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Dec. 3, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:04
December 3, 2009, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
The nation's media are focused and surrounding Washington, D.C. today, and particularly the White House today on another hoax as the universe of lies presents a so-called summit at the White House on so-called job creation.
Although it's not about that.
We are going to actually talk about it here on the EIB network today.
Every telephone call today will be from either an unemployed person or a business owner who is having to fire people.
I decided to open a universe.
If you own a business and you're having to let people go, we want to hear from you about what it's like and what it's going to take for you to be able to hire people back.
And we want to know from you why you're letting people go.
And we want to hear from business owners who may have benefited from the stimulus bill.
Greetings, my friends.
El Rushbo here.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
We used to do this kind of thing all the day, all the time.
We'd take calls only from women who had a problem with me.
Only from people of this category or that category.
Haven't done it in a long time.
We're thinking of taking phone calls from women who have had affairs with Tiger Woods.
It appears we could fill a show with that.
But we're not going to do that today.
What we're going to focus on today is callers exclusively who are unemployed.
Now, we know, we know human nature.
We know that people are going to call here who are not unemployed, thinking that they'll be able to fake their way on and then say whatever they want to say.
We fully expect this to happen.
But we have a rule here that if anybody lies to get on this program, that is the only time they are summarily dismissed.
And we do this in advanced knowledge.
You have been warned.
You'll be well aware of what will happen to you if you get on this program under false pretense.
It's not necessary.
So again, the telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
By the way, in a story that ought to be somewhat comforting to Tiger Woods, let me find the story.
Yes, here it is.
Scientific survey from the UK Telegraph.
All men watch porn.
Scientists at the University of Montreal launched a search for men who had never looked at pornography, but they couldn't find any.
This is an actual news story out there.
So Tiger, if I had his phone number, I could text the link and he could, well, I could email it if I had that, but I don't.
It's sort of like, you know, when I went, my one year of college at Southeast Missouri State University, the main building there is Academic Hall.
And it has a dome, and it has a single light bulb atop the dome.
And the rumor was that if the light ever went out, that means there were no virgins left on campus.
And the light never goes out.
They got jokes like this all over the place.
University of Missouri, the same thing.
They got the columns there.
So all men watch porn.
The chickification of news.
They couldn't find some man who had never seen pornography.
It has nothing to do with the job summit.
I just thought I would throw that in there, ladies and gentlemen, as one of the lighthearted news mentions to kick off the program.
American Spectator blog, it is impossible.
This is the CBO, Congressional Budget Office.
It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed without the stimulus package.
Here is a report, yesterday's CBO report.
Recipients report that about 640,000 jobs were created or retained with stimulus funding through September 2009.
Such reports, however, do not provide a comprehensive estimate of the law's impact on employment in the U.S.
That impact may be higher or lower than the reported number for several reasons, in addition to any issues about the quality of the data in the reports.
First, and this is the key thing, it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.
So it's garbage in, garbage out.
It's the universe of lies.
Whether it's climate science, whether it's job numbers, whether it's employment growth numbers or economic growth numbers, it's all not trustworthy.
It's all political.
It's all spun to benefit those in power.
Maybe Obama today can lead a discussion on the merits of deceit when it comes to jobs created or saved.
It's interesting that the job numbers, even the monthly unemployment numbers, are just as phony as temperature readings when liberals are in charge.
It's the universe of lies.
And here are the latest job numbers.
And again, the way this is presented is actual fraud.
New jobless claims drop unexpectedly.
Data point to a moderation in the pace of job losses.
When you read the story, you find out just how irresponsible this is.
I'll read the story to you.
And the first two paragraphs, actually the first four, make this headline ridiculous.
But the headline is what you're going to hear on radio newscasts at the top of the hour all day long.
New jobless claims drop unexpectedly.
Data point to a moderation in the pace of job losses.
The data in the story will be ignored, but I want you to know what it is.
The tally of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits fell unexpectedly for the fifth straight week, a hopeful sign that the job market is slowly improving.
And isn't it interesting?
This is just in time for the jobs summit at the White House today.
But here's where it gets the truth.
Still, claims remain above the levels that most analysts say would be consistent with an economy that is adding jobs.
So the headline that you're going to hear all day has just been undercut with reality in the story.
The headline is going to be the spin.
That's what all your, that's what you're going to, every news outlet is what you're going to see.
Jobless claims drop unexpectedly.
Data point to a moderation.
But claims remain above the levels that most analysts say would be consistent with an economy that's adding jobs.
How in the world can you say an economy is adding jobs when there are still 455,000 unemployment claims last week?
How can you even put that in the same sentence?
The unemployment rate is at 10.2% and is expected to keep climbing into next year, yet the data point to a moderation in the pace of job losses.
First-time claims for unemployment insurance dropped by 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 457,000, the lowest total since the week of September 6, 2008.
Wall Street economists expected an increase, according to a survey by Thompson Reuters.
A labor department analyst.
Now, this is where it gets just fascinating to me in terms of the way the media works.
A Labor Department analyst said the closing of state unemployment offices for last week's Thanksgiving holiday was responsible for some of the decline.
Oh!
Unemployment offices are closed two days, so we have a smaller number of job claims filed, and the experts forgot that it was Thanksgiving last week and basically a three-day week at the unemployment places.
They forgot there was a holiday last week.
Might have affected the numbers.
They were closed for two days.
So all of this is bunk.
Once again, if you read only the headline, you think good news.
That is until you read the article.
But the top of the hour news breaks, as I say, new jobless claims drop unexpectedly.
This is why the liberals don't teach math anymore.
That way nobody will figure out all of this bad news.
Closed for two days.
You got to wonder if the unemployment offices had been open five days, the experts might have been right and the jobless claims might have been up.
But the fact that they're down over a three-day week points to nothing good.
And again, the total does not include millions of unemployed Americans receiving benefits under extended programs paid for by the federal government.
About 4.5 million people were receiving extended benefits in the weekend of November 14th.
That's the latest data available.
An increase of about 300,000.
No matter how you do the math on this, there aren't new jobs being created.
And there really isn't any slowdown in jobs being lost.
Zilch Zeronada and from the Daily Mail, UK Daily Mail, the Progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research issued a study that showed Americans will lose $1 trillion in wages through 2012.
And of course, the press release said African Americans and Latinos will be especially hard hit with the recession causing them wage losses of $142 billion and $138 billion respectively.
Of course, this is a liberal progressive blog, a research center, putting this out.
Now, that trillion-dollar figure works out to more than $7,000 per employer or employee in America.
Unemployment will cost workers more in terms of lost wages and salaries in 2010 and 2011 than they have this year.
Now, if the stimulus were, say, a $500 billion tax cut over two years to business, real jobs would have been created in real congressional districts.
The economy would have grown and the public might have been more receptive to universal health care.
The public is, oh, and there are two conflicting polls on the whole concept of universal health care today.
Let's see.
Yes.
I've got four stacks.
Here we go.
First is Rasmussen.
62% oppose single-payer health care system.
That's the public option.
62%.
Let's look at it another way.
Only 27% of voters nationwide favor a public option, and that is down five points from August.
Now, 62% in the polls kept Bill Clinton from being impeached.
Well, convicted at impeachment.
Kept him in office.
You would think it would get this damn bill canned, but no, because now when we go to Reuters-Thompson, most Americans support the public option and health care reform legislation, but are skeptical health care will improve in 2010.
It's a press release from Thompson Reuters.
A majority of Americans support a public option and health care reform legislation.
No, wait, wait, wait.
Rasmussen just said 62% don't.
Only 27% do.
And here's Reuters out with a majority of Americans say they want it.
I have a way of explaining this disparity, ladies and gentlemen, and I can prove it.
It is that the Reuters-Thompson poll purposely found stupid, uninformed people and asked them.
Here are their results.
18% of survey respondents said they expect to spend less on health care a year from now.
21% believe the quality of care will improve in the next 12 months.
18% believe the value of care delivered will be better in a year.
23% believe it'll be easier for people to receive the care they need a year from now.
And 60% of Americans believe a public option should be included in final health care legislation.
Margin of error here, 1.8%.
Now, how to explain this?
Rasmussen, only 27% favor a public option.
Reuters, 60% do.
How can anybody who's been sitting up and taking notice for any of the last 50 years believe that anything would be cheaper, better, and easier once the government takes it over?
What kind of nimrod do we have out there that thinks that?
Reuters found them.
I wonder how hard it was, how hard it was for Reuters to go out and find the absolute stupidest among us and poll them as average Americans.
And why should we care what such amazingly uninformed people think?
And then we base a news story on it, or Reuters does.
All this poll shows, the Reuter poll, all it shows is that most stupid people want the government to take care of them.
And they probably realize that as bad as the government does that, the government does a better job of taking care of them than stupid people do taking care of themselves.
That's the only way to explain this.
I have a question.
A very simple question.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you were Vice President Al Gore and you had just been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize based on fraudulent hoax data from the University of Lies, that's the new name for the University of East Anglica, the University of Lies.
Wouldn't you be saying something?
Wouldn't you be writing an op-ed?
Wouldn't you be out there doing something other than what Barbara Boxer's, Barbara Boxer wants whoever hacked this prosecuted?
She wants to go after the whistleblower.
She wants to make file criminal charges against the hacker.
So does the New York Times and so does the Washington Post.
They normally love whistleblowers, but no, no, no, whoever leaked this, whoever hacked in that computer, we got to hunt them down.
We got to find them.
Barbara Boxer actually said it.
We have the audio coming up.
We also, ladies and gentlemen, Al Gore's been in the studio and he's been recording a song.
I even laid down a couple tracks for this.
Remember Thomas Dolby?
Remember that old song, Blinded Me With Science, Thomas Dolby?
The vice perpetrator, Al Gore.
And now we go to the phones.
I went, go to the phones today.
It's all about jobs.
It's all about the unemployed.
It's all about business owners who want to hire or having to lay off what it's going to take to improve things.
We will mix other news items in with the other content portion of the program.
We're going to start in Virginia Beach, Virginia with Maria.
You're up first.
Great to have you on our own Jobs Summit show today.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Nice to speak to you.
Thank you.
Rush, I have an interesting situation here.
I was encouraged to start up this small business, which I did, and I trained to become a real estate appraiser.
And literally overnight, because of what Barney Franks and Chris Dodd did to the mortgage industry, my business dried up.
Basically, what they've done, they've put into law now for appraisers not to have any contact with loan officers and to go through a third-party vendor who randomly pick out appraisers.
So all the business that I built up has now gone.
I've had to close my business.
And because I was self-employed, I'm not allowed to claim for unemployment benefits.
Well, now see, this is the kind of real information the American people need to hear.
Here's a woman who started her own business, real estate appraisal.
Actual laws, policies passed by Democrats in Washington have cost her her business, have cost her her job, and have seen to it that she doesn't qualify for unemployment compensation.
So I might ask how you are surviving.
Not very well.
Unfortunately, you know, it's very difficult in the real estate business now to get a job.
So I've been trying to find anything I can do, whether it's part-time or full-time.
But the first thing they look at on your resume is that you're specifically a real estate appraiser.
Well, yeah, it's everything has its limitations, but they can be overcome.
You had it in yourself to become an entrepreneur.
Therefore, you have what it takes to overcome the circumstances you now face.
And we're back, El Rushbow.
I just got an email, folks, from somebody here in South Florida responding to our first caller today.
I'm trying to buy a house.
I sold mine both times.
The appraiser came up from Miami.
Had no clue about the nuances of the Wellington equestrian market in doing appraisals.
Now, excuse me, for those of you in Rio Linda, Wellington's a city here.
Equestrian means they play polo out there.
And they play polo on horses.
It's not croquet.
The bank said they have no say in who the appraiser is or even what city they're from.
I learned something.
I did not know this is going on, and this is via legislation from Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
So these independent appraisers come up.
The bank has no say someone who appraises the property and they have, in some cases, no idea.
So now the appraiser community, as it's currently constituted, that bunch of people is going to get savage for not knowing what they're doing simply because they have to follow the law too.
Back to the phones, Nathaniel in Columbus, Ohio.
You're next on our Job Summit program here on the EIB Network.
Hello.
Rush, I'm a huge fan.
I've been Rush Baby for years.
You helped me ace my economics in high school.
Well, thank you, sir, very much.
Because I knew what the rule of 72 was and no one else did before the teacher taught about it.
The teacher, before the teacher even taught about it?
Well, I heard it on your show before I even took the class.
I got to take class a year early because I knew so much about economics just from listening to your show.
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate you saying that.
Thank you.
Now, why don't you tell people, see, now you have rule of 72?
What's the rule of 72?
Tell people what it is.
Well, that's the formula that tells you how long it will take your money to double when you invest it.
And you don't actually have to memorize the formula.
All you have to know is rule of 72.
Then you look it up, refresh your memory, and you're good to go.
You can be an enlightened investor when you use your money.
Now, that was then.
That was then.
Now, enlightened investor means something entirely different.
Enlightened investor today selling short.
Yeah, well, unless you're investing in gold or, you know, things that utilities and other things.
True, that's very, very, very true.
You are economically literate.
I was cracking a joke, and here you are slapping my hand.
I deserved it.
Not at all, sir.
You're the teaser.
Actually, before the market crashed, I told a friend of mine to reinvest all of her money in gold because I saw it coming, and she may not like a bandit.
Well, good.
Well, what's your economic or unemployment story?
Well, I've done a number of jobs through the years.
I come from a third-generation ironworking family and didn't want to go into that.
Didn't really have an avenue there and just had to pick up whatever job I could.
Of course, my parents never had enough money to send me to college.
I took a couple runs at it.
Just recently, this past year, I've been unemployed for the longest run yet.
It's been a little over a year, and I've never been unemployed for that long.
I've been working since I was 14.
But this time around, I had appendicitis during the summer, and that gave me some downtime to lay on my back and think about things.
So I came up with an idea.
I patented an invention, and that was last month.
I secured the patent, and this month I'm trying to make it work rather than, you know, lay down and let it happen to me.
You know what I mean?
How far along are you?
Well, I've got a number of prospects I'm trying to farm, but it's really hard trying to get business contacts with people.
See, do you mind if I talk about the idea?
I mean, I'm hard to answer that question without getting into the details on it.
Well, give me the sketch details of it, yeah, because what's good about this, we did this once before back in the early 90s when white-collar layoffs were the featured economic activity of the time.
And we spent two days, maybe three days, talking to those people, white-collar, middle-aged, no hope of getting a job where they existed in the corporate structure.
His ever being laid off in their late 40s to mid-50s.
And we took calls from those people, and it was amazing.
Most of them felt liberated.
For the first time in their lives, they were actually seeking work and doing something they loved rather than something they had to do.
Many of them had discovered their entrepreneurial spirit, and so you seem to fit that mold here.
You've been out of work longer this time than ever before, and you decided to do something about it, seeking a patent on an idea.
So what is it?
It's the idea of an educational ringtone.
And a lot of people think of that.
They don't think it's very lucrative, if you will, and that's why no one's touched it until now.
Are you sure you want to give any more details of this?
Because there's potentially 25 million competitors out there that might hear your idea and steal it.
They can compete all they want, but I have a monopoly for the next 20 years.
So if they want to make any money off of it, they have to come to me.
Okay, then go ahead and explain what it is briefly.
Yes, sir.
Educational ringtone.
It covers a very wide field, but I'll give you one example to keep it piffy.
You know the word of the day calendars?
Those are cute.
Everyone loves them, but the thing is, you never learn anything from them.
Right, right.
You look at it once a day, and then from the rest of the day, you only care about the number because you're busy.
What if your phone, when it rang, rang, here, here you go.
What if when your phone rang, you heard Rush Limbaugh's voice defining the word ingenuity or success?
Well, the first thing Rush Limbaugh would say is, where's my royalty?
I would say about 99%.
Well, think about it.
You're making the ringtone.
You're marketing on your site to your customer base.
I only want a little bit for the intellectual property rights.
See, now this is the kind of stuff we love.
This is the kind of ingenuity.
Not sitting there and taking it.
And he's been an employee, but he doesn't have the employee mentality.
He's got it in his head, folks, that he can be the boss.
Pursue his idea.
Educational ringtones.
I like it.
You're getting several affirmative reactions here from the highly overrated staff on the other side of the glass.
I'm glad you called out there.
Yeah, Nathaniel, thanks very much.
And best of luck with this.
Wendy in Missoula, Montana.
Hi, great to have you here.
Hello, Mr. Lindbaugh.
How are you today?
I'm fine and dandy.
Thank you.
Thank you for taking my call.
Yes, ma'am.
All right.
Well, our story just has to do, I think it's more of a success story, but it's something that small businesses go through as they grow.
In 2008, we had kind of a banner year.
We took the income from that year and paid off some equipment.
In kind of the sub-s organization of structure of our business, the income from the business is rolled on top of whatever wages we take from the business in the course of the year and add it together.
Right, so you file your taxes on a personal 1040 as a sub-S?
Yes, we do.
Yeah, okay.
That's where people like you get creamed and are going to get creamed even further once all this stuff that Obama's planning hits.
Okay, tell the story.
Well, the reason I called is because, you know, there's a lot of people out there who are losing their jobs.
An acquaintance of ours just lost his job, and I think he's got four kids, and it's a really tough circumstance out there.
And I guess I wanted to say it from the employer's side.
You know, last year we had hired some office help, and we had to let that particular position go because when it came tax time, we had a huge burden that we had to pay.
So on April 15th, when we wrote the check, we let that particular employee go.
And the reason isn't because of any lack of performance or even lack of work, but the reason was because of a huge tax burden.
And I think what kind of tax?
The income tax, because the profits from the business, anyway, show up on the personal side.
Right.
So in order to pay your personal income taxes, you had to lay off this office work.
We did.
Yes, I did.
And take out a loan.
Yeah, actually, we did.
So anyway, I'm just saying that it's a really hard thing to do to let people go.
If anybody's out there painting businesses like they're some greedy individuals trying to hold on to the profits, that's really, I think in most cases, not what the situation is.
I think they're, you know, people who are thankful for work and I'm thankful for the opportunity to provide jobs for the people who work for us.
And it's really kind of a heartbreaker to let them go, you know, because you've got to pay your taxes.
And, you know, with the upcoming health care legislation, you just kind of sit here on this side of 09 and look at 2010 and you just wonder what's it going to look like.
Right.
And so you're not going to be hiring anybody because you don't know what the environment you're going to face is going to cost you.
That's exactly.
That's exactly the point.
We're looking at hiring one more field person in the upcoming year.
But as far as just a pure overhead person, there's no way to really estimate that.
It's kind of hard.
No, you can't.
All you can do based on what you know is assume that your costs are going to skyrocket.
Well, that's exactly it.
So thanks for taking my call today.
I just wanted to say it from the other side of it, from the employer's perspective.
It's not like we're out there letting people go because, ha, ha, ha, we get to keep all the profits.
It's because it costs a lot of money to be in business.
And anyway, the tax structure, I also think, is pretty much set up against the small businesses.
What would it take?
What would it take for you to change your business model and start looking at hiring people?
Well, that's our business model at this point, we've got a lot of work.
We're in the industrial construction industry and business has been really good.
Our problem was that because the business showed a profit, we had to pay a huge amount of tax.
I'm sorry to be redundant there.
So what we're looking at in the future is continuing on the path that we are with a new knowledge of what it's going to take.
So basically, your business is good.
Business is great.
Activity in your business sector is good, and yet you're not hiring because of high taxes.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
If somebody would come along and cut taxes and incentivize you to grow your business, you'd do it.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
And this will not, this will not be put on the table at the White House Jobs Summit today.
Quick time out.
We'll be right back.
I just checked the email during the break, and I'm being castigated by a few people for telling jokes or making fun of Tiger Woods in his situation.
People think I ought to be a little bit more sympathetic, given that I have been under this kind of scrutiny so much and understand it.
I've met Tiger Woods one time.
It was way back at the AT ⁇ T Pro-Am.
It was on the putting green.
I think it was Poppy Hills.
It might have been Spyglass.
But regardless, he was very nice.
And I had a chance to tell him how much it was 2000 or 2001 because I remember I told him how much I admired his focus during that incredible season he had of 2000.
And other than that, I've never seen him again.
I've never talked to him.
I know what happened here.
I know what happened.
I'll tell you exactly what happened.
I'm going to tell you what happened in a psychological sense.
I mean, I don't know the details of all this stuff, but it's very hard.
And a lot of professional athletes are this way.
But the moment that they are discovered to have superior athletic talent with the possibility of getting a college scholarship or maybe even moving on to professional sports, baseball, football, what have you, basketball, they are cobbled.
They are treated as special.
I mean, when that starts happening to you at a young age, when you are perfect, when doors are opened for you, when obstacles are moved out of the way for you, it can't help and have a cumulative effectiveness over the course of your life.
And it starts very young.
You know, Tiger, first time people saw Tiger Woods when he was three on with Bob Hope and his dad or Johnny Carsten, somebody, Mike Douglas, I forget who it was, but I mean, Tiger's been known and thought to be special, and you can't help but think that you are when that starts happening to you at that age.
The world tells you from the time that you are discovered that you are perfect and wonderful and special.
And then you get married.
And marriage is a whole different thing.
That one special person finds the truth.
You are not really perfect.
And you are not really wonderful.
And all that everybody else thinks about you is not true.
And then you are not treated that way because a spouse, you have a relationship with a spouse that is going to be different than a relationship with anybody else.
So if you're not getting that treatment from the person closest to you, you're going to go out and find it.
You're going to go out and find it wherever you, because you become accustomed to it.
What do you do when you have become, I don't know, addicted, but when you expect to be treated as though you're perfect and wonderful and you're not, what do you do?
You go seek it where you will.
And if you look at, and I thought, If I have trying to say something without saying it, I hope you can figure it out on your own.
I don't want to.
But if you, if you, can you say groupies here?
You take it from there.
I mean, he's not prowling the halls at Harvard or MIT.
He's prowling the halls of nightclubs.
So that's what I think.
I've seen it.
I've worked with professional athletes.
I've seen the in large part, you know, when you're raised that way, you know, you're all a product of, we're all a product of who we are and how we're raised.
And I think, just speculating here, but as I've always said, folks, don't doubt me.
Remember, I'm documented to be almost always right now, 99.5% of the time.
Okay, back to our jobs summit.
They're asking, why aren't we creating jobs?
They've got nobody at this summit from the private sector except I saw Fred Smith from FedEx is there and Eric Schmidt from Google is there, but hell, he may as well be a big government leftist.
Would you open up a new business?
Or, and let's take the example of our most recent phone call.
If you have a business, would you expand it if you didn't know what the rent was going to be?
Would you hire employees if you had no idea what your income was going to be and what your taxes were going to be, what your rent's going to be, and what you're going to have to pay them?
Would you hire any new employees right now on the verge of this healthcare debacle without knowing what that's going to cost you?
Would you hire anybody on the verge of all of the disaster that is openly being planned and talked about in Congress?
Would you hire anybody or start a business today if you had no idea how much of the profit you will get to keep?
Three questions, all with obvious answers, so obvious anybody could answer them unless your name is Obama.
The new jobs problem is not so much the slowdown as it is the confusion.
We don't even know if we're going to be a free market system or a government-run system.
The Heritage Foundation has written about this today.
It's a great piece.
I don't have time to squeeze it all in now, but it focuses on some leftist blogger, some economist, who predicted 2.2 million jobs would be hired, were created by the stimulus plan, and is now saying it's getting increasingly unusual that we're not seeing a hiring kick set in.
This guy predicted 2.2 million jobs.
It's increasingly unusual.
We're not seeing a hiring kick set in.
And here's a CEO.
I'm not going to do anything until these things, healthcare, climate legislation, Galway, are resolved.
I'm not hiring.
I'm not doing a damn thing until these people figure out what they're going to do.
I don't even know what the rules are going to be.
That's why nobody's hiring.
That's why nobody's growing.
That's why nobody's expanding because everybody is on defense and scared to death of what the leftists in Congress and in the White House have planned for us all.
Speaking of jobs and speaking of Obama jobs created and or saved, headline Washington posts today, Secret Service agents could be fired for White House breach.
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