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March 3, 2023 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
40:56
The Florida Reptile

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit radixjournal.substack.comIs the GOP establishment’s choice for president a dangerous and sadistic sociopath? Richard and Charles Johnson breakdown Ron DeSantis’s background and psychological profile; along the way, they discuss some of the curious incidents and deaths that have assisted him throughout his career…. In the second half, Richard discusses his recent trip to Los Ang…

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DeSantis clearly cannot punch back.
And that is one of the things about Trump.
He was a counterpuncher, but then he's also a preemptive puncher.
He'll kind of sense which way the wind's blowing and then start punching in that direction to mix a metaphor here.
But DeSantis has just failed to do it.
His only response is, I'm just focusing on Florida and we're trying to bring people together here and so on.
That strikes me as someone who's going to have a difficult time counterpunching to anyone.
And, you know, in terms of the 2028 thing, I get that that, you know, makes sense in theory.
But I don't think that quite makes sense in practice.
Because you've got to...
You know, like with a football team or any sports team, you kind of need to peak at the right time.
And there's all these teams that peak almost in the preseason.
And then they kind of fall apart.
Or they peak in October, and then they kind of hit the skids going into the playoffs, and then they lose out.
And it's those teams that are kind of just like...
Firing on all cylinders as they're going into the playoffs that are the ones that make these runs.
And I think it's the same thing with politics.
I mean, if I were advising him, of course, if I were advising him, I would advise him to go jump off a bridge.
But if I were advising him in a way to win, I mean, the assumption that he's going to still...
Be this hot in four years is a big if.
It's a big assumption.
And I'm not sure I necessarily buy it.
I mean, we have these people who kind of peaked in the 2008, 2010 era, maybe 2012, like Chris Christie.
I remember Marco Rubio was really hot.
I don't think that Ted Cruz will be able to run for president again.
After barely beating Beto or Work and just, you know, the Cancun adventure and so on.
You've got to strike while the iron's hot.
I also, I think I'm getting a little bit closer to understanding DeSantis as a person.
And I do think he's an incredibly ambitious person and insanely...
And vicious person.
And I don't think he's going to leave the...
I don't think he's going to sit this one out.
The other thing is that there's so much being projected upon DeSantis.
So the whole Claremont Institute fellows, all those people, are all behind him.
They're much like in 2015.
They're memeing him into existence, talking big.
The Jeb Bush establishment Republican side has effectively endorsed him.
I mean, it was the kiss of death, in my opinion, but Jeb said, you know, this is his time.
And everyone's doing it for different reasons.
I think he's a screen that people project their fantasies upon.
But, you know, that doesn't mean that it's not the time to do this.
And I do think it is.
And I do think it will run.
And I don't think he'll be able to pull out the Republican nomination, barring Trump being sent to jail.
Because of this factor, he just doesn't have that pugnacious ability to target an enemy and slam him.
And Trump obviously does.
I mean, DeSantis has been thinking in the polls of late.
I mean, these are very early polls about, you know, where are you in New Hampshire and Iowa and straw polls or something like that.
So we shouldn't put too much stock in them.
But, you know, there's a decided trend in that direction because of this fact.
But I did want to talk about the psychology of DeSantis because it's...
I actually, I'm running a bit on empty right now.
I think I'll be fine for this conversation, but I got about two hours of sleep total last night because I got called out to LA to do this crazy thing, which I can talk about.
But one of the reasons why I was able to stay up is that I hopped on this kind of crazy all-night Twitter space.
And that Charles was hosting.
And I, you know, it kept me awake there in the LAX airport to get on a 5am flight.
Happy to do it for you, Richard.
Happy to do it for you.
Yes.
Kept me going.
I was about to...
Turn into a zombie-like state, which will sometimes be done.
When you stay up all night and you're in an airport, which is this synthetic environment, you kind of forget if it's morning or night or if it's day or what day it is or who you are.
It was quite a time.
This is the way that I would look at this issue.
So it's not too much to say that...
Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist type of person.
He is, and I think I used this metaphor before on maybe a space or maybe on one of these podcasts or members only, when I said, you know, Mitt Romney is the type of football player that if he threw three interceptions in the game, He would go up to the coach himself and say, you've got to take me out and give someone else a shot.
I ultimately want to win, and I'm going to put my ego aside for this one.
Donald Trump would never say that.
He would poison the Gatorade of his backup quarterback if that happened.
If the team decided to go without him, he would slash the tires of the team bus so they could not make the game.
He would rather the whole thing to go down than for him to be left behind and to be absent of that fuel that people like him thrive on.
The cheers, the jeers from his enemies, the dynamic of it all, the fight.
The endless fight that is basically a political campaign at this point.
Two years of just people obsessing about you.
It's very hard to leave the public's imagination.
So I think there might even be a little bit of that Norma Desmond thing going on.
Another grand pathological narcissist who is almost metaphorical in her qualities.
And so that's who Trump is.
It's all about him.
But, you know, to be fair, I have a little bit of nostalgia about Trump.
Trump can be fun.
Trump can weirdly be endearing in this narcissist way in the sense that he'll go on stage and start talking about himself.
And he'll talk about all of these things that are completely unrelatable to...
99% of the people in his audience, yet it just kind of works.
They want to hear him bash CNN.
They want to hear him bash Rosie O'Donnell or Nancy Pelosi.
They like the greatest hits of how we're going to make America great again.
They like him just off the cuff.
They really like it when he curses.
And he loves that, too.
And I just I can't see him giving it up.
And so there's a kind of.
Benign quality to his narcissism on some level.
I mean, he doesn't want to actually govern or he couldn't govern if he wanted to.
And he wants to stare at his television, yell at it and tweet out mean things about people and brag and do a little victimization now and again and all that kind of stuff that we're used to with Trump.
I think DeSantis is an entirely different human being altogether.
And I presume that you guys have seen this photo.
Now, obviously, a photo is kind of inherently anecdotal.
It could be staged, et cetera.
But it also is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, of Joe Biden.
The photo was almost so perfect, I can't imagine it wasn't staged.
It was just like a snapshot of our time.
So it was after the hurricane last September, I guess, or thereabouts.
And Joe Biden is hanging out.
He's wearing a blazer with like a striped dress shirt, no tie.
And he's putting his arm around.
A woman who's just this kind of crazy Florida lady, basically.
You know, there's Florida man, there's Florida lady.
And her husband, apparently, who, again, he has his arm around the woman, which is kind of funny.
But her husband is wearing a t-shirt that says, Cracker Endangered Species.
And he is just a, you know, out of central casting for a redneck, a Woody Harrelson type character.
And there's this kind of understanding and love and family about the whole thing.
If anyone wants to post that in the chat, you're more than welcome to.
I think I have posted it multiple times, so I imagine that if you're on the suspect, you've probably seen it on Twitter or something like that.
Ron is daring.
With seeming anger or frustration or maybe indifference, I don't know.
Walking the other direction, and he has no real connection with these people.
There was something on Fox News that just came up today that I saw where they were doing a kind of town hall in a diner in Florida, one of these typical kind of types of setups that the networks still love.
They've been going to diners for, you know, ages now.
And Ron, they're in Florida.
People are wearing Ron DeSantis t-shirts and things like that.
And it's all about Trump.
Because at the end of the day, those people still have a connection with Trump.
And they still love him.
Whatever Donald Trump's emotional life might be as a malignant narcissist, I can't say.
But he is...
Capable of some kind of warmth.
It's a warmth towards him, and it's about a loyalty towards him, but it still is a warmth.
And I'm just going to be honest in terms of DeSantis, and I do think this is why he's a really dangerous figure on some level.
There's just no emotional life whatsoever.
There's this flat affect.
Somewhat lifeless eyes, kind of shifty eyes, but very lifeless.
And he has this kind of resting bitch face, so to speak.
He's just, whenever I've heard him give speeches or speaking extemporaneously to the media, I always hear how he's this great debater and, oh my God, he went to Yale, blah, blah, blah.
Well, all I hear are...
Basically, all I hear is whining, effectively.
Just this whining about how he's not getting treated correctly or they're exaggerating things or, well, have you thought about this and what about that?
And I don't think there's much to him.
It's hard to imagine him giving a rip-roaring speech or speaking with warmth or the twinkle in his eye.
Which certainly someone like Reagan was capable of.
And look, even Nixon was capable of that kind of thing.
Jimmy Carter, I actually, when he went into hospice care, I re-listened to the so-called malaise speech from, I guess, 1977 or 78, that he showed a tremendous amount of empathy and relatability and self-criticism.
I mean, maybe too much.
But he is someone who is capable of that.
I don't think Ron DeSantis is capable of that.
I don't think he has any sort of normal human emotional life.
If I were to diagnose him as someone who is an armchair psychologist, I would suggest that he is a sociopath.
In the sense that he is not at all capable of relatability or human empathy or anything like that.
I don't think he has an emotional life in the way that you and I have an emotional life.
And all of these photos with his family, each and every one of them is staged.
It's lighting.
It's basically like having a...
Picture that you can hang on the wall.
It's not real.
And that's my take on him.
But I think that's in a way why he is successful.
Why he could very well be successful.
And why he also is extremely ambitious.
Because for him, dealing with people is just manipulating people.
It's just playing a little chess game.
There's no...
Feeling of like, you know, should I do this now?
Or, you know, is this the right time?
Am I up to the task?
Am I the right person?
Can I really save this country?
None of those thoughts actually cross his mind.
And maybe they don't cross the mind of most politicians who are, you know, of a particular psychological type, but they certainly don't cross his mind.
His mind, he would be thinking, you know, who do I have to kill to get this?
What do I need to do to get this?
Once I get it, how do I hold on to it?
And so on.
That is all he thinks about.
And so I do think he is ambitious and dangerous.
I don't think he's going to ask some of these serious questions, which a serious person would ask.
Even if you're becoming a lower school principal or something, you know, am I the right man for the job?
He's not going to ask that.
He's going to ask who needs to kill for the job.
So, I think he is a, the more I think about him, the more I find him to be a dangerous person.
And the more I want to kind of think about some of these odd aspects of his career.
And I would, you know, I'm glad Charles is here because he can go into some of these things as well.
But let me just, let me not delve into any kind of...
Speculation or conspiracy theory or something.
Let me just talk about what we know about him and then think about what that says about him as a psyche, as what it says about his inner life.
So he, after law school and after being a teacher for a year, it was actually the same track.
We're the same age, interestingly, and I also was a teacher.
He was a lawyer overseeing Guantanamo Bay in the War on Terror.
I mean, he was quite literally overseeing all of this sadistic stuff that became a shame to the nation.
You know, in the tail end of George W. Bush's first term.
This is a guy who's involved in that kind of stuff.
Not just about finding the terrorist or stopping whatever.
It's about forcing them into degrading sexual acts, building a little, you know, human pyramid, who knows, pissing on them, flushing the Quran down the toilet, whatever.
And I think there's, you know, maybe you could kind of dismiss that and say it was just a job, but I think it kind of defines how he views politics, which is in an extremely personal and petty and sadistic, but also from our standpoint, or from the standpoint of any serious person, a useless manner.
So...
Let's look at just a few things that he's doing.
The shipment of migrants to Martha's Vineyard.
I mean, I actually did a bit of a talk on this, and we discussed this when it happened back over the summer.
He picks up on something going on in the base.
He knows that they're obsessed with immigration, that Trump ran on immigration in 2016.
So what am I going to do?
So he picks up on that.
He sees that that's a way to elicit a response from the herd.
And he does this extremely personal and sadistic on all levels act of taking migrants who are probably here to mow lawns, to be honest, but who knows, might actually be dangerous.
At the very least, they're undocumented.
They're poor.
It's the type of person who would probably engage in crime.
And he ships them to his political enemies.
He ships them to WASP-y areas, the not-in-my-backyard type areas in Martha's Vineyard, just out of pure sadism.
I mean, there's nothing, there's no possible way that that leads to, like, policy or changes anyone's mind.
It's just viewed as an inhumane and disgusting act.
And that's how he makes his fortune, or his fortune in politics, that is.
And he deals with some fairly unsavory figures, and he goes out of his way to find these people, many of whom were not coming from Florida.
Similar situation when he perceived as someone, again, who doesn't have an emotional life or what some people might call a soul.
He perceives that he can elicit a response from the crowd when he does something about voter integrity, so-called.
And obviously, I mean, I've made myself abundantly clear here, all of that Stop the Steal stuff was a complete con job.
And, you know, whatever kernels of truth might have been there, it was a big lie.
MSNBC tagline, I don't care.
It's true.
It is a big lie.
And it's massively self-serving for Trump.
It psychologically damaged a lot of people who are getting fed this stuff.
It's just terrible, toxic stuff for the country.
Now, he is smart enough and kind of cagey enough where he doesn't want to fully jump on board the big lie like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And who knows, MTG might genuinely believe it.
He doesn't.
But he wants to do something for those people because he realizes it elicits a response.
And so he goes after a bunch of average Floridians who might have had felony records and voted illegally, even after he kind of entrapped them into doing it, but voted illegally, but voted in good faith.
Now...
I would suggest that a prosecutor might not prosecute this kind of thing, might just throw the votes out, might give them a warning, might give them a little education pamphlet.
No, Ron DeSantis throws them into prison and gets the whole thing on videotape so everyone can see this.
It is a useless act.
We're talking about dozens of people.
It is a meaningless act from the standpoint of voter integrity.
He does it to elicit a response, to manipulate people in the crowd.
And he does it out of his own just soulless, sadistic attitude towards the world.
Of, wouldn't it be kind of fun to throw that black lady in jail?
The kind of guy who oversaw Gitmo.
The kind of guy who did the migrant stuff, the kind of guy who did this voting stuff.
It's useless from the standpoint of policy, but it's highly useful from the standpoint of statism.
So I, you know, I had this long talk with Charles last night.
I've heard a lot of things.
I think there's some other things that are worth going into in terms of his record, but...
To put it simply, I think he's a dangerous person.
He's the kind of person you want to isolate yourself from.
He's certainly not the person you want to put into power.
Now, I don't think he's like Trump without the baggage or Trump, but he's smart, so he's more competent.
I mean, there's probably some truth to that notion, but because Trump is wildly incompetent and just shooting from his hip and all that kind of stuff.
I don't think that's quite it.
I think it would really be like someone who picks up on some Trump memes and we have this just useless but absolute statist in the White House.
And I generally think that would be a bad thing.
And, you know, I don't know what to say.
It's kind of a...
99% of a chance it's not going to happen, but I don't think it would be good for someone like that to be in power when people like myself and us are criticizing him or even demeaning him.
Just today, he has proposed a bill or signed a bill.
I'll have to go check on this.
In which all bloggers that discuss An elected official in Florida have to register and report to the state what they have blogged about.
Now, that kind of seems like a...
I don't know if it's technically a First Amendment violation.
I mean, it's obviously they're not at least ostensibly suppressing anyone's speech or things like that, but they will fine you if you aren't registered.
And that does create a kind of chilling effect.
So there is a very strong, I mean, it's pretty unprecedented from what I can tell.
Obviously, you know, to interview the White House press secretary, you've got to, you know, have an N and be with a legit institution, etc.
But this notion of if you're going to write about politics that you have to register with the state of Florida, that is use your own name and...
Social Security number and address.
I mean, this kind of stuff, again, you can say it's fascist or whatever.
Well, fascists actually had an ideology and a vision and an aesthetic and so on.
Although, granted, they probably would do some tactics like this.
But it's almost like fascism without the fascism.
It's just pure, sadistic authoritarianism and authoritarianism for no reason.
Outside of someone who desperately seeks power.
So anyway, these are my initial thoughts on DeSantis.
We can talk about some other things, but I think it is worth talking about DeSantis.
But just to sum up, I definitely think he's running.
I don't think he can win, but he definitely has the ruthless will to win.
Having someone like that in any place of authority is really horrible.
I mean, it's just kind of amazing.
Just as a little aside here.
I mean, we were joking about this last night.
I mean, what in the hell has happened to us where Florida has become this model state for conservatives?
It's like free state Florida in Tucker Carlson's mind and things like that.
Florida is...
Leaning red because there are these hundreds of thousands of billions, perhaps, retirees who are going down there.
They're going to vote right wing, no surprise.
But, I mean, I've been to Florida a little bit.
It struck me as a, you know, it can be nice in places as a kind of soulless type place.
And in many ways, as we, I think Chuck joked.
Last night at 2am, Disney World is actually the most authentic, real aspect of Florida.
The rest of it is totally fake, if you get my drift.
So anyway, those are just my thoughts.
Charles, do you want to add in a little bit more on kind of your assessment of his background and kind of like who's funding him?
That kind of stuff?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, do you want me to talk about how I know him, or what would you...
Sure, wherever you want to start.
How you know him, sure.
By the way, on the Vertol flights, they actually went to pick them up in San Antonio, weirdly.
These Venezuelans.
They then flew.
And there's a whole federal lawsuit about it and everything.
And it was interesting, you know...
Gates and I were talking about it and Gates was like, Gates and I were chatting about it.
We were going back and forth about it.
And he's like, man, I can't believe he had the balls to actually do this.
He's like, this is kind of the thing that you and I would have talked about and laughed about.
But he actually went ahead and did it.
And I think there's a level of audacity to him.
He human trafficked.
Yeah.
And like, I mean, human trafficking to own the libs?
I mean, maybe, right?
You know, maybe.
So let me put it like a little, you know, kind of further back.
So I first met him through a guy named Mike McClellan.
And Mike McClellan was involved with the Republican Party politics.
He's involved in Orange County, California.
He's a sort of attorney type.
Very, very sharp guy.
He had me over for his home for Thanksgiving one time.
We're sort of friends, if you will.
He was DeSantis' roommate at Yale.
He was first introduced to DeSantis from this kind of like You know, Yale-y, you know, he's sort of, you know, big-talking lawyer type.
I was like, oh, what was he like as a roommate?
And he's, like, extremely dedicated, extremely focused, just a total grind at all times.
Just, like, he will do the work, you give him the orders, but he is not creative.
He's decisive, not creative.
Sort of the takeaway.
I met him in Florida.
He was engaged in all these weird Jewish things.
He'd go to the David Horowitz Center.
He was very close with Ike Perlmutter, the Israeli intelligence officer who ultimately helped take over.
He basically stole Marvel from Stan Lee and then sold it to Disney.
One of the things that I've come away with on the Disney front...
This is proper fascism.
Make no mistake about it.
He's trying to shake down a company to get it to change.
I mean, using the power of the state to do so.
So anyway, I met him.
He was very, very close to Sheldon Adelson.
He was very close to Miriam Adelson.
He wanted my help to get Peter Thiel to back him in the 2018 race.
I ultimately declined to support him in the 2018 race.
I thought there was something about him that disturbed me about him, and which continues to disturb me to this day.
He has no old friends.
The one old friend that he has, the one and only friend that he has, was this guy, Kent Sturman, who shot himself in the head back in December, after he was having an affair with his babysitter, tried to shake him down.
And Kent Sturman...
Is, you know, he was himself kind of like somebody who moved around soldiers, right?
That was his sort of like, he had like a moving job, basically, like a moving business.
And had terrible reports, you know, was sort of like grifting, kind of military contractor world.
And ultimately, he was giving, renting DeSantis his home in Jacksonville.
And it became a sort of ethics issue.
Ultimately, it didn't come to anything.
Because DeSantis had won the governorship of Florida.
Matt Gates and I were heavily involved in staffing his administration.
Gates was the head that was involved as the chair of that whole operation.
And I was involved as well because we all kind of knew that DeSantis was running for president, that he has always been running for president.
And he is a sort of...
The way I would describe him is he's kind of the mob's son done well.
So the question is, with DeSantis, is the big question, the one I have not figured out the answer to, is, is he just the puppet of all these rich people?
Or is he so sociopathic that he...
Basically, he's using them, too, to achieve his objective.
That I don't know.
That's the big question that I think is unclear at the moment.
What else can I say about him?
He never looks you in the eye.
not once.
He never, you know, The only person he's very close to is his wife.
Who essentially tells him what to do on most occasions.
I've been around them when they were together.
And he's like, you know, he's very autistic in kind of how he behaves.
Like, she'll say, do this, Ron, and he'll do it.
Like, it's like she's talking to one of their children.
It's a very strange dynamic.
The rumor is that he was sexually abused while he was on the baseball team.
And I see elements of that, you know, and how I...
And indeed, that is the rumor in Florida politics.
He has an extremely interesting spat of luck that has helped him in all kinds of ways.
There was a Democrat who was polling higher than him.
This guy who I put up in the jumbo, Greg Evers, was actually a friend of Matt Gaetz, even though he was a Democrat.
And he was killed in a car crash in 2017.
A single car crash.
There are conspiracy theories that he was assassinated in Florida.
I don't know what I believe about that, just being totally honest with you.
DeSantis, he has all kinds of Israelis around him, has had all kinds of Israelis around him his whole career.
I think he's got no fewer than seven times to Florida.
I know Tom has a video of him.
Like talking to some Chabad rabbis, which maybe we can put up in the chat.
But he is very connected with a lot of the Chabad types.
He's very connected with a lot of the Italian mob types.
And he's very connected with a lot of just your standard neocon Republican types.
The Bush family itself is split over DeSantis.
Jeb sees it as an opportunity to kind of punish Trump.
Sure.
How it's been explained to me.
I don't know.
You know, I couldn't say.
That's obvious.
Yeah.
His butt is still hurt from 2016.
There's no question.
Yep.
There's a great photo.
I put it up in the Jumbotron of the space where he was.
Oh, yes.
I think the quote about Tom's right to mention this.
When I met him, I met him through, again, I'd met him on numerous occasions, but he seems to forget very selectively.
He wanted my help with Teal, and he had Matt Gaetz give me his State of the Union seat on the guise that might help him raise money from Teal.
And he told me at one point when I met him at the Trump Hotel that it was better basically if the Jews run everything.
That was like a direct quote.
I think he was trying to be funny, but I never forgot that.
That obviously stayed with me.
He is a sort of weird evangelical type, which is I think very strange for an Italian man.
I'm always kind of deeply suspicious of Italians that convert to Protestantism.
Interesting.
So he's in a non-denomination denomination.
Basically, he's an evangelical Christian.
I think that's right.
I don't know what his actual...
I know he's a Protestant.
Because I was trying to talk to him about Catholic matters at one point.
And somebody sort of took me aside because I just assumed that he was Catholic.
Given, you know, he's Italian, right?
I don't know.
I just sort of made that assumption.
And so he took me aside and was like, no, he was raised Roman Catholic, but basically he goes to all these, you know, basically these weird evangelical churches.
And even on his Wikipedia, it says that he's Roman Catholic.
You know, it's clearly like not true.
Like if he's Roman Catholic, he's like no Roman Catholic that I've ever encountered.
You know, there are all kinds of rumors about how he met his wife.
It has a sort of like assigned wife, you know, feel to it.
He was something of a womanizer way back when, you know, which kind of is actually I think one of his more endearing qualities.
But the women that we sort of have, you know, that we know that he was sort of dated or whatever, they do not regard him as fondly as the ones who dated Trump.
There's a sort of fear around him, which, again, fits your sociopath kind of thing.
The sister died under very suspicious circumstances.
More that could be said there, I think, at some point.
Basically, he joins, he becomes a JAG officer, and he marries...
Jill Casey Black, who's from Troy, Ohio.
It's basically Miami, Ohio kind of area.
She is a newscaster.
One gets the impression when you're around them that they are auditioning for some kind of play.
There's no warmth there.
I think you nailed that quite right.
As someone who's seen them around each other.
Even among political wives, it's a very strange dynamic.
Political marriages, it's very strange.
And then her father, I think, was an Air Force officer.
He himself was in the Navy.
There's sort of like this military aspect to them, sort of neocon in that way.
What else can I say about them?
I mean, they're a strange bunch.
And I frankly was very surprised that he won.
And then Joel Greenberg, the guy who got in trouble in all kinds of interesting ways, told me about the whole situation with...
What can I say about this?
Basically, he told me that there was all these photos about...
With Gillum basically being a homosexual.
And I was like, oh, that's kind of crazy.
So my read is that the Israelis kind of knew that Gillum had some dirt on him, and they sort of played both sides of it.
They had Gillum compromise on the sex stuff and on the homosexual white stuff and drugs.
And then on the other side of it, they had...
They had DeSantis.
I mean, he's sort of their pet for all intents and purposes.
But yeah, he creeps me out.
I mean, I've met a lot of people.
I will do pretty much anything I can to defeat him.
I'm that worried about him.
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