to put a cap on the potency."
which I will say, as someone that occasionally partakes,
yeah, some of you smoking some crazy shit.
What feelings are you running away from?
I'm just trying to wind down after a stressful day,
but some of y'all going the moon, nightly.
But overall, concerning news,
especially as consumption has been on the rise,
and it's something that we're gonna have to
keep our eyes on, with even the people behind this study
saying we need more research on it.
And then, the Amazon Labor Union has become a shitshow,
with us now having even more allegations of violence.
With this time, the focus on Derrick Palmer,
the Union's vice president, reportedly admitting
to strangling his girlfriend last year
on police body camera footage,
with him reportedly, back in October,
being indicted on two counts of
second degree aggravated assault.
And if he's convicted, obviously, you're talking jail time,
but also he would be barred from serving as a Union officer.
And this, notably, coming not a month after video emerged
of Union President Chris Smalls fighting a fellow organizer
outside the Staten Island warehouse.
And all that amid a deepening divide within the ALU
over alleged mismanagement by Smalls
and his leadership, who members accused
of being more concerned about personal fame
than actually running the Union.
And then, it's a bad, no good day
for the Ed Sheeran haters out there,
'cause Ed, he just won a copyright case
over his song, "Thinking Out Loud,"
meaning he won't be quitting the music industry after all.
If you didn't know, here are the key details.
He was accused of copying elements
from Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On,"
and the family of Ed Townsend,
who co-wrote "Let's Get It On," sued Ed over the matter,
specifically saying both songs
shared similar chord patterns,
with the New York Times noting that the case
asked questions of originality in pop music
and whether the use of basic musical elements,
like chord progressions and simple rhythmic patterns,
can be owned by a single creator
or are free for any musician to use and adapt.
And for his part, Ed maintained
that he didn't copy "Let's Get It On,"
even taking to the stand with his guitar
to play part of "Thinking Out Loud"
to explain what the songwriting process was like.
At one point, like I even mentioned,
he went so far as to say that if he lost this case,
he would just quit music.
But, of course, he doesn't have to do that
with the jury now siding with him.
So yeah, a bad, no good, tough day
if you run an Ed Sheeran hate account,
but for a lot of people in the music
and creative industries, people see this is a win.
And that obviously including Ed, who says that, you know,
musical chords are common building blocks
that have been used to create music
long before "Let's Get It On" was even written.
Others supporting, writing things like,
"Chord regressions are everywhere in music,
and rules typically govern how chords are ordered,
so of course there's overlap across an entire industry,"
and adding here that essentially a crisis has been averted.
Because had Ed lost, moving forward,
every musician has to use half their creative juices
on making sure no one else has ever produced
a similar sound.
Plus, they get sued out the wazoo,
with one musician kind of making the comparison
that the lawsuit and its implications
are the musical version of saying to a painter,
"You'll have to pay to use red."
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And then, Clarence Thomas is a whole-ass sugar baby
at this point, except instead of sucking dick for money,
he fucks a whole country for it, y'all!
How is there even more news coming out about him?
So much had already recently been exposed, and there's more?
When you have political institutions and government,
you know that there's gonna be corruption,
but to see it happening in the Supreme Court
is especially concerning.
In the past, when you think about
the different branches of government,
you think about checks and balances,
one of the ones that people would hold
in the highest of regards was the Supreme Court,
thinking of it as the biggest check and balance.
But what we've discovered, in large part thanks to
billionaire Harlan Crow, is that we all got it wrong.
He writes checks to undo the balances.
And what I'm specifically talking about
is that ProPublica has now published another report
on the sketchy-ass relationship between a high court Justice
and a billionaire real estate magnate
and Republican mega-donor.
And this, notably coming just weeks after
the absolutely stunning report that revealed
that Thomas had been accepting incredibly expensive
luxury gifts from Crow for over two decades
without disclosing them.
What we're seeing with this latest report is, like,
Crow is coming up with every possible way
to throw money at this man.
And in this case, a third person,
Justice Thomas's grandnephew, Mark Martin.
Because in 2008, Thomas decided
that he was gonna send his grandnephew Mark Martin
to Hidden Lake Academy,
a private boarding school in northern Georgia.
Martin had lived with Thomas and his wife for years
and was in their legal custody,
with the Justice recently telling an interviewer
he was raising him as a son.
But the tuition at this boarding school
was just insanely high at over $6,000 a month,
which, hey, is a big spend,
but seemingly something that the couple could afford.
Thomas and his wife bring in combined incomes
of more than $500,000 in 2006,
and over $850,000 in 2007.
It turns out, like with a lot of things
that we've learned recently,
the Thomas's did not foot the bill.
Instead, according to a bank statement
for Hidden Lake from July of 2009,
Crow's company paid for Martin's tuition that month.
And Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator
at the school, said that it went beyond just that month.
In fact, claiming that Crow covered Martin's tuition
the whole time he was there, which was around a year.
But again, it doesn't just stop there.
Grimwood also saying that Crow had told him
that he had paid for Martin's tuition
at another private boarding school
called Randolph-Macon Academy,
that he had attended both before and after
he went to Hidden Lake.
And according to reports, the exact total Crow paid
for Martin's education over the years remains unclear,
but if he paid for all four years at the two schools,
the price tag could have exceeded $150,000.
Now, very notably, when Crow's office responded
to ProPublica's questions,
they did not dispute the facts presented,
but said that Crow has long been passionate
about the importance of quality education
and giving back to those less fortunate,
especially at-risk youth,
and adding that he and his wife
have supported many young Americans
through scholarship and other programs
at a variety of schools, including his alma mater,
Randolph-Macon Academy, going on to say
tuition and other financial assistance
is given directly to academic institutions,
and concluding it's disappointing that those
with partisan political interests would try to turn
helping at-risk youth with tuition assistance
into something nefarious or political.
To which I have to ask, to whoever or whatever group
made this statement, did you do it, like, straight-faced?
How is a child in the legal care
of a couple making nearly a million dollars a year,
and that's just of what we know,
unfortunately, given all the unreported things
that we're finding out, I have to add that clarifier,
but how is that person less fortunate?
Especially when you consider the fact
that Martin also told ProPublica himself
that he got to join in on some of the lavish trips
that Thomas took with Crow,
visiting Crow's Adirondack estate,
two cruises on Crow's superyacht.
Or, I'm sorry, is it a superyacht
or is it a less fortunate yacht?
Since we're apparently just slapping on descriptors
that don't make any sense.
Like if you said "The Honorable" before Clarence Thomas.
But also, with this story,
after ProPublica published their story,
a longtime friend of Thomas, who has also served as a lawyer
for the Justice's wife, released his statement
confirming the Crow had indeed paid for Martin's tuition
at both private schools.
Though also arguing that Thomas was not required
to disclose those payments because Martin
was not his dependent child
as defined under disclosure law.
But you have experts saying that the claim
that Thomas didn't have to disclose Crow's tuition payments
to Martin is still bullshit because what minor
pays their own $6,000-a-month tuition
to a fancy-ass boarding school?
And noting, typically the legal guardian
is responsible for the child's education.
And this, as ethics law experts told ProPublica,
they believe that Thomas was required by law
to disclose the tuition payments
because they appear to be a gift to him.
And what's more, Thomas himself has literally reported
a similar tuition payment made by another friend
on behalf of Martin in his financial disclosures,
a fact that experts say could show that Thomas understood
that he was required to disclose tuition aid
given to him by friends, but just chose not to with Crow,
a man that experts and lawmakers say has shown
a clear interest in the court.
As we've talked about, he has given millions
to efforts to move the judiciary to the right
while also serving on boards of think tanks
that promote conservative legal theories.
But that's where we are
with this whole sketchy-ass situation,
and it feels like it's just a matter of time
until we find out what else Sugar Daddy Crow did
for Little Baby Clarence.
And then, are you on a secret government list right now?
That may sound farfetched, but a lot of people
who thought they weren't are now finding out they are.
And for the latest example of that,
you can just ask Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah.
He's the longest serving Muslim mayor in New Jersey,
fled Syria with his family back in the 1980s,
became a citizen in 2000,
got elected to the Prospect Park Council in 2001,
and then became mayor in 2005.
And since then, he's grown to be a revered
and influential figure, both in his local community
and among New Jersey Muslims, which is exactly why
on Monday, the White House invited him
and hundreds of other Muslims
to a belated celebration marking the end of Ramadan,
with Khairullah even helping the Democratic Party
compile a list of Muslim-American leaders to invite.
But when just minutes away from the White House,
Khairullah got a phone call from the Secret Service,
abruptly disinviting him from the event
without any explanation.
So he talks to the Council on American Islamic Relations,
and it turns out that his name is on a secret FBI
terrorist watch list that got leaked earlier this year,
saying that his name was added to it just a few years ago
in 2019, which is exactly when he started getting harassed
at airports, seemingly for no reason.
- In 2019, I was held and interrogated
at JFK Airport for three hours.
I also had my phone taken away
and searched through at the time.
This happened multiple times between 2019 and 2021,
when I was returning from Canada by land
where I was held up in a glass holding area
for my children to watch me and ask,
"Why can't we be with you?"
- [Philip] So you had activists and politicians
calling on the Biden administration to explain
what happened on Monday, but still, days later,
spokespeople have refused to give anything meaningful.
And with all this, Khairullah himself stresses
that the problem isn't that he was disinvited,
but instead saying, the problem is
that the secret list exists at all.
Because with hundreds of thousands of names on it,
there's no transparency about how or why
names are added or removed,
nor is there any recourse people can take
to get their names taken off the list.
Plus, a federal court already ruled the list
unconstitutional back in 2019.
And remember, we're only hearing about this story
because it involves a high-profile figure.
Meanwhile, for everyone else on this list,
it's probably gonna go unnoticed.
And then, Saudi Arabia is saying that LGBTQ visitors
are now welcome, but are they really?
'Cause the country recently updated its Q&A
of its tourism website, adding the question,
"Are LGBT visitors welcome to visit Saudi Arabia?"
And them answering, "Everyone is welcome to visit
Saudi Arabia and visitors are not asked
to disclose such personal details."
Now from a business stance,
it makes sense why they wanna court this group.
According to the CEO of the world's largest
LGBTQ+ travel platform, research shows
they spend more money in a destination
than a heterosexual couples, and tend to travel
more times a year, and saying it's a very interesting
and lucrative demographic, and countries are plowing
major revenue into attracting it.
However, Brett and Gary, before you pack those bags,
big asterisk, that's the only information they provide.
Because while there are reports that at least
in the tourist destinations, locals were relatively open
to LGBTQ+ people, it does not change the fact that
same-sex activity in that country is still prohibited
and carries the the possibility of death.
Or, if you're a lucky boy or girl,
hundreds of lashes and years in prison.
But yeah, if you want that adventure,
you want that adrenaline rush that comes from
hiding from the authorities and possible death,
Saudi Arabia, a fantastic LGBTQ+ destination.
And that is actually where today's show ends.
Thank you for choosing me
to be your daily dive into the news.
My name's Philip Franco, you've just been filled in,
I love yo' faces, and I'll see you next time.