- 'Sup you beautiful bastards.
Welcome back to "The Philip DeFranco Show."
Buckle up, hit that like button,
and let's just jump into the news, starting with
this guy got arrested after chasing people
through their lawns with his car.
Monday night in Massachusetts
a man reportedly tries to break into someone's home.
He finds the back door unlocked, he enters the house
only to find the owner sitting inside.
He then quickly runs off, jumps into his car
as the owner then follows him outside with a rake.
And as police were responding to that, they got a call about
an SUV driving erratically in a nearby neighborhood,
with that same guy being caught on video
chasing woman around a large bush
before veering off through several front yards
turning around and ultimately hitting another woman
and then speeding away down the street.
Now luckily, police caught up with him.
He was arrested on Monday night,
he was arraigned yesterday morning.
He is facing an absolute wild amount of charges
including breaking and entering, assault and battery,
negligent operation of a vehicle,
and leaving the scene of a personal injury accident.
That's what, four stars in GTA?
Jesus Christ, my guy.
And then I'd like y'all to meet Claudia.
Claudia's a 19 year old.
She loves showing her body on Reddit.
She details her slutty confessions
and she gets a little bit of cash on the side
for her efforts.
And Claudia's in the news today
because people are pissed off at her.
But it's not because an old tweet resurfaced
or anything like that.
It turns out Claudia isn't Claudia, she's AI-generated.
And reportedly she's not the only person
doing this right now.
Tools are just getting more and more powerful
and more people are picking up on 'em.
But Claudia's story has genuinely raised a lot of questions
about the future of the adult industry, right?
Historically, it's one of the first industries
on the cutting edge of new technology.
But also there is a debate to be had that
for the consumer, how is this that much different
than the the content they're already consuming, right?
Yes, usually if you have an OnlyFans model
or performer or whatever, that's a real person.
But for a number of those content creators,
when people are sending them messages in their interactions,
that's not actually the person
having that conversation with you.
It's a team that they have,
or it's the team that their manager has for them, right?
Which brings us back to a point
that I constantly talk about.
Perception is reality.
If a consumer feels like something's real, it's real.
I mean think about it, for 98, 99% of you,
we will never meet each other in real life.
I, like Claudia, I'm just a thing that you consume online.
Now, because I'm an actual human person,
which is a way that a real human person
would describe the situation,
there are mountains of trash bags filled with things
that prove I'm a real person.
But as far as for consumers, that doesn't matter, right?
Everything that we consume online, it's surface level.
Which is also why I think stuff like this
in this industry, it's just gonna skyrocket.
This has opened up the opportunity for
anyone anywhere who looks like whatever to launch a person.
And you don't even have to manage that person.
You can try and automate as much,
and you can make as many people as you want, right?
You could search up the 20 most searched things on PornHub
and then create people that just hit all those targets.
With all that possible money on the table
and with the constantly lowering barrier for entry,
of course more people are gonna enter this world.
Now understand, I'm not saying that's morally right,
but this is how things are gonna move
because money moves mountains, money moves people.
And then in entertainment news,
Ariana Grande would like you to stop talking about her body,
with her sending this message in a new TikTok
where she addressed all these recent comments
she's gotten about her body,
primarily from fans concerned that she's too thin.
And there she kind of starts off by
not talking about just her specifically, but in general
it should have never been normalized
to give unsolicited comments about a person's body.
- I think we should be gentler and less comfortable
commenting on people's bodies, no matter what.
If you think you're saying something
good or well-intentioned, whatever it is,
healthy, unhealthy, big, small,
we should really work towards not doing that as much.
- Saying there are other ways to compliment people
or of course if there's something you don't like,
you can always just shut your fuckin' mouth.
And also noting that, you know, there are a lot of ways
that a person can look healthy, a person can look beautiful.
And in her case-
- For me, the body that
you've been comparing my current body to
was the unhealthiest version of my body.
I was on a lot of antidepressants and drinking on them
and eating poorly and at the lowest point of my life
when I looked the way you consider my 'healthy'
but that in fact wasn't my healthy.
- And adding that you just never really know
what a person's going through, what they've struggled with,
or how they're gonna receive whatever it is you say
regardless of your intention.
And in general, you had many people praising Ariana
thinking that it's vile that
the internet in general or even some of her fans
have kind of pushed her to this point.
People also pointing to other examples like Selena Gomez
who has kind of similarly pushed into a corner
to address people's comments on her body
and having to discuss her weight fluctuations
being tied to lupus treatments
and saying as much as she tries,
that negativity still impacts her,
saying, "I would go online
and I would post a picture of myself
and I would say, 'It doesn't matter.
I'm not accepting what you're saying,'
all the while being in the room posting
and crying my eyes out
because nobody deserves to hear those things."
And then we've also gotta talk about
this streaming and theaters news,
with right now appearing that
movie theaters are officially back,
with parts of the industry seeming to finally be
recovering from its Covid losses,
which, when we're talking about Covid,
you had studios just getting used to
throwing movies right to streaming platforms.
But now with the recent bounce back
that we've seen at the box office,
you have studios going, "Oh, theatrical releases.
Great, this is what we know."
Whereas how one analyst put it, studios have found religion.
They've come to recognize that
having an exclusive theatrical window
is the best way to maximize profits
instead of releasing everything simultaneously on demand.
There's a lot of marketing value in
having your movie in cinemas."
And the numbers currently show
that there is money to be made again,
with Variety reporting that
overall the domestic box office stands at $2.3 billion,
which is up 36.8% from the same period last year.
And that's an astounding 589.5% improvement over 2021.
So I guess that's all to say
if you thought that we were gonna see the death of theaters,
that's not happening.
But where we are seeing a death is to another HBO name.
We've had HBONow, HBOGo, HBOMax,
And I guess today they realized the HBO part's the problem.
With Warner Bros Discovery announcing today
they are changing HBOMax to just Max,
with this reportedly combining programming
from HBOMax and Discovery.
And all this notably happening
just a little over a year after that $43 billion merger.
And this new offering will reportedly go live on May 23rd.
And then in business news, NPR is quittin' Twitter,
or rather "suspending activity."
With this coming around a week after
Twitter labeled NPR'S account as state-affiliated media,
which he outlet notes is the same label used
for propaganda outlets in places like Russia and China,
with Twitter later changing that label
to "government-funded media"
but NPR still fought back, saying it only receives
very minimal amounts of federal funding,
which is not enough to warrant this label,
especially since it holds editorial independence
and is a private nonprofit.
So they stopped posting on Twitter last week
and announced today that it stopped
all Twitter activity indefinitely,
explaining in a statement,
"The platform is taking actions
that undermine our credibility
by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.
We are not putting our journalism on platforms
that have demonstrated an interest in
undermining our credibility
and the public's understanding of
our editorial independence."
With NPR CEO John Lansing also sending an email to staffers
that it would, quote, "be a disservice
to the serious work you all do here
to continue to share it on a platform
that is associating the federal charter for public media
with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards."
And NPR releasing this kinda last thread of
where readers and listeners can find NPR,
like its newsletter, app, and other social media accounts.
And notably, this also comes at a time where
the BBC has fought back against Twitter
slapping it with the label "government-funded media,"
but also the BBC actually just did
an interview with Elon Musk
where he said he would change BBC's label
to "publicly-funded" instead.
That interview also resulting in other major headlines
like Musk saying that running Twitter has been
"quite painful" and "a rollercoaster"
with Musk claiming he sometimes sleeps at Twitter's office
and saying that the whole ordeal has created
"really quite a stressful situation
over the last several months"
though he still maintained that
buying it was the right thing to do.
Another clip also going viral from this interview
where Elon has asked about reports of rises in hate speech
on Twitter since his takeover,
and there, you can see this interaction.
- Well you've asked me, you've asked me whether my feed,
whether it's got less or more,
and I'd say it's got slightly more.
- That's why I'm asking for examples.
Can you name one example?
- I honestly don't-
- Okay, so then you must have at some point seen
the "for you" hateful content.
And I'm asking for one example, right?
And you can't give a single one.
- And I'm saying I've-
- Then I say so
that you don't know what you're talking about.
- Really?
- Yes, because you can't give me a single example
of hateful content, not even one tweet.
And yet you claimed that the hateful content was high.
- Well- - That's a false.
- No, what I claimed- - You just lied.
- And while online we've seen plenty of people
dunking on this interviewer,
you also had others noting that
even though this specific interviewer
could not in that moment come up with
a specific tweet or example,
there are numerous reports, examples, and studies
citing an increase in hate speech since Elon jumped on.
But that's also now where the Twitter news ends,
with Musk announcing the new,
definitely final, not gonna change it again date
for removing legacy verification checkmarks
to be April 20th because of fucking course it is.
He's like a walking stolen meme machine
or like a calculator you flip upside down
so it reads "BOOBS"
but turned into a person.
Though that said, you know,
some people have already lost their checkmarks,
including the likes of Doja Cat.
But she definitely didn't seem to mind.
After a fan pointed out that the check was gone,
she responded, "Having a blue tick now
means there's a higher chance that you're a complete loser
and you're desperate for validation from famous people."
And then, taking care of your body from day to night,
it's a must.
And being a parent, that's especially true
when keeping up with the kids,
and that's where today's sponsor comes in, Beam.
You know you've heard me talk about
Beam's delicious hot cocoa with five natural ingredients.
It puts me right to sleep, helps me wake up feelin' amazing,
but get this, Beam just made
a daytime version of Dream, called Core.
It supports your days the way Dream supports your sleep.
And Core has 16 science-backed ingredients
to boost energy, reduce stress,
and support your immune system.
Before coffee, I just put one scoop into water,
stir it and drink, and it's delicious.
It tastes like strawberry lemonade, but it has no sugar.
Plus both products work together.
Core supports your inflammation response, lessening cortisol
and Dream supports sleep, improving your immune system,
forming this complimentary cycle.
And the result is me feeling incredibly energized
in the best way possible.
So head on over to shopbeam.com/defranco
and use code DeFranco to get 45% off
your first month of the Core plus Dream bundle,
originally $190 value that you can get for $105,
and you can still pause or cancel any time
so there's no risk,
and you'll get a free frother with your first order.
So take advantage of it while it lasts.
And then, you know who I feel bad for?
Landlords who bought places
and then jacked up the rent prices.
You know, that's who I empathize with,
the most beloved people in our society.
What a lot of these poor souls realize is
you can make the biggest profits
not in homes but actually in apartment buildings.
And that pandemic that we all just lived through,
it exacerbated that problem
as rents and occupancy rates skyrocketed.
But now we're seeing things
crashing down on the heads of those investors,
with one of the best ways to understand
and look at the situation happening
at Laguna Point Properties.
They spent $400 million in five apartment buildings
in downtown Los Angeles last year,
with these being near Skid Row, which is like a mishmash,
there's gentrification
but it also still has a lot of the old issues as well.
Now the deal was easily
one of the largest commercial real estate deals
made during the pandemic,
and it was made possible because of
cheap financing options for landlords
that involved high amounts of collateral
for short-term loans with skyrocketing interest rates
if the Feds raise the rates,
with these deals allowing them to cheaply buy up property,
quickly renovate it,
and then charge high rents for a profit,
with them betting that they could
pay off the debt before interest rose.
But as you know, if you've been paying attention,
things did not go as planned
once the Fed raised interest rates to combat inflation,
cutting into their profits.
So that, coupled with plateauing or even falling rent rates
ruined any real chances of getting enough profitability
to make the buildings worth it
by the time that the debts came due in 2027.
So they auctioned off the portfolio
with many believing they lost the entire investment.
The Laguna Point Properties is
hardly the only one of these massive companies
that took on this risky strategy,
with $278 billion of debt for flip and rent apartments
coming due this and next year.
Now, this shouldn't make you panic
like it's gonna be some 2008-level crash,
but with commercial real estate instead of homes, right?
Because these specific loans are normally pretty stable
because they require massive amounts of collateral,
but it is expected the defaults will rise
and riskier loans will be needed
to keep many of them floating.
But ultimately I think the main point of this story is
if we can all just come together, pray,
or just have a moment of silence
for all these poor landlords.
They just wanted to disrupt regular people's lives
and price them out of the places that they lived,
because that's their only mission in life.
And now there's all this bad news,
ugh, regular people are gonna be able to afford rents.
Or at least a little more
than many of the landlords were hoping.
So say a prayer tonight,
because those rent rates are finally plateauing.
And then, this massive fire in Indiana
has forced thousands to evacuate,
with the fire reportedly starting
at a recycling facility in the town of Richmond.
And the Indiana state fire marshal Steve Jones
saying last night that the fire could last for several days.
So far we've seen an evacuation order put into place
for people living within half a mile of the fire,
meaning about 2,000 people have been ordered to leave.
Though that number may change if the wind shifts direction.
But as far as how the actual fire started,
it's a bit of a mystery.
We know that firefighters arrived on site yesterday
to find a semi-trailer filled with plastics
completely engulfed in flames.
The fire then quickly spreading to nearby piles of plastic
and then to the massive building.
But what we currently don't know is how the fire started
with that semi-trailer in the first place.
And we likely won't officially know
until the blaze is completely extinguished
and a deeper investigation can happen.
But according to the local fire department,
the owner of the building had been warned
on several occasions of fire hazards on their property.
I mean hell, they were even under a city order
to clean everything up.
So the fire department, when they pulled up yesterday,
not really that surprised.
Richmond Fire Department Chief Tim Brown saying,
"It's very frustrating for all of us.
The battalion chief on today,
he was very frustrated when he pulled up
because we knew it wasn't a matter of if,
it was a matter of when this was going to happen."
Now this morning, you have the EPA announcing that
overnight air quality testing
had not found any toxic compounds in the smoke.
Though they said they'll continue to monitor
Richmond's air quality,
but also also notably a former regional EPA administrator
and current president of Beyond Plastic
said there is another concern,
saying when plastic burns, dioxins often form,
which the EPA describes as toxic pollutants
that can cause cancer.
And explaining that state officials
will have to test for dioxin,
and even a small amount composes serious health risk.
And so for now, we've seen officials advising residents
not to disturb any debris from the fire
that may wind up in their yards,
saying that based on the age of the building that burned,
it may contain asbestos,
with the EPA also saying they plan on testing the debris.
And then in political news, Senator Lindsey Graham
just had a very nice cordial meeting
with the Saudi Crown Prince,
which is a sentence that may sound weird
if you don't have full-blown amnesia, right?
Because you might remember back in 2018
when the same Crown Prince murdered Jamal Khashoggi
and Graham had some choice words
for his friend in the Middle East.
- He's been a wrecking ball.
You know, one minute he's a visionary leader,
the next minute he's putting women in jail.
I will not have my intelligence insulted
or my support disrespected.
This all originated from the Crown Prince,
I'm convinced of that.
There are plenty of people in Saudi Arabia
that we could have a good relationship with.
But if the Crown Prince stays in power,
it will be almost impossible
to reconstruct this relationship
at a time both of us need it.
- [Philip] And he kept going, tweeting,
"It is not our national security interest
to look the other way
when it comes to the brutal murder of Mr. Jamal,"
even demanding sanctions against the kingdom,
calling the Crown Prince "beyond toxic"
and saying, "When we lose our moral voice,
we lose our strongest asset."
But now you have Graham proudly announcing
"I just had a very productive candid meeting
with the Saudi Crown Prince and his senior leadership team.
The opportunity to enhance the US Saudi relationship is real
and the reforms going on in Saudi Arabia are equally real."
And going on to say,
"I look forward to working with the administration
and congressional Republicans and Democrats to see
if we can take the US Saudi relationship to the next level."
If you're wondering
what could possibly have changed Lindsay Graham's mind,
it might just possibly be connected to
how he finished, saying,
"I also expressed deep appreciation to the kingdom
for purchasing $37 billion worth of Boeing 787s,
which are made in South Carolina,
for the new Saudi airline.
Investments like this are game changers."
But it's also possible
there's a more geopolitical angle to this, right?
As we talked about last month,
China brokered a landmark diplomatic agreement
between Saudi Arabia and Iran,
which are longtime rivals in the Middle East.
And many observers, especially Republicans,
feared that this marked a long-term trend
of Beijing displacing Washington
as the new pre-eminent power in the region.
And actually that peacemaking by China could be paying off,
because on Sunday, Saudi Arabia proposed a deal
to end the war in Yemen
where it's relentlessly bombed
the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels since 2015,
getting the leadership of its client,
Yemen's coalition government,
to agree to a minimum eight month ceasefire
as well as talks on the future of the conflict.
Saudi and Houthi leaders
meeting for the first time in public,
and actually the UN's Yemen envoy called this
the nearest the country has been to peace
since the fighting began.
Which I mean, we can't downplay how potentially huge this is
because this war has killed tens of thousands of people
and displaced millions,
leaving the vast majority of Yemenese
dependent on humanitarian aid.
But we are gonna have to wait to see
how this all actually pans out.
And then, I don't know if there's ever been a problem
that the United States didn't think it could solve
by bombing it.
With the latest example of that being
a number of Republicans advocating for the US,
and this is a real thing, to be able to bomb Mexico,
with representatives Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz
introducing a bill seeking authorization
for the use of military force to go to war with the cartels.
And this coming after the Drug Enforcement Agency
assessed back in December that
most of the fentanyl distributed by two cartels is, quote,
"being mass produced at secret factories in Mexico
with chemical source largely from China."
All right, so for America,
that's like three of our favorite things.
Snipin' China, chasin' fentanyl,
and goin' pew-pew-pew in other countries.
And we're seeing a growing faction of the GOP
starting to take this idea seriously.
Senator Tom Cotton saying he's open to sending troops
into Mexico even without the government's permission there,
as well as lawmakers in both chambers of Congress
introducing bills to designate some cartels
as foreign terrorist organizations.
And this in line with things like we've seen in recent weeks
like Donald Trump promising to use
special forces and cyber warfare
to target cartel leaders if he's reelected.
Rolling Stone even reporting that
he asked for battle plans to strike Mexico.
Though that, really not a new thing for Trump, right?
According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper,
he actually looked into firing missiles
at drug labs in Mexico when he was president.
But of course with all this,
we've seen the Mexican president flatly opposing it all,
saying last month that, "In addition to being irresponsible,
it is an offense to the people of Mexico."
But as far as what the hell's actually gonna happen,
you're gonna have to wait to see.
And then in international news,
apparently some Russian soldiers
saw those ISIS beheading videos
and they're like, "that seems like a great idea."
Because right now you have Ukrainians absolutely outraged
at an extremely graphic video that's emerged
seeming to show a Russian serviceman
beheading a Ukrainian soldier,
with the victim still alive as it happens
and pleading "it hurts, stop."
And although it is still currently unverified,
there are multiple clues within the footage
to suggest that it's real.
People pointing to the victim wearing a yellow armband,
an identifying symbol for Ukraine's troops,
while the other men wear white leg bands,
a symbol for Russians.
And one of the man holds up body armor
bearing trident mark, the state symbol of Ukraine.
And there's a booklet that can be seen on the ground
matching the appearance of
a standard issue Ukrainian military ID
and its color, layout of the writing,
and the same trident mark.
But whether it is real or not,
and of course the Kremlin is suggesting that it may not be,
what matters is that people believe it right now.
With Ukrainian authorities claiming that
Russia is spreading this video and others like it
to sow panic ahead of
the planned Ukrainian counter offensive,
with President Zelenskyy trying to
rally international support
and saying, "Everyone must react, every leader.
Do not wait for this to be forgotten."
And although on the surface you have the Russian government
distancing themselves from these videos,
pro-Kremlin bloggers and Telegram channels
have been sharing them and cheering on
the use of brutal methods of waging war.
And that is where today's show is gonna end.
Thank you for being a part of
another daily dive in the news.
My name's Philip DeFranco, you've just been filled in.
I love your faces and I'll see you tomorrow.