The Young Turks - Beto O’Rourke, Alison Hartson, Trump Caravans, and Miami Teachers
Episode Date: April 4, 2018A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from April 3, 2018. For more go to http://www.tytnetwork.com/join. Hour 1: Segment 1 Rep Beto O’Rourke raises an astounding amount of money for his campaig...n, all from individuals. Alison Hartson is killing the competition with her fundraising efforts. Pres. Trump tweets caravans of immigrants are coming our way. Segment 2 Teacher’s in Miami are not able to afford rent, proposals of special housing near schools for the teachers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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All right, guys, we're back on a Young Turks.
Lots of news to cover for you guys.
I'll read tweets a little bit later in the program.
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All right, let's do the news.
Let's go over here.
All right, fantastic news for you guys about progressive candidates kicking ass throughout the country.
Beto O'Rourke is running against Ted Cruz.
Everybody thought, ah, it's a long shot.
That's Texas.
Ted Cruz came in basically second in 2016 to Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.
He's going to be said, and he's really well-known.
and he's got tremendous name recognition.
This Beto O'Rourke is really progressive.
How could he possibly win in Texas?
Well, here comes Beto.
Last quarter, O'Rourke raised $2.4 million from $55,000 individual contributors.
That's a stunning number.
First of all, it's really important for you to know he doesn't take corporate PAC money.
So that's all real people giving him money.
And 55,000 is a gigantic number.
number, but that was last quarter. Let's find out how he did this quarter that just ended.
Representative Beto O'Rourke, who's challenging Ted Cruz for his Texas Senate seat,
raised a staggering $6.7 million in the first quarter of 2017, his campaign announced.
Wow, that's a giant amount, because people can't wait to beat Ted Cruz, including me.
Oh, we're going to run that picture of sad Ted Cruz phone banking for Donald.
Trump. It's going to be one of the greatest days if Beto takes them down. By the way, we'll
have the link to donate to Beto O'Rourke in the description box below as well as all the candidates.
But wait, we're not done with Beto yet. Furthermore, the $6.7 million, as the Texas Tribune
explains, came from 141,000 contributions. Another record-busting number for O'Rourke.
Wow, 141,000 different contributions.
That's amazing, man.
Watch out Cruz, here comes Beto.
He has also outraised Cruz, according to Mediate, in three of the last four quarters.
And he's doing it with small money, no corporate pack money.
Now, he's not the only one doing a great job in raising money against a well-known incumbents.
Wisconsin Democrat Randy Bryce, otherwise known as Iron Stash, a long-shot challenger to Speaker Paul D. Ryan, according to roll call, raised $2.1 million in the most recent fundraising quarter, his campaign announced Monday.
In a congressional race, that is a gigantic amount.
Randy Bryce also doesn't take corporate pack money.
How do I know?
Because he's a Justice Democrat.
So these guys raising this amount of money from small donors is unheard of.
Bryce's bid for the first district has raised a total of $4.7,75 million.
So far, the $2.1 million raised in the most recent quarter is nearly double the 1.2 million he raised the previous quarter.
His campaign said his campaign also reported having $2.3 million in cash on hand.
Look, let me tell you why that's so important.
And now having talked to a lot of the just Democrats, seen their campaigns, money matters a tremendous amount,
not just for running inefficient, expensive TV ads, but also because you need staffers
who are going to organize your volunteers.
You need campaign offices in different parts of the state in a giant state like Texas.
If you're O'Rourke or if you're Alison Hartson in California, you need money to buy the voter rolls
that every candidate.
I mean, it goes on and on.
And even if you want to do digital ads, that takes a lot of money.
So keep it going, guys.
both of the candidates and the people giving them small dollar donations.
If we knocked out Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan, that would be unreal.
And I believe that it is eminently doable.
And so, by the way, we also have Randy Bryce's link down below in the description box on YouTube comment section on Facebook.
That's where we always have the link super easy to click.
Go and participate.
Now, let me turn to Alison Hartson running against Diane Feinstein in California.
Hartson, who's, this is the Mercury News, explains in California, who's never run for us.
office before and who's received almost no mainstream media coverage of her campaign,
received more money and small dollar donations than Feinstein and Deleone combined.
That's another person in the race.
She took in $158,707 in unitimized contributions, less than $200 over the last three months of 2017.
That's the last quarter compared to the 11,524 for Feinstein and just 31,427 for Deleone.
She beat them both combined.
That's the legendary Feinstein.
You know what Feinstein had to do?
She had to lend her own campaign $5 million.
Now, she can do that because she's enormously wealthy.
She has about $80 million, according to the best estimates.
Her husband's a billionaire.
So $5 million is no big deal for them.
They don't even bother taking volunteers on Feinstein's website.
Alison Hartson is, of course, powered by volunteers.
She's got now over 1,400 volunteers in the state of California, and that's why she's doing a great job.
We've got her link down below as well, and it's really easy to remember.
It's just as Democrats.com slash Allison.
So make sure you go and contribute.
As you can tell with the numbers there, she's doing great compared to her opponents, but she needs a lot more money to run in a gigantic state like California.
She needs to hire a lot more volunteer coordinators, field coordinators, and then, of course,
be able to run the tough hitting ads that she's been doing lately.
And again, one more thing overall here.
We've got momentum, and it's not just for Democrats.
It's for real progressives and uncorrupted progressives.
And I want to give better oracle lot of credit here.
Look, we don't often get credit.
And when I say we in this context, I do mean the just Democrats.
I am proud that I helped form that group, and that group said that they will not endorse
anyone, they will not back any candidate if they take corporate PAC money.
And now, as you've seen, a lot of people, including some fairly well-established Democrats
in the Senate, if I could put it that way, are also declaring that they're not taking
corporate PAC money.
I don't know that the just Democrats were the sole reason.
I, of course not, right?
But were they part of the reason, an important part of the reason is you have 52 candidates
in the Justice Democrats that said they will not take corporate PAC money, and now a lot of them
are doing well, five out of seven, one in the Texas primaries.
In fact, one of the ones that beat a just Democrat has just become a Justice Democrat,
Mary Wilson in Texas.
So six out of seven, in a sense, and they're uncorrupted and they're wonderful, and they have
all this momentum.
And I'm kind of proud that we helped to start the, we helped to start the,
No corporate pack money trend, right?
But there are some people who've been on that before us, and one of them is Beto O'Rourke.
So that's why I wanted to point that out and give him all the credit in the world.
He decided not take any corporate bank money even before the just Democrats were around,
even before it became fashionable in the Senate and other places.
So no wonder he's gotten the credibility that he has with all those donors and the small dollars that are coming in
I'm sure the volunteer is coming in.
Please, we'll have all the links down below.
Go to their websites, donate if you can, volunteer if you can,
Allisonhearsen.com slash now to volunteer for Allison in California.
Or, by the way, you could help these guys by making calls no matter where you are.
You don't have to be in Wisconsin to defeat Paul Ryan.
You don't have to be in Texas to defeat Ted Cruz.
You don't have to be in California to have a real progressive represent the really blue state of California like Allison Hartson.
So wonderful news, but it's on you guys to finish this.
If we get all this way and then we don't win these elections, well, of course, then we didn't, we didn't accomplish our goal.
We've got to finish him.
Let's go do that together.
Okay, now that's good news.
Now, let me give you back to the madness now, the news of the day, okay?
So Donald Trump often copies Fox News.
We know this.
He watches them and then Paris what they say.
In fact, it just happened a day ago.
He put out this tweet, Honduras, Mexico, and many other countries at the U.S. is very generous to,
sends many of their people to our country through our weak immigration policies.
Caravans are heading here.
Must pass tough laws and build a wall.
Democrats allow open borders, drugs, and crime.
Now, when I saw that tweet, I was like, what in the world is he talking about?
What caravan is heading over from Honduras to Mexico to here?
Why would people sneaking in do a caravan?
That makes no sense.
And I've never seen that report in anywhere.
It turns out it was reported one place.
You guys want to see where?
Let's put this up.
Unsurprisingly, yes, there it is on Fox News.
Caravan of illegal immigrants headed to the U.S.
Totally made up.
And Donald Trump, of course, sees it on Fox and Friends and runs with it.
Well, today, another example.
So before I get to Trump, let me show you what Tucker Carlson said last night on Fox News.
Now listen carefully.
Right. So 60,000 Americans died last year from drug ODs.
And most of those drugs came from Mexico.
So they're a hostile country.
They're abetting the movement of these people here.
Would it be possible to send the military to our border?
I mean, why is this not, honestly, why is this not a hostile act against our country?
All right, two things there.
First of all, 60,000 people died from opioid abuse.
And he says, all came from Mexico or the majority came from Mexico.
No, it didn't.
Those opioids are mostly legal in America.
Yes, there's heroin as well, but actually more people die from legal opioids like OxyContin than they do from the illegal ones.
I'm pretty sure Purdue Pharma and all the other giant pharmaceutical companies are not based in Mexico.
They're based right here in America.
but he'd like to deceive you and get you to hate immigrants that are coming into the country
when they're not really to cause the problem.
But the interesting part there was, he said we should deploy the military to the border.
Now, when I saw that online yesterday, I thought, hmm, I haven't seen that one before.
TikTok, let's see how long it takes for Trump to say it.
And he does not disappoint. Listen to Trump today.
So I told Mexico, and I respect what they did.
I said, look, your laws are very powerful.
Your laws are very strong.
We have very bad laws for our border.
And we are going to be doing some things.
I've been speaking with General Mattis.
We're going to be doing things military.
Until we can have a wall in proper security, we're going to be guarding our border with the military.
He watches it on Fox, and then he repeats it.
He doesn't bother asking anyone, hey, is this a good policy idea?
What would be the implications?
Is it really a smart idea to post-military?
in their actual military role within the United States
on the border? Have we done that before? What were the consequences? Oh, we've never
done that before? Why haven't we done that before? Any of these type of conversations,
how much would it cost? And on and on and on. Nope. I saw it on Tucker Carlson. Must be a good
idea. I told my defense secretary, let's get the military on the board. Now everybody's
freaking out that the military is going to go to the border. What are they going to do? Shoot
the undocumented immigrants coming across? Shoot random Mexicans. What the hell are they going to do down there?
It doesn't matter to hear it on Fox.
Our president is a moron.
He watches television and then goes, well, let's do that.
Whatever Tucker Carlson said.
Okay.
Speaking of which, one more statement about the caravans again from today.
Watch.
But I told Mexico very strongly, you're going to have to do something about these caravans that are coming up.
And I just noticed that the caravan now, which is toward the middle of Mexico, coming up from Honduras,
is breaking up very rapidly.
That's because Mexico has very strong immigration laws, as we should have.
We should have those laws.
We don't have.
We have immigration laws that are laughed at by everybody.
Break down the stupid on that one.
So there's this mythical caravan that came from Honduras into Mexico.
He said in that comment, you could rewind and watch, that was in the middle of Mexico,
but is now breaking apart.
But that's because Mexico is really tough immigration laws.
then why are they in the middle of Mexico?
Would Mexico have stopped them before they entered,
especially if they were a giant caravan?
They're like, hello everybody, we're an undocumented immigrants,
we formed a caravan.
Why would Mexico, who you just claimed has very tough laws,
allow them into the country?
He claims that they're bringing up in the middle of Mexico
because there's no caravan.
It was made up by Fox News.
So nobody can see it on a satellite,
nobody can report on it, because it doesn't exist.
So he has to say,
Mexico is very tough with them.
In the middle of the country,
they decided they weren't going to let them in,
and they're breaking them apart now.
That's what we should learn from.
Fox News is running the country.
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that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives,
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That's the insanity we live in today.
What is the next Fox News anchor going to say and what worldwide implications is it going to have?
Brace for impact.
Okay, I got to take a break here.
When we come back, speaking of Fox News, oh my God, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse.
Look, the right wing complains about the word racism, I'm going to prove it to you guys when we come back.
You're right in the middle of this podcast.
We've got another great segment coming up for you.
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All right, back on my young Turks.
All right, yes, we are indeed back.
Jank and Anna with you.
Mike has a great tweet.
The right wing is willing to create a police state to protect the right.
They purport is intended to prevent the development of a police state.
That's such a great tweet.
Yes.
Mike, you get a t-shirt.
If you want to do the gun control, one that we have.
But anyway, shop t-y-t.com.
Thank you, Mike.
That's a great, great point.
Dude Foxy says, I don't understand how these shootings keep happening with a surplus of thoughts and prayers we have in this country.
That's a good point.
You know what?
That's another good tweet, another t-shirt.
I think it's the atheist's fault.
I mean, we're just not praying enough.
And unfortunately, that's what's leaving.
to these mass shooting shank.
Apparently.
All right, members of the day are Mike Conwell and Mary Kay Cyril.
We've got a great post game for you guys today.
And you're going to talk about.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Toastmasters.
What is it?
I experienced it last night.
It was amazing.
You got a family member.
I think I have a family member in it.
Really?
Oh, my God.
This is exciting.
Okay, very, very exciting.
And then we got to also do the story of, I took on a 14,
year-year-old girl in swimming and a 10-year-old boy in a sprint, exciting drama, we'll tell you
what happened. TYTNetwork.com slash join. Obviously, as you can tell in the postgames, we talk a little
bit more about our personal lives, a little bit more relaxed and fun going with all the serious
stories out there. TYT Network.com slash join to become a member. All right, what's next,
Anna? Last week, ABC News broke a story regarding Scott Pruitt, who is the EPA chief, and the fact that
He had been renting a condo in a prime location in D.C. near Capitol Hill for a very small amount of money.
But it wasn't disclosed how much he was paying for that condo.
Now, a little digging indicated that he actually was only spending $50 a day for this two-bedroom condo.
And the person who had rented that condo to him was working for a lobbying company known as Williams and
Jensen, okay? In fact, she is a big part of that lobbying firm, and they lobby specifically
for oil companies and companies that extract natural gas. And so obviously, there's a little bit
of a conflict of interest there, and now we have a little bit more detail into what's going
on. First, the ethical concerns. Apparently, the EPA investigated this and found that there
are no ethical concerns. Let me give you the details. Oh, what a coincidence.
A memo signed by Kevin Minoli contends that Scott Pruitt's $50 a night rental payments constitute a fair market rate.
No, they don't.
And I'll tell you why in just a minute.
The memo was dated March 30th, the day after ABC News first reported, Pruitt lived last year in a condo co-owned by the wife of Stephen Hart, a registered lobbyist whose firm pushed the EPA to relax pollution regulations.
Okay. Now, by the way, Scott Pruitt not only met with these lobbyists, he immediately took action.
And this is all happening while he's staying at this condo for $50 a night.
By the way, they didn't charge him for the nights that he wasn't in the condo.
So they made a special exception for him and didn't even charge him for the nights that he didn't stay there.
But they did charge him $50 a night when he did stay there.
Now, Pruitt has moved to scrap, gut, or replace numerous environmental regulations.
opposed by the industry while boosting the continued burning of fossil fuels.
And by the way, this lobbying firm specifically worked for an energy company,
the only energy company in the United States that produces liquefied natural gas.
Okay.
Now, what did Pruitt do in regard to liquefied natural gas?
In October, the EPA announced that it would rewrite the Clean Power Plan,
the Obama era regulation that sought to limit planet warming carbon emissions from coal fire power plants,
like those operated by OGE, another company represented by this lobbying firm,
which paid Hart's firm $400,000 in lobbying fees in 2017.
Also, Pruitt traveled all the way to Morocco and talked to some of the leaders there to convince them to import
liquefied natural gas from the United States.
Wow, specifically liquefied natural gas.
Another amazing coincidence.
Look, what I love about this story is that the negative news coverage about Pruitt is piling on.
And it appears that Kelly and Trump have been in talks with him.
Trump has said that he has Pruitt's back, which means Pruitt is probably going to get fired soon.
That's my speculation.
But I believe that we have some history to prove why I would have that kind of speculation.
Now, let me give you a few more details.
Is that townhouse or that condo, was it being rented to him for market value?
No, it was not.
According to ABC, I'm sorry, the Associated Press, the townhome on a town home on the same block as the one leased by Pruitt was advertised for rent on Monday for $3,750 a month.
Another two-bedroom unit on the next block was advertised as available for $4,740 a month.
Based on how Pruitt was able to pay for the condo that he was staying in, he was paying an average of $1,000 a month.
So no, he was not paying market value.
There's a clear conflict of interest here, and it doesn't appear that the media is letting this go, which I think is a good thing.
One of my favorite parts of the story is when they say, no, that's okay, you don't have to pay for the nights you're not there.
You guys ever rent a place?
Did they ever tell you, oh, no, but if you're away, that's okay, you don't have to pay the rent on those days.
It's insane, yeah.
And so on the day that he went to go give a speech in favor of liquefine natural gas in Morocco, why?
You're the head of our EPA.
What are you even doing in Morocco?
I mean, if you were there for an environmental conference and figuring out how to protect the environment better, okay.
But you're there to basically be a spokesperson for the company that is letting you have this condo at a ridiculously low rate.
And on that night, they make sure that you don't pay the 50 bucks because you're away in Morocco.
That's right. It's insane.
So, again, there are issues not only with the conflict of interest here, but also with the fact that Pruitt,
just secured, he took advantage of a loophole in the federal government to secure raises
for two of his employees within the EPA, and he increased their salaries to the tune of
tens of thousands of dollars. So there are people in the White House who are not too happy
about that. Also, Politico reported that Pruitt has been scheming to take Jeff Sessions
place as attorney general. And the reason why I tell you that is because it's relevant to
how I think the media obtained information about Pruitt's condo situation.
Because that's not public information.
This is a person, the lobbyist, right?
They own the condo.
So they don't have to make that information public.
They don't have to publicize how much they're renting it out for.
Someone within the White House, this is again, my speculation, knew about Pruitt's living
situation, didn't like what Pruitt was up to by being maybe overly ambitious and maybe
leaked it to the press. Little leaky leak. Yeah, I mean, look, they're running a reality show over there.
So it might be time for Pruitt to get voted off the island. And that's what they do on shows like
Survivor or Prentices, et cetera, a lot of back dealing. And Trump loves it. He was the host of a
reality show just like this. So that's why this is always encouraged. And as Pruitt got a little
too ambitious all of a sudden
a little shib, shib, shib.
Now before they knew about the
$1,000 condo that should have been
$3,700 to $4,700
they didn't care, they didn't mind.
Pruits corruption and destruction
of the EPA, that's what they hired
them for. I don't have any problem
with that. It's corruption 101
in the Trump White House.
I mean, look at what
the firm who's corrupting him
wanted him to do. They wanted them to relax
pollution regulations. Why
would they want them to do that? Probably because they want to pollute. That's why you don't
want pollution regulations, because you'd like to pollute. That's right. So, and they put it
into the water and the air, and that affects us. But they privatize the profits. They socialize
the costs. We all bear the costs, but not Pruitt. He gets a great apartment at a cheap rate,
but if you're going after another Trump guy, what's the biggest problem in America?
You can rip off poor people, middle class people all day long, but you touch anybody else.
else in power, then you're in trouble.
That's right. And so it looks like
Pruitt made that mistake. Got a little
ahead of himself. Let's see how this winds
up. And I want to leave you with
a quote from Trump, who was
asked by reporters about this
Pruitt situation. And here
is his supportive quote
toward Pruitt. I hope
he's going to be great.
Oh, he's done. Okay, next
week on Apprentice,
see you later. Pruitt gets a rose or doesn't get one
or however it works.
Oh, I can't stand, Pruitt, so this is great.
It's not only great for me and my feelings, it's great for the environment.
He is incredibly damaging.
Obviously, he'll probably be replaced with someone just as terrible when it comes to environmental issues,
but he's getting what's coming to him.
Let's hope.
Yes.
All right, moving on.
The DEA has arrested dozens of individuals who they believe,
are involved in the over-prescription of painkillers and opioids.
Now, there have been 28 people arrested.
None of them are people working in the pharmaceutical companies.
All of them are either pharmacists or distributors.
So let me give you the details on that.
The Drug Enforcement Administration arrested 28 prescribers and pharmacists
and revoked the licenses of 147 people who handle controlled substances.
Now, when it comes to the revoking of those licenses, it's basically when the DEA has some evidence
indicating that they're doing something unlawful, but they could get their licenses back
if they prove that they didn't act in any unlawful way.
Now, it did not appear that the effort targeted any of the drug distributors or manufacturers
that have been blamed for allowing hundreds of millions of opioid painkillers to pour out
of the legitimate supply chain into the black market over the past 15 years.
No, really?
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the distributors, because that's actually an important
part of this story.
Last year, the Washington Post did a fantastic job reporting about how members of Congress
aggressively pushed for and successfully passed legislation that stripped the DEA of its
ability to go after these distributors.
Previously, the DEA had the ability to enforce the law and see whether or not these distributors were selling or distributing a huge amount of opioids or narcotics to these pharmacies.
But under this new law, which again passed in 2016, they were stripped of the ability to do that.
And so it was referred to, I don't have it in front of me, I apologize.
guys. But Jeff Sessions, to his credit, is working pretty aggressively to overturn that law
because he wants to give the DEA its power back to go after these distributors. Now let's
talk about the pharmaceutical companies. Of course, the pharmaceutical companies haven't been targeted.
I mean, there's no excuse when it comes to that. No one in the Trump administration is going
after Big Pharma. And Big Pharma is the root of the problem. So I'll give them a little bit
of a pass when it comes to the distributors, but no pass at all when it comes to the
pharmaceutical companies.
Yeah.
So I don't mind going after doctors that are over prescribing the medicine and the pharmacists,
et cetera.
And that's a lot more logical than what Trump and Tucker Carlson, et cetera, have been
saying on Fox News about how it's Mexico.
What?
Tucker Carlson just said we had 60,000 opioid deaths just last night on the program,
he said, because of the Mexicans.
No.
It has nothing to do with Mexico.
What are you talking about? There's no Mexicans running pharmaceutical companies.
So the opioids are not brought in from outside the country.
They're made here.
And to the point Anna was making about distributors, you know, this was sort of a story we did
a little while back, so I don't know the exact numbers in front of me, but I believe
they brought in about 20 million pills into a West Virginia town of about 3,000 people.
So did they know the distributors, hey, I wonder if these 3,000 people?
people in this town can really handle 20 million pills in a matter of a couple of years.
And of course they knew what they were doing.
Of course they're culpable in that sense.
And they knew that it was causing addiction.
And they profited off of it.
But when it comes to the head honchos, the ones that are actually making the drugs,
well, they're untouchable.
Why?
Number one donors to politicians in the country.
more than oil companies, more than the bankers, more than anyone else, the drug companies.
And we have an open auction in our country, as you know, you can just buy any politician.
It's private financing.
And so they just buy them.
And so they go get out of jail free card.
We know you're the ones who are doing it, but we'll blame Mexico.
And from time to time, we'll go after the doctors or the pharmacists, and maybe we'll get to the distributors later.
But you guys are untouchable.
Right, and I just wanted to make sure you guys had the info about the law that was passed in 2016 that protected these distributors.
First of all, it was co-authored by Representative Tom Marino, who's a Republican, Senator Orrin Hatch, who's a Republican.
They aggressively pushed for it, and it was ironically named the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016.
Of course it was.
Right, and by the way, Mitch McConnell voted in favor of it.
And later, after that Washington Post 60 Minutes story broke, he was asked about it, and he was shocked.
He said that he didn't realize that the legislation had this type of wording.
It was a three-page bill, and he didn't read it.
He didn't read it.
Of course he didn't read it.
And they keep saying how the Democrats didn't read Affordable Care Act, a bunch of liars.
None of them read any of the bills.
But much more importantly, I am greatly amused by the idea of Mitch McConnell coming in here.
There's gambling in this establishment.
I am just shocked.
You mean to tell me that my Republican Party has been being bribed legally through private financing of elections for all these years?
And the pharmaceutical companies are number one donors?
Well, I am shocked to find that out.
Well, Mitch, I'm sure you are.
But to the rest of us, we think, Mitch, please.
All right, we've got to take one more break.
We'll be right back.
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