- Today we're gonna talk
about why the Tucker Carlson Fox News situation
just isn't adding up.
We correct the Mr. Beast misinformation going viral.
We break down why grown men
are threatening six year old girls
just searching for their lost kitty cats
and so much more because this is the Philip DeFranco show.
Let's just jump into it.
Starting with schools in Flint, Michigan are taking
a unique approach to guns safety, right?
Because there's this fear of kids bringing guns
or other weapons to school,
and so what they're doing is
just outright banning backpacks.
And this policy reportedly lasting at least
until the end of the year,
and the superintendent saying,
"Backpacks make it easier for students to hide weapons
which can be disassembled and harder to identify
or hidden in pockets inside books or under other items."
And so now instead,
students are allowed to store personal items
in small purses, bring lunch boxes,
or place their gym clothes in clear plastic bags
all of which will be subject to searches.
But schools also might not be the place where
you have to worry
about your kids getting shot the most, right?
Because in recent weeks we've seen a number of stories
of people just being shot
because they went up to the wrong house or the wrong car.
And the latest of these stories,
luckily just an almost situation.
And at the center of it you have Chris Robbins
a Texas meteorologist with a Facebook account
called Eye Weather Net that dishes out weather news
to over a hundred thousand followers
in Dallas Fort Worth and Atlanta.
But this week you made news for something
that didn't have to do with the weather tweeting,
"A child just rang my doorbell,
folks, you do not ring doorbells in 2023.
My six was loaded, keep your kids away. Signed Chris."
So as you might expect, there was a lot of backlash here
for people saying things
like stand your ground isn't meant for that,
and the way you're nearly threatening anyone
specifically kids, is disgusting,
and why some people shouldn't have guns.
To which he replied, "I'm not fucking around."
So after that, more and more criticism poured in
with Robinson repeatedly updating his original post
with more details, saying,
"The kid who rang his doorbell was a little girl
looking for her kitten,"
as if that somehow made him look better.
And then adding, "This is not 1972
if that brat rings my doorbell again tomorrow
I will call the police take notes."
And honestly, I was like
please tell me I'm being pranked right now
'cause the hole that he was digging himself
just kept getting deeper and deeper with him saying
that he warned the girl not to ring the doorbell again
or he might pull her hair causing her to cry,
with him later even linking to an article
about that 84 year old white man
who shot a 16 year old black teen in Missouri,
when the boy rang the wrong doorbell.
He finally clarifies,
"For the record, I never threatened a six year old."
Which I think that's what you know, you're in a rough spot.
You're like, I need to clarify.
I did not threaten murder to this six year old
looking for a kitten and adding,
"I helped her find her kitten.
We got her kitten back, do not ring doorbells in 2023,"
which yeah unfortunately may actually be very good advice
if we have trigger happy gun nuts like this motherfucker.
Good luck to all you Postmates drivers out there, Jesus.
And then this news, these leaks,
the general narrative around
this whole Tucker Carlson Fox news situation
doesn't make sense to me
and we've talked about it on the show,
Tucker and Fox News going their separate ways.
It's a mutual decision, wink, wink,
but with how unexpected the announcement was,
it seems pretty obviously there was a pushing out.
But also since then there have been these leaks
around Tucker Carlson, some video, some text messages
a number of them being used
as examples of why Fox News decided, you know what?
Enough is enough.
But the content of these things
don't seem to genuinely match up
with why they would get rid of their cash cow,
and whether people love him or hate him,
you cannot deny his numbers.
Like in one of the videos, a bombshell,
he's caught on camera wanting to wear a suit in a video
and he is bashing Fox Nation as
like a terrible website, okay?
And then today you have the New York Times
reporting on a text that was included
in a redacted court filing in the Dominion's defamation suit
against Fox News.
And while in the filings, the text is entirely blacked out,
the contents were disclosed to the Times and interviews
with several people close to the defamation lawsuit.
And per the Times,
Tucker sent a message to one of his producers
in the hours following the January 6th insurrection.
And in it, Carlson describes how a video
he had recently watched of a group of Trump supporters
violently attacking what he called an Antifa kid
had brought up conflicting emotions for him.
Writing, "Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable,
obviously, it's not how white men fight,
yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob
against the man hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him.
I really wanted them to hurt the kid, I could taste it.
Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off.
This isn't good for me
I'm becoming something I don't wanna be.
The Antifa creep is a human being"
Also adding, " I need to remember that people love this kid
would be sad if he died."
And concluding "if I don't care about those things
if I reduce people to their politics
how am I better than he is?"
Right and from that, people focused on two parts.
The first is being that kind of blood lust
and then the pullback of like, oh whoa,
my mind's going to a scary place.
But also two, a lot of people focused on that
it's not how white men fight part,
and that being one of the main things
popping up at headlines today.
But I have to say with this,
even if you are disgusted with that statement,
it does not make sense
that Fox News would go, yeah, that's the line, right?
This is a man who largely made a career out of going,
hey old white people, scary brown people are sneaking
into the country, they're gonna steal your jobs
they're gonna do God knows what to your daughter,
you are being replaced, right?
If you're the Fox News higher ups
like that's not a different guy in the text messages
than the guy that you platform
to millions of Americans every day, right?
So far the only different guy we've seen in text messages
and onscreen is when he is like, I hate Trump.
Can't wait to not have to deal with this guy anymore, right?
The stuff he was saying about Dominion,
that not matching to what he was saying on TV, right?
And so all of that brings me back to
there has to also be something else happening,
something else at play,
because this idea that the text message
making the rounds today like
that was just too far for Fox News, it doesn't add up.
And then, and a lot of you hitting up the text line saying,
hey, you gotta update the Chris Tyson Mr. Beast situation.
There was people saying that Mr. Beast
kicked Chris Tyson off of his team, right?
With this apparently happening after all the controversy
over the last couple of weeks,
batons of people attacking Chris online
after they revealed they're on HRT
and a number of conservatives specifically angling
those attacks at Mr. Beast himself.
And when we saw Mr. Beast come to Chris's defense,
you had fans going, hey we're noticing that Chris
is not as involved in recent videos,
and started to wonder if Mr. Beast asked Chris to leave.
And actually regarding that, you had Chris release a video.
- I pretty much told Jimmy
just because I wanna spend time with Tucker
and he's traveling a lot,
I'm just gonna come and go as I please.
I came to Japan and I left when I pleased.
- Chris also saying the same thing happened
in a trip to Mexico, right?
Joining and leaving on their own time.
And so when I watched that video, I got confused,
because apparently for a number of people online
they saw this video as evidence that Mr. Beast fired Chris
which does not actually appear to be the case.
In fact, Twitter even had to add fact checking context
on some of these posts, noting,
hey, what you're saying Chris is saying in this video,
is literally not saying.
And honestly, I gotta say with the amount of attention
Chris has gotten with this
it absolutely makes sense that they might wanna
pull back and focus on some family.
So yeah, that's the update that there's really
not much of an update except that currently
it looks like there's just misinformation being spread,
and then you know how yesterday we talked about PornHub
blocking people in Utah from accessing the site, right?
Because starting today, legally adult sites in the state
will be required to verify that users are 18 or older
with the law requiring a government id.
Well, I can't speak to how many people that
stopped from consuming pornography.
I can speak to how many people Googled VPN yesterday
with people in Utah absolutely scrambling
to get some VPN goodness in their life.
It's almost like all those companies
and those experts that said that trying to age gate
the content in this way that it's not gonna work
that they were right, crazy.
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And then if you're old enough to operate an Nintendo Switch,
you're old enough to operate the line,
that appears to be the general mindset
behind some of this child labor news today
with the Department of Labor
recently investigating three different
McDonald's franchises across Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland,
and Ohio, totaling 62 different stores,
and they found that the franchises employed 305 minors
that were working more than the permitted hours
and completing tasks unfit for their age.
In fact, one of the owners, Bauer Food and Louisville
they reportedly had two 10 year olds that were employed
but not paid and sometimes working as late as 2:00 AM,
and one of them even found to be working the deep fryer,
though the majority of the miners were working
for Archways Richwood based in Walton Kentucky,
them having a total of 242
14 and 15 year olds working more
than the legally allowed hours.
So obviously less insane
than 10 year olds working a deep fryer
at 2:00 AM but still concerning.
And it is getting big enough
that the senior vice president chief people officer
at McDonald's USA had to say,
"These reports are unacceptable,
deeply troubling and run afoul of the high expectations
we have are the entire McDonald's brand."
And a key thing to take away here is
this is just a small part of a trend,
but the Department of Labor reporting
there has been an uptick in child labor violations.
In fact, since 2018 they've seen a 69% increase
in children being employed illegally.
And keep in mind that's on top of the recent push
for rollbacks in child labor laws,
with all that said, a question I wanna tack on to this story
is when did you get your first job?
For me, my official first job
was I was 14 years old in Florida
and I got to work at McDonald's after school.
My dad had to sign special paperwork.
I was so excited having my own money
that I earned for the first time in my life
was such a big deal.
It made people making fun of my voice cracking
while I was operating the drive-through manageable
but before that, my mom had like a plethora of businesses
and she loved to hire me 'cause I worked for free 99.
Yeah, I'd love to hear from you.
And then that monster
who fatally shot five of his neighbors in Texas,
has finally been caught and arrested
after a days long manhunt.
According to the County Sheriff Greg Capers
the man was caught hiding in a closet
underneath some laundry in a home
a few miles from the location of the attack,
and adding that the suspect has now been charged
with five counts of murder
and is being held on a $5 million bond.
With this, we also got an update to the story
around Texas Governor Greg Abbott
where he this week faced a lot of backlash
after posting a statement where he described
the five victims as illegal immigrants
but is now retracting that claim
after many accused him of attempting to undermine
the lives lost by dehumanizing
and needlessly bringing up their immigration status
as kind of a dog whistle,
and the spokesperson from his office telling reporters,
"Any loss of life is a tragedy and our hearts go out
to the families who have lost a loved one,"
but also going on to say the federal officials
had told the governor's office
that the victims were in the country illegally
and adding, "We've since learned
that at least one of the victims
may have been in the United States legally,
we regret if the information was incorrect
and detracted from the important goal of finding
and arresting the criminal.
Now with how unnecessary it was to mention
the alleged legal status of the people who were murdered.
We still had a lot of people
saying this was a piss poor apology
for him having a mask off type of situation.
And then this is a weird one,
the Texas State Senate just passed a bill
that will give the politically appointed
Secretary of State the power to overturn the election,
but a key thing here just
for the state's largest county which has,
coincidentally I'm sure,
increasingly become bluer and bluer,
making it a democratic stronghold
with the legislation written so that the new rule
applies to counties with populations
higher than 2.7 million, and Harris County,
which includes Houston is the only county
that meets the threshold with nearly 4.7 million residents,
and the second largest county in the state
coming in at just 2.6 million residents,
and that's Dallas County.
How subtle.
And as far as the specifics of the bill
it would give the Secretary of State
who is currently a Republican,
the ability to throw out election results
if at least 2% of polling places
run out of ballot paper for more than an hour,
but very importantly, according to reports,
the Secretary of State wouldn't actually have to prove
that any polling places actually ran out of ballots.
They would merely need to have good cause
to believe that there was a shortage,
and additionally they wouldn't have to prove
that election administration issues
affected the outcome of the election.
Now notably, if that does happen
another election would need to be held,
with that we know for a fact that turnout is almost always
much lower in recalls or runoffs,
especially in states where republicans are imposing laws
and making it increasingly harder to vote,
and so if this bill is signed,
massive, massive news with huge implications
for the third largest county in America,
and then Democrats are taking steps
to pass a debt ceiling increase bill
without Republican support,
and in a letter yesterday
house minority leader Hakeem Jeffrey said
that the Democrats plan to file a discharge petition,
which if you don't know 'cause why the hell would you,
it's a procedural motion
that would effectively force a vote on a debt limit increase
if it's signed by a majority of 218 house members.
A move that would allow Democrats
to push forward a clean bill
rather than a version passed by Republicans a few weeks ago.
And that notably would raise the debt ceiling for a year
in exchange for billions of dollars in cuts
rolling back key parts of Biden's agenda
further restricting social programs
and increasing mining and fossil fuel production,
but a small but also massive thing here.
A discharge petition would still require
at least five Republicans to sign on,
while you literally have hundreds of house members,
this could still be difficult,
given that even moderate GOP members
are standing firm in the party's demand
that Democrats negotiate with them.
But this as Biden and Democratic leadership
have repeatedly argued that Congress
must pass a clean version of the bill
with no Republican conditions
and also accusing the Republican party
of holding America hostage to advance their wishlist agenda.
And as all this plans out, the country is inching closer
and closer to catastrophe
with a treasury secretary warning that the US
could hit the debt ceiling sooner than expected
and as early as June 1st,
and then the Biden administration's worried
about our southern border
and just struck a deal with Mexico to help keep people out.
And that's because on May 11th,
the Trump era title 42 immigration restrictions
for Covid were due to end
with the administration reportedly fearing
that this would trigger unprecedented migration flow.
So it rolled out a plan to send out troops
to the southern border,
and it now formalized a deal that would keep asylum seekers
from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua
from living in the US while their cases are pending.
And it reportedly doing so
by housing many of them in Mexico,
which agreed to accept 30,000 people per month
as long as the US did the same.
Although that number is misleading,
the 30,000 that the US accepts
have to be part of a parole program
where they apply from overseas and have a US-based sponsor
which is very different from how it normally works
where asylum seekers just show up on your border,
that is the group that Mexico would be taking.
The deal also leaves a lot of questions
such as what's gonna happen to migrants from places
like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras
who don't have a US-based sponsor
and are seeking asylum.
But no matter what, it feels very much like
we're gonna be talking about the southern border a lot
as Title 42 comes to a close.
And understandably, there are a lot of questions
about how this is actually gonna look.
And then is Russia lying again?
I mean, usually there's an easy answer to that
but that's also something being asked
after the Kremlin was seemingly hit
by two drone strikes last night.
Now notably only superficial damage was done
but Russian authorities were quick to claim
that it was an assassination attempt on Putin by Ukraine.
With that, most people are very skeptical
with US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken saying that,
while he couldn't verify the story either way,
he would take anything Russia says
with a very large shaker of salt.
Others also claiming that it was unlikely
to be an attempt on Putin
since Ukraine tracks his whereabouts
and knew that he wasn't there at that time.
And with that some suggesting
that if it was in fact Ukraine
this was more of a show of force
to Russians that they can target them at home.
Or what we're seeing a larger amount of people saying
is that it's more likely to be a false flag
to justify targeting Zelenskyy,
which I mean we've already seen.
And all that brings us to the end of today's show.
Thank you for being a part of another
daily dive into the news that you need to know.
As always, my name's Philip DeFranco,
you've just been filled in.
I love your faces and I'll see you tomorrow.