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March 30, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:45
March 30, 2016, Wednesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey, we are back.
Great to have you here, my friends.
Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB microphone, hump day, middle of the week, broadcast excellence, all yours.
For the next three hours, yet another excursion into broadcast excellence.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, lrushbaugnet.com.
I must begin the program today with an announcement of sorts.
I know that a major story in the media today is, I don't know what we call it, Lewandowski gate, grab gate.
Whatever it is, the ongoing and still blossoming controversy involving the videotape of the reporter at Michelle Fields, the Trump campaign coordinator, Corey Lewandowski, and the Trumpster himself and what the heck happened.
And my friends, I have decided that going forward, I cannot share with you my opinion on this story.
And so going forward, I will not opine.
I will simply tell you what the latest is.
But I will not tell you what I think about it.
I am taking the equivalent of the EIB network's Fifth Amendment here.
Because no matter what I say, I am convinced people cannot listen anymore.
And no matter what I say, it is going to be misconstrued into one of two things.
Either I'm defending Lewandowski, or I am trying to destroy Trump in order to help Ted Cruz.
And I have done neither, said neither.
Yesterday, all I did on this program was to review for people who may not have been able to see the video because it was happening while the program was on the air, just telling people what had happened.
And I commented on how much time CNN was spending on this.
And I talked about how they were stacking guests.
And all of that became Limbaugh defends Lewandowski.
Limbaugh sells out conservatism.
Limbaugh, traitorous to the cause.
Limbaugh supports reprobate A-Hole.
Limbaugh, whatever.
And since I didn't do any of that, what?
I didn't do any of that.
I don't even know Lewandowski.
What I know is everybody apparently hates the guy.
What I know is everybody wants to try to destroy the Trump campaign that is not part of the Trump campaign.
I know that includes many people in the media.
They will take the occasion of any event that pops up to try to destroy and bring down the Trump campaign, which is politics and it's fine.
But I have determined here that because tensions are so tight, everybody is wound up to such a feverish pitch here that no matter what I say, it is misunderstood and is not helpful.
And so on this story going forward, I have no opinion.
We have the latest in sound bites.
We have the latest in the news on it.
I'm even reluctant to just tell you what the latest is because of how that's going to be misinterpreted.
And this may not be the only subject about which I may have to muzzle my own self here and silence myself, at least from the standpoint of opinions.
Because it's apparently impossible to be correctly, properly understood.
So that's that.
We have news items out there, Wazoo today.
The program is loaded with stuff on the Democrat side.
There's stuff that has nothing to do with the campaigns.
New York Daily News has a story that this is kind of funny.
They finally figured out that the Democrat campaign's rigged.
New York Daily News, if Bernie Sanders wins a New York Democrat primary, super delegates are going to back Hillary anyway.
The opening line in the story, maybe the system really is rigged.
You think?
The whole thing, the Democrat primary, has been rigged from the get-go.
It's been rigged since the Democrat campaign of 2008 ended.
You can go back to the archives of this very program and you can find me assuring everybody that no matter what, Bernie Sanders was not going to be the nominee of the Democrat Party.
And nothing has changed.
Ruth Marcus, Washington Post.
I'm just going to run through some of these things headline-wise, and I'm going to do my best to get into all of these today.
Why a no-indictment of Hillary Clinton would still be a problem for America.
Ruth Marcus, Washington Post.
She's upset that if there's no indictment, the FB, this Comey guy, he had better clear her.
He had better call a press conference, and he had better tell everybody that they never had a single shred of evidence.
If the FBI allows this to go on and on and on, and if there's no indictment and they don't do anything and allow people just to assume that Hillary is guilty, but that the Democrats are not going to pull a trigger because of partisanship, that's a disservice.
So if there's nothing there, Comey needs to come forth and say so.
From a publication calling itself Orb magazine, as the Clinton campaign falters, tension erupts between Bill's crew and Huma's crew over who has final say.
North Carolina has become ground zero in the latest iteration of the culture war, and it's absolutely absurd.
We have a conservative governor in Georgia, Nathan Deal, who literally caved to the threat of economic pressure brought about by American corporate interests.
Same kind of thing is happening in North Carolina, where special considerations for one half of 1% of the population seem to be dominating the structuring passage of laws today.
And it's all about lesbians and gays and bisexuals and transgenders and who wants to use what bathroom on a particular day of the week or at a particular time of day.
And nobody's got the right to tell somebody who thinks they're a woman on Tuesday at 2 in the afternoon that they can't use the women's bathroom.
And the NBA says, if you're going to tell somebody who thinks they're a woman at 2 o'clock on Tuesday, who got up as a man, by the way, but at 2 o'clock on Tuesday thinks she's a woman, you're going to tell her she can't use the women's restroom, we're pulling the all-star game out of Charlotte.
Fine.
Meanwhile, have you heard about Saudi Arabia?
You haven't heard of it.
The Saudi royal family wants to begin summary executions of all gays, lesbians, and transgenders as a means of shutting it down.
How many American corporations do business with Saudi Arabia, starting with big oil, starting with big Silicon Valley, starting with big defense contractor?
Tell me, how many of them do business with Saudi Arabia and would never once threaten the royal family?
Let's just see what happens.
It's all over the news.
You're looking at me like you haven't heard about this.
I cannot, I'm not going to, I don't care what Corey Lewandowski thinks about this.
I am not opining on it.
Has Lewandowski spoken about what's going on in Saudi Arabia anyway?
I don't care, even if he has.
You can't suck me into this, snurdly.
I have announced the self-imposed ban on myself on this, and there's no trick that anybody can employ.
But seriously, Saudi Arabia, the Saudi royal family, which, by the way, the Saudi royal family are the official guardians of Islam, Mecca.
And folks, they are openly saying, execute all known and discovered gays, lesbians, transgenders, bisexuals, as a means of shutting it down.
They are the head honchos, if you will, of Islam.
They are the guardians of the sacred mosques in Mecca.
How many American politicians, how many worldwide politicians, particularly on the left Democrat Party, will refuse any, they will refuse to tolerate any criticism of Islam.
We cannot associate Islam with terrorism.
No, no, no, no.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Here in the headquarters, summary execution of gays, lesbians, and how many American corporations will pull out?
How many will condemn it?
How many will tell the Saudis, you better, you better not, you better not do that, or else, like they will tell the governor of Georgia, like they will tell the legislature of North Carolina.
A story at thehill.com.
What do you think of this?
Majority of Republicans support path to citizenship.
This is a poll from an outfit called the Public Religion Research Institute, the PRRI.
Have you ever heard of them?
The PRRI are a notoriously left-wing group that has ongoing research partnerships with the Brookings Institution and the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.
And they have just released a poll saying that a majority of Republicans now support amnesty, now support a path to citizenship.
We'll see how that manifests itself.
A Nevada candidate for public office says that Dingy Harry told him to quit and not even go for it because he's a Muslim.
And, quote, a Muslim cannot win this race, unquote.
Dingy Harry, a former Senate majority leader, who in the Democrat Party and on the American left can do no wrong as telling a guy, don't run, you're a Muslim, you can't win.
By the way, what would you think if Trump chose Newt as his vice presidential nominee?
Back in a second.
Did you hear that story recently?
Maybe you saw the headline, No, you can't carry a loaded weapon into the Republican National Convention.
Did you see that story?
I did, and I know a number of you did.
From theHill.com, it turns out that the guy who authored a petition to allow open carry of guns at the Republican National Convention did it, says he did it to test the limits of the party's support for the Second Amendment.
The petition, which has attracted national attention, reads as if it was written by a supporter of gun rights.
Instead, the guy behind the petition is a Democrat who plans on supporting Hillary.
His name is Jim.
He's from Philadelphia.
He reached out to theHill.com in a phone interview, said he published the petition to call attention to what he sees as a discrepancy in the Republicans' position on gun rights.
So here you have a guy.
There was a way this works, the story's out there that somebody wants an open carry permit for the Republican National Convention.
Everybody goes, no, no, that's crazy.
Turns out it's a Democrat playing a trick.
After the impact of the news, after the impact of the story has been felt, then we learn the truth of it.
Sorry, cannot play audio soundbite number 20.
We just received a new audio soundbite here.
New movie trailer shows illegal aliens being gunned down while audio of Trump is playing.
I cannot play this audio soundbite.
It's part of my Fifth Amendment, EIB Fifth Amendment ban on uttering any opinions about the Trump campaign.
People don't hear what I say.
They misunderstand.
So the safest thing to do is to not say anything about it.
Well, I'll tell you what it is.
I mean, it's a guy.
What we have here, a Spanish language ad made to look like a movie trailer was released for it's a new movie actually called Desierto.
And it juxtaposes audio from a speech by Trump with scenes of Mexican immigrants being gunned down while crossing into the U.S. They actually made a movie out of this and they've taken a section of it as a trailer.
They put Trump's voice talking about immigration and a number of other things over Mexicans being shot at the border.
But I can't tell you what I think of that.
Well, I could, but I refuse to.
You just have to stick with the fact that it is out there.
Yesterday, the Washington Post had a story, a column, by Michael Gerson, the former speechwriter for George W. Bush, essentially claiming that I am destroying conservatism.
That my quote-unquote blessing of the Trump campaign, my blessing of Donald Trump, is killing conservatism.
I didn't bother commenting on it because it was silly.
I guess I could.
I think I saved it here somewhere.
But anyway, this was brought up last night on the Fox Business Network, Charlie Payne, his show called Making Money.
He had Tammy Bruce, who herself is a talk radio host, a Fox News contributor, and he asks her about this.
He says, look, Washington Post story, Rush Limbaugh's blessing of Trump is killing conservatism.
He's one of the few well-known conservative radio guys who is neutral.
He obviously likes Ted Cruz.
He said some nice things about Trump.
He doesn't condemn the Trump campaign.
What about it, Tammy?
Is Limbaugh killing conservatism?
Well, look, I've been agnostic as well.
We understand for many Trump supporters this is about an existential issue for the country, that if the country doesn't exist as we know it, then what good is conservatism?
And if conservatism is so weak and has been so undefended, why would just Donald Trump be the one to destroy it all?
So she - her basic point is that conservatism is going to survive no matter what.
But when you start throwing in blame like this, this argument about who's responsible for Trump, the very people responsible for it are those trying to shift that responsibility in the form of blame to others.
But again, that's off limits here on the EIB network.
I do have something, however, that I want to share with you.
There was a town hall meeting in Wisconsin last night on CNN, and there was some news that was made out of this thing.
All three Republican presidential candidates have now backed away from the pledge they all made to support the eventual nominee.
None of the three remaining Republican candidates would guarantee last night that they would support the eventual nominee for president, departing from previous promises to do so and injecting new turmoil into an already tumultuous contest.
Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich were each given a chance during a CNN town hall in Milwaukee to definitively state that they would support the nominee and all three declined to renew their pledge.
That was just as recently as March 3rd in a Fox News debate that all three said they would support the nominee.
Most of the drive-by media are only reporting that Trump is refusing to promise support for the nominee, but all three of them have basically backed away from their pledge.
This was always going to be the case.
You know, when these pledges first started flying, I thought, the only guy, I'm sorry, I can't say that.
I just thought when all of this started happening that none of this was going to hold up, start making promises like this way back last fall, whatever the first debate was, August 6th, I think, August 3rd or August 6th.
And that's when Brett Baer asked all these guys in the first Fox News debate, Trump, sorry, I can't say it.
They all took the pledge.
And I'm watching this.
This is not going to hold up.
We're too soon into this.
There's too much tumult yet to come.
There are too many feelings yet to be hurt.
There's too many people waiting to be offended or going to be offended or angered or what have you.
And it was almost when Baer asked the question, the responses were practically instantaneous and automatic, which made them formulaic.
But look, there's something interesting here.
We had the town hall meeting, and I have two different stories about the town hall meeting, and they are completely different takes on what happened last night.
One of them is at Breitbart, and the other one is by Daniel Horowitz at the Conservative Review.
And the entire, well, not entirely, but I mean, largely different interpretations and points of interest cited by both publications as to what happened last night.
We'll come back and review this right after this.
Most of my brain tied behind my back today, just to make it fair.
Rush Limbaugh, 800-282-2882.
Great to have you with us.
Okay, the town hall meeting last night, Breitbart News, the headline, crowd booze when Donald Trump mentions Scott Walker and Paul Ryan in Janesville, Wisconsin, which is Ryan's hometown.
Donald Trump knocked Scott Walker, who endorsed Trump earlier in the day, endorsed Cruz earlier in the day, and the crowd booed when Trump mentioned Scott Walker's name.
Trump says total state debt, $45 billion, very high, one of the higher ones, 20,000 fewer people in the labor force than seven years ago.
Even though the population has grown, Trump stated as he read aloud statistics about Wisconsin.
Trump, he said that he was not sure if the stats were accurate, but he went on to say, Walker not doing a very good job.
And the audience cheers.
The audience booed Scott Walker, the governor, and Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, in his hometown, Janesville, Wisconsin.
Trump was mocking Walker.
He doesn't look like a motorcycle guy to me.
Walker rides bikes.
Trump said unemployment rate, they're down 20%.
That can't be possible.
800,000 food stamp recipients, middle class hit very, very hard due to loss of manufacturing jobs.
Goes on to talk about how many jobs lost to Mexico since NAFTA.
He said that both, I'm just doing a juxtaposition.
Hang on just a second for a different take on this.
Trump goes on to rip both of them, Walker and Ryan, because they support the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama's massive Pacific Rim trade deal that he says will make NAFTA look like a baby.
And Breitbart reports that the audience loved it all, ate it up, cheered Trump left and right, and just booed Walker and booed Paul Ryan.
And Breitbart concludes, hey, this is a great night for Trump.
It was a kick night for Trump because these guys, he was able to personify them as members of the establishment, what he's running against, and the audience ate it up.
It's also noted in the Breitbart story that Dave Weigel of the Washington Post noted that at least 4,000 people were in line to get into the venue to hear Trump speak, but only held about 1,000 people.
So now, this was actually a Trump rally, not the town hall meeting.
But here is, let me move over here now to Daniel Horowitz at theconservativereview.com.
And the headline is Trump running to make socialism great again.
This is campaign seasons come full circle.
The closing argument of the GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, the man who has garnered so much support under the guise of being an anti-establishment candidate, has now exhibited the palest of pale pastel characteristics of the very establishment that voters hate.
So Horowitz claims that Trump is exactly what he's running against.
He is the guy he's campaigning against.
That he's every bit the establishment type of person is the people he's criticizing.
That he thinks just like the establishment people.
And Horowitz then says, one of the more insightful questions asked at last night's town hall in Milwaukee was directed at Trump by a woman who wanted to know the top three functions of government.
Trump initially answered security, security, security.
But then, Mr. Horowitz writes, Trump struggled to name any other core functions.
He couldn't think of any.
But then he could.
And then Trump settled on health care and education as two of three top functions of government, health care and education.
Mr. Horowitz writes, this is a man running for president who, if he wins the nomination, will debate Hillary Clinton in the fall over the fundamental role of government.
It appears there won't be much of a debate because there won't be much of a difference between Trump or Hillary.
Speaking like a typical establishment Republican who is too diffident in his own views to correctly define the role of government and how it helps the average person, Trump continued to defend federally controlled health care.
And then a transcript of questioning from Anderson Cooper to Trump is published here.
The indication here is that Trump doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to policy.
He doesn't know anything.
It's not that he's done.
He's just ignorant.
He hasn't studied it, doesn't really care about it.
And so when he doesn't know, he relies on his instincts.
And his instincts, according to Horowitz, the Conservative Review, take him right to massive big government running everything.
And in this, we should all be worried.
Everybody should be frightened because Trump is not who he claims to be.
An example.
Anderson Cooper says to Trump, so in terms of federal government role, the federal government role, you're saying security, but you also say health care and education should be provided by the federal government.
Trump.
Well, yeah, those are two of the things.
Sure.
I mean, there are obviously many things.
Housing, providing great neighborhoods.
Horowitz writes, yeah, for good measure, Trump tosses in housing, free housing, great neighborhoods, Bernie Sanders all the way.
When Anderson Cooper questioned him further about his support for these traditionally Democrat views, Trump explained that, of course, the states should control education, Mr. Horowitz writes, thereby contradicting himself again within 10 seconds.
And the column, the story, is pretty much devoted to this theme, that Trump gets tripped up when asks specific questions that it is assumed anybody running for president would be able to rattle off.
Give me three primary functions of government.
If you stutter around and can't come up with any, then you don't know anything.
And then when you think about it, and because you're stuck here, then you come up with three things and end up sounding exactly like Hillary Clinton on it.
Well, government's got to provide housing, government's got to provide health care, government's got to provide education.
It is therefore concluded that Trump, not only is he not a conservative, he may as well be a Democrat, masquerading as somebody who is not.
So those are the two juxtapositions here of, and there are many more than that.
But these are two juxtapositions of what happened last night.
We have the Breitbart piece where Trump was a hero, and he went in there and he just jammed Walker and he jammed Ryan and his audience ate it up.
And Trump was on message and the crowd loved it and he was really riffing great on anti-establishment.
Go over here to conservativereview.com and you get a report on Trump as basically an incompetent, unaware, know-nothing who was exposed into exhibiting the undeniable fact that he is a liberal at heart.
I don't know what I think about that.
I'm just telling you what happened.
And we're going to get to the phones here in just a second.
But first, is this an editorial?
So this is an endorsement?
Okay, the Milwaukee, it's the Wisconsin Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee.
Yeah, opinion editorial.
I assume this is an endorsement.
John Kasich, the GOP's best hope, can win and govern.
After terrorists murdered 35 people in Brussels last week, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz competed to see who could fashion an American police state response more quickly.
Trump demanded the U.S. close its borders to Muslims and torture Muslim captives.
I don't think Trump said that, but I can't.
I'm sorry, I can't correct this.
Be misinterpreted.
Cruz suggested forebodingly that police patrols were needed to secure Muslim neighborhoods.
Well, that again is not entirely true, but moving on.
And John Kasich, one guy says we should patrol Muslim neighborhoods.
Is they're quoting Kasich here.
One guy says we should patrol Muslim neighborhoods.
The other says we should withdraw from NATO and have a religious test.
And who comes into the country?
You think we're going to fix problems with these approaches?
If you want to find out about the radicals inside the Muslim community, you frankly have to ask a Muslim.
We have to have communication between the civilized world, all of us together, against these murderers, and that takes U.S. leadership.
And the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says that Kasich is the guy.
Kasich had a smart, pragmatic answer to Brussels, they say here.
He is, in fact, the only thoughtful candidate with a fundamental belief in long-standing democratic principles who remain standing in the GOP primary field.
Our editorial board, they write here, our editorial board normally avoids recommendations for political office, but the Republican presidential campaign this year demands a stand.
We recommend John Kasich in the Wisconsin Republican primary on April 5th.
Now, to get the nomination, Kasich must win it on the floor of the convention because, they write, he has no mathematical chance of winning outright before then.
They don't tell anybody why.
Nobody's voted for him.
Sorry.
Anyway, there you have it.
The Wisconsin Journal Sentinel in Milwaukee endorsing John Kasich.
Now to the phones.
Mary in Barrington, Illinois, your first today.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello.
Hi, thanks, Rush.
You bet.
You know, this Michelle Field story is just driving me crazy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but she's a reporter covering presidential politics and approached a presidential candidate, it sounds like, within the circle of Secret Service that was escorting him out, and she has a problem with being pulled away from that situation.
I just don't get it.
It feels to me like she's really playing a woman card here and using what she perceives as her power to accomplish something political.
What do you think that is?
Dump Trump.
Get rid of Trump.
Oh, that's what that is.
They can't seem to take him down.
So, you know, a good soldier would go for the first in command, which would be Corey Lewandowski.
Right.
Well, that's interesting.
Well, I thank you.
You bet.
I'm glad you called.
Thank you so much.
It's great to hear you, Mary.
Who's next?
Yeah, what's it?
Who's next?
Brian in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello.
How are you doing, Rush?
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
Same here, Brian.
I'm glad you made it through today.
Thank you for taking that call.
You bet anytime.
The reason why I'm on a call is, first, I'd like to say that I'm a never-Trump guy.
I'm a pro-Cruise guy, but I know that you've been taking a lot of heat, especially from us pro-Cruise people.
And for a while, I was one of those people who are saying, you know, what's Rush doing?
Rush was doing Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.
It was starting to upset me.
And then I've been listening for about 10 years, and I started doing exactly what you said, which is you take people at their word.
So I started to do the same thing with you.
And I'm thinking to myself, okay, Trump has brought all this new pizzazz and appeal to politics in general.
And if I were you and I'm always promoting conservatism, I would take that opportunity to promote conservatism to potential voters that may have never even heard thoughts and views on conservatism.
Do I, I guess, have an idea to where you're going with this?
Because I feel that you just take a lot of heat.
And I was one of those people that were upset until I started thinking about us conservatives, we already know who we're going to vote for.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
What do you mean I'm taking a lot of heat?
Meaning, like, for instance, yesterday you had a couple callers that were giving you grief.
I think it was a gentleman from Texas saying, you know, he had to turn you off a couple times because, you know, he just got tired of that.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I remember that.
So I was just thinking that if I were you, and I truly believe in conservatism and, as you say, inspiring a generation of voters, you know, that I guess my purpose would be not to talk to the people who already understand conservatism, believe in it wholeheartedly, maybe those Democrats that are crossing over to get them to understand.
So you think that's what I should be doing but haven't been doing?
I think, no, I think that that's exactly what you've been doing.
And rather than, you know, myself and other conservatives that were saying, you know, what's Rush doing?
You know, I actually took a step back and I figured if I were you and I had, you know, millions of listeners every single day and my goal is to promote conservatism, what better way to do it than rather than, you know, the crew supporters, they know what conservatism is inside and out.
But the new voters that are coming for Trump, explaining it to them in a way like that got me, you know, 10 years ago when I first started listening.
That's very, very insightful of you, Brian.
I have to say, very, very, you've been reading between the lines out there.
You've been studying it.
And that's another thing.
You know, I try to listen to you intently, and I listen to you pretty much every day.
And, you know, like I said, I was upset with you for a little while until I started to read in between the lines.
And just to the fellow Crew supporters, you know, the never Trump people, I honestly think that Rush is doing us a great service by informing many more people.
Can I let me jump in because time is dwindling.
You know, one of the I'll be honest with you folks, one of the most frustrating things about doing this is that it's three hours a day.
There's 15 hours a week.
And then you add the weeks.
It is a lot to expect.
I'll admit, it's a lot to expect people to remember things that I say, which is why I repeat them sometimes, particularly the things that I think are important or the things about which I'm really passionate, I repeat them.
And I always beg your indulgence when I do so.
There's a thing with the written word.
If you read it, you could read the most outrageous thing, but just because it's published, you're going to give it credibility.
This is spoken word, which is why, by the way, everything I say here is transcribed and is available at rushlimbaugh.com on the free side.
In most cases, you don't have to cross the paywall.
You can go read the transcripts of what I say.
You can actually read what I say.
And one of the things I said way, way back, and I wish people remembered these things because it would help explain.
If you could remember what I said back in October or September or November, it would help you to understand what's going on today.
As I say, I realize that is a maybe unrealistic expectation I have.
So let me just remind you: when Trump first showed up and this thing that he's doing took off, and people started asking me why I wasn't condemning it, I had a very specific answer that had nothing to do with ideology, had nothing to do with conservatism, liberalism, any ism.
It had to do that Trump was demonstrating that all the things Republicans and conservatives fear that makes them shut up, you're seeing you don't have to be afraid of them.
You don't have to shut up.
There was a great lesson being taught, a great demonstration going on.
And that was the original.
I'm out of time.
I've got to take the break here, folks, but I'll continue this.
I know.
It's crazy.
I'm asking people to remember what I said back in October when very few people even listened to an entire three hours and remember what they heard.
But that's not your problem, folks.
That's mine.
And I'll deal with it in my own way.
We'll be back.
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