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March 28, 2019 - Jimmy Dore Show
01:04:35
20190328_TJDS_20190328_Podcast
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Get ready for an outstanding entertainment program.
The Jimmy Dore Show.
Oh, hello.
Unlike Donald Trump, my family did not give me a $200,000 allowance every year from the age of three.
No, I got 25 cents a week for my allowance, goddammit.
You try raising a family on 25 cents a week.
But you didn't have a family to raise when you were seven years old, did you, Bernie?
You ever try feeding a dozen hedgehogs?
It's not easy.
Every day, I had to walk seven miles in the snow.
Not to feed my hedgehogs, I had gas.
Allowing for inflation, how much would those 25 cents be worth today, Bernie?
Approximately $7 million.
How the fuck should I know?
Who cares?
Are you on crack or something?
No, I'm sorry.
I thought it might be an interesting piece of trivia.
That's all.
I don't have time for your falderalls, young man.
And I never used Falderall lightly.
Falderall?
Wow.
I never even heard that word.
Okay, well, I understand that.
Let me tell you something, you entitled bourgeois and great.
I grew up during World War II when everybody did their part by not taking unnecessary trips or buying new tires.
I also made soap out of old soap.
There were no parades.
How would you suggest that people do their part now, Bernie?
By getting the fuck off my back.
How does that grab you?
You guys know everything there is to know about me, yet you keep distorting my record and asking how I feel about this or feel about that or feel about this thing over here.
You really want to know how I feel about this and that?
Yeah, sure.
You can all eat my goddamn trousers.
That's how I feel.
And not my Sunday trousers either.
The bad ones.
But you're getting attacks from all sides now.
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation just accused you of violating election laws by hiring what they call non-Americans.
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation.
Sounds like the kind of shit Undertakers put on dead conservatives to make their skin less shiny.
Two of the worst presidents in history and somebody names a foundation after them.
What next?
The Ronald Reagan airport.
Oh, there's already one in D.C. You knew that.
I'm an outsider, you fat cat.
If I have to explain one more thing to you, I'm going to squeeze it out of your pancreas.
They were brain dead before they were brain dead.
I don't have time for this garbage.
We're trying to save the world, and I get goosed by two dead idiot presidents.
And Hillary Democrats, they say you're going to split the party.
Yeah, split it from its ass in a hole in the ground.
Tragic, right?
I'm ready for the fight.
Schiff is shifting his diaper.
Madow is scrunching up her face weirdly.
And Pelosi is choking on her goddamn mint.
All is good in the world.
Now give me my campaign a goddamn dollar, you cheapskate.
It's the Jimmy Dore Show.
The show for...
The kind of people that are.
It's the show that makes Anderson Cooper save.
It's hard to talk to you guys.
And now, here's a guy who sounds a lot like me.
It's Jimmy Dore.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to this week's Jimmy Dore show.
Our next live Jimmy Door show, June 5th.
Just to add it, that's a Wednesday, June 5th in Hermosa Beach, California.
Hermosa Beach Comedy and Magic Club, a live Jimmy Dore show, June 5th.
Go to JimmyDoorComedy.com for a link for all tickets.
Hey, let's get to the jokes before we get to the jokes, shall we?
I don't know if you know, but archaeologists have just uncovered a 2 million-old Neolithic playground.
Yeah, and it was being watched by a 40-million-year-old priest.
Come on.
Come on, am I right?
Come on.
Come on.
They got a problem with the pedophiles.
Am I right?
Hey, Joe Biden now says he wishes he could have given Anita Hill the hearing she deserved.
Yeah, ladies, give him a chance.
Isn't Let Me Creepily Smell Your Hair step up from who put pubic hair in my Coke?
Hey, Barack Obama just warned New House Democrats.
Did you hear about this?
He just warned New House Democrats that Medicare for all and the Green New Deal might cost too much.
And they should be cautious.
It's all part of his grand vision to wait until it's too late before we do anything about stuff.
Wow, that's Barack Obama, huh?
President Trump spent a day on Twitter bashing John McCain again, to the outrage of both political parties.
You know, I'm really on the fence with this one, though.
Do I root for the racist warmonger who's fighting against single payer or the dead racist warmonger who fought against single payer?
Did you know Americans are so pessimistic about their future?
They think they're all going to end up poor and homeless, but come on, don't worry.
You can always get tasered and shot in the back by cops.
Hey, when somebody pulls the phrase purity tests out of their food expeller hole, what they really mean is you don't deserve the basic barest minimum of human decency, so shut up.
Hey, did you hear that the secretive German family behind the company that owns Krispy Kreme says that they're going to donate more than $11 million after the discovery of its own Nazi past?
Did you hear about that?
Here's a little tip for you the next time you go to Krispy Kreme.
Do not order the tiger tank tails or the kraut colors and do not indulge in the overpowering tasty treat of mind fritter.
I say stay away from the Eva Braun bombs.
And whatever you do, do not order the V2 rocket rolls.
They will kill you.
A lot of fat and sodium.
Disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a new podcast out.
It's called Newts World.
It is.
I visited Newts World once, and all I encountered were empty Kentucky fried chicken buckets and fear pee.
Hey, a new Barbara Bush biography came out.
Did you hear about that?
Oh, yeah.
Ellen can't wait to read it.
15 years from now, Centrist will be celebrating Melania Trump's biography, believe me.
Hey, did you hear that Betsy DeVos wants to take away money from the Special Olympics?
Betsy DeVos is the type of person who can only feel joy if she's handing out a detention slip.
Am I right?
Hey, here's a little sketch I'd like to read to you.
Science says, hey, climate change is real, and we need to do something about it now.
Elected officials say, we're fine.
Here's Ronald Reagan riding a dinosaur.
USA.
Hey, what's coming up on today's show?
The Mueller Report is in, and the Jimmy Dore show takes a victory lap.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen.
A dumb jagoff nightclub comedian figured out Russia Gate two and a half years ago by doing what?
By following evidence, interviewing independent reporters, and following logic to its logical conclusion.
Plus, Rachel Maddow's ratings plummet after her conspiracy theory bubble is popped by Robert Mueller.
Keith Oberman is unhinged.
We'll play that video for you.
Plus, we got phone calls today from Chuck Schuber, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, and Liam Neesom, plus a lot lot more.
That's today on the Jimmy Dorse Show.
Oh, wow, Barack Obama's on the line.
I wonder if he's going to ask me how we're going to pay for it.
Hello, Barack Obama.
Jimmy.
Yeah.
How are we going to pay for it?
Let's come down to Earth here.
We all want to save the world.
How are we going to pay for it?
Get real, man.
Ladies, take a break.
But aren't you all about hope, Barack?
Aren't we supposed to have hope for the things we deserve, you know, like our survival?
Hope is great, but not unless it's incremental hope.
Hope means being practical.
Hope springs eternal.
But eternal costs money.
Wow, I just paid half a million a pop to say this shit.
So you don't think that people deserve free health care or a Green New Deal?
I can afford my hopes, but you got to pay for your hopes.
You can't just hope hope.
That's hopeless.
Why?
Where are you going to get the buds to pay for your hopes?
You have to aspire to hope.
And you can't aspire until you aim, plan, and dream.
There are at least five stages of hope.
The last being, I'm fucking rich, bitches.
But shouldn't people have the expectation of not going extinct for something completely preventable?
Not going extinct is expensive.
And that's why I backed Joe Biden's extinction savings account.
Heard about it?
I know.
It's a lot like the health savings account.
Here's how it works.
First, you build up a massive savings account.
That is what they sell.
Medical savings account.
Well, how do you do that?
Well, first, you save up a bunch of your own fucking money.
And then when you get sick, you spend it all.
But most Americans don't have savings like that, Barack.
They can't even afford a $600 emergency.
Don't worry, Jimmy.
Your extinction savings account is tax deductible.
Let me explain it to you while gesticulating awkwardly with my thumb and forefinger.
Whatever you put into your ESA to keep you from going extinct, you get to deduct the interest from your taxes.
It's a win-win.
But most people can't afford to get to the point where they can deduct anything from their taxes that they put in their extinction savings account.
And I feel your pain.
I'm crying right now.
Jimmy, you have to long for it to happen.
You got to yearn to earn.
And when you yearn long enough, the next stage appears.
And that's called longing.
And that sets you up for the desire level of achieving your ultimate goal of hope.
But you got to crave it.
And to crave it, you need one thing.
Well, what's that?
A hankering.
But to get to a hankering, you got to want it.
And Mac takes a plan.
But you can't plan without a goal.
Ladies, take a break.
But Obama, if we can't afford to fight our extinction, how can we afford all those wars you got us into?
Stop it.
Those wars are necessary for hope.
War equals hope.
And hope equals war.
See?
Okay.
I mean, okay, I guess.
You're welcome.
And please, from now on, call me Black Reggin.
Tired of the disrespect.
This is my celebration, Mike, everybody.
This is celebrating.
We're celebrating today with Erin Bate.
If you know Aaron Bate, a friend of the show, he is a writer for the Day Shit magazine.
And he's been leading.
He's been out in front of the curve on the Russia Gate.
Can we see him?
There he is.
Hi, Aaron.
How are you?
Hey, Jimmy.
Now, how annoying do you find my celebration, Mike?
It was pretty annoying.
I'm not going to miss it.
That's the last bit of it.
All right.
Now, now let's go through this.
I don't even want to get your overview yet.
Go ahead.
Take some time.
Now, how have you been reacting to the latest news that Mueller has finished his investigation and handed his report off to the Attorney General?
Right.
Okay.
So until we see the actual report or even get a glimpse at a summary of its findings, which should be any day now, we can't draw like 100% conclusions.
But I think we can strongly expect that this is the complete collapse of the RussiGate conspiracy theory that you and I have been pushing back on for two years now.
The fact is, and this is a point that needs to be tirelessly made, after hearing so long about Mueller and Mueller was going to indict Trump, he was going to indict Trump Jr., he was going to indict all of Trump's associates on this grand conspiracy with Russia.
The grand result is we have zero indictments pertaining to a Trump-Russia conspiracy.
And all the evidence we have so far from the indictments we have undermines the prospect or the chances of there ever being a Trump-Russia conspiracy.
So it's a huge blow to that.
There's also another significant thing worth noting here, which is that, I mean, one could argue that, you know, and it's been, we're hearing it already that, you know, perhaps collusion is something that Mueller couldn't indict.
But the fact is also, what Mueller also didn't indict anybody on is any perjury charges that could have been used to cover up any Trump-Russia conspiracy theory.
So, you know, all the key pillars like the Trump Tower meeting where Don Jr. met with some Russians and a publicist told Don Jr. that he that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Don Jr. was not indicted for lying to Congress.
And Don Jr. told Congress what that meeting was about, which, you know, and his telling us nothing to do with any kind of conspiracy theory.
So no indictment for that.
So although we can't draw like 100% conclusions yet, we can learn a lot from the way that this Mueller probe has concluded.
Okay, so yeah, so even though we don't know the contents of the report yet, the reason why we can draw this conclusion is because If there really was a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians to throw an election, there would be more people involved besides just Trump, right?
So there would have to be, you would think at least one other person that would be indicted, right?
So since no one else is being indicted, it points to the fact that there isn't a conspiracy.
And so, but so we're going to, because I'm going to play you some video.
What they've been saying on CNN and MSNBC is, oh, no, they could still be laying out the deal.
You know, let's remember you can indict a sitting president.
So what he could be doing is laying out the case for impeachment.
And then it's up to, that's such a bullshit assessment of this.
And they're comparing it to Nixon.
And they're saying, well, Nixon wasn't indicted.
And we all know he obstructed justice.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But do you understand?
They're so disingenuous.
They're still doing it, right?
That's a disingenuous thing to argue that it's like Nixon because it's not, right?
I mean, the whole thing for two years has been disingenuous by ignoring all the evidence that contradicts the bold conclusions of a conspiracy that people like the punts on MSNBC and CNN were drawing.
So it's no surprise that right now, in the face of Mueller returning zero indictments for the conspiracy that we've heard endlessly about for two years, it's no surprise that these same people are doubling down with a new deflection and a new way to mislead their unfortunate audiences.
So let's have some fun.
Here's, you know, people have told me, and I like since people have told me that I have anger issues, but I'm like, well, I didn't let it ruin my show for two and a half years, right?
There's a lot of other people who let their anger for Donald Trump completely ruin their show for the last two and a half years.
Everyone at MSNBC, everyone at CNN, and half the people on YouTube, if not more, I would say probably 80% of the people on YouTube have let their anger for Donald Trump ruin them, completely ruin their shows and ruin them.
And here's one of them.
He is not a president.
He is a puppet put in power by Vladimir Putin.
And those who ignore these elemental existential facts, Democrats or Republicans, are traitors to this country and will immediately and forever after be held accountable.
Aaron, have you been held accountable yet?
You know, Jimmy, what I want to stress here is that the, you know, like the problem here, like when you talk about anger ruining people's shows, anger over Trump, see, the anger for Trump is obviously justified, right?
But not only has this anger ruined people's reasoning skills, it's also ruined their ability to be an effective resistance to Donald Trump.
So it's been 100%, it's an act of 100% self-sabotage because for two years, people like Keith Olberman and other prominent liberal pundits have directed us to resist Trump by believing in their conspiracy theory.
And look at the result now.
Now we've just handed Trump a massive gift heading into 2020.
He'll claim vindication.
He'll claim with some justification that this investigation was unfair.
And there is actual grounds for that because when you look at what it's based on, it's pretty baseless.
Well, 50%, you know, there was a new poll recently, USA Today.
50% of the people believe that Trump is a victim of a witch hunt.
Exactly right.
And the thing is, they're catching on.
And part of that has to reflect the fact that after two years of hearing about it, hearing about Trump and his associates were guilty of all these crimes, there's nothing except for process crimes that result in a very small amount of prison time for the people who pled guilty.
Or in the case of Manafort, the only person who faces serious prison time, it's for a case that has nothing to do with Russia or the 2016 election.
So what I want people to really get, because I've been hearing today from people I respect about, you know, about how challenging Russia Gate is a way of defending Trump.
No, we're challenging the people who have been handing Trump a massive gift for his reelection campaign.
That is such a crazy assessment of what we're doing.
So if you don't go along with unbelievable propaganda, you're somehow defending a politician.
That is the most backwards upside down and the opposite of journalism.
So when you say people you respect, I'm guessing you don't mean your dad, but you mean someone in freaking journalism.
And so that these, so these people who consider themselves journalists, what I'm finding out for the little time I'm spending in this area is that they're horrible, that 99% of them suck worse than me and wouldn't know a fucking fact if it bit them in their conspiratorial ass.
And the fact that I can get this right for two and a half years when still to this day, people that you respect are saying that telling the truth is somehow a subversive act.
That's, again, it reminds me of that thing that Ron Paul likes to say, you know, when telling the truth becomes a crime, you're being ruled by criminals.
And now we're also telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
That's what we're living in.
It's a ubiquitous lie.
Russia Gate was nothing but a propaganda invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign, pushed by the intelligence community because it forwards their Cold War narrative.
And now we have another Cold War.
And guess what?
We're spending $800 billion a year on bombs and missiles again.
So everybody's happy.
And guess what?
Rachel Maddow has the number one show on cable.
So everybody's happy about this Russia Gate thing, except, you know, who's not?
30 million Americans that don't have health care.
80% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck.
That is who is not happy about Russia Gate.
Now, I saw, so, you know, unhinged people, I mean, to be able, so now when I'm out there telling the truth and I got to turn on the video and hear a jag off like Keith Olberman say something like this about me.
He is not a president.
He is a puppet put in power by Vladimir Putin.
And those who ignore these elemental existential facts, Democrats or Republicans, are traitors to this country and will immediately and forever after be held accountable.
That is so damaging to our country.
And it just goes to show you that Keith Olberman was all this time, he was Glenn Beck in a costume.
That's Glenn Beck.
So you know how when a black guy with a Muslim name got elected to the presidency, how a bunch of right-wingers' brains just got fried like Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck would have a chalkboard and tell you how the Muslims are taking over, even though Barack Obama wasn't a Muslim.
And they would tell you that's how fried their brain got, right?
And then they chased him down for his long-form birth certificate.
And now all of a sudden you go, oh my God, the left is just as bad as they are.
In fact, fucking worse.
They didn't call me a traitor to my country because I supported Barack Obama, but they do say that now.
Keith Olberman is just a hack who nobody should take seriously and who ultimately what he says is inconsequential.
But I mean, overall, the media culture that he is a part of.
I mean, we certainly agree.
And you've been calling this out for two years.
And I've tried to do my part too.
The media culture that he's a part of, where this unhinged conspiracy theory has become the prevailing culture, has done serious damage, irreparable damage, turning liberals into Cold War dogma, adhering national security state worshiping conspiracy theory, peddling people.
And it's, you know, like, again, there's so many negative consequences to it, including taking our eye off all the issues that you laid out, like healthcare, and now heading into 2020, giving Trump this massive victory to cling to and to cite.
And, you know, unless we wise up to that, unless we can let go, speaking of the broad liberal progressive spectrum, let go of this attachment to this conspiracy theory.
I'm really worried about what that means for 2020.
In January 2017, we were saying, I mean, we've been saying this from the get-go, that this is going to come back to bite the left on the ass, and you got to be careful before you do this.
Also, we also would say that, you know, this is going to, you know, people already have very little confidence in news journalism, especially after what they saw they did to Bernie Sanders, right?
And then, and so now, so half, half of the left hated the news media because they saw they were disingenuously and unfairly covering Bernie Sanders.
If they weren't smearing him, they were ignoring him while they're showing empty Trump podiums, right?
And now the other half of the country gets to see how the news media completely lied about Donald Trump and created a complete propaganda scare and they created a new Red Scare.
And so now there's absolutely no confidence in the news media on the left or the right.
And so now when the news media actually does want to tell you something about Donald Trump, now people aren't going to believe them.
And that's the big problem.
And now nobody's going to believe.
So when Nancy, let me ask you this question, Aaron.
When Nancy Pelosi says for two and a half years that Donald Trump is being controlled by Vladimir Putin, very much like Keith Oberman just said, in no uncertain terms, and then she says, I'm not going to push for impeachment.
What that tells me is she never really believed he was a Putin puppet because if you thought we had a traitor in the White House, you would do everything you could to get that guy out of power, wouldn't you?
I totally agree.
It tells you that they did not take their wild claim seriously.
It also tells me that they don't take being a serious opposition party seriously.
Because if you were a serious opposition party, then why would you insist on an evidence-free narrative, prioritize that for two years, spread all kinds of innuendo and raise expectations amongst your base, only then, knowing full well that there's no evidence for it.
And then even when it collapses, doubling down on it.
So last night, I saw Adam Schiff, who's peddled the Russian conspiracy theory more than probably anybody in Congress, talking about how Muell might not have done a complete enough investigation and how Congress needs to see all the evidence because there might be underlying evidence there of a compromise president.
Well, if Muell didn't allege a compromise president, how all of a sudden is the House going to be able to figure out that Trump is a compromise president based on the evidence that Mueller used?
So it's like, that tells me that these people are more interested in protecting their own status, their own privilege, which they've done for two years because if they were serious about actually challenging Trump, then they would have taken a look at what got Trump elected.
And what got Trump elected was painting himself as a working class champion and conning enough people into believing that he would defend working people and take on Wall Street.
But Democrats don't want to have to look at that because that would mean challenging their own relationship to Wall Street and rethinking that and coming up with a serious alternative to Trump's policies.
But they haven't done that.
So all this tells me that not only are these people conspiracy theorists, but they're not interested in being an actual effective opposition.
So now, can you tell me what now, I interpreted this as when Joy Ann Reed says it feels like the seeds of a cover-up are here.
To me, that sounds like Joy Ann Reed is saying Trump is guilty of this criminal conspiracy that Mueller's been investigating.
And somehow Mueller is in on this cover-up from the Justice Department.
Is that what she's saying?
It's ludicrous, but it's not surprising.
So for two years, we've heard so much about the need to protect Mueller and how Mueller has this unparalleled integrity, the integrity of a Marine.
He's a soldier.
He's just going to follow the facts.
Now, all of a sudden, Mueller has delivered a report without indicting anybody for the Trump-Russia conspiracy that people like Joy Reed have been so convinced of.
And now we're hearing about, oh, was Mueller interfered with?
This seems like a cover-up.
Her reasons for that, if you watch the clip of it, she says that Barr didn't recuse himself and Trump effectively controls the DOJ.
That's her reason for it, which is just, it's ridiculous for so many reasons, including the fact that Barr in his letter to Congress notes that the Justice Department never interfered with a single decision or track that Mueller wanted to pursue.
So it's like even factually incorrect based on the information we got yesterday and comparing it to the narrative we've heard about Mueller for two years, it's just, it's ridiculous.
So now they're going to start throwing Mueller under the bus as well.
And it shows just how pathetic and desperate they're getting.
Instead of just acknowledging like, okay, this didn't work out the way we primed you to expect.
Let's move on now.
They're doubling down with a new conspiracy, a new conspiracy theory to cover up for the failure of the old one.
Hello.
Hello, everybody.
It is I, Master of the Senate, Chuck Schumer.
I am here to take my victory lap.
Ready?
What?
Victory lap for what?
Final vindication with the Mueller report.
My work is done here.
Away.
He looks into the sky, drapes his cape around his back, and soars into the air.
Away.
Away, my friends.
Victory is ours.
Wait, don't anybody move.
I dropped a contact lens.
Vindication for what, Chuck?
Mueller didn't recommend one person connected with the Trump White House for charges of conspiracy with Russia to fix the election.
Details, schme tails.
Mueller report, Mueller-Richmort.
How do you like them, apples?
Wait, that should be Mueller Report Schmueller report.
You get the point, though, right?
You know, I hate to say this, but I have to even agree with Bill O'Reilly on this.
Trump is stronger, and Democrats will have to reinvent themselves after this utter failure.
You see, I bring people together.
You and Bill O'Reilly.
Isn't that nice?
Jimmy, we have to reach across the aisle in our failure.
Hello, failure.
My name is Failure Two.
How do you do?
Only it's not really a failure, Jimmy.
It's a fail win.
Fail wins are very, very different from failures.
For instance, let's say you try to do one thing for three years and end up looking foolish and dishonest.
That's a failure, right?
Yes.
But let's suppose you do all that while ignoring how our health care system is killing everybody right and left.
Not to mention our impending extinction starting 10 years from now.
That's a fail win.
How?
Because our party was never going to do anything about those dumb things anyway.
So essentially, we distracted a worried public from their horrible fate for three whole years.
And I still have my job.
I'm going to die long before we start fighting our neighbors for clean water and those giant ants eat us in our mud huts.
Yay.
So who's to blame for misleading the public all this time, Chuck?
Democrats or Republicans?
It's that Mueller, dude.
I never trusted him.
There have been words said that he's a Russian asset.
Yeah.
I'm not at liberty to say anything else about it right now.
National security.
Didn't you say this after Rosenstein appointed Mueller?
Former Director Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for the job.
You said that.
Could you repeat the question, please?
I was trying to get a milk dot off the roof of my mouth.
You endorsed Mueller, right?
Why do they always stick to the roof of your mouth like that?
You know, sometimes I like to toss a whole box of them in my mouth just to see what happens.
What do you think happens, Jimmy?
They stick to the roof of your mouth, right?
Precisely.
It's the little things in life that bring people together.
Don't you think?
But you did say that about Mueller.
Oh, sure, I might have said that.
But what we have to consider is what I really meant when I said that.
Hey, I just asked for the Senate to pass a resolution to make the Mueller report public.
And what if that doesn't happen, Chuck?
Then I shall huff and I shall puff and I shall blow their house down.
And you can tell I mean it because I'm lifting both arms to shoulder level and clenching my fists like a crack baby.
So you're so you're still telling the public that it's not completely over?
Nothing's ever over, Jimmy.
Investigations are like wars.
They're too big to fail.
Well, what else do you expect to find?
Attorney General Barr's letter about the investigation raises as many questions as it answers.
For instance, just what in the fuck were we doing all this time?
And why isn't the Find Friends app more accurate than it is?
Sometimes it has me out in a cornfield while I'm on my way to the safe way.
Questions like that.
Oh, look at me with all the questions.
Where are my manners?
I have to go raise money.
I was also the mayor from Ghostbusters.
Ta-ta.
So Aaron Matei had a great question.
He said, if you're in NBC right now, what do you do after two years of peddling a conspiracy theory by shutting out dissenting voices and countervailing facts?
Do you double down with deflection denial, distortion in the hopes your audience doesn't catch on, or start doing actual journalism?
That's a good question.
Do we get to vote?
Well, it already happened, so we get to see shucks.
So, well, it turns out he says, let's say you spent two plus years ceasingly hyping a Trump-Russia conspiracy on your top-rated news show.
Mueller has just finished his probe by finding no conspiracy.
If you're Rachel Maddow, how much time do you then spend reporting on that result?
30 seconds.
She spent 30 seconds talking about the Mueller report's results, and she moved right on, kept going right on.
And they're all doing it.
There's absolutely no reckoning happening, of course.
There isn't, but it's even worse.
They're still going.
Like, they're not stopping.
Like David Corn and Mother Jones.
Mother Jones must be owned by the CIA at this point.
It is unbelievable how horrible.
They might as well be owned by the CIA.
Their horrors are so horrible, that Mother Jones.
Anyway, but Rachel Maddow's ratings took a little bit of a slide ski.
Maddow, other MSNBC hosts, see ratings drop and Fox is up.
That's the headline at the Washington Post.
Maddow and other embassy hosts, MSNBC hosts, see ratings drop.
Fox News up.
This guy, Tom Guerre, editor Buddhist feed, he says, Maddow, who has consistently vied for the first or second top-rated cable news program, was sixth on Monday evening.
Sixth.
Rachel Maddow's been number one.
She fell to sixth on Monday, down almost 500,000 viewers from the previous Monday.
In fact, her audience of 2.5 million on Monday was 19% below her average this year, and it went down further to 2.3 million on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, her head-to-head competitor on Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity, saw his audience soar on Monday to 4 million viewers, a 32% increase from his average.
Maddow has been the most...
First of all, is that surprising to anybody that her ratings are way down?
And I think Glenn Greenwald made this analogy, but he kind of compared it to like a murder series or a mystery novel.
And I think that's part of it, too.
People kept tuning in.
They're like, are they going to get him?
When's it going to be?
We played the compilation videos of the walls are closing and the walls are closing and the walls are closing and the walls are closing in.
Well, the walls are still not closed.
Walls did not close in.
Well, it reminds me of the time where, you know, the past six months where Rachel Maddow decided that she was going to be able to disclose his income tax.
And it was this very long segment about, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to expose him.
I'm going to expose him.
I'm going to expose him.
Now, turn that into over two years.
Two years, if she would have been saying that.
And by the way, her ratings went down after that, too, after she hyped that and it didn't come through.
Her ratings plummeted after that, too.
Did you know that?
Well, Ron will remember this, but I remember when our Geraldo Rivera was saying that he was going to show us Al Capone's Al Capone's Vault.
And everybody tuned in.
Of course, then that was only like four channels.
This is like that.
Yes.
See, with WMDs in Iraq, it led to a real war that they wanted.
So it worked.
But with Russia Gate, well, I guess what they really wanted was a distraction from the Democrats' loss to Donald Trump, a political novice and a game show host.
And how did they lose to him?
And so that, so it actually did fulfill its purpose, don't you think?
Yes.
So here, though MSNBC president Phil Griffin did not return the Daily Beast request for comment, he said in a statement that the Mueller investigation was a huge story and that the network was going to keep doing its job poorly.
They were going to keep Not we apologize to everyone.
The last two and a half years has been a complete waste.
We should get our Facebook and Twitter accounts deleted.
We should if everything was fair, but we're not going to, of course, because we're owned by a huge corporation.
So Phil Griffin, the president of NBC, says that they're going to keep doing their job, asking the tough questions, especially when it involves holding powerful people accountable.
That's the last thing you guys do is hold powerful people accountable.
You're the powerful people we need to hold accountable, Phil.
Rachel Maddow needs to be held accountable.
Chris Hayes needs to be held accountable.
You need to be held accountable.
So now you had a debate about this with Jenk Uger, who has famously been on board with Trump as a puppet of Putin.
That's the narrative that they've told at the main show.
We've told the opposite at the aggressive progressives on the same network.
So tip of the hat to Jenk Uger for having a show on his network that gets it right.
No other news channel does.
So I think I'm actually complimenting myself when I do that.
I think that's what I'm really doing.
But I saw that now you had a debate with him, and he has a different view of this.
Can you explain quickly what it is?
And did you have any effect on him, you think?
Well, first of all, tip of the hat also to Jenk for having me on because so many other progressive outlets have just completely shut out debate.
You'll never see.
In fact, I think I saw you tweet that the last time anybody at MSNBC had a counter view of the Russia gate.
When was that?
Can you tell us?
It was December 2016.
So before even Trump took office.
And it was when Ari Melber interviewed Glenn Greenwald.
So Ari Melber interviews Glenn Greenwald.
So no one will ever see that because it's on fucking Ari Melber's show, which no one watches.
I'm not going to disari, but I will say it's crazy that in two for all of Trump's presidency.
Well, I will disari for not having Glenn on since.
Yeah.
Because it's insane that for two years of Trump's presidency, you don't have one progressive critic of this dominant narrative and no one who can point out all the facts that your network has been ignoring and sidelining for two years.
That is what is called state TV.
In this case, it's state TV for the wing of the state known as the Democratic Party.
But it's like, it's insane.
And so credit to Jenk for having me on.
I thought we had a very substantive discussion.
I mean, I think Jenk's thing is that from the way I interpret it is that he doesn't think collusion happened during the 2016 campaign.
He does, though, think that Trump is compromised by Putin because Putin has leverage over Trump via Russian money laundering.
And so he can get Trump to do things that no other president would do.
And he's suspicious because of things like Trump meeting with Putin privately and tearing up or reportedly tearing up the notes of that meeting from the translator afterwards.
So I think that is the crux of.
So I always thought that that was a killer argument that Jenk had.
So Trump had a meeting with Putin and they got rid of his own American interpreter.
And so it looked like he wanted to talk to Putin without anybody in any records.
And that does seem pretty Jenk-like points of that.
And he's like, that's it.
Why else would you want to do that if you're not doing some kind of criminal stuff?
And I was like, that's pretty good.
And then you pointed out in that conversation that, well, there's actually precedent for this, that Ronald Reagan, of all people, had secret meetings and told the press and his interpreters a getaway.
And him and Gorbachev had a meeting.
And what we got out of that was a nuclear arms treaty.
So good things come out of them meeting privately like that.
So that point of Jenks, which I really did think that was a killer point for a long time until again, and then I double-checked you, by the way.
I looked that up to make sure that you weren't pulling that out of somewhere.
And so you were right, 100%.
I even read it in the LA Times.
And in fact, the way the LA Times reported the private meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan was that it was a great thing.
They never, they didn't, everyone's suspicious of Ronald Reagan.
They were just saying this is a great thing and the pesky press had to get away.
That's the way they couched it.
So that point fell apart.
And now his other thing was about the financial crimes.
Jenk's opinion is that the Russian oligarchs are under the thumb of Putin and Trump is under the thumb of Russian oligarchs.
So Ergo, he's one step removed from Putin.
So he's underneath Putin's thumb because whatever Putin wants, the oligarchs do and the oligarchs do will make Trump do whatever they want because they're giving him money, right?
So they parked money.
All these Russian oligarchs parked money in his properties in Florida.
But that also doesn't support that theory, right?
Right.
I mean, there's a few things here.
First of all, if Trump is under Putin's thumb, then why then is he pursuing policies that are more hawkish on Russia, far more hawkish on Russia than Barack Obama's?
I mean, we don't accuse Obama of being compromised by Putin.
You know, one illustration of that points to a very big irony when it comes to this issue of the precedent for Russian and U.S. presidents meeting privately.
One of the policies that Trump has pursued is tearing up the very nuclear arms control agreement that resulted from those private meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev, the INF treaty, which is now giving us a new arms race.
So great.
And where is the resistance on that?
Trump's trying to overthrow Putin's ally in Venezuela.
He's bombed Syria, Russia's ally, twice.
He's trying to stop a vital gas pipeline deal between Germany and Russia, even considering sanctions on that pipeline, which is like crazy and unprecedented.
He's increased the number of U.S. troops at Russia's borders, held the biggest military war games ever on Russia's borders.
So on and on and on and on.
And nobody ever addresses the sobering reality of what is actually going on, preferring instead to come up with fantasies about what they think is going on behind the scenes.
And in terms of Russian money having leverage over Trump, I mean, like the sources for that are basically like some, literally a Gulf magazine writer says that like he said what he said a few years after the fact, he said that in a conversation, which he never reported previously, he said that Eric Trump told him that the Russians have a lot of money in Trump properties.
Okay.
So that's one source for that.
And then there's also a comment by Donald Trump Jr. where he talks about how Russians have been buying up some of our properties.
Okay.
And so like that is like the main source for all these claims about Russian money compromising Trump.
And even if there is a disproportionate amount of Russian money being laundered through Trump properties, I mean, that's serious and worth looking at.
But then how you get from that to Vladimir Putin and instructing Donald Trump what to do privately and telling him, making him do his bidding is just improbable, especially when you look at the fact that what Trump is actually doing consistently is endorsing and implementing a hawkish posture, a hawkish and dangerous posture towards Putin and Russia.
Yeah.
So here in another, here's Kyle Kalinsky puts it this way.
The Putin puppet narrative was always liberal Benghazi.
Trump's own policies debunked it.
What policies?
Well, he armed the Ukrainian Rebels.
Russia didn't want that.
He'd put a NATO buildup on the Russian border.
Putin didn't want that.
He put U.S. warships in the Black Sea.
Putin certainly didn't want that.
He's right now pressuring Germany to axe a Russian pipeline oil deal.
Did you know that?
Yeah, he's doing that.
He pulled out of the nuke treaty.
Russia didn't want that to happen.
He's escalated in Syria and he bombed Syria twice.
And now he's trying to overthrow Maduro in Venezuela.
Russia also doesn't want that.
So again, that's what a conspiracy theory is.
When you start at a conclusion that Trump is the Putin puppet, and then you go and you find evidence to back it up, and even evidence that would debunk your theory, you twist it to fit your theory.
It's called an unfalsifiable theory, right?
And that's.
You ignore it.
Yeah, or you ignore the countervailing evidence, which is why we don't see on CNN or MSNBC any segments about all these serious issues.
Like, look at that list of things that Kyle has there, all these serious issues that are going on in the world.
We don't even talk about them, partly because they undermine that conspiracy theory that liberal media culture, unfortunately, is so attached to.
And, you know, part of it, it could not exist, I think, if we're talking, if this were about any other country, I don't think it could sustain itself.
But unfortunately, in the U.S., there is a Russo-phobia that goes way back, you know, far before 2016.
It's sort of in our DNA, where, you know, back in the back in the early 20th century, there was talk about Russian infiltration and Russia influencing the minds of vulnerable Americans.
And that narrative has been used to sustain a dangerous Cold War that threatened extinction for the world, but was very profitable for the military-industrial complex.
And now RussiaGate has basically taken that, rebranded it into this false idea of it being used to take on Donald Trump, when really, as we've been talking about, it's actually empowered Donald Trump and made the world much more dangerous.
So here is Chomsky speaking to this point of there has to be a so Trump is under the thumb of the Russian oligarchs and Putin, so there must be a quid pro quo, right?
So they're doing something for Trump, so Trump has to do something for them, right?
And Chomsky says this.
Where is it?
Watch.
But with a quid pro quo of the Russians of what?
The quid pro quo is that he's increased military action on the Russian border.
He's created a huge military expansion of the military budget aimed at Russia.
He's pulled out of the INF treaty, which is a major threat to Russia.
What's the quid pro quo?
So that would, to me, debunk this other theory of that of Jenks that Trump is an economic puppet of Putin.
Would that do it for you?
No one says it like Chomsky.
What's the quid pro quo?
What is it?
So here, we'll play a little bit more, Chomsky.
Here he is talking about the crazy amount of focus that the U.S. media has given to this Russia gate narrative.
And listen, he uses a funny word at the beginning.
Watch.
What's being, there's a focus on what I believe are marginalia.
Marginalia.
Marginalia.
I had to get some cream for my marginalia last week.
I had a rash.
Did you see?
I don't know about that.
Anyway, I had my marginalia out in public.
I got arrested.
Did you know that?
If you do that.
Anyway, so we've been focused on marginalia.
I wonder if his marginalia is circumcised.
Anyway, here we go.
Take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections.
Did the Russians interfere in our elections?
An issue of overwhelming concern to the media.
I mean, in most of the world, that's almost a joke.
First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts ways in the balance as compared with what another state does openly, brazenly, and with enormous support.
Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done.
So there you have it again.
That just shows you that this is propaganda, that Adam Schiff, Rachel Maddow, Jake Tapper, they're all pushing complete 100% propaganda.
Because if you really cared about our pristine elections and undue foreign influence, you'd be screaming bloody murder about Israeli influence in our government.
But they're not.
So that, again, reveals them to be frauds.
They're frauds.
Okay.
So there's no two ways about it.
Now, Aaron's not going to say that because he has to work with these people the rest of his life.
But I'm going to say it.
They're frauds.
The people who've been pushing this stuff are frauds, which is why people have such little faith in our news media today, which is also why I can consistently do a better job than they do.
What does that tell you that I'm doing a better job than they do?
Jesus Christ.
Do you understand how bad they are?
And I'm not kidding.
I'm doing it much better.
We got the Syria war right.
They got it wrong.
Venezuela, they're all getting it wrong 100%.
Even on YouTube, they're all getting it wrong almost 100%.
And RussiaGate, we've been pushing back two and a half years against this.
It's almost unbelievable that we've gotten this right here at our little stupid show at my garage.
And I mean, look at all the money at these beautiful, these studios people have.
People have millions of dollars in their studios.
And what?
So they can have prettier lights while they gaslight you and push propaganda from the government.
That's what's happening.
And Chomsky just revealed that.
If you really give a shit about our elections and integrity, you wouldn't be looking at Russia.
Well, here's another one.
Here's something else he says.
Let's listen.
If concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in democratic society, taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look.
So let me get you to react to that, Aaron.
Now, how are you going to, how do you react to that when you hear him say that?
Well, look, I mean, I pretty much reflexively agree with whatever Chomsky says.
But in this case, I all the more agree.
I mean, he's talking about all the issues that are serious threats to democracy in this country that have been ignored by RussiaGate.
I mean, look at the 2016 election.
You can sort of chart Trump's victory and the Republican victories to a key influx of dark money.
And of course, gerrymandering, voter suppression.
I mean, all these things.
Add them up all together.
And none of them have received a fraction of the attention that RussiaGate has got.
And the reason why is because taking on those issues seriously would mean seriously taking on the U.S. elites that profit from them, that profit from a system that allows for dark money and corporate control of media and politics.
But none of these, unfortunately, none of these self-styled bold thinking independent-minded journalists who have big platforms like on msnbc want to actually do that their only option like from the left to oppose Trump has been through a conspiracy theory that really threatens nobody.
And in fact, it benefits privileged sectors because if you drum up tensions with Russia, that's going to be profitable to industries that profit from tensions with Russia.
So it's a very safe way to resist.
And we're feeling now the disaster.
And I just want to stress again that for us to challenge that is not to support Trump.
It's to say that we need to challenge Trump based on what Trump is actually doing, not on this invented conspiracy theory.
Now, since this show has gotten this right and we've gotten Venezuela right and the word has gotten out.
Now, my phone has been ringing off the hook.
Everyone wants to hire me.
Now, I bet you're in demand too, because you've been way out in front.
You've been famously out in front on this and you've been getting derision and you've been getting derided and other words that start with derid.
So are people calling you up right now?
They want to get this kind of good investigative reporting on their platforms.
Not yet.
No kidding.
Wow, that's weird.
So I guess you'll be having a drink with Phil Donahue later on and Ashley Banfield.
Yeah, Phil, as you talked about a lot, was taken off the air before the Iraq war for challenging it.
And MSNBC said in a memo that, you know, that having someone who questions the U.S. government's drive to war right now is just not good for our network.
It's not the kind of image we want to cultivate.
So there we go.
Those are the results for people who get it right.
People get it wrong, as we saw with the Iraq war, are kicked upstairs.
Jeffrey Goldberg, who gave us the notion that Al-Qaeda was working with Saddam and that Saddam had WMDs.
He's not the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
David Fromm also, David From, who invented the term axis of evil, he's also an editor at the Atlantic, right?
Jonathan Chait, who supported the Iraq war, supported the war in Libya.
And didn't apologize for it until 2012, by the way.
Jonathan Chade didn't apologize for supporting the Iraq war until 2012.
There we go.
And now during the Trump-Russia era, has distinguished himself by writing an article wondering if Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset since 1987.
And these guys don't get fired.
They never get fired.
Dave Weigel's never going to write an article about what a shithead Jonathan Chate is and what a conspiracy theorist is because they all are.
Every writer at the Washington Post and every writer, they're all goddamn conspiracy theorists.
And it's just so fun.
I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you.
Go ahead.
Well, just to say, there was recently a round of layoffs at New York Magazine where Chate writes, Chate was not included in the law.
There was recently a big round of a huge round of layoffs at BuzzFeed News.
BuzzFeed, which has actually done some very good reporting, but not included in those layoffs were the people who gave us this now debunked story about Trump ordering Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.
They kept those guys?
They kept those guys.
And it just came out recently that BuzzFeed paid at least $4.5 million in a lawsuit to defend itself against defamation after it published the phony steel dossier, this bullshit thing paid for by the Democrats that alleged a Grand Trump-Russia conspiracy theory.
BuzzFeed published it.
They were sued for defamation by some people who were named in that dossier.
And BuzzFeed spent at least $4.5 million to hire experts to try to corroborate that dossier, which of course they couldn't.
So that is where right now, that's a small window into where journalism, money, and resources are going to, and who is getting kicked upstairs and who's getting left out by it.
And so BuzzFeed most recently, famously printed a completely bogus article that we debunked here.
That's another thing we got right.
So we got, and also the bullshit Manafort meeting with Juliana Sons.
We also debunked that.
It's amazing all the things we get right at aggressive progressives in the Jimmy Dore show that they don't get right anywhere else.
It's amazing how is it that I can get that right?
That is just that is that is just a mind-blowing thing that BuzzFeed didn't, by the way, they still lived that story up.
And the story was that Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress.
And they ran with that story and they said it was real.
And that, of course, is 100% a false story.
And they're standing by a false story, but their Facebook page is not going to be taken down, nor will they be taken off of Twitter.
So this just goes to show you when you lie for the establishment, there's never a price to pay ever.
If you tell the truth, an uncomfortable truth about the establishment, you'll be deplatformed.
And that's what's been happening to people on the left.
And I understand people on the right, too.
I'm not that into it, but I hear Tim Poole has told me.
Let me play one more clip from Chomsky here.
Let me play one more clip.
Here we go.
But for a long period, way back, U.S. elections have been pretty much bought.
You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision, simply looking at campaign spending.
So if you want to know what influences our elections, look at who that's the money.
Our elections are bought.
And all the Democrats are running around.
Our democracy has been hijacked.
Our democracy was hijacked in 1977 or whatever that goddamn ruling that opened up the floodgates of unlimited money in politics.
That's what we're living in.
We don't, again, I saw Zephyr Teach out tweeted out, we need to have functional political parties.
She's really working to make the Democratic Party a functional political party, even though she just found out that the Driple C is now doing economic terrorism against any progressive who primaries a corporatist Democrat.
That's a new story we're reporting.
They said if you're a consultant and you work with someone who primaries a corporate Democrat, the Driple C will then never give you another contract, which is effectively a death sentence for a political consultant.
So they're still doing it to Chomsky.
Let me just, let me, I mean, they're still doing it to the progressives.
I just want to say thanks for you tweeting this out, Aaron.
Jimmy deserves a ton of credit.
He used his platform to consistently and effectively debunk the Russiagate madness while others in the progressive field drank the Kool-Aid.
I'm grateful to him for that and for giving me an opportunity to be a frequent guest.
Well, thank you for tweeting that out.
That was really nice.
And why did you put consistently with little asterisks?
Well, there are some places that did it for a bit, but then got, I think.
Oh, I think I know what you mean by that now.
You know, Democracy Now, the intercept that have had some people that push back, but have also featured a lot of voices who drank the Kool-Aid as well.
And it's been, I think there's been an overall cowardice in leftist media circles to really take this on, not because I think they have a lack of integrity, but I think that Trump really just skewed people's thinking and they couldn't see that actually challenging this conspiracy theory was not helping that challenging this conspiracy theory was not a way of helping Trump.
Uh, it was actually a way to help to challenge a something that was doing serious damage to the efforts to take on Trump.
And I think a lot of people lost sight of that because of the overall just confusion that Trump's presidency engendered.
Because for a lot of people, it was a very disorienting and traumatizing experience.
I just have a hard time believing that people like Ari Melber and Chris Hayes really believe this the whole time.
Like, I just don't think that they believed it for even a second.
And I just think that they just go, they're just go-along tools.
They're beards of a nefarious corporation, and that's why they got hired.
And if they weren't willing to go along with that kind of dog shit, they wouldn't have got hired in the first place, or they would have got fired quick like Jenk Uger or Ed Schultz or Phil Donahue or Ashley Bamfield or Jesse Ventura.
So I really feel sorry for you, Aaron, that you have to work in this profession for the rest of your life.
I really do.
Honest to God, like if every fucking comedian was an ass, I was like, that's the beauty about comedy.
I get to hang out with other comedians.
I love it, right?
They're my favorite people to hang out with.
But these journalists, they're all fucking career climber jagoffs who don't give a fuck about journalism.
And they have no trouble smearing somebody.
And they won't even stand up for Julian Assange, somebody in their own goddamn profession, but they will stand up for a jackass like Jim Acosta.
I mean, I got zero fucking respect for the entire profession.
And so I just wish you good luck, honest to God.
And right now, the Washington Post is lying about Venezuela.
Fucking CNN is lying about Venezuela.
MSNBC, they're all getting it wrong.
They're all still fucking getting this wrong.
It's amazing how shitty they are.
And I just want to say thank you to them because it's helped my show immensely.
We just crossed 500,000 subscribers.
And, you know, you'd think that they would, MSNBC, Ari Melber would want to have me on or have you on.
Somebody who's been famously out front sticking our chin out on this and getting it kicked in.
And now we're fucking right.
And guys like Ari Melber and Chris Hayes, and of course, Rachel Maddow, who's completely fucking batshit crazy, won't have us on for a second, right?
Because that would show that they have integrity.
And even if they had integrity, their bosses don't.
And they could never push back against their boss, which means fucking they don't have integrity.
And so I've got way more integrity than those pieces of it over at MSNBC and CNN.
And I'm fucking better than they are.
You know why?
I'm just not bought.
That's why, because I'm not funded by the people I'm supposed to be exposing, you stupid son of a bitches, you fucking losers.
A guy like me who smokes pot when he gets up in the morning has fucking scooped you for two and a half years.
You can all whoo feels good.
Feels good.
Aaron, I'll edit out the swears so you can throw it to your journalist friends.
Don't worry about it.
Ha ha ha ha!
*Bell rings*
Hello.
Jimmy, hello.
I want you to listen very closely because I'm only going to say this a few hundred times.
The walls are opening out and the heat is tepid.
It's only a matter of time before nothing in particular happens.
The storm is not brewing.
The cracks aren't showing.
The pressure is receding.
And we have reached a lukewarm simmering point.
So did you write all that down on a piece of paper?
Yes, I did.
We'll destroy it, you fool.
Hey, you know, there's a lot more to that phone call, but we don't have time in today's podcast.
How do you hear the entire phone call?
You got to become a premium member.
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Today's show was written.
That's right.
It was written by Frank Connoff, Jim Earl, Ron Placone, Steph Samurano, and Mark Van Landowick.
All the voices today performed by the one and the only the inimitable Mike McRae, who can be found at mikemcrae.com.
That's it for this week.
Let you be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.
Don't freak out!
I'm not kidding.
Don't freak out!
Don't freak out.
Do not, do not, do not.
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