- What's up, you beautiful bastards?
Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show.
It is Monday, January 25th, 2021.
So buckle up, hit that like button,
and let's just jump into the news of the day
So you can get back to yours.
And where we'll start today,
is with entertainment/entertainer news
starting with JoJo Siwa.
Siwa if you don't know, is a massively successful creator
both in numbers of followers and views
but also, business.
She's one of the most economically successful
creators out there.
I mean, in addition to a number of revenue streams
it's been reported that she has sold over 80 million bows.
The reason that Siwa was trending into and over the weekend,
is that she just recently came out.
She had been hinting, kind of teasing,
that on Friday she posted a photo saying my cousin
got me a new shirt that shirt saying
"Best. Gay. Cousin. Ever."
- I have never, ever, ever been this happy before.
And it's feels really awesome
and I've been happy for a little bit now
and it's just so, so, so awesome.
- Also in the video saying she's not labeling
her sexuality specifically yet.
- And the reason why I'm not ready to say this answer
is 'cause I don't really know this answer.
I wanna share everything with the world what I really do,
but I also want to keep things in my life private
until they're ready to be public.
But I, right now what matters is that you guys know that,
no matter who you love, that it's okay.
- I know for a number of people watching
and maybe thinking is this really that big of a deal?
Is it important that she did it?
I would actually argue, yes.
Even though there is obviously a difference coming out today
compared to that maybe of 20 plus years ago,
it still matters.
And Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD explained,
"JoJo's decision to share her truth with the world
is a powerful moment
as one of the most influential young role models today
JoJo's story is a reminder for LGBTQ youth,
to love who they are and define safe
and welcoming environments to speak out."
And as much as maybe in you and I's day-to-day life
it's not that big of a deal for someone to come out
as gay or to be gay,
that's not everyone's experience based on where they live.
So I think when any celebrity can use their spotlight
to take away the stigma from something that people
were just born a certain way,
that is great and that is amazing
because there are a lot of people in this world
that do not feel comfortable in their skin
because they were raised to feel like who they are
on the inside is wrong.
Ignorance and bigotry is still around
despite that, you know, we wanna pat ourselves on the back
for being so different than those in the past.
Unfortunately, that was not the only reason
JoJo was in the news.
After all this news happened, she ended up getting swatted.
and then alive and people have been saying
it seemed like JoJo was implying that the media actually
swatted her, so she had to leave her house
and people could take photos.
Though, and it's not a contest,
but if you thought swatting was bad,
I mean, we should talk about Roman Atwood.
He of course is one of the early big prank YouTubers,
then becoming a massively loved family of Vlogger.
He and his wife over the weekend made headlines
because they finally made a video
addressing why they've been so quiet on the platform
for the past year and explaining,
that they were dealing with stalkers.
- We have left out of the fear of our life, literally.
- The safety of our kids, like our house,
our everything we have.
- Going on to say that what happened went above
and beyond the creepy things that many people
in the public eye have to deal with,
and that it was extreme severe harassment.
Also sharing a handful of the terrible things
that have happened.
- You have to have a funeral for somebody that you love.
These stalkers bomb threaded a funeral.
Literally in our vehicles,
like shutting our vehicles on and off,
and powering them on and off and.
- Setting the alarm off while we're just sitting at home
with our kids.
- Like the alarm in our house,
they turn the power off to our home.
This home, they turned the power off
in the middle of the winter.
- They also said the stalkers did things
like canceling their car insurance without them knowing,
sending pictures from the security cameras
to their cell phones, changing their mail
and sending threatening text, including death threats.
But also saying that this only kinda scratches the surface,
also thanking the FBI for helping them through this
and saying that they finally feel that there's a light
at the end of the tunnel for them.
So obviously we'll wait to see
if any other information comes out
but I kinda wanna end this on two notes.
One, I feel horrible for Roman and his family
for having to deal with this.
No one should have to deal with this.
And two, if it can even be thought of as the slightest bit
of a silver lining,
I will say I feel a little bit hopeful.
In the past, it feels like when I would cover something
where something bad would happen to a celebrity
because of something with fans or something like that,
people would have this mindset of, hey, well,
that's just part of the cost of being famous.
But, one of the biggest things I've seen from Roman
sharing this story is the amount of empathy and sympathy.
And that makes me the slightest bit hopeful.
That makes me feel like people,
as we all get more accustomed to the internet
aren't fully losing the fact that the other person
on the other end, despite the success
or whatever else they have, they are still a human being
that they should still be afforded human decency.
And then, let's talk about big business news
starting with GameStop.
So this is actually a wild story.
So during the pandemic last year,
GameStop stock was around four or $5.
Then around August of last year it starts going up
and up, and up.
Beginning of January this year, it's actually close to $20.
Two of the key things to know about GameStop is that,
there are a lot of short sellers that think
that because of the pandemic the company is overvalued,
that the price will go down.
And then two, there are a lot of people
in the subreddit WallStreetBets
that really love game stuff.
And so reportedly to mess with the people
who are shorting the stock
that think the stock will go down,
you have a ton of people on WallStreetBets
pushing for others to purchase the stock.
This ultimately brings us to last Thursday
where you have short-seller Andrew Left, of Citron Research
releasing a video saying this is why GameStop
should be a $20 stock.
That, then seemed to lead to two different things.
One, he actually pulled back and claimed that
he and his family have been threatened
because of that video.
And two, people kept buying more and more GameStop shares
jumping from $41 last Thursday to $140 today.
That is, until it then plummeted
to about half of that amount,
70 and as a recording it's around $77.
And as far as my personal opinion on this,
I'm just, I'm fascinated.
I'm so interested to see where GameStop's
gonna be a week from now, as well as just a month from now.
This feels very much like that potentially boom
and or bust volatility that comes with crypto.
A lot of people gain, and a lot of people have lost.
It'll be interesting to see how longterm
versus short term all of this is.
Especially since I've seen from a lot of people online
part of the reason they did this
wasn't just to try and make money,
but what it was to kind of give the middle finger
to short-sellers who while this is obviously
still a developing situation today,
I'm recording while the market's still open,
we have a long week ahead of us.
I mean on Friday alone,
it was reported that short-sellers had lost $1.6 billion.
I for one though, and I'm not an advisor in any way
I'm gonna be staying away.
Anytime I see massive waves, I just get scared
'cause I, (chuckles)
I have this fun habit of anytime I pay attention
to a wave, it lands on my head.
I'm all about that long and boring life.
Then let's talk about Uber who after buying Postmates
reportedly laid off 185 people from the Postmates division
Reportedly, that's about 15% of Postmates total workforce
with mostly apps executive team not returning
including its founder and CEO Bastian Lehmann.
But, do not fret your prayers
for the billionaires have been heard
and a number of the executives will reportedly be leaving
with multi-million dollar exit packages.
Also, as far as why we're seeing these cuts
it's believe that this is part of a larger plan
to better integrate Postmates infrastructure with Uber Eats.
This is an area that Uber has been looking to grow, right?
They tried and failed to buy grub hub,
then purchasing Postmates for $2.65 billion.
And, food delivery has been seen as a crucial move for Uber
since its ride sharing business has been suffering
because of the pandemic.
The more that you look at the company,
the more it becomes apparent
that they're kinda consolidating changing things up
in order to be profitable by the end of 2021, hell.
Back in December, Uber sold the autonomous vehicle segment
to Aurora Innovation and sold their Uber Elevate
flying taxi division to Joby Aviation.
We also had SpaceX in the news
because they launched 143 satellites into orbit on Sunday
breaking the record for the most satellites lifted
into space and a single launch.
And notably, this launch was the first of SpaceX
dedicated Rideshare programs, SmallSat Rideshare
which is basically like a carpool for satellite.
It's this recent innovation that came in response
to growing demands for low-cost access
to space by smaller companies and institutions.
And while this new launch is definitely seen
and being hailed as a success,
it also triggered conversations
about the increasing number of satellites
congesting low earth orbit.
With many experts fearing that overcrowding
could create a rise and potentially catastrophic
orbital collisions and dangerous levels of space debris.
And so now, many of us calling for regulations
to be put into place.
In fact, NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel
wrote in its 2020 annual report.
Given the recent increase
in non-traditional commercial space operations
including satellite servicing, space tourism,
and the deployment of large numbers of satellites
provide worldwide internet access,
updates to existing roles and responsibilities
may be appropriate.
As things stand today, there are no clear lines of authority
for directing coherence among the many entities
that operate in space.
And to that,
I say there's only one obvious solution space wars.
Make all these companies vying for internet dominance,
make military vehicles boom instant government funding,
and then every week 8:00 pm Eastern space wars
or, more communication and regulation.
But I'm still vying for space wars.
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Then an important international news
we should talk about how Russia experienced
some of their largest protests in years this past Saturday,
this of course after Russian opposition figure
Alexei Navalny called for them
following his arrest last week,
we saw tens of thousands taking to the streets
clashing with police and more than one hundreds cities
with independent monitors claiming the 3500 people
were detained by police.
And among those 3500, you had Yulia Navainaya,
Alexei's wife who was targeted by authorities
during the protests.
Although, according to Russian media,
she has since been released.
Despite all these protests being declared illegal,
they had a lot of reach
and very notably over one-third of the protestors in Moscow
said that they had never protested before
which is definitely huge, but it is also hard to say
how the protest popularity will turn
into real political power.
Because these protests were from across the political
spectrum from far left groups to nationalists
meaning, they may oppose Putin
and wide-scale corruption in Russia,
but, they might agree on very little (indistinct).
But, the protests also were a swing
and how Russian authorities deal with Navalny in the past,
they've never mentioned him by name,
however, this weekend he was on everyone's lips.
With the newscasters they're airing multiple programs,
trying to discredit him, painting him
as a tool of the West.
With Putin himself also having to deny
some of Navalny's claims about him
such as that he has a secret billion dollar villa
on the coast of the Black Sea.
As far as the Navalni himself he's still in jail
pending court proceedings on February 2nd.
And, if those go poorly,
he could be in prison until the mid 2020s.
However, if anything he seems more concerned
about the immediate future
telling supporters on Friday
that he has no intention of suicide.
In addition to opponents of the Kremlin
just somehow getting poisoned, you know, it happens.
Suicide is also a common fate for critics of Putin.
Then and news about Rudy Giuliani,
who is a real human person and not a fascist robot
with an oil leak problem,
yesterday we saw Dominion Voting Systems
filing a defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani
seeking $1.3 billion in damages
for false claims that he made about the company.
Dominion which is one of the largest voting machine
manufacturers in the United States,
of course became the main target
for widespread election fraud conspiracy
spread by Giuliani and other Trump allies,
that people who falsely claimed with zero evidence
that Dominion machines widely used in key battlegrounds
were flipping votes from Trump to Biden.
So now, you have a company claiming that Giuliani
and his allies manufactured and disseminated the big lie
which foreseeably went viral
and deceived millions of people
into believing that Dominion had stolen their votes
and fixed the election.
The lawsuit alleging that he did this in part
to enrich himself through legal fees and his podcast
noting, that Trump's top lawyer
reportedly demanded $20,000 per day,
for his legal services to the president.
And arguing that he cashed in by hosting a podcast
where he exploited election falsehoods to market things
like gold coins, supplements, cigars and more.
The 107 page suit also specifically outlines
more than 50 statements Giuliani made on Twitter,
his podcast to the conservative media,
and during legislative hearings.
And notably, the company points out
that he never mentioned Dominion in court
where arguably, he could face legal ramifications
because he knew what he was claiming was a lie.
But despite that,
Giuliani continued to push the false narrative
even after Dominion sent him a letter in December
warning that they would take legal action against him.
Also very significantly,
the lawsuit also links Giuliani's false claims
about Dominion to the Capitol insurrection
putting out that he mentioned
the company was speaking at the rally before the attack
and on social media numerous times during the attack.
But also, I mean even according to reports,
even after that, he has still continued to spread those lies
as recently as last week.
The lawsuit going on to say that,
as a result of these statements pedaled by Giuliani
and others, Dominion's founder and employees
have been harassed and received death threats
and Dominion has suffered unprecedented
and irreparable harm.
Now notably, this is also not the first defamation suit
Dominion has filed against Trump allies in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, the company filed a similar claim
against Sidney Powell, where it also saw $1.3 billion
in damages over her claims
that Dominion was part of a worldwide communist plot
to rig the election.
Separately, one of the company's top executives
also filed suits against Giuliani, the Trump campaign
and several pro-Trump media outlets
after he was forced into hiding
due to conspiracies that he masterminded the plot
to steal the election.
And one of the biggest things here,
is this could all just be the start.
According to reports, an attorney for Dominion
said that it was possible that the company
would file additional lawsuits
against pro-Trump media outlets such as Fox News
and even potentially with Trump himself.
Then in president Biden news,
let's talk about two key things today.
First up, you had Biden signing an executive order
overturning Trump's ban on transgender Americans serving
in the military.
That ban as Axios explained,
allowed the military to bar openly transgender recruits
and discharge people for not living
as their sex assigned at birth.
Reportedly, this is something that had affected
up to 15,000 service members.
So you have that big news.
And then, the news that Biden has now reimposed abroad
travel ban aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus.
And the specific ban in question,
was initially imposed by Trump preventing non-citizens
who have traveled from Brazil, Ireland, the UK
and 26 other European countries in the last 14 days
from entering the United States.
Though, despite Trump putting it into place
during his last two days,
he issued a proclamation ordering the ban
to end on January 26th,
when the CDC starts requiring passengers from abroad
to present proof of a negative coronavirus test
before boarding a flight.
Razo is set to end tomorrow
but, Biden's order according to CDC officials
will roll back that decision
and keep the initial restrictions in place.
In fact, it's being reported
that Biden will also be adding people
who have recently been to South Africa to the travel ban.
This decision coming as part of the new administration's
much more aggressive approach to fighting the coronavirus
which so far seems to be popular.
For example, in an ABC News IPS's poll released,
yesterday they found that 69% of Americans approve
of Biden's COVID-19 response so far.
And actually where we'll end today's show
is on the note of COVID-19.
The number of confirmed cases in the United States
has now surpassed 25 million.
President Biden also saying in a speech on Friday
that he expects the death toll
to eventually top 600,000.
Though, the number of cases per day in the United States
does appear to be falling for now.
However, how the visuals have warned
against celebrating just yet.
For one, daily death rates remain high.
And two, COVID variants could upend any ground gained
if people do not stay vigilant.
That news is also why we've seen such a mixed reaction
to what's happening out here in California.
This is because California governor
Gavin Newsom lifted regional state-home orders
across the state today.
That new is first coming
after a letter from the California Restaurant Association
to its members leap.
Notably, what this move does,
is that it gives way for restaurants in the state
to resume in-person dining, gyms,
hair salons and nail salons could also reopen.
It appears that this move may be connected to ICU capacity.
Like the rest of the United States,
California has started to see a steady decline
in the number of coronavirus cases being confirmed each day.
In San Francisco for example,
ICU capacity has surged to 23% this weekend.
However, also like the rest of the United States
daily death rates remain high.
A number of other regions in the state
also have had less notable success.
But, according to the LA Times,
a Newsom administration official has said
that models project ICU capacity for areas
with less access,
increasing about 15% over the next four weeks.
Now as more and more people get vaccinated,
there of course is the hope that we will continue to see
a decline in the numbers.
But also there is concern for reasons like on Sunday,
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, told Fox News
that the federal government doesn't know how much
coronavirus vaccine the country has.
And adding, "If I can't tell it to you
then I can't tell it to the governors,
and I can't tell it to the state health officials.
If they don't know how much vaccine they're getting
not just this week but next week and the week after,
they can't plan.
They can't figure out how many sites to roll out,
they can't figure out how many vaccinators that they need,
and they can't figure out how many appointments to make
for the public."
And in that interview Walensky noted
that the problem is just one of those challenges
we've been left with and the transition
from the Trump administration.
And notably here,
this challenge specifically could hamper Biden's
efforts to vaccinate 100 million Americans
in his first 100 days.
According to the CDC so far,
just under 22 million doses have been administered.
But, we've also seen reports
that tens of thousands of people with appointments
to get the COVID-19 vaccine,
have had to have them canceled
because states are running out of supplies.
Though, we saw Walensky say she is hopeful
that the production of the Moderna
and Pfizer vaccines will increase
after Biden's first 100 day.
Also, saying that she's hopeful
that the Johnson & Johnson's vaccine
as well as the AstraZeneca vaccine
could soon see emergency approval from the FDA.
And I'll close this story is the light
at the end of the tunnel is there stay smart, stay safe.
(groaning)
One day in the near future
we will get to stop saying once COVID is over, I will blank.
And that day cannot come soon enough.
Can't wait to go back to being an introvert by choice.
And whether it be this final story
or anything that stuck out to you,
I'd love to know your thoughts in those comments down below.
But, that is where I'm going to end today's show.
Thank you of course for being a part of my daily dives
in the news, I love having you.
Also, if you're looking for more to watch
I actually put out two videos on Friday
I was like, I don't normally post this day
so let's do it twice.
Yeah, like I Tsaid at the end of last year
I'm tweaking things with a schedule, not forcing shows.
But yeah, that's it, you've just been filled in with news
that matters for people that care, I'll see you tomorrow.