- [Reporter] Ghent is a veteran of the fire department
in Lancaster County, serving much of that time
here at McDonald Green Volunteer Fire Department.
A few days ago, he took to Facebook and posted,
"Dear Police, stop responding to these black neighborhoods.
They will eventually kill each other
and the fake news won't have a story."
- I guess it was racially insensitive.
I did not mean it that way.
- How would you mean it then, Ghent?
Unpack it for us.
Explain where the misunderstanding lies.
Jesus.
Everyone is so big and bad on Facebook
and then local news pulls up and they're like,
"Well, well, well, what actually happened..."
So the nuance is being missed here.
Anyway, hey,
welcome back to The Philip DeFranco Show.
It is Thursday, April 29th, 2021.
Hit that like button.
Definitely subscribe.
A brand new subscriber for the month of April,
at the end of the month, we're almost right there,
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and then it goes bye-bye forever.
Yeah, with that said, let's just jump into it.
The first thing that we're gonna talk about today,
it's easily is one of the most requested stories,
and it allows me to kind of share news,
provide an update, but also maybe a clarification.
So I've gotten a lot of requests to do an update
on the Jeff Wittek, David Dobrik story.
Jeff Wittek, of course, has his whole docuseries
about how he got injured.
Spoiler alert, David Dobrik accidentally swung him
into a metal excavator, just maiming his face.
In the last time we covered it,
we talked about the revelation,
how it's amazing that Dobrik didn't end up in jail
because there's just oozes of criminal negligence.
Since our last coverage,
Wittek came out with another episode, some saying,
"Why didn't you cover that?"
And it's because there's not really
any sort of a legal or business angle to it.
This is no shade towards those channels
because they are in high demand,
but this is not a primarily drama-based channel.
If there is a business element to it,
if there's a legal element to it,
if there's a precedent-setting element to it,
we're gonna cover it.
But if it's just about Jeff's feelings
towards a friend and feeling betrayed
and then going through all these emotions,
that's not something that I'm gonna cover on this show.
That said, an interesting business element to this story
has come out.
I've seen a number of different reactions,
and I touched on this interesting element to this story,
which is, I've seen some people criticizing Jeff Wittek
for milking the situation.
There's even a viral TikTok about it.
- Oh my God, he is milking this!
- You're saying he's milking it?
- There's episodes to this. Like, what?
- Dude. If someone injures you,
you're telling me you can't get some views off of that?
- You can get some views, but three episodes?
- Since then we've seen outlets like Tubefilter
putting out articles saying,
"Jeff Wittek's Patreon Account Gets 37,000 Supporters
in 10 Days with Docuseries Rollout.
That's At Least $2.2 Million in Annual Revenue."
They say "at least" because on the Patreon
they have subscriptions of $5, $10, $20 plus.
But the reality being that in all likelihood,
if all those people stay subscribed there,
the number is probably much larger than $2.2 million.
And ultimately with this aspect of the story,
what I would say is,
to those saying that Jeff Wittek is milking this situation,
that he's taking advantage of it
and profiteering off the situation, fine.
If anyone should be able to, it's him.
Yes, I understand that Jeff Wittek is an adult
who made a choice, but I still very much see him
as the victim of this toxic situation.
And if anyone should be able to benefit and grow from it,
I think it should be him.
I mean, it's part of the reason why
I didn't run with leaked videos
when it was kind of a known thing
that he didn't want the stuff out there.
And then you throw in YouTube age-gating
and cracking down on his content
so he's not able to share his story to as many people,
then yeah, the Patreon just makes sense.
But hey, this is The Philip DeFranco Show.
You don't have to agree with me.
That's the story, my opinion,
and then I'd love to know what you think
whether you agree or disagree with me.
Then let's talk about our douchebag of the day,
a man who has been called by local media
the most hated man in Australia,
42 year old Richard Pusey.
And Richard, if you don't know,
he was reportedly pulled over
for speeding down a highway in his Porsche last April,
and as four Victoria police officers prepared his arrest,
the driver of a semitrailer swerved out of its lane
and struck all of them,
though Richard reportedly avoided getting injured
because he had been urinating beside roadside bushes
at the time.
But it's what he did after the accident
that has so many people hating him.
He remained at the scene of the accident
for several minutes to film the officers who had been hit.
All four officers were killed,
though experts believe
the one who was pinned under the semitrailer
was likely alive as Pusey began filming.
And for around three minutes he walked around the crash,
he zoomed in on injuries,
he mocked the officers on video.
His commentary included profanity and remarks like,
"he's smashed," "justice,"
"absolutely amazing," and "beautiful."
When a bystander came to aid the officers
and asked Richard to help,
he replied, "They're dead," and continued filming.
He reportedly made no attempts to assist them
then left the scene and drove home,
with the police ultimately finding that footage
after his arrest and learned
that he had shared it with other people.
Ultimately, what we ended up seeing
was Pusey later pleading guilty to outraging public decency
along with a drug possession and speeding offense,
with him ultimately being sentenced to 10 months in prison,
a $1,000 fine, and had his driver's license suspended
for two years, which is stand out for a few reasons.
One, because it's actually the first time
the outraging public decency charge has been prosecuted
in the state since 1963,
with a sentencing judge saying
that his conduct was heartless, cruel, and disgraceful,
though he noted that Pusey had a personality disorder
which might explain some of his behavior.
And two, a lot of people think
that this punishment is actually very small,
especially because he's already spent
nearly 300 days behind bars when the sentence was ordered.
Though, actually according to the New York times,
he is likely to remain in custody for unrelated matters.
But still, families of the slain officers
and much of the general public were furious
over the sentencing,
with many on social media calling it too lenient.
Chief of the Victoria Police Association Wayne Gatt
even saying,
- He is a worthless individual that lacks any human trait.
Each and every one of us will face our mortality one day.
When his day comes,
I hope that he faces the same coldness
and the same callousness
with which he provided my members when they faced it.
- But you also have others agreeing with
and pointing to a piece by Rebecca Cavanaugh,
a court reporter for the Herald Sun,
which explained the sentencing
and noted that being a downright despicable
scumbag devoid of any redeeming features
unfortunately isn't an offense.
Though of note here as far as the biggest sentence,
you have the driver of the truck.
Reportedly he had actually been impaired by drugs
and he was sleep deprived when his vehicle hit the officers.
He ended up actually being sentenced
to 22 years in prison after pleading guilty
to four counts of culpable driving causing death,
three charges of drug trafficking,
and one count of possessing illicit drugs.
But ultimately with this story,
I do want to know your thoughts
regarding the sentencing of Richard Pusey.
Where do you land on it?
Do you think the sentence was right or no, it wasn't enough?
Or do you think that he should not have been charged?
Any and all thoughts and then the reasons you have them,
I'd love to know.
But from that, let's take a second
to pay some bills and thank the fantastic
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Then for our daily
which celebrity are people angry at today news,
we had Miley Cyrus facing some backlash,
and this, in part, because it was announced
over the last weekend that Elon Musk
would be hosting Saturday Night Live on May 8th
with Miley as the musical guest.
You know, Elon Musk can be a polarizing figure.
Some see and love him as the billionaire genius
behind Tesla and SpaceX.
But, on the other hand, you have people saying,
"No, he's just kind of this egomaniacal billionaire."
I mean, he denied the severity
of the coronavirus pandemic early on.
He spread misinformation on the topic.
He prematurely opened Tesla factories amid lockdown.
He called that Thailand diver that was helping,
you know, those kids trapped in a cave a pedophile,
among other things, right?
Some people just going,
"Why are you giving a random billionaire access
to hosting SNL," right?
And this is just a quick scrub through Twitter.
There's many issues.
Even on a casual scrub, you could find some cast members
giving subtle criticisms,
people like Aidy Bryant who shared a Tweet
from Bernie Sanders on Instagram
about how the 50 wealthiest Americans own more wealth
than the bottom half of the country,
as well as Bowen Yang responding to Elon's weird tweet
saying that he was going to find
out just how live SNL really is, with Bowen writing,
"What the fuck does this even mean?"
But then with this, we saw the outrage and anger
get re-targeted towards Miley Cyrus.
This in part there
because she engaged with Elon on Twitter,
kind of talking about this wrecking ball parody,
with people who don't like Elon Musk seeing this
as Miley Cyrus co-signing him as a person,
with Tweets like,
"Miley, please, You don't have to pretend to like him."
"Miley, don't associate."
And it's been really interesting to watch
because, I mean, this is probably the most backlash
that SNL has got for a host since probably Trump.
But what also comes with that is
that this is probably the most that someone has talked
about an upcoming SNL host in a long time.
It really wouldn't surprise me
if this was probably the most viewed episode
of SNL this season with people just tuning in
to see what the hell this is even going to be.
And hey, I guess we're going to see in a little over a week.
Then, what's the weirdest way I could introduce this story?
Got it.
You know how some people say you cannot put a dollar amount
on a human life,
but we know that not to be true for two reasons.
One, if you've ever listened
to enough true crime docuseries or dramas,
you can pay people apparently a very minimal amount
of money to kill other people.
So you can put the dollar amount there.
Or two, you can put a dollar amount
on it based off of how much money you make other people,
not including Facebook,
who just reported their quarterly earnings.
And we learned that for every person on Facebook,
you are worth $9 unless you live in North America.
In which case you are worth $48 a year.
I should have clarified that.
You're not some cheap $48 bitch.
You're a $48 a year bitch,
which is just an ungodly amount of money for Facebook,
considering that across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp,
Facebook says that they have 3.5 billion
active monthly users.
So it's not surprising to learn
that their sales jumped 48% from 2020 to $26 billion,
and of that, 97% were made up from ads.
The profit as a company also doubled to $9.5 billion.
But funny enough, Facebook looks like child's play
when you compare them to Google.
who brought in $55 billion in sales, right?
More than double Facebook's,
with Google's profit more than doubling at $18 billion.
Notably here, YouTube was a massive winner for Google,
with their sales jumping 49% to $6 billion.
Just for comparison's sake,
YouTube's quarterly sales alone is 85%
of Netflix's quarterly total, so yeah.
Also, because I introduced this story
in such a weird, depressing way,
I feel like I should end on a happy note.
Or actually, maybe happy is not the right word.
Maybe helpful.
I could not put a dollar amount on your life right now.
Every single day, we make choices that that kind of
show the world how much we value ourselves,
what we do with our time, the people we keep around us,
and probably a third thing as well.
This is why my videos have jump cuts
because not everything comes to me in the moment.
You know, the love that we have in our life
that we allow ourselves to receive.
That is one of the biggest indicators
of how much we value ourselves.
If you're not surrounding yourself
with people that lift you up,
that's you subconsciously telling yourself,
"I'm not worth that much."
Was that helpful?
I don't know.
Anyway, moving on.
Then, we should definitely mention
that the US Food and Drug Administration
announced this morning that it has begun the process
of trying to ban menthol cigarettes
as well as flavored cigars,
with the agency's acting commissioner Janet Woodcock saying,
"With these actions,
the FDA will help significantly reduce youth initiation,
increase the chances of smoking cessation
among current smokers,
and address health disparities experienced
by communities of color, low-income populations,
and LGBTQ+ individuals,
all of whom are far more likely
to use these tobacco products."
Which, according to the data, is true.
It shows that the mint-flavored cigarettes are
overwhelmingly used by young people and minorities,
with research showing that 85% of Black smokers use menthols
compared to less than a third of white smokers.
And connected to that, Black men have
the highest lung cancer death rate in the country,
which is why you have people like Carol McGruder
of the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council
asking, "The science is there, the data is there,
so why are these products still on the market?"
And really, the answer there is because of a 2009 law
because even though that law allowed the FDA
to establish authority over tobacco products,
meaning that it could ban flavored cigarettes,
thanks to industry lobbyists,
menthol was the one big exception.
So instead, the law simply called
for more research on menthols
before anything could be done.
You know, for years, anti-smoking advocates
and medical groups have continued to pressure the FDA
to take action against menthol cigarettes.
In fact, back in 2013, they even filed a petition
urging the agency to ban the flavor,
but the FDA never responded.
So because of that, last year,
two anti-smoking groups sued the FDA,
alleging that regulators had "unreasonably delayed"
responding to the petition.
The agency then had until today to respond,
and yeah, they essentially did it last chance they could.
But still, do not expect this ban
to actually happen overnight.
For one, multiple FDA officials have attempted
to move forward with a ban on menthol cigarettes
several times since 2009,
but each time they have faced steep pushback
from Big Tobacco, Congress,
and even competing political interests
in both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Right now, we're also seeing
the American Civil Liberties Union pushing back,
saying that it's concerned that this ban could foster
an underground market that could disproportionately harm
people of color due to over-policing,
with the ACLU invoking both the names of Eric Garner,
who, of course, was killed by a police officer
after allegedly selling cigarettes
outside of a convenience store,
as well as George Floyd,
who was murdered by a police officer
after trying to pay for a pack of cigarettes
with counterfeit money.
And then two, let's say the ban goes through.
It would likely face a stack of legal challenges,
making it unlikely to be implemented for years.
And, I mean, for Big Tobacco,
this is a big, meaningful fight.
Menthol sales make up more than a third
of cigarette sales in the country.
And so a question I wanna ask,
and if you'll let me know if you're a smoker,
you're a non-smoker,
what are your thoughts on the possibility here?
Do you love to see it?
Do you hate to see it?
Where do you land and why?
Then, we should definitely talk about updates
around the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.
It's been a while since we talked about it,
so if you don't remember,
Arbery was the 25-year-old Black man
who was shot to death while jogging
through a South Georgia neighborhood
in February of last year,
his death being one of many
that fueled nationwide protests about racial justice.
You know, with this killing,
you had three men charged,
35-year-old Travis McMichael, his father,
65-year-old Gregory McMichael,
and 51-year-old William Bryan.
And throughout this whole situation,
the McMichaels have maintained
that they thought that Arbery was a burglary suspect,
then they pursued him,
claiming that Travis McMichael was acting
in self-defense when he shot Arbery to death.
Meanwhile, Bryan's attorney has argued
that he committed no crime at all.
He was kind of just there.
But in addition to those three
also facing separate state charges,
including for murder,
the three Georgia men have now been indicted
on federal hate crime charges,
with them each charged with one count
of interference with rights
and one count of attempted kidnapping.
Travis and Gregory McMichael also charged
with one count of using, carrying,
and brandishing a firearm,
with Travis in particular being accused of shooting Arbery.
According to the Justice Department,
the McMichaels allegedly armed themselves with firearms,
got into a truck,
and chased Arbery through the public streets
of the neighborhood while yelling at him,
using their truck to cut his route off,
and threatening him with firearms,
with Bryan then allegedly joining their chase,
cutting off Arbery's route with his truck.
The indictment saying that all three tried
to unlawfully seize and confine Arbery
by chasing after him in their trucks
in an attempt to restrain him,
restrict his free movement,
corral and detain him against his will,
and prevent his escape.
And ultimately with this story, I mean,
that video is seared into my mind.
My personal feelings, my opinion on this,
I hope these three get prosecuted
to the fullest extent of the law.
It's disgusting.
A man was murdered.
Once the video was released,
obviously I can't show it here,
but once the video was released,
I felt like it completely undercut any sort of argument
that they were operating within
what they thought was the law.
But for now, we will have to wait and see what happens next.
And ultimately, with this story
and honestly anything that stood out to you today,
I'd love to know your thoughts in those comments down below
because that is the end of today's show.
As always, thank you for watching, liking, subscribing,
all the good stuff.
If you're looking for more to watch,
I got you covered right here with some more news
or my latest podcast.
But with 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.