- 'Sup, you beautiful bastards
hope you're having a fantastic Thursday,
welcome back to The Philip DeFranco Show,
and let's just jump into it.
And the first thing we're gonna talk about today
is why the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League,
is making headlines today.
And for those that don't know,
the ADL says that they're an organization
devoted to fighting anti-Semitism,
hate, and other forms of discrimination,
and the ADL has something that they call
the Hate on Display Database,
something that they say serves as an overview
for many of the symbols often used
by white supremacists groups and other types of hate groups.
And this in includes everything from generic hate symbols
to acronyms, abbreviations, logos, slogans, more.
And you might remember we talked about this back in 2016,
I kind of joked and mocked
how they made Pepe the frog a hate symbol.
For me, it was one of those things of well,
how can you call this a hate symbol
if it's just a general meme used by everyone,
including, yes, some people that were using it
for hateful and anti-Semitic things,
but it was one of those things of well,
how can you still call the whole.
Especially because on the ADL website
they note that it did not originally have
racist or anti-Semitic connotations.
They continue by saying the majority
of uses of Pepe the frog have been,
and continue to be, non-bigoted.
And to me, I would say that even the classification of that
as a hate symbol at the time,
all it did was kind of lend itself to increase usage.
Because then posting Pepe memes
was kind of just adopted by people
that wanted to troll something that they found stupid.
And while we talked about that back in 2016,
this list was created in 2000
to help law enforcement and members of the public
identify potential warnings of extremism.
And the reason we're talking about this today
is that the ADL has now 36 new entries to the list.
And while most of which include
logos for groups like League of the South
and the National Socialist Legion,
others include the Happy Merchant meme,
which ADL says is quote,
"By far the most popular anti-Semitic meme
"among white supremacists."
That and the practice of burning Neo-Nazi symbols.
But those really weren't the entries that made headlines.
Instead, they include the OK hand symbol which the ADL says,
"Begun as a hoax by members of the website 4chan,
"the OK symbol became a popular trolling tactic.
"By 2019, the symbol was being used in some circles
"as a sincere expression of white supremacy."
And for those kind of wanting to know where
that sort of thinking started.
It kind of started as a trolling tactic
where people were saying when you do that sign,
you're saying white power, WP.
But their entry also adds that the suspect in the
Christchurch shootings that killed 51 people
used the symbol in a courtroom appearance.
Right, so essentially the argument is
it was kind of brought out of this world of trolling
into real world white supremacy.
Another entry is actually the bowl cut haircut?
And in their description on this one they say,
"The 'Bowlcut' is an image of a bowl-shaped haircut
"resembling the one worn by"
the shooter in Charleston, South Carolina,
"Those who use the bowlcut image,
"or other 'bowl' references admire him
"and call for others to emulate
"his 2015 mass shooting attack."
Right, so in general, that's the bulk of the announcement,
the bulk of the story, and uh,
I guess I'm kind of left wondering how does this help?
Because as the ADL even notes at the bottom of their list,
"All the symbols depicted here must be evaluated
"in the context in which they appear.
"Few symbols represent just one idea
"or are used exclusively by one group.
"For example, the Confederate Flag is a symbol
"that is frequently used by white supremacists
"but which also has been used
"by people and groups that are not racist.
"Similarly, other symbols in this database
"may be significant to people
"who are not extreme or racist."
And in this, they further try to explain kind of
the additions that they're putting here, saying,
"Many of the newly added symbols
"are identified by ADL's Center on Extremism
"as being adopted by the alt right segment
"of the white supremacist movement."
With John Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL
saying in a statement,
"We believe law enforcement and the public
"needs to be fully informed
"about the meaning of these images,
"which can serve as a first warning sign
"to the presence of haters in a community or school."
All right, so it ends up being more nuanced
than I think kind of the headlines
that people are seeing and sharing right now.
But also at the same time, kind of going back to
the explanation on the Pepe the frog page.
If the majority of usage is for non-bigoted reasons,
then how can it be an effective warning sign?
Or how can you better handle or communicate the situation
because my personal feeling on this?
I think you're giving the actual hate groups
far more power in allowing them
to hijack language and body language.
Because right now, the way that it's been communicated,
it one, makes the people that were using it
for non-bigoted reasons feel defensive.
Which I don't think is a completely misplaced reaction,
given what we saw with Pepe the frog,
where accusations were being made of just tying people
that were using it like normal to extremism.
And with weak, poorly thought out,
or just outright false accusations and connections,
you're gonna have people using that more as a way to troll.
And then you also have people more scared
to be like yeah that's OK, and so it ends up
being more associated with the other thing.
Like I feel it should be OK to say fuck a white supremacist.
You limp-dick little bitches,
you gotta hate someone cause they're a different race?
But yeah, I'm not gonna let those groups
or the ADL, for that matter,
dictate a change in the way that I communicate
or hijack any language or body language
that I might already incorporate.
Yeah, that's all I gotta say about this story,
and of course I pass the question off to you.
What are your thoughts on this?
Then, I'm gonna try and share these
whenever they come across, and if you wanna send me
happy stories on Twitter, please do.
Feels like there's just kind of wave after wave
of dark and divisive stuff,
so let's celebrate good when we see it.
Earlier in the week, we talked Carson King
raising over a million dollars now
for a children's hospital.
And today an act of good will
that we wanted to highlight and showcase
actually came from YouTube's own David Dobrik.
He came across a guy by the name of John
who said that he was currently homeless,
he got kicked out of foster care,
his car had also recently gotten stolen
and I guess at that point David Dobrik was like,
my superpower could activate!
Along with giving him a car,
they gave him free Chipotle for a year.
He also just gave the guy a car.
It's heartwarming and I think it's also nice to,
whenever you see someone in kind of a
very awesome, privileged position,
doing onto another because they can.
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And the first bit of awesome today
is the team and I put out a deep dive
on a topic you may have never heard about,
prison rodeos, which I didn't know was a thing beforehand.
It's fascinating, and I definitely recommend
after today's show you check it out.
Also, while I'm doing some self promotion,
if you didn't watch the podcast I put out yesterday
with Dr. Mike, I highly recommend it.
One, I mean just as far as content goes I think it's great,
but also two, and I've seen comments saying this,
I'm just really, really enjoying it, and I'm having a blast.
But yeah, there was that.
Also in other awesome, we got the brand new trailer
for The Irishman, that's looking great.
We had Bon Appetit giving us a pro chef
learning how to carve a $1,500 leg of ham.
You know, some foodie goodness.
We also had Liza Koshy, Kimiko Glenn, and Travis Coles
taking a friendship test.
You then have Day6 trying nine things
they've never done before.
You know, gotta feed the K-pop stans.
Then we got Ashton Kutcher on Hot Ones.
We had astronaut Nicole Scott
answering space questions from Twitter.
And BBC Earth gave us the most important video,
the best dogs of BBC Earth.
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.
And the final thing we're gonna talk about today,
of course, is the continuation
of this Trump, Biden, Ukraine,
impeachment, whistleblower situation.
So we've been covering this all week.
If you want full details,
kind of like not the oversimplified stuff
to get you to where we're updating,
I highly recommend you watch the previous shows.
Right, but the main thing is that this story
centers around a whistleblower complaint
that claims that Trump pressured
Ukrainian president Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden.
Right, an accusation that the president of the United States
abused his power to solicit foreign interference.
And as we talked about yesterday
there was a July phone call with the Ukrainian leader
where yesterday a memorandum of that call was released
and it showed Trump asking Zelensky
to look into Biden for him.
Once again, oversimplified.
I also had an issue with
how some of the news outlets were covering it.
They were pairing certain parts of the, yeah.
I know that it's self promo
but really watch yesterday's video
if you wanna understand that part.
Also yesterday we saw Zelensky and Trump
make an appearance together at the U.N.
And notably there Zelensky addressed the call
and said, "Nobody pushed me."
But others have argued that one,
that's not the only concerning thing from the memorandum,
and two, he still asked a foreign leader to interfere.
And that is why it's believed
that it is still grounds for the impeachment inquiry
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday.
Also, of note, before moving forward,
this story is developing so fast,
and there is so much to cover,
and it is impossible to do in just one show,
or even in a week of shows.
But there are two main updates
that we're gonna talk about today.
The first, and probably most significant development
is that today the whistleblower's complaint
was actually released to the public with minimal redaction.
And two, which we will talk about briefly,
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire
is testifying before the house today.
Okay, so that first one.
Let's take a look at the complaint.
The whistleblower starts with this small bit,
"In the course of my official duties,
"I have received information from multiple
"U.S. Government officials that
"the President of the United States is using the power
"of his office to solicit interference
"from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.
"This interference includes, among other things,
"pressuring a foreign country to investigate
"one of the President's main domestic political rivals."
And also going on to note
that Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani,
and Attorney General, William Barr, are involved.
The whistleblower also goes on to note
that they had received this information
over the past four months,
from more than half a dozen U.S. officials.
But notably here they also say that they were,
"Not a direct witness to most of the events described,"
but also adding, "In almost all cases,
"multiple officials recounted fact patterns
"that were consistent with one another."
And I point that out because one of the arguments
that we're seeing from Trump and supporters of the president
is this kind of firsthand witness part.
And so it should be clear the whistleblower's kind of
counterargument there is the multiple sources as well.
Technically, the whistleblower is saying
they did not witness most of the events, not all of them.
And in this, the whistleblower goes on to say,
"I am deeply concerned that the actions described below
"constitute 'a serious or flagrant problem,
"'abuse, or violation of law or Executive Order,'"
and later adding, "I am also concerned
"that these actions pose risks to U.S. national security
"and undermine the U.S. Government's efforts
"to deter and counter foreign interference
"in U.S. elections."
And they then outline those actions
through a series of different sections.
The first section is titled
The 25 July Presidential phone call.
There, it details the same call between
Trump and Zelensky that we saw the memorandum for yesterday,
with the whistleblower saying
it was the first publicly acknowledged call
between the leaders since a quick, congratulatory call
after Zelensky won his election.
Which regarding that note,
yesterday we also saw Trump acknowledge
that he had a previous call.
And saying that he would release the transcript
of that first call if asked,
but that's really not the focus here.
But yeah, bouncing back to the July 25th call,
the whistleblower says,
"After an initial exchange of pleasantries,
"the President [...] Sought to pressure
"the Ukrainian leader to take actions
"to help the President's 2020 reelection bid."
But then the whistleblower continues,
"The White House officials who told me
"this information were deeply disturbed
"by what had transpired in the phone call.
"They told me that there was already
"a 'discussion ongoing' with White House lawyers
"about how to treat the call
"because of the likelihood, in the officials' retelling,
"that they had witnessed the President
"abuse his office for personal gain."
Then we have the second section,
still connected to this call, and it's called
Efforts to restrict access to records related to the call.
And there, the whistleblower writes,
"In the days following the phone call,
"I learned from multiple U.S. officials
"that senior White House officials
"had intervened to 'lock down' all records of the phone call
"especially the official word-for-word transcript
"of the call that was produced."
And that word-for-word transcript they describe as customary
by the White House Situation Room.
Adding, "This set of actions underscored to me
"that White House officials understood
"the gravity of what had transpired in the call."
Then going on to describe what that looked like, writing,
"White House officials told me that they were 'directed'
"by White House lawyers to remove
"the electronic transcript from the computer system
"in which such transcripts are typically stored,"
and going on to say that instead of storing it
where it's normally stored,
it was loaded into a separate electronic system,
"Used to store and handle classified information
"of an especially sensitive nature."
And there, noting that,
"One White House official described this act
"as an abuse of this electronic system
"because the call did contain anything remotely sensitive
"from a national security perspective."
And later in the complaint the whistleblower also writes
that the White House officials informed them that,
"This was 'not the first time'
"under this Administration that a Presidential transcript
"was placed into this codeword-level system
"solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive
"--rather than national security sensitive-- information."
Okay, and so then the third and fourth sections
of the complaint are titled Ongoing concerns
and Circumstances leading up
to the 25 July Presidential phone call.
And in these sections, the whistleblower said that
multiple officials told them that Giulani had,
"Reportedly privately reached out to a variety
"of other Zelensky advisers."
Later adding that even before the call,
starting in mid May, officials told them that,
"They were deeply concerned by what they viewed
"as Mr. Giuliani's circumvention of nation security
"decisionmaking processes to engage
"with Ukrainian officials and relay messages
"back and forth between Kyiv and the President."
They also talked about efforts made after the call
by two ambassadors who,
"Reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership
"about how to 'navigate' the demands
"that the President had made of Mr. Zelensky."
And going on to say that officials told them that
state department officials,
including the same two ambassadors,
had spoken with Mr. Giuliani in an attempt
to contain the damage to U.S. national security.
And then, notably, the whistleblower says,
"During this same timeframe, multiple U.S. officials
"told me that the Ukrainian leadership
"was led to believe that a meeting or phone call
"between the President and President Zelensky
"would depend on whether Zelensky showed willingness
"to 'play ball' on the issues that had been publicly aired"
by the former Ukraine prosecutor general and Giuliani.
But also noting that was what was conveyed to them
by U.S. officials but that they
"Do not know who delivered this message
"to the Ukrainian leadership, or when."
And the whistleblower also elaborates on that in an appendix
where they say that U.S. officials told them
that Trump instructed Vice President Pence
to cancel his trip to attend Zelensky's inauguration
on May 20th, and instead sent Energy Secretary Rick Perry,
with the whistleblower continuing,
"According to these officials, it was also 'made clear'
"to them that the President did not want
"to meet with Zelensky until he saw
"how Zelensky 'chose to act' in office."
But here, the whistleblower again notes that they
do not know how that was communicated, or by whom.
And also that they do not know if that action was directly,
"Connected with the broader understanding [...]
"that a meeting or phone call between
"Trump and Zelensky would depend on
"whether Zelensky showed willingness to 'play ball.'"
Whew, and the last thing that the whistleblower
includes in this complaint is about aid to Ukraine,
writing that on July 18th
an official from the Office of Management and Budget, OMB,
informed other departments and agencies,
"That the President 'earlier that month'
"had issued instructions to suspend
"all U.S. security assistance to Ukraine."
And adding that neither OMB
nor the National Security Council staff
knew why Trump had made that decision.
But there, adding that OMB officials
had explicitly said that the order
came directly from Donald Trump, and concluding,
"As of early August, I heard from U.S. officials
"that some Ukrainian officials were aware
"that U.S. aid might be in jeopardy,
"but I do not know how or when they learned of it."
So a lot of information that I hopefully made consumable
with being too surface level.
You know, kind of out of all of this new information
a lot of people are looking at the "play ball" aspect.
Right, one of the things we've discussed
is the debate of whether or not
this was implicit pressure for a quid pro quo.
Right, because Donald Trump didn't say
hey, look into Biden, and I'll give you something in return.
You know, you have some arguing and now arguing harder,
given this new information from the whistleblower complaint.
You know, you have Trump holding back
nearly 400 million dollars.
Then you look at the timing,
you see the requests, there's concern there.
Now Trump for his part has said that he decided
to hold back the aid because
he was concerned about corruption in Ukraine
but also that kinda changed here and there.
After he made that claim we all saw him claim that
he felt like other European countries, they should do more.
Although there, we should point out
that the European Union has provided
15 billion euros to Ukraine since 2014.
That, compared to the United States'
reported $1.4 billion during that same time,
and that shift also might be connected to some other things.
For example, last night, NPR obtained
a letter from the Pentagon
sent to four congressional committees back in May
where, under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood,
wrote that he, "certified that the Government of Ukraine
"has taken substantial actions
"to make defense institutional reforms
"for the purposes of decreasing corruption
"[and] increasing accountability."
And as NPR explains, that certification is required
under the law for that aid to be released to Ukraine.
All right so basically there,
the Undersecretary is saying that he had certified
that Ukraine had met its corruption reduction goals.
Right, so the aid was good to go
and the Defense Department in fact announced
that it would be sending that aid to Ukraine back in June.
But then of course as we know
the White House blocked that aid
before Trump's call with Zelensky in July.
Aid that ended up being released to Ukraine
on September 11th after congress learned
that the aid was being withheld
and demanded that it be given to Ukraine.
Which, of course, because timing is a big part of this story
was also around the time that congress
was first informed about the whistleblower complaint.
Okay, so there was all of that, and then of course, two,
the other big that that I mentioned.
The Acting Director of National Intelligence, Maguire,
testified before the House Intelligence Committee,
and that was an incredibly long testimony
that was happening while we were filming
so I'm not going to be able to super dive into that.
But some of the quick highlights we did see initially.
In his opening remarks he defended
the way he handled this complaint,
including his decision to hold it as long he did
and also noting that his whole
ordeal and situation is unprecedented.
Also adding that he was following the Whistleblower Act
in his decision making,
regarding the whistleblower, he said that they were
acting in good faith, and added.
- I think the whistleblower did the right thing.
I think he followed the law every step of the way.
- It's also worth noting here
that Maguire reportedly does not know
the identity of the whistleblower.
Also adding that Trump never asked him
to find out their identity.
Like I said, there's more and more there.
Although, regarding that, while I was finishing up
this part of the story,
it's being reported that today, at a private event,
Donald Trump, when speaking of the whistleblower, said,
"They're almost a spy.
"I want to know who's the person,
"who's the person who gave
"the whistleblower the information?
"Because that's close to a spy.
"You know what we used to do in the old days
"when we were smart? Right?
"The spies and treason, we used to handle it
"a little differently than we do now."
Which is, uh, a lot.
And on that note, while we were recording,
we're seeing an update from The New York Times
which reported that the whistleblower
is a CIA officer who was detailed
to work at the White House at one point,
and this, according to three people
familiar with his identity.
Now regarding the New York Times' decision to report this,
they defended it, arguing that the context
of the person's position and expertise
lends credibility to his complaint,
but of course still you have people concerned,
especially given what it's reported that Donald Trump said.
We're now seeing #CancelNYT trending, lots of people angry.
But hey, like I said, that's kind of where we are.
Things are still developing.
Hopefully you get a better understanding
of the allegations being made,
and you don't get swept up into kind of
just the headline promotion we often see on social media.
But yeah, that's the story, and of course,
like with everything we talk about on this show,
I would love to know your thoughts
in those comments down below.
And that's where I'm going to end today's show.
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but with all of that said, of course, as always,
my name's Philip DeFranco, you've just been filled in,
I love your faces, and I'll see you next time.