Impacts of the Global Microsoft Outages; Chris Van Hollen Challenges Chuck Schumer for Senate Majority Leader

0:00Sophia gets a call from Dave Portnoy and she finds out that Alex had gotten her own lawyer, had negotiated to do Call Her Daddy solo, and had essentially iced Sophia out of the deal. Hi everybody and welcome to Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Basugan. So today on the show we are catching up on the drama between the founders of the hit podcast Call Her Daddy. Alex Cooper's ex-co-host is out with a new memoir, our Sabah Hamidi. Read it, so you don't have to. We're going to get you up to date on that. Plus, Senator Chris Van Hollen is mounting a challenge to Senator Chuck Schumer for Senate Majority Leader.

0:38But does he actually stand a chance? Possibly.

0:45Up first, though. If you use Outlook, you've got mail again. Microsoft says its services are recovering after a major outage that impacted millions of customers' email service, Outlook calendar functions, and co-pilot AI chats. One expert told NBC News that the disruption could be one of the biggest outages of all time, rivaling the one last year with Amazon Web Services and the CrowdStrike outage back in 2024. But hey, maybe it's kind of a blessing, right, in disguise for some office workers to get a break from emails and Cal invites on a Friday. So for that, I want to bring in NBC News Chief Business Correspondent, Christine Romans.

1:24Hi. Hi, how are you? I'm good. You didn't reply to my email. Oh, yes, sorry. They all came this morning flooding in at around 6.45 in the morning. And I thought, what a great excuse to not actually have to reply to people's emails. What happened? We don't know exactly. Okay. Microsoft says that it's investigating. They're addressing the underlying issue. They're going to restore service in batches gradually here as they get to the bottom of it. What's interesting to me is, so this morning I got up, still no emails in my inbox. They stopped yesterday around 12.30 in the afternoon, for me at least.

2:02And I got up to go to my yoga sculpt class, my hated yoga sculpt class. And everybody at the studio was talking about the Outlook outage, right? Because it's not just affecting, for instance, us at NBC or even kind of businesses that just use Outlook. Like it had effects across the board for various businesses. What are some of the other things that we didn't necessarily see in our own small circles that were affected? How about court cases where you have a court hearing and suddenly you can't get the documents you need to take to the court? Wow. This happened in a bunch of different places. hospitals suddenly couldn't, the way they communicate before a surgery or an event, suddenly they're scrambling.

2:45There are a lot of businesses use Teams and they've gotten rid of the landlines on the phones. That's so pre-COVID, right? And now you've got half your staff at home on a Friday, for example, or a Thursday. And you've got people here and people there and you use Teams. And then suddenly you had small businesses scrambling to find people's personal phone numbers because you couldn't use your normal Teams to communicate during the day. I think it was the Arapahoe County Sheriff put out a note saying that, well, we use Outlook for our bail procedures. So you're going to have to come in person if you're trying to work with us on a bail procedure.

3:21So it was like 1984. It shows you how much we use these products and how integrated they are into so many things we do. Are we going to get an incident report on this? Yes, we are. Do they feel like it's going to take a long time? I don't know how long it's going to take, but they say they will do an incident. they're still trying to fix the problem. Right, it's still a problem. This is still struggling to get everything up and running again. I mean, this began, you said yours was like a 1230 on Thursday. In one hour, it spread to 74 countries. Wow. That's how fast it moved. And now it's taken hours and hours and then overnight and then this morning again and still not 100 % yet.

3:59So, you know, a lot of folks are talking also about the connection potentially to the layoffs, right? Because Microsoft has been doing, quote-unquote, restructuring. Yeah. Right? Layoffs have been happening. Thousands of jobs have been affected. Buyouts have been offered as well to employees. And the reasoning being from Microsoft is that they want to make room for AI. Right? Yeah. Is there any potential connection to these layoffs, these buyouts that were taken, and what happened over the last 24 hours? It is certainly a question that is being asked, and that's what we will be looking at this post-incident report to find out if there's any potential connection.

4:42And we don't know exactly what happened here. I mean, the first updates we were getting all day yesterday were so technical. You know, you had to call, like, a software engineer to translate it for you. Very technical things that they were posting. They've gotten a little more—I think a PR person has gotten involved here. But we're deeply sorry for the disruption. We take this seriously. et cetera, et cetera. This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI agents. Because there was a fear potentially that this was a cyber attack. That's right. Right. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change.

5:20So that's their layman's technical term. Because there's less people, because there's less infrastructure, because of these layoffs, because of these buyouts, would that not have happened? That's certainly the big question, yes. If we look at this kind of 30 ,000 foot above big picture, you and I have talked a lot about in this conversation how widespread this thing was, how reliant we are on these systems. So then you have to question, like, is it good to be so reliant when there's a breakdown like this that in some respects things stop? So what needs to change here? I mean, in my mind, you need to have a multi-pronged approach for communication.

6:01and what companies have been trying to do is get you to only use their products. And they have this whole suite of products and just use the Microsoft or just use the Google products. And it was funny because I was talking to one of our colleagues who was homesick yesterday and she said for two hours, she was freaking out because she couldn't get ahold of anybody and she thought she wasn't doing her job and she was in this high stress situation because she wasn't there. And we were thinking about all the people who were working remotely yesterday and what they must've been going through trying to figure out what is actually happening here, especially if you're trying to get on Teams to call somebody.

6:32Well, yeah, I was able to walk outside my office and go, wait a minute, is your email not working? Why haven't I received an email since 1230 in the afternoon? It's something Craig Melvin said to me this morning at the Today Show. I said, you're going to get a bunch of emails, Craig. They're all going to come at once. Like Microsoft says, these haven't gone into the ether and they've disappeared. They're going to come back. And he's like, do I really need all those emails? I'm like, now it's an existential question. What is the meaning of life? And do I need all of those emails? Do I need all of those emails?

6:59Do I have to answer them? That is, and that is the bigger question we all need to answer. Christine Romans, thank you. You're welcome. All right, we're going to take a very quick break. And when we are back, the battle brewing for Democratic leadership, that's next. And also, while you're listening to the ads, do me a favor, rate and review the show wherever you're listening. It really helps us reach future fans. We'll see you on the other side.

7:27This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just$15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want. Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for a 12-month plan required,$15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra, New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Hi, I'm Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the NBC News podcast, The Drink.

8:03This month, I'm having a non-alcoholic Guinness with filmmaker, actor, and writer Ed Burns. You know him from movies like Saving Private Ryan and 27 Dresses, but you will not believe what it took to get his first movie made, including tracking down legendary actor-director Robert Redford. Ed and I talk about how he built his career on his own terms and the staying power of independent filmmaking. And of course I had to ask, what's the secret to his decades-long marriage to supermodel Christy Turlington? We talk about all of it. I hope you'll join us for The Drink, Listen, and Follow wherever you get your podcasts.

8:42And we're back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So Congress just started its lame duck session this week, but both parties are already looking ahead. and figuring out who's going to be in charge once Democrats take control in January. On the GOP side, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan is going to be the new House minority leader. And South Dakota's John Thune is going to continue to lead in the Senate. For the Democrats, New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become the next Speaker of the House. And it initially looked like New York Senator Chuck Schumer was a shoo-in to retake his title as Senate Majority Leader.

9:15But then there was some pushback from some heavy hitters. And now a new contender is throwing his hat in the ring, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen. Here he is, begin Friday, at the Democrats' What's Next conference in Denver. And we should be making, delivering for the American people the single mission of our government, even when that means shaking things up.

9:46And that is why I'm running for the majority leader in the United States Senate. So, does Van Hollen actually have the votes to beat Schumer? And how could this affect the Democrat strategy when they take control of Congress? For this, I want to bring in NBC News Chief Capitol Hill Correspondent Ryan Nobles. Hi, Ryan. Hi, Yas. Okay. So when you and I spoke the day after the midterms, you said to me that your sources were telling you there were no real challengers to Senator Chuck Schumer taking control of the Senate, i.e. becoming the Senate majority leader. But in fact, Ryan Nobles, there now is a challenger, and that is Senator Chris Van Hollen.

10:31What are your sources now telling you about Van Hollen and his chances here? You didn't clip that or anything, right? That audio doesn't exist anywhere. Okay, great. Yeah. So what I'll tell you is that when I told you that at the time, it was very true. But time has a way of changing the scope of the way things are happening. And I think the thing that's always been a problem for Chuck Schumer is that the length of time that Democrats have decided to wait before they elect their next leadership group. And he is not or they're not going to hold those elections until the middle of December. And so I think the biggest difference between when you and I talked right after the election, and I think we talked again in the interim and now where we are today, is that we actually have somebody who has physically put their name into the ring.

11:20Not theoretically like, oh, maybe I'll consider doing it if there are enough people that want to support me. The fact that Chris Van Hollen has said, I am your alternative. Here is someone you can vote for whose name is not Chuck Schumer. I do think that that changes the dynamic quite a bit. Now, what we're not seeing is an en masse movement toward Chris Van Hollen. I think there's maybe three or four, if that, publicly that have come out and said that they will support him. Now, there's a bigger group of folks that have either said, I'm not voting for Chuck Schumer or I'm interested in an alternative but have not come right out and said they're going to vote for Chris Van Hollen.

11:56But what still doesn't exist, though, are 29 senators. And when I do the math and when I look at the roster, because it would take 29 senators to elect a new majority leader, I can't find 29 senators that will vote for Chris Van Hollen or 29 senators that will vote against Chuck Schumer. So why is Senator Chris Van Hollen potentially a – you know, he's been around for a while as well. It's not like he's new. It doesn't necessarily represent the new generation, I think is what I'm trying to say. Right, right. But why is the marketing of Chris Van Hollen and or the choice of Chris Van Hollen potentially seen as like the potential leader of this new generation of freshman senators?

12:40Yeah, so let's first of all establish that fact, right? Now, Chuck Schumer's been in office for almost 50 years, so he's been doing this for a long time. Chris Van Hollen has been in office for almost 36 years. His entire professional career has been elected public servant. He served in the Maryland State House, served in the Congress, and now has been a senator for 10 years. So it's not as if he's just arriving to the party. He's not Abdul El-Sayed or Troy Jackson. This is somebody who is very much a part of the Democratic establishment and has been for some time. The reason, though, that I think that Chris Van Hollen has caught this lane as being somewhat of an outsider pick is because, to his credit, he has taken some what I would describe as bold and maybe more provocative stances on a number of issues that have really connected with the progressive part of the Democratic Party.

13:34I think really where he started to get a lot of attention amongst these activists is when he traveled to El Salvador to meet with Gilmar Arbrego Garcia, who was someone that lived in his state, who was caught up in these ice raids, and in the mind of Van Hollen and other activists, was unfairly detained, was not given proper due process, and was shipped out of the country without the requisite amount of attention drawn to his case. So there's been a couple of things here where he's kind of stuck his neck out a little bit in ways that other senators haven't. And the base of the party has seen that and recognized it.

14:16And I think that that's how he's been able to catch this lane. And now he feels that this lane is strong enough to maybe propel him to become the next majority leader. Let's talk about Senator Chuck Schumer here for a second, though, because you've got some senators that are supporting Schumer that are basically saying, listen, why would you replace the manager who just won the World Series? Right. My question to you, Ryan, is how much, though, credit should Senator Chuck Schumer be getting for the wins the Democrats had in the midterm elections? And I ask this because if you look at the polling, Democrats are not necessarily polling well.

14:50Yes, they won big in the midterm elections, but the approval for Democrats across the board is not in good standing, A. And then B, even some of these freshman senators that are now incoming are sort of saying, Chuck Schumer did not get me in, right? Scott Colombe telling Yemi Shelstynor last week, let's not give Democrats, That's National Democrats' too much credit here. They haven't been trying, right? Chuck Schumer did not endorse initially Abdul Sayed. He endorsed Haley Stevens and then subsequently came around to Abdul Sayed. So how much credit should he be taking for those wins? First of all, I don't think that any political strategist, if you just looked at the cold hard facts of the Senate map, would have said it's wise for us to invest in Mississippi.

15:31That was a generational upset win that never would have occurred under any normal circumstances. But what Chuck Schumer did do was he flew to Ohio and he told Sherrod Brown, he flew there three different times, and he told Sherrod Brown, will you be able to live with yourself in retirement if you're the one, if we lose the majority by one seat? And then Sherrod Brown called him the next day and said, I'm running. He personally recruited Roy Cooper in North Carolina, who had never lost there statewide. He personally invested massively in both Texas and Georgia to the point where the Democratic candidates in Texas and John Ossoff, the incumbent in Georgia, ran out to such big leads early on that those races were never really in contention.

16:15We thought Texas was in contention. When you look back on it now, I mean, that ended up being a blowout. I don't think he was perfect under any circumstances, but the results speak for themselves. It was a generational win for Senate Democrats to win nine seats on a map that favored Republicans. No one was predicting that was happening. And Chuck Schumer was the driving force behind that. Now, the response that the progressive lane of the party will give, and I think that there's merit to this argument, was that it wasn't Chuck Schumer and his recruitment that led to those big wins. It was Donald Trump and his bad policies and that the voters chose these Democratic candidates in spite of Chuck Schumer, not because of Chuck Schumer.

16:58So this is going to be a choice for Senate Democrats. You know, there's obviously a lot of passion in the base of the party to move on and do something different as a sign to their voters that they're listening to them. But it comes with an enormous amount of risk because you've got somebody in there that knows how to do this job and you're going to go through the next two years of a volatile period of time in divided government. And so, you know, the choice they make here is going to be a very important one. Ryan Nobles, thank you. Thanks, Yas. All right, coming up, Democratic infighting has nothing on Call Her Daddy.

17:35We're getting into the new tell-all memoir that spills on why the show's co-hosts split up. That's next.

17:46This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just$15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want. Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. I'm Kristen Welker, and this Sunday on Meet the Press, has the MAGA movement come to an end?

18:22I'll sit down for an exclusive interview with former Vice President Mike Pence to talk about the GOP's midterm losses and how much influence the president has left as the party regroups for 2028. This Sunday on Meet the Press. Hey everyone, I'm Dylan Dreyer, co-host of the third hour of today and mom to three wild boys. I've learned a lot in my years as a parent, mostly that I don't have it all figured out yet. And I'm not the only one. This is my new podcast, The Parent Chat. Each week I sit down with someone new for honest conversation and real world advice about parenting. I am over here just like winging it.

19:00Hey, I'm just trying not to screw my own kids up. I'm not giving you advice on how not to screw yours up. Search The Parent Chat on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.

19:11Hey, Scoop Gang. We're back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So I said it that way because I'm giving you a little bit of a clue. The Call Her Daddy podcast, of course, in that podcast, they call themselves the Daddy Gang. It's been this massive success since shortly after it launched back in 2018. Back then, the show was under Barstool Sports and was co-hosted by roommates and friends, Alex Cooper and Sophia Franklin, famous for their raunchy and not safe for work conversations. It was shocking for the daddy gang community when the two actually split up professionally back in 2020. After she left Barstool, Cooper ultimately became the solo host and signed a hefty exclusive deal with Spotify.

20:00And all of that drama was reignited this week with Franklin's new memoir titled Daddy Issues. So for this, I'm bringing in NBC News' Saba Hamidi, who hopefully does not have any daddy issues, the NBC News trends and culture editor. Hi, Saba. Hi, and I have to say, no, no daddy issues. I have a nice Persian dad, so gotta give a shout out to Fareed over here. Hi, Farid. He's Scoop Gang. I love it. He's part of the Scoop Gang. He's part of the Scoop Gang. So you read this memoir. What does Sophia Franklin actually say about what was happening at Barstool that broke them apart? Sure, yeah. And obviously this is all her narrative and her claims.

20:46Yeah, sure. So she claims, of course, that they were really close friends. They started this together. They got a deal from Barstool, which was very exciting for them. Within two months, they exploded in popularity as a Barstool sports podcast. But their deal at that time was obviously not as lucrative because they were new, but they were bringing in so much money for them. And this is where things get a little complicated. So Sophia writes that it was a one Barstool holiday party where she and Alex Cooper were, obviously they went and they were all partying, but Sophia partied a little too hard.

21:24She blacked out. She doesn't remember much. And the next day, all she remembers is that Alex was really mad at her and said, you know, she was awful to her and that she needs help. And Sophia felt so bad, but Alex kept saying, no, don't talk to Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports. like I already talked to him, like they wanted to fire you. I had to talk them out of it. But really what Sophia learned later is she said she learned that actually Alex was trying to fire her and went to Dave after that holiday party and used Sophia's behavior as a way to negotiate a raise, a$20 ,000 raise for herself.

22:04And the other thing that came up was basically as a year and a half before their contract was going to be up at Barstool Sports. They decided they wanted to renegotiate because at this point they were bringing in a lot of revenue. And so they decided to hire a lawyer, work together, and try and negotiate with them. They asked for a million per year. They wanted that money and they wanted 50-50. And at the core of the argument with Barstool was they wanted the IP. They wanted to own Call Her Daddy. Okay. And Sophia and Alex decided, they were on the same page, they said, we don't care what happens, but we decide we want to be together.

22:44We want to stay together. Even if they keep the IP, we will leave. We will walk. And that's what they agreed on. But then one day behind the scenes during COVID, Sophia gets a call from Dave Portnoy that, and she finds out that Alex had gotten her own lawyer, had negotiated to do call her daddy solo, and had essentially iced Sophia out of the deal. What has Alex said about this? What has Dave Portnoy said about this? Have we heard anything? So Alex hasn't said anything recently because she just had a baby last month, but she, in the aftermath of their breakup, she released a 52-minute episode by herself, posted it to YouTube.

23:25It's still up, which is very interesting. And she basically says Sophia became a liability, And that's why they broke up. Oh, and then Dave Portnoy this week went on the Toast podcast and basically said he hates Sophia and denied sort of a lot of the allegations that were made. He said, I hate Sophia? He actually said that? Yeah. I hate her, he said. Okay. The thing is, Alex has made a ton of money now, right? She reportedly licensed Call Her Daddy to Spotify for more than$60 million. Then a couple of years later, she signed a multi-year deal with SiriusXM worth a reported$125 million. Meanwhile, Sophia Franklin literally got nothing.

24:07I can't help but think that this was just really smart business dealing on behalf of Alex Cooper. I'm wondering if we would be having kind of the same conversation, if like the drama would exist, if these were two men who had launched this podcast together and then had a falling out. But because it's two women, we are talking about it in a way in which Alex Cooper is being kind of like villainized for just making smart business decisions. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you. I think in the end, even Sophia's reflection was that she got stabbed in the back professionally because she gave too much trust to this person, both as a friend and as a business partner, I think.

24:49Like, she just never expected someone to do this. But like you said, business is business. How are fans reacting to this? I think fans are actually very sympathetic towards Sophia. I think she wrote this book in a way that it isn't. It does obviously cast Alex in a poor light. But I will say it also is very, very reflective on her own past before Alex. She talked about how she was arrested three times in Utah. She's had substance abuse problems, and she's been sober and not sober. She's had a tough path. And, of course, that path intertwined with her friendship with Alex and all this fame that came with it.

25:32At the end of the day, it's a memoir about how you can pick yourself up once you fall down. Saba, thanks for reading it and providing some clarity on this drama. Thank you, Saba. Listen, Scoop Gang, you got to— Protect yourselves. That's what we're saying. Thanks, Scoop Gang. All right. That is going to do it for us. Here's The Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vasugan. We'll be back on Monday with whatever the weekend may bring. And if you like what you heard, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also subscribe to our daily newsletter, The Inside Scoop. It's a deeper dive on the main stories of the day that comes out every weeknight straight to your inbox.

26:12You can sign up for The Inside Scoop as part of our paid subscription at NBC News. We'll see you Monday.

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