- Sup, you beautiful bastards,
hope you're having a fantastic Wednesday,
welcome back to the Philip DeFranco Show,
buckle up, hit that like button,
and let's just jump into it.
And the first thing we need to talk about today
is why Jeff Bezos is in the news.
This is a story that kind of starts out salacious,
then has escalated,
and has really hit an incredibly concerning point.
And for some of this, we're gonna have to backtrack
through the last year,
so we really understand the weight of today's report.
But you have Jeff Bezos.
He owns Amazon, The Washington Post.
And last year, you might remember we talked about
The National Enquirer leaking text messages
between Bezos and a woman named Lauren Sanchez
who he was allegedly having an affair with.
Right and after that we saw Bezos himself
put up a Medium post where he argued
that the leaks were a politically motivated hit job
because he owns The Washington Post.
And so with this, he accused The National Enquirer
of extortion and blackmail.
And in this post, Bezos described the relationship
between President Trump and David Pecker, who owns AMI,
which owns The National Enquirer.
And as you might remember, AMI was the company
that bought former Playboy model Karen McDougal's story
alleging that she had an affair with Trump for $150 000.
And doing so, so the story wouldn't go well,
otherwise known as catch and kill.
Bezos also mentioned that Pecker and his company
have been investigated for various actions
they've taken on behalf of the Saudi government.
Also citing a New York Times excerpt that said
that Trump invited Pecker to a White House dinner,
and Pecker brought a, quote,
"guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia."
Bezos then goes on to say
that because of his ownership of The Post,
people the newspaper covers
might conclude "I am their enemy",
adding "President Trump is one of those people,
"obvious by his many tweets.
"Also The Post's essential and unrelenting coverage
"of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi
"is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles."
Also adding that there were several investigations
into how his texts were obtained,
and that he was also launching his own investigation.
Writing, "several days ago, an AMI leader advised us
"that Mr. Pecker is 'apoplectic' about our investigation.
"For reasons still to be better understood,
"the Saudi angle seems to hit
"a particularly sensitive nerve."
Bezos then continues, saying that AMI told them
that they had more of his messages and photos
and that they would publish them
if he didn't stop his investigation.
He then provided what appeared to be
a series of copy paste emails from AMI,
one of those emails describing the content they would leak,
this including a "dick pick"
and "a naked selfie in a bathroom" of Bezos,
as well as several personal pictures of Sanchez.
And also including another email
containing a list of quote "proposed terms" from AMI,
which basically said that they would not publish
the content if Bezos agreed to a number of things.
Things including making a public statement,
"affirming that they have no knowledge or basis
"for suggesting that AM's coverage was politically motivated
"or influenced by political forces".
But of course, Bezos refused to both end his investigation
or back down from the claim
that AMI's coverage was politically motivated.
And so we ended up seeing
at the end of last March, Gavin de Becker,
the man Bezos chose to lead his investigation,
published an op-ed in The Daily Beast.
And there, he said he had concluded the investigation
and handed it over to federal officials.
And while he wrote that he would not disclose details,
he did confirm one key fact from the investigation,
saying, "Our investigators and several experts
"concluded with high confidence
"that the Saudis had access to Bezos' phone,
"and gained private information.
"As of today, it is unclear to what degree,
"if any, AMI was aware of the details."
But he did say that when AMI was threatening
to release the photos and texts,
they sent him a contract that would require him
to publicly say that his investigation
had concluded that there was not,
quote, "any form of electronic eavesdropping
"or hacking in their news-gathering process."
And after the Medium post, the op-ed,
Saudi Arabia denied the allegations, and so did AMI,
with AMI specifically telling CNN in a statement
that it only had one source, Sanchez's brother,
and that there "was no involvement
"by any other third party whatsoever."
But Lauren Sanchez's brother Michael Sanchez
has repeatedly denied giving AMI all of the pictures
noted in the email, specifically the naked selfies of Bezos.
And with all of that, it brings us to the reason
we're talking about this today.
This morning, United Nations Human Rights investigators
said in a statement that they received information
that suggested a WhatsApp account
belonging to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman,
also known as MbS or Mohammad Bonesaw, some call him.
Not me, not I, it's 2020, it's all positivity for me.
But that account, belonging to that man,
was used to hack Bezos in 2018.
In the statement the investigator said,
"The information we have received
"suggests the possible involvement
"of the Crown Prince in surveillance of Mr. Bezos,
"in an effort to influence, if not silence,
"The Washington Post's reporting on Saudi Arabia."
They say these allegations support reports
"of targeted surveillance
"of perceived opponents" by the Saudis.
"These allegations are relevant as well
"to ongoing evaluation of claims
"about the Crown Prince's involvement in the 2018 murder
"of Saudi and Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi."
and adding that the report was based on forensic analysis
from Bezos' and de Becker's investigation,
with the experts also calling
for further investigations of the matter.
And in an analysis of the report,
the UN experts found that in April of 2018,
Bezos and MbS exchanged phone numbers
that corresponded with their WhatsApp accounts.
And then a month later,
"a message from the Crown Prince account
"is sent to Mr. Bezos through WhatsApp.
"The message is an encrypted video file.
"It is later established, with reasonable certainty,
"that the video's downloader infects
"Mr. Bezos' phone with malicious code."
And reportedly, according to the assessment
seen by the UN experts,
a massive amount of information
was exported from Bezos' phone,
starting within hours of the video being sent.
And adding that the data spike continued
undetected over some months,
and altogether more than six gigabytes of data was stolen.
The report then continues to go through
the timeline of events,
noting Khashoggi's death on October 2nd, 2018.
And writing that a month later,
"a single photograph is texted to Mr. Bezos
"from the Crown Prince's WhatsApp account,
"along with a sardonic caption.
"It is an image of a woman resembling
"the woman with whom Bezos is having an affair,
"months before the Bezos affair was known publicly."
And so that is a massive deal.
Right, the details of the affair aren't public yet,
it seems like MbS could've gotten the information
from Bezos' texts with Sanchez.
And while it doesn't directly tie AMI,
or The National Enquirer to the hack, or to the Saudis.
If true, it would mean that MbS had in his possession,
text messages and photos sent between Bezos and Sanchez.
This including potentially incriminating photos,
like the ones mentioned in the AMI email.
Now of course, important to note,
that doesn't rule out the fact
that AMI did receive the texts
from Sanchez's brother like they claim,
But it does, at the very least,
raise some serious red flags
given Pecker's relationship with Saudi Arabia,
especially when paired with Bezos' allegation
in his Medium post that AMI was trying
to kill this sort of Saudi Arabia angle of the story.
But hey, let's say that even without AMI,
the claiming that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia
hacked Jeff Bezos and potentially tried to blackmail him
just because of The Post coverage
of the Khashoggi killing, it's huge on its own.
Now following these reports coming out,
Saudi Arabia, of course, has denied the allegations,
saw the Saudi Embassy tweet,
"Recent media reports that suggest the Kingdom
"is behind a hacking of Mr. Jeff Bezos' phone are absurd.
"We call for an investigation on these claims
"so that we can have all the facts out."
Yeah, ultimately that's where we are right now.
I mean, as far as my opinion,
I think we just take Saudi Arabia's word for it.
Feels like their government has been
really up front and honest
about any kind of international scandal.
Let's see if it follows the same path as Khashoggi.
Remember they went from, "Who's that, I dunno what,
"what was he even there?"
To, "Okay, yeah he definitely got murdered,
"but MbS wasn't a part of it?"
So in this case, what would that go,
it would go from, "This claim is absurd.
"Okay someone did it but they grabbed MbS' phone.
"Okay, yes MbS did install a virus,
"but it wasn't to steal anything,
"it was just to send Bezos memes.
"Sneak memes on his phone, you know a joke.
"MbS stands for Mohammad being silly."
That's stupid, anyway, this story is genuinely horrifying,
and if anything I think it really does shine a spotlight
on just how vulnerable not only people,
but whole institutions can be.
But yeah, of course with this story
I would love to know your thoughts.
But from that, I wanna share ya some stuff
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And the first bit of awesome
is this number.
Text me.
Sometimes I text things to everyone,
certain people like happy birthdays.
Also after the show, I'm trying to dedicate 30 to 60 minutes
just to chat with whoever I see.
Also, for those super far away, sorry, it's US, Canada only.
Then in Fine, I'll Stay Subscribed news,
we got the trailer for the final season
of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars".
In How To Drink, giving a "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge"
drinks recreated.
We got the Honest Trailer for "Joker".
We also got the trailer for
"Pokemon: Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution."
Wired gave us Doctor Debunks Medical Myths.
The cast of Doctor Who recapping the show
in sixteen minutes.
Then we had David Dobrik on Jimmy Fallon
gestate further meshing of all the entertainment mediums.
And if you just need a quick little smile,
BBC Earth gave us a video about Poppy the baby chimp.
And if you wanna see the full versions
of everything I just shared,
the secret link of the day, really anything at all,
links as always are in the description down below.
And then let's talk about Netflix
and the story that I think touches
on the streaming space in general.
Yesterday Netflix shared
their fourth quarter earnings report
which may not sound that interesting or exciting.
Unless you're Anna Akana getting hyped
about Netflix on Instagram.
but even if you're not a Netflix stockholder
or a Netflix customer, some of the updates
they threw in their report were very interesting.
First off, and this seems like a massive red flag to me,
Netflix said that it would be
changing the way that it counts views.
Right now, they count a view based
on an account watching 70% of a single episode
of a series, or of an entire film.
Right so if you watched most of the movie "Sixth Sense",
but you had to stop before the end,
and you're like, "Ah, I can't wait to see what happens
"in this movie about a totally alive child psychologist."
Right, your view still counts it,
even though you technically didn't get to the end.
But Netflix says that they believe
that this model no longer makes sense
when they have so many titles
that vary dramatically in length.
Right this includes shows that are as short as 15 minutes
and movies over 130,
and in their letter they say, "We are now reporting
"on households that chose to watch a given title."
And in the letter they say that they're changing a view
to when an account, quote, "chose to watch and did watch
"for at least two minutes, long enough to indicate
"the choice was intentional, is the precise definition."
And they then compare this model to the way BBC iPlayer,
the most popular section of The New York Times,
and YouTube views are structured.
But still a massive and dramatic turn for the company.
And while I do think the argument can be made
that it kind of brings Netflix in line with others.
It feels like the larger move here
is to inflate their numbers.
Right they even included an example,
saying that on the old metric, 33 million people
watch their original docuseries, "Our Planet".
But with the new metric, that number goes up to 45 million.
That's meaningful, it's substantial,
it happens to coincide with Netflix sharing more and more
of their view counts on series and movies.
You know until recently,
Netflix has notoriously not shared numbers,
then kind of cherry-picked.
Now they're sharing more and more,
but they're also changing the system,
And part of that may also be connected to the increase
in actual competition in the streaming space.
And understand, I'm not saying Netflix is wounded,
Looking specifically at customer growth,
Netflix did well overseas, adding 8.8 million users,
well over their forecast of 7.6 million.
But in the United States and Canada,
where they're more saturated, they didn't fare so well.
They were projected to add 600 000 subscribers,
but only added 420 000.
And they say this is, quote,
"probably due to our recent price changes
"and to US competitive launches."
And as far as what they're referencing there,
there are these small indie companies,
I think it's called Apple and Disney,
that launched their own streaming services in November.
And so we have Netflix admitting
this could be why their growth here
in the United States wasn't so strong.
Right, and with these two,
you had Apple TV Plus sort of being the smaller
of the two competitors regarding success,
though they still did have decent success
with The Morning Show.
But as of right now, the bigger
and much more obvious threat is Disney Plus.
According to reports, they ended up signing
10 million subscribers on the first day.
We've already also had a fan hit with "The Mandalorian",
Baby Yoda coming for Netflix's throat,
although just to be fair,
the numbers from Disney Plus aren't as clear yet,
especially in a way to show
a concrete comparison to Netflix.
But the study from Parrot Analytics
does put the success of "The Mandalorian"
into some perspective.
Right just by mid to late November,
the show was in higher demand than several Netflix hits
like "The Crown" and even "Stranger Things".
So it seems like Netflix isn't too afraid of studies
like this, and in their own report,
propped up their own content.
For example, a lot of their pride resided
in their new show, "The Witcher",
which came out on December 20th.
In the report they say the show is, quote,
"Tracking to be one of our biggest
season one TV series ever."
With 76 million member households
choosing to watch it in its first four weeks.
but, and important note here,
that appears to be under Netflix's new metric
of view count, so at least two minutes.
They then, and I'll say kind of in advance,
it feels awkward and misleading that they did this.
They shared and compared Google analytics
of searches for their show, "The Mandalorian",
"The Morning Show", and "Jack Ryan".
One, it's misleading, because as Forbes points out,
"it compares worldwide interest when The Mandalorian
"is only available in a handful of regions."
Whereas, Netflix is just worldwide.
And as Forbes points out,
when you change the parameter to just the United States,
you get a far different chart.
Also, and if anything, when you look at these charts,
it feels like there's another argument to be made.
Maybe releasing an entire season,
right, something that people are going to binge,
might not be the best model.
As a consumer I love it, but just looking at the data,
right, "The Mandalorian" got weekly releases.
And yeah, if anything, it feels like this highlights
how big of a success "The Mandalorian" was for Disney.
Yeah, ultimately that's the story, that's a change,
it's gonna be fascinating to just kind of watch this space
over the next few years, I mean you have new competitors
still trying to come out.
With that said, what are your thoughts on this?
Do you feel like this is just Netflix
trying to fluff things up,
or it actually is bringing them in line?
Any and all thoughts, I'd love to hear from you
in those comments down below.
Then in a quick update around a story
we covered yesterday about the new outbreak of coronavirus.
According to reports, the number of confirmed cases in China
is now up to 470, and the number of deaths is at 17.
Also, insofar as what's being done
to try to contain this situation,
it's being reported now that Wuhan,
which has an estimated population
of anywhere between 9 to 11 million people,
is having a transportation shutdown.
According to reports, bus, subway, ferry,
and long-distance transport networks will be suspended.
Those living in the city have been told not to leave,
and the airport and train stations
will be closed to outgoing passengers.
We've also seen China advising against travel to Wuhan.
And as far as any other international restrictions
or reactions, right now we're waiting.
As we mentioned yesterday, the World Health Organization's
emergency committee is meeting today in Geneva.
And so right now, we're waiting to see
if they think this situation "constitutes
"a public health emergency of international concern."
But that's where we are now,
obviously this is still a developing situation,
and we'll be keeping an eye on it.
And then, do not check your calendar,
it is not 2016, it is still 2020,
but we have more Hillary Clinton news.
Of course, yesterday we talked about Hillary's interview,
that documentary, the Bernie bashing.
Following the public reaction,
she kind of, sort of snarkily walked her statement back,
tweeting, "I thought everyone
"wanted my authentic, unvarnished views!
"But to be serious, the number one priority
"for our country and world is retiring Trump,
"and, as I always have, I will do whatever I can
"to support our nominee."
But, the Bernie stuff is not
why I'm talking about Clinton today,
rather it is now the Tulsi Gabbard stuff.
As of this morning, Representative Gabbard
is suing Hillary Clinton for defamation
and is seeking $50 million.
And as far as what the document says
are the defamatory statements, it includes,
on October 17, 2019, Clinton was a guest on a podcast,
and Clinton stated the following, regarding, quote,
"somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary,
"who they are grooming to be the third-party candidate."
Quote, "She's the favorite of the Russians.
"They have a bunch of sites and bots
"and other ways of supporting her so far.
"And that's assuming Jill Stein will give it up,
"which she might not because she's also a Russian asset.
"Yeah, she's a Russian asset."
And then adding the next day, October 18,
Clinton doubled down on the defamatory statements,
noting a CNN reporter asked
Clinton's official spokesman, Nick Merrill,
whether the defamatory statements were about Tulsi.
Clinton's spokesman responded, quote,
"If the nesting doll fits."
And he continued, "this is not some outlandish claim.
"This is reality."
Now regarding these claims, it does feel appropriate
to look back to what Nick Merrill said
after this story initially came out.
And essentially he had responded that news outlets
had been misreporting about the podcast.
Tweeting, "On Friday the New York Times
"did a piece about a podcast
"Secretary Clinton did with David Plouffe.
"They incorrectly quoted her saying that the,"
quote, "Russians" were quote,
"grooming a candidate running in the Democratic primary.
"They rightfully fixed it to reflect
"that she was talking about the GOP."
Right so essentially the response was "they" was the GOP,
not Russians, though, seemingly standing by
what they were saying as a separate statement
that she is a favorite of the Russians.
And Nick Merrill in this Twitter thread goes on to say,
"And yes, she," in reference to Hillary Clinton,
"said that certain fringe members of the Democratic
"and Green parties are assets to the Russians.
"Well guess what folks?
"That's true.
"She didn't call anyone a spy,
"as some are wrongly asserting
"for their own political gain."
Right, and so that was part of the response,
then, as far as his response now,
he responded to the lawsuit saying,
"That's ridiculous," in reference to the lawsuit.
Yeah ultimately that's where we are
with the situation right now.
It was just filed today,
I wanted to provide some background,
what both sides are claiming,
and of course, I'd love to know your thoughts
regarding this latest development
in those comments down below.
And that is where I'm going to end today's show.
Thank you for watching my little daily weekday news show.
Also if you're looking for more to watch,
maybe you missed yesterday's show,
we're just kicking things back up again this year,
you can click or tap right there to watch that.
Or, maybe you want some more news.
Click or tap right there.
But, with that said of course,
as always my name's Philip DeFranco,
you've just been filled in,
I love yo faces, and I'll see you tomorrow.