- 'Sup, you beautiful bastards?
I hope you've had a fantastic Monday.
Welcome back to the Philip De Franco Show, buckle up.
Hit that like button,
otherwise, it will punch you in the throat.
And let's just jump into it.
And the first thing we're gonna talk about today
is the story and situation around Post Malone,
which I feel like is bigger than the story around one man.
I think it's something
that touches on anyone in the spotlight
and the relationship and a sense of ownership
that people have, whether it be the fans
or the internet, in general.
So over the past week,
we've had a large number of people
sharing clips saying they're incredibly concerned
about the 24-year old's behavior.
This including videos of him stumbling on stage,
intensely rolling his eyes as he sings.
Right now we have a lot of fans
that are protective, concerned,
people who are still reeling
from the drug-related deaths
of people like Mac Miller and Lil Peep.
I've seen a number of people with these viral videos,
saying that Post Malone's behavior
signaled a potential substance abuse problem,
though I understand, while these theories were going viral,
they were blowing up, you still had
a number of fans arguing
that this is just how Post Malone performs,
others just feeling uneasy
about all of the public speculation,
in general, even if the intentions were good.
You know the push back to that
was it's better to be safe than sorry.
And as the noise around this situation
got louder, we saw Post Malone's father,
Rich Post, eventually taking to social media
to shut down the rumors.
Retweeting a video of his son playing the guitar
and singing, adding, "I'm getting tired of it y'all.
What does this video say?
Coherently playing the guitar while simultaneously singing?
Seems a lot harder than accidental slips
and stage theatrics."
And then continuing, "I don't want to come across
as dismissive to those of you
who have expressed concerns about Austin.
Your sincerity and kindness regarding him is certainly
heartwarming and appreciated."
We also ended up seeing Post Malone
himself address this during a performance
in Memphis, Tennessee.
- I'm not on drugs and I feel the best
I've ever fucking felt in my life.
(crowd cheers)
And that's why I can bust my ass for these shows
and fucking fall on the floor and do all that fun shit, man.
(crowd cheers)
But for anybody that's concerned here,
I appreciate the love and the support,
but I feel fucking fantastic and I'm not doing drugs.
(crowd cheers)
- But he did also acknowledge that there was a dark time
in his life where he would turn to drugs
but once again assuring fans that he was okay now.
- You know, there was a time in my life,
a very dark time in my life where, you know,
I would try and, you know, find alternate escapes
from reality and do drugs.
But now I just want everybody to know in this building,
that I'm fucking okay and I'm the happiest
I've ever fucking been.
So thank you so much ladies and gentlemen.
(crowd cheering)
- And following that, it calmed down the worries
of many fans, but also even a number of people saying
maybe he just hasn't accepted the problem yet.
Once again, that's speculation, and it brings up that debate
of is this helpful or is actually something that's hurting?
Now, I don't have the answer for that.
But what I will say is looking at the concern
that there is around artists and the conversation happening
around it most of the time,
it does somewhat bring a smile to my face,
and it makes me feel like the conversation
around mental health has greatly improved
just over the past decade alone.
And obviously, I think that's somewhat connect
with the losses we've seen in recent years.
But then notoriously, people like Amy Winehouse,
someone who, I mean, looking back really didn't get
that public empathy that a lot of artists get today.
Someone who was very publicly spiraling
and instead of just an army of hands reaching out to help,
she was kind of villainized, right?
So as far as where the right middle ground is,
as far as public help and public reaction, I don't know.
But that's also kind of the beauty of the show.
That's the story.
I'm just one person, and I pass the question off to you.
I'd love to know your thoughts on this one.
And then let's talk about the news
and the conversation around misinformation
and manipulated media.
So last month, Twitter rolled out its policy
for addressing synthetic and manipulated media,
which said that users could not,
"Deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media
that are likely to cause harm," with Twitter also saying
that it would label this kind of content,
and that policy actually went into effect
last week on March 5.
And ultimately, that brought us to yesterday
where Twitter seemed to apply the manipulated media label
for the first time to a video
that was posted by Trump's social media director
Dan Scavino and retweeted by Trump himself.
And the video in question was a 13-second clip
of Joe Biden speaking at a campaign rally on Saturday
that looked like this.
- During this primary for my campaign
that's about negative attacks
and the one about what we're for
because we cannot
get re-elect, we cannot win this re-election,
excuse me, we can only re-elect Donald Trump.
- So you watch that and you potentially go, did Joe Biden
just endorse Donald Trump?
What just happened?
Well, it turns out that that clip was actually cut
before Biden finished his sentence.
And in the original video that we found, we see him say this
- We can only re-elect Donald Trump, if in fact,
we get engaged in this circular firing squad here.
It's gotta be a positive campaign, so join us.
- And so, basically, what appears that he was saying
was Trump can only be re-elected if we keep infighting.
So, obviously, a very different situation
and message from the first video
that was edited, looking at the situation, right?
Twitter's first official implementation of their new policy,
it was met with a fair share of problem,
because while it has been hit
with a manipulated media label,
Twitter didn't determine the post
violated its guidelines until about 18 hours after.
And according to reports by that point,
it had already been viewed more than 5 million times
and retweeted more than 20,000.
Also, it appeared that
there were technical problems as well.
According to reports, it was a glitch
with the manipulated media label itself,
with the Twitter spokesperson saying
that the manipulated tag
wasn't showing in the tweet details and adding
that users who clicked into the tweet itself
may not be able to see the label,
but that it was visible in the timeline,
which I imagine is how most people see tweets.
Now, one of the other reasons this was
a big deal is not only
because the content was labeled,
but also because this possibly sets a precedent
that it shows that Twitter is not scared to crackdown
on Trump and his team.
And this wasn't just a tweet and a video
from Joe Blow, this was coming from people with connections
to the administration.
Also, Twitter is not alone here,
we saw Facebook respond to the video of Biden as well.
Facebook did not initially label
or do anything to the post
but it did prompt Biden's campaign manager
to blast the company in a statement last night
saying, "Facebook's malfeasance when it
comes to trafficking and blatantly false information
is a national crisis in this respect.
Facebook won't say it
but it is apparent to all
who have examined their conduct
and policies: they care first and foremost
about money, and to that end, are willing to serve
as one of the world's most effective mediums
for the spread of vile lies."
But then this morning, we ultimately
saw Facebook add a label to the video
marking it as partly false information.
The Facebook spokesperson saying,
"Fact checkers rated this video as partly false.
So we are reducing its distribution
and showing warning labels with more context
for people who see it, try to share it,
or already have."
And adding, "As we announced last year,
the same applies if a politician shares the video,
if it was otherwise fact-checked
when shared by others on Facebook."
But as far what happens from here with Facebook
and Twitter, even if they implement
this labeling system fast, right, not 18 plus hours,
one, I think it's gonna be incredibly hard
if not impossible for these companies
to implement this policy across the board.
Honestly, this clip is probably one the easiest examples
and instances that they will face.
But it's the small, singular moment and clip
where the post on these websites are saying
he said this even though the clip is cut
in a specific way to change the context.
I mean, without being an enabler, there are a lot
of different ways that this clip can and will be played,
in a way that does not violate the rules.
And two, I do believe this is going to happen
to Biden over, and over, and over,
from today all the way to election day
if he gets the nomination, like odds
are looking like he's gonna get.
Right, because you have Trump, the GOP,
a number of Republicans, Dem supporters
who oppose Biden trying to label Joe Biden
as a old man with dementia.
'Cause the thing is, Joe Biden misspeaks
and he will continue to misspeak.
Thus, making him a bigger and easier target.
Now, the way that Biden supporters have been able
to combat that claim, is pointing out
that Joe Biden has had a life-long problem with stuttering.
Which I will say, I'm completely unfamiliar with
the challenges that come with a stutter.
And I started looking into it further,
because when someone says, you know, they have a stutter,
I just think someone that says I, I, I, I, blah, blah, blah.
Or looking for the answer,
well, how it explains sometimes the odd sentence structure
or the word choice.
And actually, I'll read a small snippet
from this interesting Atlantic article
about Joe Biden stutter.
I'll link to it down below.
The author writes there,
"A stutter does not get worse as a person ages,
but trying to keep it at bay
can take immense physical and mental energy."
Noting, now, "Biden talks all day
to audiences both small and large."
Also noting, "In addition to periodically stuttering
or blocking on certain sounds, he appears to intentionally
not stutter by switching to an alternative word,
a technique called circumlocution,
which can yield mangled syntax.
I've been following practically everything
he's said for months now, and sometimes what is quickly
characterized as a memory lapse is indeed a stutter."
And I understand, this is not me saying
that Biden does not make mistakes.
All politicians to different degrees
make mistakes when speaking.
But we are likely going to see a higher rate
of people saying that Joe Biden
has dementia when there are moments where you see
the headlines where it's like Joe Biden appears
to forget Obama's name.
- Because they invaded another country
and annexed a significant portion of it called crime media
He's saying that it was President--
My boss, is his fault.
Then you have experts looking at that clip,
going, "Oh, no, he just blocked on the word Obama,
and so, he substituted my boss."
Yeah, that's a story, some of my predictions.
If there is a final note here,
no matter where you're standing,
I think we could all benefit
from just kind of like holding on a bit
before we sharing something, and it's very easy
to characterize this as someone lesser than you would do,
but none of us are immune from this.
And that said, around this, of course,
I'd love to know your thoughts.
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The first bit of all, this is something
I am incredibly excited about,
it's also a little bit of a tease,
this Wednesday at noon, West coast,
3:00 PM Eastern over at YouTube.com/aconvowith
for the video version or linkshole.com
for the audio version of a podcast
and conversation going out with comedian, Daniel Sloss.
He's someone I've been a fan of for the past few years.
He's kind of been one of the pie
in the sky polls for the podcast.
If you haven't seen his comedy specials on Netflix, Dark,
and Jigsaw or his HBO one-acts,
I highly recommend it before Wednesday.
Yeah, I'm very excited to release it.
It was an awesome time and I know you'll enjoy it.
Then how it should have ended gave us volume two
of their Star Wars compilation
with Megan Thee Stallion creating the playlist of her life.
Norman Reedus answering the web's most searched questions.
We also have the final trailer for Black Widow
and SciShow gave us five
of the most important inventions in robotics.
If you wanna see the full versions
of everything I just shared,
the secret link of the day, really anything at all,
links is always already in the description down below.
And then let's talk about the hugely serious issue
that a lot of us are still joking about
as a way to really kind of deflect
how nervous we might be, coronavirus.
Over the weekend, we saw a number of massive updates.
As of this morning, worldwide,
110,000 have been infected,
nearly 4,000 people have died.
And in large, a lot of what we're gonna be talking about,
are updates from the United States and Italy.
Now, in the United States, as we're recording this video,
we've seen the number of cases jumped
over 600, 26 now dead.
Notably, most of those deaths
are coming from Washington State alone.
In the US, we've seen a number of conferences in the news,
for example, SXSW in Austin, and Texas,
which has never had to cancel, cancel.
And they are just one of several conferences
that have either canceled or postponed.
Although, another conference in the news was CPAC,
right, is that yearly conservative convention.
You had speakers this year like president Trump,
vice president Mike Penn,
secretary of state, Mike Pompeo,
came out that one of the attendees
tested positive for coronavirus.
And following that, we saw Republicans, Ted Cruz,
Paul Gosselaar, Doug Collins, and now Matt Gaetz saying
that they would be self-quarantining,
though of note, at this time, none of them have said
that they have symptoms.
I mean, that's also part of the issue with this,
its symptoms do not appear until up to 14 days later.
And here we saw a number of people mocking Gosselaar
and Gaetz specifically, this is largely
because they had mocked the emergency coronavirus bill
that was meant to throw money at this problem,
with Gaetz specifically making headlines
after wearing a gas mask on the house floor
while the bill was being debated.
In the United States,
we're seeing major health officials saying,
"This is past the point of containing the virus."
And so, ultimately, the goal now is to just try
and protect as many people from catching
the virus as possible.
The US surgeon, General Jerome Adam saying,
- Initially we had a posture of containment
so that we could give people time to prepare
for where we are right now.
Now, we're shifting into a mitigation phase,
which means that we're helping communities understand
you're gonna see more cases.
Unfortunately, you're gonna see more deaths,
but that doesn't mean that we should panic.
- So continuing on the idea of be alert,
but do not panic, Adams then going on to say
the communities need to decide whether or not
to close schools, have employees work from home,
cancel large gatherings.
But also Adam's saying that he believes
that the virus is contained in certain parts of the country.
Also, regarding the previously mentioned throwing money
at the problem, on Friday,
we saw president Trump signing $8.3 billion
coronavirus aid package.
Notably, this bill will fund prevention efforts,
medical supplies, vaccine research.
And after signing that bill, Trump visited
the centers for disease control
and prevention headquarters in Atlanta
where he said, "It will end.
People have to remain calm."
Also on the question of whether
or not Americans should start canceling
their travel plans, Trump said,
- I think it's fine if they wanna do it.
I don't think it's an overreaction,
but I wouldn't be generally inclined to do it.
I really wouldn't be.
- Also, there's been a lot of confusion around
who can actually get tested
if they think they have the virus, is in part,
because on Friday Trump said,
- Anybody right now and yesterday,
anybody that needs a test gets a tests, they're there.
- Though on Thursday, you had Vice President
Mike Pence saying that though
the government would provide testing for people
that believe have been exposed or showing symptom,
it does not have enough tests today
to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.
Though, on that, the CDC is saying that it expects
to have 4 million ready by the end of the week,
so that is obviously better.
And so, after that, we saw
the Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
criticizing the Trump administration on MSNBC,
saying that the administration was sending mixed messages,
which was not a unique note.
I mean, just a couple of weeks ago,
we saw Washington Governor Jay Inslee say,
"I just received a call from VP Mike Pence
thanking Washington State for our efforts
to combat the coronavirus.
I told him our work would be more successful
if the Trump administration stuck
to the science and told the truth."
Also, last week we saw
a California Governor, Gavin Newsom calling
the US's testing capacity 'simply inadequate',
though last night we saw Trump directly respond
to Cuomo on Twitter saying,
"There are no mixed messages,
only political weaponization by people like you."
And this morning Trump tweeting,
"The fake news media and their partner,
the Democrat party, is doing everything
within its semi considerable power, it used to be greater,
to inflame the coronavirus situation far beyond
what the facts would warrant."
Surgeon General, "The risk is low
to the average American."
And while we in the United States
kind of brace ourselves waiting for this
to get into the thousands, I think it's important
that we look to Italy where the number of cases
has spiked to more than 7,300.
And it's now tracking just under South Korea,
which is the largest outbreak in the world outside of China.
They're seeing similar numbers of around 7,400 cases,
although there only 50 have died, so far.
But in Italy, on Saturday, 233 people had already died,
and yesterday, that number actually jumped to 366
with most of the deaths reportedly happening
in the northern region of Lombardy.
And because the situation there was getting so bad,
on Saturday, an Italian newspaper leaked
that a new decree would go into effect the next day.
That decree that would extend Italy's quarantine measures
by classifying 14 of Italy's Northern provinces
as red zones until April 3rd, meaning that
no one would be able to get in or out
of the region during that time, which is massive.
Because I understand we're not talking
about thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people,
we're talking about something
that would prevent 16 million people
from leaving the region.
That is a quarter of Italy's total population.
Among other things, that decree also bans public events.
It closes movie theaters, gyms, bars,
even things like funerals and weddings are currently banned.
And so, with this, you had
a lot of people complaining saying
that these measures were draconian.
So with this being announced, it set off a firestorm.
You have people trying to get out of town
before the restrictions came into effect at midnight.
We all saw news coming out of Italian prisons
where things were even worse.
We ended up seeing inmates
protesting overcrowded conditions.
Many of them are afraid
the coronavirus could easily spread among them.
Reportedly, this was widespread.
Protest broke out at more than two dozen prisons.
And even outside, we saw the families
of the prisoners protesting in the streets.
This is because the prisons
had stopped allowing visitors to see them.
Also, according to reports in these prisons,
many of the protests turned into riots.
I mean, hell, and this morning
we even saw inmates breaking out
of a prison in Milan, climbing the roof.
And in other prisons, we saw reports
the prisoners escaping altogether.
Others where six inmates died
after they broke into the infirmary.
And actually, oh, wow, I mean,
this really speaks to how fast everything developed.
As I was filming this, we got the notification
that Italy is now expanded travel restrictions
to the entire country.
So now, not just 16 million people, but around 60 million.
Now, with all of that said,
this still being a developing situation,
I kind of wanna end on two notes.
One, I know that there's been this run on hand sanitizers
and face masks, experts say
that your best defense against this is,
I hate even saying it because it makes you wanna do it,
not touching your face, your eyes, your nose,
your ear, mucus organs, making sure
that you are hand washing with soap and water.
These people smarter than me explain soap molecules
have a fatty end that attach to and penetrate
the lipid shell of the virus,
and the hydrophilic, water-loving,
end that water attaches to and rinses away
the soap with the virus.
Whereas, hand sanitizer may render the virus impotent,
but leaves it on your hands.
And also, too, we should talk about the lethality
of this coronavirus, COVID-19.
The World Health Organization currently estimates
that the fatality rate is 3.4%,
but that varies greatly depending on, A,
that it's really not until you're talking about people
in their '50s where all of a sudden you see
the big spike in fatalities with 70 to 79 hitting 8%,
80 plus, 14.8%.
And you might be younger and you might be thinking,
"Ah, well, if I get it, not a big deal."
There, I would say there are other factors.
As it's been reported, people who are immunocompromised
and smokers may be more at risk,
but also even if you are not at high risk yourself,
we still have a public health obligation
to take interventions that will prevent spread,
that could overwhelm the healthcare system.
Minimizing and slowing the spread as much as possible.
Healthcare experts call this flattening the curve
and it would give the system, in general, more time to prep
and be prepared for what was coming next.
Ultimately, that's where we are right now.
I want you to be informed on this.
Be concerned, be alert, but right now, still do not panic.
With that said, obviously,
we will be staying on top of this.
This is still developing, and, of course, in the meantime,
I'd love to know your thoughts on it.
And that is where I'm going to end today's show.
And, hey, if you liked this video, hit us with a like,
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Also, if you're looking for more right now,
you can check out that latest podcast
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you wanna catch up, you can click your tab right there
to watch either of those.
But with that said, of course, as always,
my name's Phillip DeFranco.
You've just been filled in.
I love yo faces, and I'll see you tomorrow.
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