President Trump gears up for his Supreme Court pick, Democrats panic, and Jim Jordan finds himself under the gun.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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So it was a really nice weekend.
Got to spend it with my kids.
And then we come back.
And today is the glorious day.
President Trump about to pick a successor to Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.
We're going to get into all of that.
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Alrighty, so today's the day, guys.
President Trump is going to make his big pick tonight, 9 p.m.
Eastern.
Who gets the rose?
Who gets to go to the honeymoon suite with President Trump?
You have to love how President Trump trots this stuff out.
I do love this sort of showmanship from President Trump.
I enjoyed it when he did it with Justice Gorsuch.
I'm enjoying it even more this time because the wails and gnashing of teeth that can be heard in the background are just glorious to behold.
We'll get into some of those wails and gnashing of teeth in just a second.
President Trump tweeted out, looking forward to announcing my final decision on the U.S. Supreme Court justice at 9 p.m. Eastern tomorrow night at the White House.
An exceptional person will be chosen.
And the best part of this is obviously the bathing suit competition.
That's the part I'm looking forward to the most.
Although I have to say that I don't think that the people he's considering among may chart high on that aspect.
But here are basically, he's down according to everyone to four picks.
And I'm going to go through sort of the criticisms, the major flaws in the four picks.
Because we can assume that virtually any of these people are going to be better than Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Although one of them I have my serious doubts about.
So there are four people that he is down to at this point.
One is the sort of frontrunner, the longtime frontrunner, which suggests that he's not going to win, right?
Because in every reality TV show, there's the guy who you think is going to win, and then there's the guy who's actually going to win.
And they edit it in the back room to make it look like the guy who is going to, who actually loses, is the guy who's about to win.
So that guy is D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
He's the guy who all along we've been saying, he's the one who's going to win.
He's the one who's being pushed hardest by Leonard Leo over at the Federalist Society.
He's the one who's been pushed hardest by Team Bush.
He's a longtime Bush lawyer.
He was involved in the DOJ during the Ken Starr hearings in 1999, 2000.
Made very close with a lot of members of the Bush team.
He was very instrumental in pushing Chief Justice Roberts to the Supreme Court, which I think is a demerit for him.
And then there's Third Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Thomas Hardiman.
He's the one who's friends with Trump's sister, so Trump knows him a little bit.
Then there's Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
And then there's Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Raymond Kethledge.
So let's go through the criticisms of each one of these people so that you know Who's the best and who's the worst?
Now, I will give you my preliminary ranking of these people.
If I had to pick from these four, I would pick Barrett first, and then Kethledge, and then Kavanaugh, and then finally Hardeman.
I think Hardeman is by far the weakest.
I think that Kavanaugh is the second weakest, although not supremely weak.
I think that Kethledge is pretty good, and I think Barrett should be pretty stellar.
So, what are their major flaws?
What are the major critiques?
Of these four candidates.
So let's start with Brett Kavanaugh, who's the purported frontrunner.
So Kavanaugh, again, has a heavy base of support among Bush staffers because he was a Republican operative for a long time before he became this very brilliant judge on the D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals.
So his critics essentially make three claims, joined by maybe a fourth.
So first, they argue that in a case called Seven Sky, he went out of his way to avoid jurisdiction over Obamacare.
So Obamacare was sued, the federal government was sued over Obamacare, the case was that Obamacare was unconstitutional, and Kavanaugh looked at that case, and what he said is, I don't have jurisdiction to decide this case, because this case is adjudicated under something called the Anti-Injunction Act.
The Anti-Injunction Act holds that a tax cannot actually be adjudicated by the D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals.
So what he said is that Obamacare was not a fine, that when the government threatened to fine you if you didn't buy Obamacare, that was not a fine, that was a tax.
He was the first person to actually articulate that position, and that position ended up being used by Chief Justice John Roberts in, of course, his famously awful decision in which he suggested that Obamacare was constitutional, that Congress could create a tax, but they couldn't create a specific fine forcing you to buy things.
So that is case number one.
So Kavanaugh's defenders will say that this is an example of Kavanaugh using judicial restraint.
Now, judicial restraint is a term that's very often used by people who don't know what they are talking about when it comes to law.
So there are a lot of folks who will use two terms, judicial activism and judicial restraint, and they will contrast these two things.
A judicial activist is a person who Well, that doesn't answer the question of where the judge should be involved and where the judge should not be involved.
who exercises judicial restraint is a judge who does his best not to rule on cases because he believes that most things ought to be left to the legislature.
Well that doesn't answer the question of where the judge should be involved and where the judge should not be involved because of course if you were to take these two terms to the logical extreme and any attempt to overrule any statute at all would amount to judicial activism and any attempt to allow the legislature to go forward on any basis at all would amount to judicial restraint.
Nobody actually believes in total judicial activism or total judicial restraint.
The question is, what standard do you use when you are overruling a particular case?
So I don't like the terms judicial activism and judicial restraint.
I'm more interested in judicial philosophy.
Why would you overrule a case?
Why would you not overrule a particular law?
That's the real question here.
So when Kavanaugh's defenders say, well, he was exercising judicial restraint, the question is, well, was he right to do so?
In that case, I do not think that he was right to do so.
OK, second area of criticism about Brett Kavanaugh.
Critics argue that in a case called Priests for Life, Kavanaugh expressed that the government had a compelling government interest in providing contraceptive coverage.
So in Priests for Life, basically, my understanding is that there was a religious group that was not providing contraceptive coverage to some employee, and Kavanaugh, in his ruling, he dissented from the main ruling, in his dissent, he acknowledged that the government had a compelling government interest in providing contraceptive coverage.
Now, there's no reason to acknowledge that, because the government does not, in fact, have a compelling government interest.
In mandating contraceptive coverage.
Why exactly is it in the government's interest to mandate that my insurance program covers an IUD?
What does the government have to do with that?
Why isn't that just about me and my employer?
But Kavanaugh sort of accepted that premise.
Kavanaugh's fans say that he was just reflecting the Supreme Court holding in Hobby Lobby.
I think that's pretty dubious.
Okay, third, critics say that in a case called Garza, Kavanaugh didn't join a dissent that criticized Roe v. Wade.
This is a case where an illegal immigrant, 17-year-old, came to the United States, she wanted an abortion, and she was not given one by the government.
The government said, well, you haven't been released, you haven't been remanded into the custody of a relative yet, and we do not have the obligation to make sure you get over to an abortion provider to make sure you get that abortion.
So Kavanaugh didn't vote that the woman should be able to get an abortion, but in that case, he did not actually criticize Roe v. Wade.
Instead, what he said is that the government might have some sort of interest in granting her an abortion under Roe v. Wade, but that her status as an illegal immigrant trumped all of that.
Well, the problem with that, of course, is that Roe v. Wade is a badly decided case, and there was another dissent that criticized Roe v. Wade.
Finally, Kavanaugh granted standing to an atheist suing the government over the Pledge of Allegiance.
That's always sort of a weird thing.
So there's something in law called standing.
Standing means that you can't sue unless you have actually been damaged by something.
So if I am damaged by you, right?
Let's say that Jess hits me with her car.
I now have standing to sue her because now I have been damaged by Jess's car.
However, if Jess hits Mathis with her car, I can't sue Jess.
First of all, why would I?
But second of all, if Jess hits Mathis with her car, I'm not involved in that case.
I don't have standing to sue.
Okay, well, the same thing holds true with regard to federal litigation.
So, you don't have standing to sue just because a law affects you.
Right?
The law has to specifically target you.
It has to affect you in a way that violates the law.
Well, there's a case in which an atheist sued the government over the Pledge of Allegiance.
There's no standing.
There's no actual damages shown by the person who heard of the Pledge of Allegiance but was not forced to stand for it.
If you were forced to stand or put your hand over your heart for the Pledge of Allegiance, then you'd have standing.
In this case, the atheist did not have standing, but Kavanaugh granted standing anyway.
So that's another criticism of Kavanaugh.
So those are the criticisms of Kavanaugh.
Okay, now, Thomas Hardiman.
So there are a lot more criticisms of Hardiman.
So Hardiman was the runner-up to now-Justice Gorsuch just last year.
As you recall, I was actually very critical of Hardiman.
I thought that Gorsuch would be a much better pick, and thank God, President Trump made the right call on that.
There are a bunch of areas in which he is too soft.
First, there was a case called Prowl, in which Hardiman found that a homosexual, quote-unquote, effeminate man, that was the description in the case, could be discriminated against under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act based on gender stereotyping, despite the fact that this does not reflect the text of Title VII.
So, under Title VII, I can't discriminate against Jess because she's a woman.
I can't do that.
But, if Jess were a lesbian, then I could, and I don't know, but I assume not, she has a boyfriend.
In any case, right Jess?
I don't wanna, like, not that there's anything wrong with that, folks, but Jess is straight.
Okay, in any case, if...
Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, I can actually, under Title VII, discriminate against homosexuals.
Now, there are state laws that prevent, in many cases, discriminating against homosexuals, but Title VII doesn't cover sexual orientation.
It only says I can't discriminate against Jess because she's a woman, and I can't discriminate against Mathis because he's a man.
I can discriminate, however, on the basis of sexual orientation.
Well, in this case, a gay man sued his employer, saying he was being discriminated against not because he was gay, but because he was an effeminate man.
Okay, and Judge Hardiman found that he expanded Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to cover appearance as an effeminate man in gender stereotyping, which is a pretty radical redefinition of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
So there's that.
Second, in NAACP versus North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue, Judge Hardiman ruled to strike down a fire department's residency requirement based on a finding of disparate impact.
So this has always been a weird aspect of the Civil Rights Act, is the disparate impact test.
Virtually every law has a disparate impact.
Any law that you pass has a disparate impact.
If I pass a law against thievery, against stealing, then people who are kleptomaniacs are disproportionately impacted.
There's a disparate impact on kleptomaniacs.
If, for example, I were to pass a law that said that You're not allowed to buy Manischewitz wine for whatever reason.
You decide that Manischewitz wine is damaging to the psyche because it tastes like cough syrup, and therefore you ban the sale of Manischewitz wine.
First of all, unclear that's constitutional, but let's say that it's a perfectly legal law.
It would have a disparate impact because most of the people who are drinking Manischewitz are old Jews, right?
So that would have a disparate impact.
Does that mean that the law is per se illegal?
Not really.
You have to show that there is intent behind the law.
You have to show that the law was designed to have disparate impact, not that the law just had disparate impact.
Well, in this case, there was a residency requirement for the fire department, and Hardiman said, well, just because there's a residency requirement, that means that not enough black people are getting in, and that means that there's disparate impact.
That means the law is discriminatory.
That's a little bit dicey.
Okay.
I'm going to get to the other claims against Hardiman in just a second.
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Okay, so back to Thomas Hardiman, who is, again, one of the possibilities for President Trump.
We've already talked about a couple of the claims against him.
Third, in a case called Valdiviezo-Goldemez, Hardiman ruled that an illegal immigrant could claim asylum based on targeting by MS-13 in his home country.
Now, asylum usually means that the government has to be targeting you or that the government is going out of its way not to protect you from criminals.
So let's say you're targeted by MS-13, you go to the government, you say, I'm being targeted by MS-13, and the government laughs in your face and says, I hope MS-13 gets you.
Right, then you might be able to claim asylum in the United States.
But just because you're targeted by a criminal somewhere else on the planet does not mean you get asylum in the United States.
Hardiman, however, ruled...
Fourth, Hardiman is not exactly a critic of so-called Chevron deference.
Chevron deference is, there's a very famous case called Chevron, in which the Supreme Court held that when an administrative agency decides that, basically, let's say that you have a fight with the EPA, it's an administrative agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, and they've ruled that a pond, your koi pond on your property, is actually a protected federal wetland, and therefore, you cannot actually have those koi in there, they're going to clean out the koi.
Okay, so you go to the EPA, and you say, that's not right, and they send you to an administrative court, and then the court rules in favor of the EPA.
So you sue, and you send it to the judiciary.
Well, normally, the judiciary would be able to look at that case de novo, meaning they'd actually be able to look at that case and say, well, is this right, or is this wrong?
But, according to Chevron, administrative agencies deserve deference.
So you ought to allow the EPA to decide its own fate.
Okay, Chevron deference is really stupid, but Hardiman has not been a critic of Chevron deference.
Instead, he's basically stood up for it.
Critics have charged that Hardiman is not textualist enough, that he hasn't focused enough on the words of the Constitution or the law.
Instead, he focuses on legislative history.
And finally, Hardiman's critics point to the fact that he's very close with Trump's liberal sister, who sits on the circuit court, and his wife is a prominent Democrat.
Okay, so Hardiman is by far the weakest of these candidates.
Okay, the other two are Barrett and Kethledge.
So, Amy Coney Barrett, who again sits on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, she There's not a lot to criticize her about because her record isn't very long.
She only joined the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals last year, so she hasn't been there for very long.
Otherwise, she's very originalist from her writing.
She's very textualist.
She obviously doesn't like Roe v. Wade very much.
She obviously is not a fan of government interventionism, so she's my first pick.
And then there's Judge Raymond Kethledge.
There are a bunch of people on the right who have been criticizing Kethledge, saying that Kethledge is not anti-illegal immigration enough.
It's basically groundless.
I think that groups like Breitbart that have been targeting Kethledge on behalf of Kavanaugh, I think they're fibbing.
I think they are manipulating the actual case law.
So, for example, there's a case like Van Nguyen, in which Kethledge ruled that a particular legal immigrant Barrett, Kethledge, Kavanaugh, Hardiman.
We'll have to see what happens tonight.
not a felon, even though he had committed grand theft auto.
That's not because Kethledge wanted the illegal immigrant in the country.
That's because the statute didn't define grand theft auto as a violent felony under the statute.
So Kethledge is just a good judge.
So in order of my ranking, Barrett, Kethledge, Kavanaugh, Hardiman, we'll have to see what happens tonight.
Okay.
Meanwhile, folks on the left are losing it because they think this is the end of the world.
And they've demonstrated, full scale, how radical they are when it comes to the Supreme Court.
They believe the Supreme Court exists merely to uphold their policy priorities.
I believe the Supreme Court exists mainly to uphold the Constitution.
The left will never discuss the Constitution.
The left will immediately discuss Roe.
If you ask anybody on the left, what do you want out of a Supreme Court justice?
That person on the left will never say, I want them to uphold the words of the Constitution.
Never.
They will never say that.
Instead, what they will say is, I want that justice to uphold Roe v. Wade.
Roe v. Wade is not in the Constitution.
Roe v. Wade is not law.
Roe v. Wade is a judicial decision.
That judicial decision is wrong, and it's stupid, and it's badly argued, and it's badly written.
It's wrong on virtually every score, but this just demonstrates what the left thinks the judiciary is there to do, which is impose their policy preferences from above.
So the NARAL president, the National Abortion Rights Action League, they changed their name because they didn't like to have the name abortion in there, so they just called themselves NARAL now as though it has no meaning.
The NARAL president, Elise Hogue, she was on Fox News Sunday, and she says that from any judge who is asked to be on the Supreme Court, we want an affirmative declaration that Roe v. Wade is going to be upheld.
We need an affirmative declaration, right?
We need, and I think even Susan Collins said this when she said she needs to see a nominee demonstrate their commitment to upholding Roe vs. Wade and keeping abortion legal.
What the hell does that have to do with the Constitution?
The answer is nothing.
The left doesn't care about the Constitution.
However, the left believes that the Constitution is merely an impediment to their policy goals.
And it is amazing to me that people on the right will say, we don't need a litmus test for judges.
We shouldn't have a litmus test for judges.
No, I think we should have a litmus test.
I think the litmus test on the right should be, will you vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?
Like, if we were actually honest about this stuff, we would just ask judges this stuff, and judges would answer honestly.
But we can't do that anymore ever since Justice Bork.
So instead, we have stealth candidates where we ask them about Roe v. Wade, and they say, well, I'd have to see the facts of the case in front of me.
Roe v. Wade obviously is binding precedent.
They're all going to say the same thing, because precedent is a fudge word.
When people say they're going to abide by precedent, what they really mean is, I'm going to abide by the cases that are on the books until I don't want them to be on the books anymore.
So at one point, Bowers v. Hardwick, which said that states could ban sodomy, that was on the books.
And then that was overturned.
That was overturned by the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas.
At one point, Plessy v. Ferguson, which said segregation was legal, that was overturned.
That was on the books for 58 years in the United States before it was overturned.
So, you know, when people suggest that precedent is the be-all end-all, what they really mean is, cases I like I want upheld, and cases I don't like I want overturned.
Constitutional interpretation, at least on hot-button issues like abortion, is actually not all that difficult.
People deliberately obscure the questions so they can get to their preferred policy recommendations.
Now, the left has moved extraordinarily radical on abortion.
They now see abortion not just as something they want protected, but as a sacrament itself.
And they're proving how foolish they are every single day.
So there was a bizarre demonstration yesterday.
We're so concerned with owning the cons and owning the libs these days that people are willing to do the stupidest possible things.
So a bunch of women decided to go out and dress themselves in Handmaid's Tale's outfits because they went and they got like red habits.
They got like red robes and the white potato chip hats and all the rest of this.
And they're wandering around Arizona in the 110 degree weather.
In order to own the cons or something.
So here they were walking around and jabbering about Roe v. Wade.
You can see them here saying, it says, keep your theology off our biology.
Get out of our privates.
Ladies, I have no interest.
Okay, keep your theology, and then there's pictures of abortion hangers and all these women who are walking around in 110 degree weather as though they are going to be made handmaidens if they can't kill the babies inside their womb.
The most obvious example, by the way, of the stupidity of the left on this issue comes courtesy of Michelle Wolf, who is just an awful human being.
So Michelle Wolf, you'll recall from being terrible at comedy and also being on the White House Correspondents Dinner where she yelled about her vagina or some such, she decided that in honor of the 4th of July, the most American thing she could think of was killing your baby in the womb and cutting its brain out.
So here she is doing her 4th of July special in which she does a full-on, star-spangled tribute to killing your baby in the womb.
have the power to give life and then we'll try to control that.
Don't like this.
God bless abortions and God bless America.
God bless abortions and God bless America.
And since the break's 10th annual salutes Wow.
God bless America and God bless abortion.
The perverse level of love for abortion.
Abortion is a sacrament.
Abortion is a sign of bravery.
Abortion is a sign of decency on the left.
This is why they are so concerned that Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned.
Not because Roe v. Wade being overturned will actually amount to the illegalization of abortion.
But simply because they're afraid that people might actually want to vote on the issue of whether you ought to kill your baby in the womb.
And they can't win this argument because this argument is unwinnable.
People should not be allowed to kill babies in the womb.
Even most Democrats believe that there should be significant restrictions on the ability to kill a baby in the womb.
They may not agree on how early you ban that, but most of them agree that 20 weeks and on, that should be banned.
So Michelle Wolf, this radicalism is really insane.
It shows why they're so concerned with the Okay, so I want to talk about the conservative sort of response to some of the Supreme Court stuff, particularly Roe v. Wade in just a second.
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Okay, so.
With the left so militant about abortion that they are talking about abortion as a sacrament.
I'm old enough to remember when Bill Clinton said abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
I'm old enough to remember that.
Now, it's abortion should be plentiful, available, and celebrated.
We should cheer for it.
Because killing a baby in the womb is a sign of womanhood.
It's a sign that you are truly a woman in charge of your own life.
If you have not actually killed a baby in your womb, that means that you are subjecting yourself to the hierarchical preferences of evil masculinity.
But if you kill a baby in the womb, that shows that you've stood up to the man.
Sure, you might have killed a baby in the process, but at least you stood up to the man.
This is the perspective of someone on the left.
Now, the pro-life issue is one on which the right can win, and should win, because this is an issue that is as vital morally as any issue the United States has ever faced, up to and including slavery.
The murder of a million babies a year in the womb is a serious moral issue.
And if you don't think it's a serious moral issue, it's because you haven't looked at it hard enough.
But folks on the right tend to shy away from this, and it's a serious problem.
So Leonard Leo, who's one of the fellows who's helping Trump select the next Supreme Court Justice, he was on Sunday, he was on this week on ABC, and he said that rumors of Roe being overturned, that's greatly exaggerated.
Why is it always the job of the right to quell rumors about Roe being overturned?
I don't understand this.
Why shouldn't the right say, hell yes, we want to overturn Roe because it's a bad decision?
Why shouldn't that be something the right campaign's on?
By the way, overturning Roe does not mean that abortion becomes illegal across 50 states.
If you think that California is suddenly going to ban abortion, you're out of your mind.
California is not going to ban abortion.
Neither is Massachusetts, neither is New York, neither is New Jersey, neither is Illinois.
There are too many states in the Union that are going to allow abortion to continue unfettered.
But the right is constantly running away from their own positions on this stuff.
So Leonard Leo, whom I think is a quite brilliant legal mind, here is saying, well, Roe's not going to be overturned.
Let's stop with all the fright.
Why is everyone so worried?
First of all, nobody really knows.
We've been talking about this for 36 years, going all the way back to the nomination of Sandra O'Connor.
And after that 36-year period, we only have a single individual on the court who has expressly said he would overturn Roe.
So I think it's a bit of a scare tactic and rank speculation more than anything else.
Okay, so, you know, all of the talk about, don't worry about it, it's just speculation.
The right is constantly attempting to run away from this issue.
So, more evidence of this.
Tomi Lahren, who, you know, I've refrained from criticizing generally because, you know, Tomi does what Tomi does, but Tomi Lahren has now made the case that we should never speak about abortion.
This is, of course, because she is pro-choice.
Tomi Lahren is pro-abortion.
She went on The View and she suggested that it's only religious objection to abortion that was driving the right's objection to abortion.
So she was on Fox News Final Thoughts, and she suggested that Republicans only win by staying out of the social issues.
Let's be honest.
The federal government does few things well, and I believe regulating social issues is an area where it fails.
Let the churches, the nonprofits, and the community groups step in, not almighty Uncle Sam.
Okay, so I am generally friendly to libertarian arguments, but this is not any social issue when you're talking about abortion.
When you're talking about abortion, you're talking about an issue of protecting human life.
By this definition, slavery is a social issue.
By the way, Tommy Lahren is very fond of talking about social issues when it suits her purposes.
I mean, how many times have you heard Tomi Lahren talk about the flag and patriotism and kneeling for the national anthem and culture?
I mean, that's what Tomi Lahren specializes in.
She's not exactly a Milton Friedman economist, right?
You're not going to hear her sitting there spouting Vienna School of Economics explanations of trade theory, right?
That's not Tomi's thing.
So for her to say that we are not going to focus in on social issues because otherwise we're never going to win, I think is is foolish.
Not only is it foolish.
Let's be real about this.
If the right is not fighting to protect human life, then the right is not doing its job.
No victory that leaves behind babies in the womb to be carved apart and then flushed down a toilet.
No right that does that in the name of victory is winning a victory that is worth that is worth fighting for.
Victory has to mean something, and one of those things that victory has to mean is standing up for the lives of the unborn.
Now, Tommy responded to all of this.
She got heavy flack from a lot of folks on the right for saying all of this, that the right should leave behind the social issues.
By the way, Donald Trump didn't leave behind the social issues during the election cycle.
He was very pro-life during the election cycle, at least insofar as what he had to say.
And Tommy then tweeted something out about how she's not going to be cudgeled into believing something that she doesn't believe.
No one's trying to cudgel Tommy into believing something she doesn't believe.
She's certainly able to believe whatever she wants to believe.
The point I'm making is that she's wrong.
So she tweeted out, Do I form my political beliefs based on acceptance from the self-appointed thought wardens of either political party?
No.
And I never will.
You don't have to like or agree with my thoughts, but at least you know they are my own.
A couple of things about this.
This seems to be the last refuge of people who can't make a good argument nowadays, is that you make an argument and then they say, you're not going to box me in with your standards.
I'm not trying to box you in.
Make your argument.
I just think your argument sucks.
Like, that's not me boxing you in.
I've heard the same from several relatively major figures in the past several weeks, that if I say that I don't like something that you've said, that suddenly I'm trying to provoke you into moving your position.
No, I'm trying to present a differing position.
You can say whatever you want.
It's a free country.
You can make a bad argument if you want to.
Also, the substitution of authenticity for solid thinking is not even an argument.
It's an emotional appeal.
This idea that you don't have to like or agree with my thoughts, but at least you know they are my own.
Right, I assume they are your own, which is why I'm criticizing you.
If they were somebody else's, I'd be criticizing them.
The substitution of authenticity.
Well, he's very authentic in how he feels.
Therefore, you really shouldn't question.
Therefore, you really shouldn't question what they have to say.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
At all.
I just, I think that's completely nonsensical on virtually every level.
Okay, meanwhile, I don't want to, you know, center on my criticism for folks on the right, because the reality is that folks on the left continue to be more and more extreme in every possible way.
Over the weekend, there's more sort of extreme behavior from folks on the left.
The point is, I don't think that we ought to surrender our principles simply because the left is really militant on issues like abortion.
I think that ought to make us More militant, at least in our in our pursuit of the right principles.
I don't mean more militant like physically, but I do mean that we ought to stand up strongly and proudly for the positions in which we believe, particularly when they happen to be purely moral as in protection of human life.
We're going to talk about the extremism of the left in just a second because there are more incidents Of Trump administration officials being targeted by folks on the left over the weekend.
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All righty.
So, meanwhile, it seems like virtually every member of the Trump administration is now being confronted in public.
Like, this sort of thing is happening all the time.
And it ranges from current members of the Trump administration to past members of the Trump administration.
So the latest such Incident happened over the weekend, so apparently Stephen Miller, who's sort of the president's immigration guru, former Jeff Sessions acolyte, he apparently ordered 80 bucks of takeout sushi, this is according to the Washington Post, from a restaurant near his apartment.
A bartender followed him into the street and shouted, Stephen!
When Miller turned around, the bartender raised both middle fingers and cursed at him, according to an account Miller has shared with White House colleagues.
Outraged, Miller threw the sushi away, he later told colleagues.
I'm not sure why you would throw away the sushi.
The sushi's probably still pretty good.
It seems like a waste of perfectly good sushi.
Give it to a homeless person or something if you're not going to eat it.
But in any case, this just demonstrates the vile behavior that too many on the right are experiencing.
Mitch McConnell was confronted on the street over the weekend, and people were telling him that they knew where he lived, to which Cocaine Mitch responded, I work hard for this.
And then he snorted a line and took out his machine gun.
So Cocaine Mitch is not going to be having any of that.
He just unleashed Elaine Chao and Elaine Chao came out just like claws, claws unleashed like Wolverine.
So you want to go to the McConnell house?
Get ready, gang.
Get ready, gang.
I mean, that that dude has been.
Have you ever seen Narcos?
OK, this is why you don't go up to a cocaine dealer and say you know where he lives.
So here is what it looked like over the weekend when someone went up to to Cocaine Mitch.
We know where you live.
- Go home.
- Go you out.
What are you doing to get the babies back?
- Yeah, we know where you live, T-Mitch.
We know where you live.
Yeah, we know where you live, Mitch.
- Apolish ICE! - Apolish ICE! - Apolish ICE! - Okay, so the screaming at people that you know where they live is always a really delightful mode of political expression.
As someone who's received a number of death threats and who has a shotgun for precisely this purpose, I promise you that Mitch McConnell is not all that worried about people knowing where he lives.
Again, but the extremism of folks on the left who feel the need to do this is pretty astonishing.
The same thing happened to Steve Bannon now.
As you know, Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist, Sloppy Steve, as the president so memorably named him, I am not a fan of Sloppy Steve.
I've been a not-fan of Sloppy Steve for many years.
In fact, I was one of the first not-fans of Sloppy Steve.
In the pages of the Washington Post, I talked about the shortcomings of Sloppy Steve as a human being.
When I quit Breitbart News, I talked about how Sloppy Steve was not a great person, to say the least.
But Sloppy Steve still has a right to go to a bookstore.
Steve Bannon still has a right to go to a bookstore.
Dude's an inveterate reader, and he likes going to bookstores.
So he went to a bookstore, apparently in Richmond, Virginia.
And the bookstore was called the Black Swan Books.
And some idiot person, this guy, This woman came up to him in the aisles and started yelling at him in the bookstore, which is just a delightful thing to do, right?
Listen, again, I dislike Steve Bannon, which is why I avoid him.
I have a lot more cause to dislike Steve Bannon than some random woman at a bookstore.
She starts yelling at Steve Bannon in the bookstore because she's a jerk.
And the owner of the bookstore, whose name is Nick Cook, he promptly asked her to leave.
And she said no.
And he said, well, if you don't leave, I'm going to call the cops on you.
At which point she left.
He said this was the end of the story.
However, it was not the end of the story because it turns out the left is awful.
So a bunch of folks on the left, including a former Hillary staffer, decided it was time to dox the bookstore owner.
It was time to go after the bookstore owner for having the temerity to say, customers in my store ought not be abused on my premises.
Like, forget whether or not you like Steve Bannon.
Forget whether or not Steve Bannon is in there buying books you don't like.
None of that matters.
If you are a store owner, if I own a restaurant and randos keep invading my restaurant and yelling at the customers, I'm going to call the cops because I run a restaurant.
But this, according to the left, is not acceptable in any way.
So you have this guy, Raphael Shimonov, who is a techie political artist who apparently started going through the history of the bookstore owner and goes after the guy's wife because his wife was, I guess, a national Episcopal treasurer.
And then there's a correspondent for Raw Story who said that Nick Cook won't tolerate anyone calling out white supremacy even after the fatal alt-right march in Charlottesville.
He wants everyone to know his store is a safe place for fascism.
Or maybe his store is just a safe place for his customers.
And then there's a TV writer He suggested that this bookstore thinks Steve Bannon should be allowed to shop peacefully.
Well, it's going to be pretty peaceful there when everyone stops shopping at this bookstore.
So now, unless you allow people to harass people on your premises, we are going to destroy your business.
Just delightful.
The best was Philip Raines, who's just a garbage human being.
So Philip Raines is a former Hillary Clinton advisor and staffer, very longtime staffer, was with her at the State Department, and goes back with her probably 20 years.
Well, he tweeted out the store's address, phone number, and email address, and then he told The Daily Caller, you have some very fine people on both sides.
Which is, of course, a reference to Charlottesville.
they may want to contact the store, as many did after Sarah Slanders, trademark, was asked by the owner to leave the Red Hen restaurant.
So clever.
For convenience, I copied and pasted the store's contact us page.
Presumably, they post their contact information on the World Wide Web in the hopes people contact them.
Hence the name, contact us.
That's all.
It's not like I tweeted Lindsey Graham's cell phone number.
Then he added, I'm providing a service to the public by providing the contact information the bookstore posted on their website, presumably with the hope of being contacted.
This sort of delightful behavior is certainly likely to drive more people into Donald Trump's camp.
There is just no question.
There's no question.
And it should drive people into Donald Trump's camp, because the extremism of the left is making it unpalatable for people in the center to vote for them.
And it's not just these fringe political actors who are now being egged on by the likes of Maxine Waters.
They're mainstream political Democrats who are saying things that are fully insane.
So Dick Durbin, who is a senator from Illinois, he just said that detained children in the United States, these detained migrant kids who are coming across the border with their illegal immigrant parents and now are being detained because we can't just release them into the public.
Right.
We have to either separate them from their parents and give them to a relative or they have to stay with their parents.
Those are the only two choices.
Well, now Dick Durbin is comparing those kids who by law have to be separated from their parents or could be kept with their parents in detention because their parents are illegal immigrants.
Now, Dick Durbin is comparing those kids to these Thai kids who are stuck in a cave.
Literally.
You know who's been following this story?
They're all these Thai kids from a soccer team, I guess, who are stuck in a cave in Thailand.
They've had to be brought out one by one because the cave flooded.
So he's now comparing detained immigrants, detained illegal immigrant children, to Thai kids who may drown.
Yeah, it's exactly the same.
By the way, Dick Durbin's the same idiot who compared American troops to Pol Pot and Stalin.
So not a great shot for the senator from Illinois who has nary two neural connections to rub together.
So here he is.
Hearts and prayers are with those boys in Thailand trapped in that cave.
I hope our hearts and prayers are also with thousands of children, toddlers and infants removed from their parents by the Trump administration under zero tolerance.
They're trapped in a bureaucratic cave too.
Yeah, it's just the same.
And they're trapped in a bureaucratic cave.
You know, like with the judiciary.
And with actual due process of law.
It's exactly like almost being drowned in a cave.
Exactly the same thing.
Yeah, I can't imagine why folks are looking at Dick Durbin and saying, yeah, this is all a little bit nutty to me.
This is all a little bit too much to me.
Now, in a second, I want to discuss all the scandal that's now broken out around Jim Jordan.
So Jim Jordan is a guy who wants to run for Speaker of the House.
Full disclosure, I'm friendly with Representative Jordan.
I've met him a couple of times.
He asked me to speak on a panel in Washington, D.C.
We've talked on the phone a couple of times.
That's pretty much the extent of it.
But Representative Jordan is now being accused of covering up the team doctor at Ohio State University who was apparently, basically, fondling, examining the men.
So it was a team doctor who was sexually harassing the men on the wrestling team.
And Jim Jordan was then a 21-year-old coach.
He was like first year out of college, and he was, I guess, training for the Olympic wrestling team.
And the accusation is that he knew that this team doctor was basically harassing the men, and he did nothing about it, and that he is therefore a sort of Penn State type.
So here is Jim Jordan's response to exactly those reports.
I mean, I never saw, never heard of, never was told about any type of abuse.
If I had been, I would have dealt with it.
Our coaching staff, we would have dealt with.
These were our student athletes.
If there were people who were abused, they deserve justice.
But what has been said about me is completely false.
So what's happened with a lot of these former, they're a bunch of former students, and they say that he had to have known, right?
It's not that they know that he knew, it's that he had to have known.
So there's a guy named David Range who wrestled at OSU in the 1980s.
He spoke to the Washington Post.
post, here's what he said.
Jordan definitely knew these things were happening.
Yes, most definitely.
It was there.
He knew about it because it was an everyday occurrence.
He said he never discussed the issue directly with Jordan one-on-one and did not know whether anyone made a formal report, but he said Jordan was present during group conversations in the locker room about Strauss' behavior.
We talked about it all the time in the locker room while Jordan was there.
He said everybody joked about it and talked about it all the time.
And Jordan said, well, conversations in a locker room are a lot different than people coming up and talking about abuse.
And people are getting on his case for all of this now.
I've talked with somebody who was at OSU while this was happening, who was actually a member of the wrestling team during this period.
And what he told me is that everybody who was on the OSU wrestling team knew that the doctor was weird, but they also figured that the doctor was the doctor, that the university had put him in place because they wanted him there to preside over thousands, presumably, of young people to do checks.
He said that this doctor was apparently the sort of person who you'd come in with a cough and they'd immediately want to check you for a hernia.
You know, right?
This is a doctor who was very Not not covert about the sort of pursuit of young men particularly.
But what he also said is that everybody sort of joked about it.
This guy was a weirdo.
And remember, these are adults, right?
These are young male adults.
And I don't want to pretend that males and females are exactly the same, okay?
Because I don't think they're exactly the same when it comes to matters like this.
The chances that a male who is severely sexually abused at age 19 by a coach, by a team doctor, wouldn't go to one of the coaches and say something or punch the doctor when this happened.
These are guys on the wrestling team.
It's about as macho as it gets.
You know, the fact that they're joking around in the locker room, and Jordan was there while they're joking around in the locker room, I don't think is exactly the same thing as somebody filing a formal report.
So at Penn State, there were actual formal reports filed, and the accusation was that members of the Penn State administration basically ignored these formal reports, knowing what was going on.
Also, the accusation is that this was happening to 7-year-old kids, not to 20-year-old men.
But if this was just a bunch of guys in the locker room joking around about a doctor so-and-so, what a weirdo he is.
You remember that doctor?
That guy was Richard Strauss.
You remember that guy?
That guy's a weirdo.
He just called me in there and just started feeling me up.
That was weird and everybody's laughing about it.
Not exactly the same thing as Jim Jordan was told that this doctor was abusing people and then he failed to report it up the chain.
It's weird that Jordan is being targeted considering there are literally hundreds of members of the OSU athletic staff, right?
Jordan's the only name you're hearing here.
Who are the other members of the OSU staff who are being accused of covering this up if there was an active cover-up?
There's a lawsuit ongoing.
Presumably we'll get all the information, but people who are suggesting that locker room joking is exactly the same thing as filing a formal report has never met either a teenage guy or is being disingenuous, I think.
And even the reports from the Washington Post, there's people saying, well, Jordan had to have known this was happening.
First of all, had to have known is vague.
What this is is vague, right?
Because I assume that Jordan wasn't an expert in medical procedure, so maybe he just figured, okay, the doctor's a little weird, but he's doing his job.
Like, again, if you're in a position of responsibility and someone went and reported to him that he'd been sexually abused by the team doctor and he did nothing, that is a real problem.
If it was a bunch of guys sitting around the locker room going, God, that Richard Strauss guy, what a weirdo he is.
That guy, he's always finding some excuse to touch me.
Isn't that weird?
And everybody around the locker room, yeah, me too, man.
That was pretty weird.
And Jordan going, yeah, me too, because he was presumably examined by the same team doctor.
I'm having a hard time getting to, he was covering for abuse.
That he wanted Richard Strauss to get away with the abuse.
He's a defender of the administration.
That seems like a little bit too much of a stretch for me to go there.
Now, maybe new evidence arises, but from what I'm hearing, I can't go all the way to, this is Penn State and the upper-level administration of Penn State.
I just don't see the evidence for that yet.
Again, maybe that'll change.
Okay.
Time for some stuff I like and then some stuff that I hate and we'll do a Federalist paper.
So, stuff that I like today.
So, over the weekend I read an excellent sci-fi book.
It's called Summerland by—I'm going to get the pronunciation wrong here—it's Hanu Rajaniemi.
And the book is really interesting and really creative.
So basically, The premise of the book is it takes place in 1938 and it's an alternate history in which basically mysticism is real, that psychics are real, mediums are real, there is in fact a spirit world and somehow people on earth have found a way to get in touch with the spirit world.
So when people die you can just talk to them on the other side and the people on the other side live in a place called Summerland, hence the title of the book, and Summerland is basically A lot like Earth, except you don't have a body, you're disembodied.
And so there are all these spy, counter-spy missions that are going on on both sides of the death barrier.
That basically, on the other side, there are still Soviets, and on the other side, there are still British spies, and they're interacting with one another.
And if you die in one place, it doesn't mean you die in the other.
So it's really interesting and well done.
Really clever and a cool concept.
Check it out.
Summerland by Hanu Rajaniemi.
I'm a big fan of good sci-fi and this is one of the better sci-fi books that I've read in a long time actually.
I think it's really, really good.
So go check that out.
Okay, other things that I like.
So Chris Broussard.
The Sports Commentator is now at Fox Sports 1, and he was basically thrown off of ESPN, as I recall, because he made the comment that religious people might not be in favor of same-sex marriage, and this is not allowed at ESPN.
You're not allowed to say this at ESPN.
You have to be like Jimmy Carter and say, Jesus was totally into same-sex marriage.
If you say that the Old and New Testaments are not particularly pro-homosexual activity, then you get thrown off of ESPN.
Well, now Chris Broussard is over at Fox Sports 1, and he was asked about being woke, and he made this comment, which is just spectacular.
You want to be a revolutionary?
You want to be woke?
The most revolutionary thing a black man can do in 2018 in America is partner with a wife and raise strong, intelligent black kids that are committed to the upliftment of black people and have an appreciation for their race.
This is exactly right.
Okay, what he said right there is exactly right.
Being woke is not tied to how much you hate the system.
Being woke is make all the right decisions in your life, raise your kids right so that they live better lives than you do, and also fight the elements of the system that you think are wrong.
Now, the fact this is even mildly controversial is astonishing, but Broussard is exactly right.
There's nothing you can do that is better for the world than raising your children correctly.
That is the best thing you can do for the world.
Put everything else aside.
Raise your kids right, you're making the world a better place.
Raise them wrong, you're making the world a worse place.
It is the number one contribution anyone on this planet makes, what you do with your kids.
Okay, time for another.
So the other thing that I like...
And this is pretty spectacular.
So, socialist Bill de Blasio spent the weekend at socialist Bernie Sanders' very socialist summer home.
That's really great.
I love how socialism is now this.
So, Mayor Bill de Blasio, according to the New York Post, his wife, Shalane McRae, and their two kids spent a couple of days at Bernie Sanders' summer home on Lake Champlain in Vermont.
That would be his third home.
Photos show the progressive politicians and their families at Sanders' four-bedroom retreat in North Hero.
Sanders, his unruly crop of gray hair covered by a white cap, is sitting shirtless in a lawn next to his wife, Jane.
Well, McCrae relaxes, just steps away to their right.
So this is all, you know, it's all fabulous.
This is the beauty of socialism here in the United States.
Socialism means that you get to sit on the banks of the River Champlain shirtless, wearing a white cap, looking like a refugee from Weekend at Bernie's, but actually at a Weekend at Bernie's.
And you have your own lake house.
So socialism is pretty awesome when you never actually have to experience it.
So that's pretty exciting stuff there from the socialists among us.
Final thing that I like, so this is Also pretty spectacular.
Apparently, there's a group of lesbians who decided that they were going to lie down and stall a transgender parade, the London Pride Parade on Saturday.
So a group of eight women stormed the parade route, according to the Gay Star News, and unfurled banners reading, Transactivism erases lesbians and lesbian equals female homosexual.
And apparently the protesters stalled the parade for around 10 minutes, and as they were carted off, one could be heard screaming, a man who says he's a lesbian is a rapist.
Saying that if a man says that he is a woman, that is not true.
And a woman having sex with a man, even if he says he is a woman, is still having heterosexual sex with a man.
Which is biologically true.
One of the great ironic elements of the LGBT movement is that the T totally overrides the L and the G.
That if you are, that transgenderism makes the argument that gender is entirely a social construct.
Lesbianism and homosexuality, male homosexuality, make the argument that not only is gender not a social construct, a preference for one gender above the other is in fact biologically ingrained.
So if you prefer a male, Right?
Then that is because it is biologically ingrained in you.
But, transgenderism argues that you can't biologically prefer a male because male- male-dom itself is a biological and sociological construct.
So it doesn't really exist.
Transgenderism destroys the lesbian and gay movement.
These lesbian activists are right.
Then they went ahead and apologized for all of this, right?
They said that this is- this is something that we- we're not, you know, we're sorry this happened.
But one of these activists told the media, we don't want any kind of penis in our bedroom.
I'm really sad I have to reassert this again.
This seems relatively self-evident if you're a lesbian that this is something that you don't want in your bedroom, but it is hilarious to watch as the left twists itself in knots to avoid the obvious implications of the movements that it supports and are in conflict with one another.
Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
Okay, thing that I hate number one.
So the president of the United States is now tweeting out about his relationship with Kim Jong-un.
It turns out No, no, you say.
Kim Jong-un would never lie.
Kim Jong-un was negotiated with by the President of the United States.
He's an honorable man.
Kim Jong-un is a mass murderer who shoots people with anti-aircraft guns and poisons them with weapons of mass destruction in public places.
Kim Jong-un is one of the worst people on planet Earth.
Here is what Bloomberg reports.
As U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touched down in Pyongyang at 1054 a.m. on Friday, he had few details of his schedule in the North Korean capital, even which hotel he and his staff would stay in.
Not much was clear from lunch with counterpart Kim Yong-chol to start filling in the nitty-gritty details from the Singapore declaration signed between the leaders.
A handshake with Kim Jong-un, at least, seemed certain.
In the end, Pompeo stayed in neither of the hotels where he thought he'd be.
The North Koreans took him, his staff, and the six journalists traveling with the delegation to a gated guesthouse on the outskirts of the capital, just behind the mausoleum where the bodies of regime founder Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il lie embalmed and on occasion display.
It was the start of a confused visit of less than 30 hours, marked by a pair of lavish banquets that the secretary and his staff appeared to dread for their length, and a daunting number of courses presented by unfailingly polite waiters.
He only learned of his own schedule hours ahead of time, and the meeting with Kim Jong-un never happened, despite strenuous efforts from his staff.
Also, it turns out that they're saying now that the United States lied about the denuclearization argument, that they were not actually going to denuclearize in the first place, and that Trump lied about it.
And this has led President Trump to tweet out, and I am not kidding, this is a thing that the president of the United States tweeted out, the United States tweeted out, quote, I have confidence that Kim Jong-un will honor the contract we signed, and, even more importantly, our handshake. .
He's an evil dictator.
Handshake deals with evil dictators are literally a plot point in an Austin Powers movie.
You don't make handshake deals with evil dictators.
Trust but verify requires actual verification, not, we made a handshake and now we're besties.
That's not how this works.
This is why I was very critical of the president meeting with Kim Jong-un.
This is why I thought that it was a mistake.
This is why I thought that he was being played.
That's why I thought that all of the premature celebration was premature celebration.
I see China's hands all over this.
We're in a fight with China.
who are pushing the North Koreans not to make nice with the United States based on tariff plans.
Here's what Lindsey Graham is saying, Senator from South Carolina.
Here's what he had to say.
I see China's hands all over this.
We're in a fight with China.
We buy $500 billion worth of goods for the Chinese.
They buy $100 billion from us.
They cheat and President Trump wants to change the economic relationship with China.
So if I were President Trump, I would not let China use North Korea to back me off on the trade dispute.
There's no doubt in my mind that it's the Chinese pulling the North Koreans back.
Okay, well, I think that's probably untrue.
I think that there are two things.
One, the Chinese could be pulling the North Koreans back because they're angry at the United States for its tariffs, which is, you know, again, not a reason to pull back from the tariffs if they're for actual national security purposes and not just because Trump wants a trade war and thinks about trade deficits too much because trade deficits are stupid.
But it could also be that the North Koreans never intended on fulfilling any of these promises, which is why none of them were on the paper.
We read the entire agreement word for word when it came out.
There was nothing of substance in it.
Nothing.
All of this was, it seems to me, a foolish enterprise if the president actually believed he was going to make a handshake deal with one of the worst dictators on planet Earth.
Okay, time for a Federalist paper.
So we are all the way up to Federalist number 36.
We are making steady progress through the Federalist papers.
Alexander Hamilton writes this one too.
This is in a series of six or seven papers in which Alexander Hamilton makes the case for why federal taxation power should be less limited than a lot of people were arguing.
He argues that the states shouldn't worry that the federal government is going to basically take all the tax revenue.
He says there won't be double taxation.
I think this is the weakest part of the Federalist Papers.
I think that Alexander Hamilton radically underestimated the desire of the federal government to tax.
So he says, many specters have been raised out of this power of internal taxation to excite the apprehensions of the people.
Double sets of revenue officers, the duplication of their burdens by double taxations, and the frightful forms of odious and oppressive poll taxes have been played off with all the ingenuous dexterity of political leisure domain.
He says everybody's lying when they worry about double taxation.
I can guarantee you that Alexander Hamilton was wrong about this.
We get double taxed in California like nobody's business.
And we have two separate sets of people who are actually enforcing the taxes in the United States.
We have state tax officers and we have federal tax officers.
None of it is good.
So I am with the anti-federalists on this one.
Alexander Hamilton's argument in favor of broad-based taxing power for the federal government was, I think, was short-sighted.
I understand he was attempting to set the United States on firmer fiscal footing at the time.
He never could have imagined the income tax, for example.
No one could have, considering that that was only legalized in 1916, I believe, with the 16th Amendment.
But in any case...
The arguments that Hamilton was making with regard to the taxing power seems a little bit short-sighted.
It seemed like he was trying to get something through.
It was 1913, rather, the 16th Amendment.
But his argument in Federalist 36 is not his strongest argument.
He says that state tax officers will end up collecting additional taxes for the federal government and that the states won't be adversarial to the feds because the feds are picking up their debts.
That was the one area where he was right.
The states, it turns out, don't care that much all about the federal tax burden.
Because they'll just raise taxes willy-nilly anyway, as we have learned in California.
Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow.
At this time tomorrow, we will know the Supreme Court pick by the President of the United States, and we will have all the information on it then.
And I'm sure the firefight will begin, so be there or be square.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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