The Eric Metaxas Show - Dr. David Grantham and Josh Hammer
Episode Date: March 13, 2024Dr. David Grantham joins to discuss the crisis in Haiti and Josh Hammer speaks on his latest article "Liberal Elites Against Democracy" ...
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Hey there, folks.
Welcome to the Eric Metaxos show.
We have three exciting guests and one very dull guest.
Actually, you know what?
We're going to get rid of the dull guest, and it's only going to be three exciting guests.
Our first guest is Dr. David Grantham in a few minutes talking about the absolutely
confusing, horrifying situation in Haiti.
I don't know if you've followed any of this in the news, but it's confusing.
and he's going to help us understand what is happening there and why we should care about it.
So that's coming up next.
After that, we talked to our friend Josh Hammer about liberal elites who are the enemies of democracy
accusing their enemies of being the enemies of democracy, their enemies being you and me, I hope.
And that's – it's just very interesting.
And then at the end of today, I've got an amazing conversation with Josh Broome, one of the most powerful stories of redemption, just a wild, wild story of redemption, God's hand in somebody's life to take them from the darkest place you could be, as far as I'm concerned, to becoming somebody who loves God and is now a pastor.
so that's just a really happy way to end the day.
Chris Heimes, we have to do, we've got to do an update on a couple of things here.
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The number is 855-385-0-596.
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Okay.
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just dial that number right now and who will dial it by the grace of God and do your part.
We've all got to do our part.
We are, I mean, the reason we're in the mess we're in in America is because we haven't done
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It's okay.
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People have given their lives for this country.
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We owe them getting in the battle ourselves.
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One final thing before we get to our trio of amazing guests,
Letter to the American Church.com.
If you go to letter to the American church.com,
you are now able, you were not able to do this last week.
You are now able to do this.
You're able to watch the film there.
The link to watch it.
Boom is right there.
You can pay $9.99 and watch.
watch it. I'm not sure how long the link lasts or whatever. You can buy a DVD if you prefer that.
The link is good for 30 days and the rental is good for 72 hours.
I don't know what they... Oh, oh, you mean that when people get it, they have...
Yeah, the link will expire in 30 days if you don't click it and then... But if you do click it,
you have for three days. Okay, so you have to go to the Americanchurch.com. Let it to the American
church.com. I want to reiterate when you go there, we have a list.
of most of the churches that are doing a free screening.
I was just in Orlando, Florida,
at Family Church in Orlando.
They did a free screening there,
and I introduced it,
and then we did a Q&A afterward with the pastor.
I'm meeting all the heroes in America,
all of these churches that are standing strong.
This week, I fly to Denver, Colorado,
and in Denver I'm going to be at Brave Church, Brave Church in Denver.
I've been there before.
They are also heroes.
So any church can do a free screening.
And I would exhort you to go to letter to the American church.com.
Sign your church up for a free screening.
You'll see the list of the free screenings.
Yesterday I was on the phone with Lauren Bobert, one of the heroes in America.
We have to get her back on this show.
She's got a stiff primary.
that she's facing. She's one of the heroes in America. Her church, someplace north of Denver,
is doing a screening Saturday. I'm going to go up there. So I'm going to be at Brave Church on
Friday, this Friday for a screening. And then I'm going to go up to see Lauren Bobert. We've got to get
her on this program soon because she's just one of the warriors in America right now. Just fantastic.
But lots of free screenings. Letter to the American Church.com. You can sign up for everything there.
please go there folks you can get the book you can get the study guide uh this is a movement uh this is something
it's important letter to the american church dot com and don't forget metaxistococopcom we'll be right
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Hey, the folks.
Welcome back.
As promised, my guest now is Dr. David Grantham, who is here to tell us about the insane situation in Haiti.
just reading about it, I thought, what is happening?
It's mind-blowing.
David Grant them, welcome.
Thanks for having me, Eric.
Well, first of all, I want to explain to my audience.
I should, if I haven't already, that you were in counterintelligence.
You've written a book called Consequences, and Intelligence Officers' War.
The idea is, of course, that America, under the misleadership,
of Joe Biden is falling apart not merely domestically, but around the world, things are falling
apart, and the lack of American leadership is leading to disaster after disaster after disaster.
What is happening now in Haiti, rather than my explain it, do us a favor and give us just a thumbnail
before we get into analyzing what's happening. Simply tell us what is happening in Haiti right now.
Sure. Well, first of all, my heart goes out to those innocent people in Haiti. They're really at the, no pun intended, at the rifle, but of notorious gangs and they're in Haiti. But what you have is a country of roughly 11 million people. And the capital is really the heartbeat. There's about 1.2 million people in the capital.
And roughly, I mean, the estimates changing daily, but 70 to 80% of the capital is under control of some sort of criminal organized element, whether that's just street gangs or a transnational criminal organization.
So the really the only functioning, major functioning city, the capital, that's like Dallas, Texas, for instance, the equivalent to population.
That would be like Dallas being 80% of it being taken over by gangs.
The prime minister, I believe, has resigned.
There's obviously president and prime minister.
The president, Henry, he is stuck in Puerto Rico.
He won't be able to get back at this point at risk of death.
So he's holed up.
The prime minister has stepped down.
And so really the any sort of,
police function is virtually non-existent, at least in the capital, or at least there. Do we have, do we have, I just want to be clear, is this simply criminal anarchy or is there some kind of a civil war happening? I'm not really, I'm just not clear, because I know the person heading up, uh, the, the, the, the main gang, uh, seems to be not just a criminal, but somebody who, uh, has, um, issues with, uh, uh, uh,
the current Haiti leadership.
I just, I'm trying to get a handle on what is at the core of this.
Well, we're going to, this was going to be unpacked for years and years to come.
It isn't, it's not entirely clear.
So you're in the majority because going back to July 2021,
with the assassination of the current leader of Haiti,
who was surrounded by people who supposedly orchestrated this hit,
And there's questions about was this assassination coordinated because of relationships with drug, drug pushers with weapons traffickers.
So I believe there is an element of organized influence within Haiti right now.
I don't think this is, it is, it is anarchy, but it's also, there's some organized elements behind it.
I mean, the barbecue, the leader that's getting the most media attention right now, has said that his name is barbecue.
Correct.
That's his moniker, yes.
And he claims his mother gave it to him as a child.
Others say he earned it because he likes to barbecue his victims.
So take that for what it's worth.
But his complaint is that Henry is not the rightful successor.
So now whether that's him actually waiting into politics.
and having a legitimate grievance? I mean, who knows? But that's his comment that Henry is not a
legitimate leader. He was supposed to step down. He did not. Therefore, we're taking over.
Regardless, I do think there's anarchy on a tactical level, if I could use the military
terminology. On a strategic level, I do believe there is some outside influence.
Well, here's the question. Why should Americans care about this?
that's a great question and i'll give you a couple points first uh obviously Haiti is in the
same island as the Dominican Republic the Dominican Republic in the in Haiti do not have a
very good relationship going back for centuries uh Haitians are flooding over the border for
every every 10 Dominicans that are born in the Dominican Republic there's 25 Haitians that
are born moreover that animosity historically
centers around Haitians, and this is from a Dominican perspective,
Haitians claiming that the whole island is theirs.
It was theirs back in the 1800s, and it's still theirs today.
So there's a fear among Dominicans that if this spills over,
that the Haitians, those that believe in that are going to exercise that grievance
and try to take over the island.
So their fear is instability that Haiti will bleed over.
Why should Americans care?
Because Dominican Republic is one of the,
few allies in the Western Hemisphere that the United States has left. If you look just below us,
Mexico with AMLO as president, he's not a friend of the United States. Cuba, obviously,
not a friend of the United States. If you keep moving east once you get to the Dominican Republic
in Haiti, if the Dominican Republic falls, the U.S. is going to have a string of countries below
lowest that could or will be unsympathetic or hostile to the United States.
Well, I have to be clear. I mean, I've been to the Dominican Republic.
Zillions of my fellow New Yorkers traveled to the DR routinely, have families there.
It's like Puerto Rico. It's just a short flight.
So this to me seems like a headline that for the first time that I've ever heard,
you know, it would be sort of like hearing about Puerto Rico being in danger.
of being overrun, although Puerto Rico, of course, is officially part of the United States.
Nonetheless, I've never heard this before.
Have we ever been this close before to the Dominican Republic being potentially overrun
or fearing that that could happen?
I don't know that it's ever been at this level.
This is something, I don't want to say it's unprecedented,
but it is unprecedented in the term of risk and scope.
It's one thing to have anarchy in pockets of the island and pockets of Haiti.
It's another thing for the entire capital in the functioning government to be under siege.
That changes the landscape completely because this has not happened before that Porta Prince has been under siege anything like this.
Not in the modern day.
I mean, there's been.
I'm not interested in the 19th century.
Right.
I'm talking about, you know, in our lifetimes, Port of Prince, there's been, we,
know that Haiti, Haiti has been incredibly unstable and corrupt and just, I would say, spiritually
very dark going back centuries, we know. But we've not seen anything boil over like this
in Haiti in our lifetimes. Well, I think there's, you have disease that they've had disease
issues in the modern day. They've had earthquakes. They've had natural disasters.
But those things could create a humanitarian crisis, but not a security crisis.
Right.
This is creating both.
And that's where I think it's unprecedented.
Well, so since you're the CEO of the threat management group, you've been in counterintelligence in the Air Force, you're a combat veteran.
So my question is, is this a failure of American intelligence?
Is this a failure of American foreign policy to foresee what is happening so very close to our own shores and our own hemisphere?
I don't know that it's a failure of U.S. intelligence so much as a misunderstanding over the last two decades of developments in Latin American in the Western Hemisphere.
Haiti is just a symptom of a larger issue with Venezuela, with Nicaragua, Argentina for a time.
which seems to have pushed back somewhat with a new president.
But the hemisphere in general has been trending toward anti-democratic forces,
anti-free market forces.
And there's really two things that those forces,
I call it like there's an axis of agitators in the Western Hemisphere,
led by Venezuela.
And Venezuela is using really two primary.
things, drugs and people, both as weapons to destabilize democratic institutions. My fear is that Haiti
will be their target if it's not already in order to install somebody who is sympathetic to them
will work with them on drug trafficking and the weaponization of needy people and moving them
into the Dominican Republic. They've wanted the Dominican Republic for a long time, that is Venezuela.
And so all of this is a strategic miscalculation on the part of, I think,
Democratic forces in Latin America and the United States.
The United States has a long history of really missing much of what's going on in Latin America.
It gets ignored.
David, Grantham, we have to go to a break here.
We'll be right back.
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Folks, welcome back. We're getting an update on the developing situation in Haiti.
Staggering, really, when you look at it. We haven't gotten into the details. I'm talking to Dr.
David Grantham about what is happening there. So you said in our first segment in the beginning
of it that the capital, in other words, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. The.
center of population in Haiti is under control of, it sounds like, vicious criminal gangs.
Again, it's not clear to me, do some of the people in Haiti look to these gangs as their
friends? What is the end game of these criminal gangs? Why have they done this?
Yeah, with armed gangs, the street level is probably just enforcement, violence.
They control areas that they've had control over for a long time.
I think on the strategic level, the goal is to take control of the government,
or at least some part of it, to where the government has to acquiesce to some of its authority through these gangs.
Like I said, Henry can't return.
Barbecue, who is, like I said, getting the most media attention, he seems to have a grievance.
My audience is not aware of Haitian politics.
So Henry is the prime minister?
Who is Henry?
The president.
The president cannot return.
So he's in exile in Puerto Rico.
When did he leave?
He left to go on a trip to Africa to drum up support for an international peacekeeping force.
And since then, the situation has escalated so much that he's, he probably, if you wanted to, he could return.
But it's so delicate that he's choosing to wait.
The Dominican Republic will not let him in their country for risk of their own people and own situation by encouraging his presence.
So he's sitting in Puerto Rico.
And it would just seem to me that since the Dominican Republic is an American ally and so close,
close to our own shores that the United States ought to be called upon as a stabilizing force
or a peacekeeping force. What is the American government's position?
Yeah, the Biden administration is between Iraq and a hard place. I think the key, regardless of
what the United States decides to do, there has to be a clear plan and a clear exit strategy.
too often governments march into war hastily and leave at their leisure without any sense of planning.
And I think the key is regardless of, because this is going to spill over into the next administration, whoever that is.
So the plan has to be clearly defined with an exit strategy that says we're either going to go support.
I don't know.
Nobody mentioned war.
I'm just saying like an international peacekeeping force.
It just seems to me that, you know, I don't know why.
you're bringing up war exactly. It just seems to me that when a country falls into anarchy,
into this kind of a criminal anarchy, that it's in the best interests of those around to step in
and to make sure that doesn't happen. It would seem to me that the United States should already
be doing that or the UN would be doing that. Is there no, there's no effort to do that? People are just
sitting back and watching. Did this take everybody by surprise? I'm not clear.
Well, I don't use war as a parallel. I use it as a figure of speech to say governments tend to intervene, whether that's war, criminal activity, stabilizing forces. We tend to interhastily and exit at leisure without any sort of plan. And I think the plan has to be clearly defined with an exit strategy. What would be the intent? Is it international peacekeeping? To me, that's probably the best way to go. And that way, the United States is not shouldering the entire burden of any sort of,
UN peacekeeping. But I think with something of this nature, a peacekeeping force could be a good
option since there is a functioning government that needs to return to power, it's merely
stabilizing really more anarchy around criminal gains than anything else.
So where do you see this going right now? And actually, before you answer that,
right now what is happening? In other words, Tuesday, March 12th in Haiti, what, what
is happening right now is the head of this number one gang, the gang that's leading,
is that person looking to take over politically? Because people mention civil war. I don't know,
you can have a civil war if you just have thugs and gangs. It's not clear to me. Is this person
have political ambitions? Time will tell. He has political grievances he so claims.
I would imagine that power is his only goal, not political ambition as we understand it.
What that power looks like is really in his head and for him to carry out.
Okay, but I'm just, in other words, when you say power, so is this a coup?
Is this somebody who would put himself forward as a dictator over Haiti?
I mean, that seems where it would drift.
Correct.
That's what I, yes, that's what I mean by power. It's unadulterated power, enforcement of his desires, his wishes. There isn't any sort of democratic norm. It's not replacing the current leader in order to institute some sort of free elections or to stabilize the government and redirect it towards democratic norms.
Well, David, thank you for your insight. We'll have to have you back as this develops. It's just absolutely bizarre.
Folks, just want to remind you, we're doing a fundraiser with the Alliance Defending Freedom.
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Hey there, folks.
Welcome back.
In the next hour, I have just one of the most amazing stories of redemption that I've ever heard.
Joshua Broome will be my guest in Hour 2.
He was, this sounds unbelievable.
Sounds like I'm making it up.
He was maybe the leading.
male porn star in America,
got out of that business
and is a pastor.
It is so amazing to me
when you hear a story like this
and when you get the details
of the horror and the redemption.
It's unbelievable.
That's Joshua Broomie.
He has a new book out with a friend of ours.
And we're going to be talking to him in hour two.
But we're going to continue talking
news right now. I have a different Josh on. This is Josh Hammer. He's a senior editor at large with Newsweek
magazine. Josh, welcome back. Eric, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Well, listen, what you wrote
about is just something that I'm talking about all the time. And so if somebody writes an article
hitting on the themes that I'm talking about all the time, I thought maybe this would be a good person
to help us figure out what's happening. So what's the title of your
article and the thesis. Yes, my most recent column is liberal elites against democracy. It was actually
the second of two pieces that I wrote last week on this theme. It's a theme that I've covered
many times. I know that you have covered this theme as well, Eric, many times. It is one of the
great ironies of our time, isn't it? That the political party whose name purportedly comes from the
term democracy is actually profoundly anti-democratic and trying to subvert the
democratic process trying to subvert lowercase our Republicans self-governance these days.
And, you know, the most recent kicker for me to write these pieces, which we can obviously
talk about as much as you want, is this nine to zero unanimous Supreme Court decision in
the Trump versus Anderson case.
Well, actually, before, Josh, before we get into that, I just want to say to interrupt and
annotate, what makes this to my mind rise to the level of like demonic, it's one thing that
that the liberal elites, these globalist liberal elites are undermining genuine democracy,
undermining American-style self-government. They're doing that. But what makes it diabolical to me
is that as they are doing that, they are constantly accusing people like us of doing it,
people like Donald Trump of doing it. That's what makes it diabolical. The very thing that they
say they've got to save America for democracy by defeating Trump by any means necessary because
he's the greatest enemy of democracy. And in fact, exactly the opposite is true. That is,
it's a level of, you know, what we call gaslighting that we have never seen in American life.
You have people doing something really wicked, but making it that much more wicked by
accusing those who are fighting for genuine democracy, self-government, liberty,
accusing them of doing that. And you can imagine people in the middle or people who are not really
paying close attention hearing this propaganda from the very people that are doing it. So I just have to
say that because that's to me what is particularly horrifying. It's one thing for somebody to be the
enemy of what we all believe in, of American-style self-government and liberty on the founder's model.
That's one thing. That's bad. It's very bad. But the idea that they're accusing
the people who are the champions of genuine democracy and self-government and liberty as being the
enemies of it. That's what makes it sort of an unbearable horror to me. So forgive the long interruption,
but I just want to lay that out. So when you write about this in your articles in Newsweek,
you said that the most recent ruling, the nine zero ruling by the Supreme Court, is kind of at the heart of expressing this.
So go ahead.
Sure.
So there's many examples, and, you know, multiple of them involved the U.S. Supreme Court as well.
But this most recent example is positively jarring, Eric.
And, you know, frankly, I don't know that our side is, you know, our side being the broader sane side, the center right of America.
I'm not sure that our side, more broadly speaking, is quite as apoplectic as to the gas-liding operation that the leftist legal activists just tried to pull over our heads as they should be.
So to kind of step back a little bit here.
You had last summer two law professors, one of whom I actually had in law school for two courses,
we remain personally friendly to this day.
But two of them wrote this absolutely ludicrous law review article, basically arguing that Donald Trump was disqualified from the ballot under the so-called insurrection clause,
a very sparsely litigated provision buried deep in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
And it met instant immediate pushback, but you had many so-called legal eagles, such as the former Fourth Circuit judge,
J. Michael Ludig, who has had something of a late in-listment.
life conversion to being kind of a Johnny Come Lately, MSNBC left this.
Many of them were really pushing this full throttle.
And the Colorado Supreme Court legitimized it four to three in this split December ruling.
It was rejected nine to zero, Eric, by the United States Supreme Court.
Nine to zero.
They couldn't get Katanji Brown Jackson or Sonia Sotomayor to sign on to this theory.
What could possibly be more insane than having Katanji Brown Jackson?
being not left enough for you.
And you have these crazy activists on Twitter saying,
oh my God, Sonia Sotomayor has to resign.
She doesn't know what time it is.
She doesn't know the stakes of Donald Trump's subverting democracy.
You people are the ones who just try to subvert democracy, for God's sake,
by trying to remove a presidential candidate from the ballot.
The literal definition of democracy, as far as I learned back in grammar school, Eric,
is that the people decide,
or the people through their duly elected officials decide.
There is nothing more professional.
downly democratic, then literally voting for the officials that you want to.
I mean, I mean, you could even go backwards, Josh.
You could go all the way back to January 6th, this lie.
This, again, there's certain lies, there are lies, and then they're really wicked lies.
This January 6th, this narrative that's been pushed down the throats of the American people,
that there was something like an insurrection.
Oh, this was terrible.
This was terrible riot.
It was a threat democracy.
the more we look into it, the more we see that is absolute nonsense.
It was a setup.
Again, most Americans can't conceive that their government would create something like this.
None of us in our lifetimes has ever seen anything like this.
Really, in anyone's lifetime, in the history of the United States, we've never seen
entrenched power elites using the FBI, using, it's.
intelligence to do things that are themselves undermining of and looking to overthrow a genuinely
free country, to take the voice away from we, the people. It is unbelievably wicked. And then to use
what they did as a pretext to say, no, no, no, this was, you know, MAGA people trying to
take over the government to use that lie then to subvert democracy. It's difficult to
comprehend. We'll be right back lots more with Josh.
Hammer, Newsweek
Editor at Large. Don't go away.
Welcome back. I'm talking to Josh Hammer,
who's Newsweek Senior Editor
at Large. We're talking about
your thesis, this article
that you wrote Josh.
And you just said it.
How much more dramatically
clear could things be to have
these three liberal
justices,
Kagan and
and so it's Mayor and Brown side with the other six in this ruling saying that it is not constitutional
to remove Donald Trump from a ballot under this whatever, the pretext of that he's an insurrectionist.
I mean, that's kind of amazing to me. Say more about that.
Yeah, again, Eric, I genuinely don't.
think that our side is up in arms quite enough about what just happened. I agree. That's why I keep
interrupting. It's like I want people to get this. So keep going. So just to clarify,
you had some law professors last summer who first put out into the open this elaborate legal
theory buried deep in the bowels the 14th Amendment. It is a sparsely litigated provision.
The Supreme Court has really not discussed it since a 1869 case called Griffin's case. And
it's wrong for like five or six different legal reasons. Only one.
one of which is the fact that January 6 is obviously not a quote-unquote insurrection under the original meaning of that term.
There are at least four or five other reasons why it's wrong.
But this argument seeps out into the legal and by extension political discourse last summer.
And then you have some state actors in the various states, Colorado, the main secretary of state,
a judge in Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago is, who start to just put their, you know, their thumb on the scale and say,
hmm, you know what?
I can use my own authority vested in me by my local charter, state constitution, or whatever.
to just declare Donald Trump ineligible for the ballot.
And when the Colorado Supreme Court decided four to three
that Donald Trump was ineligible back in December,
you had all of the usual suspects, George Conway, Judge Ludig,
who I mentioned recently, Judge Ludick, Eric,
went on cable news and said that these Colorado Supreme Court's decision
in declaring Trump ineligible was masterful, brilliant,
and unassailable legal logic.
Yeah, it was so unassailable, in fact,
that, again, Sonia Sotomayor,
and Katanji Brown Jackson did not even go along for the ride.
Unfortunately, this is not the only instance of a Supreme Court-related episode, I think,
underscoring the fact that the left is so anti-democratic.
Eric, let's go back a little bit to the Dobbs' abortion opinion leak back in May 2020.
Is there anything more pro-democracy if we actually take that term seriously
than kicking back this contentious issue to the people away from unelected judges
who constitutionalize this fabricated, quote-unquote, right to murder your unborn child
under the guise of substantive due process? No, of course not. Dopp's was the most pro-democracy decision
imaginable. Nonetheless, what did the left do after that abortion opinion was leaked? Eric, they tried to
assassinate Brett Kavanaugh. I mean, someone literally flew from California to Maryland in the middle
of the night, showed up outside Kavanaugh's house in suburban Maryland in the D.C. suburbs
With a kit ready to gag the guy and try to kill him, they protested outside the justice's homes for
months trying to overturn them, subvert the process. Now you have Keith Oberman, the absolute
Lombag who's calling for the dissolution of the U.S. Supreme Court after this 9-0 opinion,
they've totally lost the narrative, they've lost the plot.
But for our purposes, it is important to understand, as you said a few minutes ago,
that they are the ones who are gaslighting you, that it is not our side.
It is not our side that is trying to subvert the democratic process,
that is trying to undermine Republican self-governance.
They're doing it willfully out in the open through the sprawling lawfare apparatus against Donald
Trump.
This Trump v. Anderson case is a key part of it.
but it's only part of it.
And hopefully the American people see it, Eric, for what it is.
Well, we've got more on this subject with you, Josh Hammer, coming up after the top of the hour.
And then after that, one of the most amazing redemption stories, folks.
Stick around for that.
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