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June 16, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
32:29
The 'Peace' President

Just weeks after his Saudi Arabia speech excoriating neocons and again pledging to be the "president of peace," Donald Trump has admitted to being part of an Israeli sneak attack on Iran late last week. With Israel discovering an Iran that is successfully fighting back, Netanyahu is now begging for the US to become militarily involved. Can Trump redeem himself as his MAGA base loses faith?

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Oil Surge Disrupts Markets 00:04:18
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Doing well.
Doing well.
Good.
And maybe we're running out of things to talk about.
Things are calm over there in Israel and Iran, so to speak, but the markets are calmer.
Does that mean there's less war going to happen?
I'm not convinced, but all of a sudden the markets turned down.
Oil was up last week.
That made sense to me.
You know, gold was way up.
Silver was up.
Everybody was anticipating a problem.
But markets make corrections and they're making some corrections, but this still is still a little bit strange because it is some serious thing.
You know, if it's more like an average correction and they're taking a pause, I keep thinking, well, maybe they won't have as much to worry about, the investors, the traders.
But I got to thinking, well, just wait a day and maybe they'll start thinking about a big problem.
Like, how are they going to finance the debt?
You know, how are they going to finance all this militarism?
And that would stir up the markets.
But I think one of the biggest things going on here for the markets was last week, I think oil went up like $5 in one day.
It has been in the doldrums.
And there is a lot of oil in the world.
So it's amazing how governments and the militarists want to prop up their prices and they cause these troubles and the price goes up.
But that was a big jump.
But I think the oil had been down a good while.
It was down in the 60s, worked its way through in the 70s, and now it popped up like this.
And making a correction today.
But I think oil was a very big thing in the 70s because of the embargo by the Saudis.
And we also had the adjustment from gold going from $35 an ounce up to $800.
So that was a big deal.
I doubt if percentage-wise it'll happen that well, that much, but it's going to be there because everything is going to go up.
And it's what catches the attention of the traders to look at some of these fundamentals.
And this, I think, is what we'll be looking at because I don't think things have been calm there.
I see a lot of things, and we'll be talking about that in a minute or two, about the foolishness of this whole war going on.
And also, the one area that we have more responsibility for, and I certainly assumed that when I was in Congress, is what's our policies doing?
What are our representatives doing?
Are we protecting the people's money?
Are we using any money?
Oh, whom do we believe?
Everything is okay and not a problem.
And we're not anxious to go to war.
And things will be okay.
And then other times we hear other stories.
And of course, we can look at our history.
Can we stay out of it?
And if you look at the history from 1945 on, we're either engaged in it, helped start it, or just making some profits over it.
So I'm not very confident that things are going to calm down and we're going to go back to market forces because market forces are so determined by our foreign policy and the warmongers and all that goes on.
And also the ridiculous argument, of course, how much should we raise the national debt this year?
Should we raise it at $2 trillion or $5 trillion?
So that kind of stuff.
Eventually, that's these fundamentals, but that's eventually what will really make the difference in people's lives and the economy.
So This war, you won't be able to predict it completely and day on a daily basis, but it can't be helpful.
It's part of the problem.
And we've been arguing that case for a long time.
The foreign policy needs revamping, but so does the monetary policy.
Yeah, and you know, Dr. Paul, it was just a couple of weeks ago that President Trump was in Saudi Arabia and he gave that speech, which was an incredible speech.
Israeli Pretense and Coups 00:09:37
He denounced the neocons.
They do nothing but destroy.
They're terrible people.
I'm the peace president, and I'm in favor of peace.
And now we see over the weekend the Israeli sneak attack on Iran, and you see the involvement of President Trump in this.
Now, this is an infamous now New York Post story that came out on the 13th after the Israeli sneak attack started.
Trump tells the Post, quote, I always knew the date for Israel attack on Iran.
Now, that is like someone who's committed a crime making a confession, because what that means, Dr. Paul, is that President Trump knew all along that this was coming, yet he lulled the Iranians into a sense that they were not going to be attacked as long as the U.S. was engaging them in this dialogue, in these negotiations.
We had met with the Iranians several times, the U.S. had, and they had the impression that the talks were proceeding because Trump kept saying, a deal is close.
We're going to get a deal.
A deal is close.
And he kept saying that all the while he knew that Israel was going to do a sneak attack on Iran.
And that's exactly what happened.
Now, the Axios publication, if you go to the next one, they have more details and they always seem to have these juicy details.
But here's what they reported after that.
Two Israeli officials claimed to Axios that Trump and his aides were only pretending to oppose an Israeli attack in public and didn't express opposition in private.
Quote, we had a clear U.S. green light, one claimed.
The goal, they say, was to convince Iran that no attack was imminent and make sure Iranians on Israel's target list wouldn't move to new locations.
Netanyahu's aides even briefed Israeli reporters that Trump had tried to put the brakes on an Israeli strike in a call on Monday, when in reality, the call dealt with coordination ahead of the attack, Israeli officials now say.
Now, of course, the Israelis are going to, it's going to be in their interest to pretend that they were working with Trump, and we can't discount the fact that they might be lying.
But Trump himself did bolster that idea by saying, I always knew from Israel when it was going to happen, meaning that he was involved in this, even as he was talking.
His people were talking to the Iranians.
Witkoff was talking to the Iranians.
They were setting them up for a sneak attack.
You know, this is nothing new.
And I don't think it totally surprises us that we're becoming aware of this.
Because if people would see what we're managing or trying to mismanage it, and that is our empire, they're always involved.
When weren't they involved in all that?
And, you know, most recently before this was Ukraine.
You know, the evidence was clear-cut that we orchestrated the coup there.
And we've been involved in more coups and probably more terrorist type of shenanigans than around the world.
Then they come up with that's the absolute reason why the congressmen in Washington are saying, we got to go after them.
They're the chief instigators of terrorism.
Well, I'm sure they've done some things that people might call defense and might call terrorists.
But I tell you what, they have a hard time proving that.
And that compares to everything that we have involved.
But if people would look and try to understand from the viewpoint of the individuals in charge are managing an empire.
And so this is not going to happen.
They're building the empire.
They're maintaining the empire.
They're financing the empire.
They threaten people.
And also, sometimes they're deceived and thinking, oh, well, you know, if we put the Republicans in, they're going to do this, what they say.
They're going to, you know, manage things much better, the Democrats.
But, you know, the big issue is I've argued a long time, there's not a whole lot of difference.
I mean, have we ever walked away or shrunk the size of our involvement in foreign policy?
No, either party will take us in hand because they believe in the principle that hands-off is weak and you're going to be attacked and you'll suffer the consequences, but we'd rather spend the money, bankrupt the country, and destroy the civil liberties of our people.
And that's the policy we have.
And I don't see it reversing real soon.
There's a lot of people who would like to do it, but they're not in charge yet.
It's good that you mentioned Iran, Dr. Paul, because it was a very similar situation with you.
I mean, Ukraine, because it was a very similar situation with Ukraine.
Remember, Trump was pretending that he's the mediator.
He's the negotiator.
And there was another round of talks with Ukraine scheduled between Russia and Ukraine.
And then we had this sneak attack of Ukrainian drones inside Russia, taking out some of these strategic bombers.
It was the exact same thing.
Trump pretending to be the negotiator, pretending to be the mediator, while at the same time being involved with an attack on Russia.
And so what you have here, I think, and it's probably for us the most critical thing, and people don't realize this, U.S. credibility is gone.
You know, nobody will believe the United States.
Who would negotiate with the United States that pretends to be negotiating while they're greenlighting attacks on bombers?
Well, they're greenlighting a sneak attack on Iran.
Nobody will trust a word that the U.S. says anymore.
And that makes the world a much more dangerous place, in my view.
You know, there was another incident going on this past weekend.
Got a lot of attention, all very pumped up and positive.
At least they wanted to be positive.
And they took a small chunk of money to brag about their patriotism.
So they had a little parade to celebrate.
I don't know what they're celebrating because if you look at our militarism, but they were enhancing and maybe popularizing and deceiving people into how wonderful militarism is.
So they spent $45 million.
Oh, that's chicken feet.
But what could the people, if you went out on the street and found 100 people and say, you know, if you have $45 million to spend, would you give up the parade if you decided that should be left in the hands of some people who've been working and they're overtaxed and having trouble and losing their jobs?
Would you be, do you think there's a better way of spending 40?
But what about 45 billion?
What about 45 trillion?
You know, that's where the debt will be pretty soon.
So I am not exactly pleased to say, you know, isn't it?
And actually, I was in a group.
They were thinking, if you're a veteran, we really want to thank you.
Yeah, I was in there and I was a veteran, but they sort of messed up my life for a while.
Fortunately, it was nothing critical like how many people I remember.
My teachers, some teachers when I was during the Korea era, where they were redrafted from World War II, but they didn't come home.
That had an impression on me.
Yeah.
The timeline of this is really interesting, Dr. Paul, because you have with Trump, you have the brag, which we've just seen.
I knew all about it.
I knew when it was going to happen.
Then you have the bluster.
Now, this next clip is the bluster.
Here's Trump.
This is, it's hard to imagine that a president of the United States would write and release such a statement about what's happening.
If you can put that on, and I'm going to read it because it's bizarre, Dr. Paul.
And this has led a lot of people to wonder if maybe Trump has a little bit what Biden has.
Trump says, I gave Iran a chance to make the deal.
I told him in the strongest of words to just do it.
But no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done.
I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told.
The United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world by far, and that Israel has a lot of it with much more to come.
And they know how to use it.
Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but they don't know what was about to happen.
They're all dead now, and it will only get worse.
There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make the slaughter, to make this slaughter with the next already planned attacks becoming even more brutal come to an end.
Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.
No more death, no more destruction.
Just do it before it's too late, all caps.
God bless you all.
That is an unhinged blustery.
Do you think he is using Lizzie Graham to write a speech?
Could be.
It could be.
But you know, after the bluster and the admission, boldness, blustering, admission, then comes the panic.
Because look at the next clip.
He realizes that he had let the well, actually, here's Marco Rubio as Trump was saying, hey, I knew all about it.
I was giving him the green light.
Rubio comes out with a statement at the same time saying, tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran.
We were not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces.
So Rubio comes out and basically contradicts President Trump by saying we had nothing to do with it.
And so then what does Trump do after that?
He puts out a statement contradicting his own previous statement saying the U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran tonight.
Aircraft Within Range 00:13:52
If we're intact in any way, shape, or form, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So you had the bragging, the blustering, and then the panic.
Oh my gosh, I shouldn't have been so bold as to let the cat out of the bag.
Yeah, the big question is: how is this going to change?
And what is it going to lead to?
I, you know, the longer this lasts, it's been around when was it going to happen, you know, for years almost.
And then in the last month or two, there is more and more talk.
And it shouldn't have surprised too many people.
But when does this all end?
Can it end with all of a sudden, okay, let's get together and talk this over?
You know, what are the odds of that?
Unfortunately, I can't even visualize that happening.
And the sad part is if we work real hard to try to be as objective as possible, but then we have to do what you just did, point out the irregularities and the shortcomings of our own people who are representing us, you know.
And, oh, you mean, you guys aren't even patriotic.
You know, why weren't you out of the parade, that $45 million parade?
You could have had more fun than worrying about, you know, all this technicalities on language and promises and interventions.
And we're, you know, the $45 million, that's ironic.
That really is peanuts compared to how much money have we spent.
And here, they were sending more weapons even right before it happened.
Yeah, that's right.
The 300 missiles just before it happens.
They could have had a lot of parades there.
You know, if we had to have parades, maybe that would be better than the war mongering.
But the trouble is the parades are the psychological excitement to get people prepared to be, you know, to be the king of the world.
You know, what happened after, so initially, what this was is the plan was for Israel to do to Iran what it successfully did to Hezbollah, which was a decapitating strike on its leadership and then some sort of a technical attack, which for Hezbollah was the Pagers, which just completely destroyed the coherence as a military organization.
They thought they could do this with Iran.
Now, they successfully did the decapitation strike, and that was with the help of the United States, by the way, because it was under the auspices of a pre-planned military exercise with Russia and a few other countries.
And so you had the top generals gathering in a place where they knew they would gather before this exercise is.
And the Israelis used that opportunity to do a sneak attack because they didn't think they were going to be attacked and decapitate.
And then they did a cyber attack on Iran's air defenses, which crippled them for about eight hours.
But what Israel didn't count on, and this is why it's always a danger to underestimate your adversary.
Sunsoob will tell you about that, is that the Iranians got their air defenses back up online and began firing very powerful missiles into Tel Aviv.
And now Israel has been hit with missiles, the likes of which it has never seen before.
And there are whole areas of Tel Aviv now that are flattened.
So they didn't count on this happening because they were arrogant.
They believed they were invincible.
And the truth is, that's not the case.
But the other thing about this, Dr. Paul, is that Netanyahu, of course, came out and said, I had to stop Iranian snooks, Iran's nukes.
Whereas they don't have them when we know that they don't.
Because Tulsi Gabbard told us either she's a liar, which I don't think she is, or they just ignore the fact that our intelligence community says this.
Now, I put together a clip that just happened of Tucker on with Steve Bannon on the war room.
And this is an interesting perspective that Tucker Carlson had.
If we can listen to one minute and 10 seconds, it's a little longer than we usually do.
But let's listen to this first minute, 10 seconds.
I can't say, but that this could be a predicate to a peace deal, what we're seeing now.
He really thinks that and wants that.
And the other side is just like, no, a peace deal is the other side, but the other side also has the apparatus here.
This is what happened in Ukraine when Ukraine attacked, when Ukraine attacked, we still haven't asked Ratcliffe.
Was the CIA involved?
That there's zero probability Ukraine could attack out deep into Russia without some involvement.
Here, the exact same thing.
Why was Tulsi Gabbard not invited to the Camp David meeting all day?
You know why?
Why Tulsi Gabbard still to the American public has said the last public statement is that the program was not back up and running.
And now we have from Bibi by himself on Fox by Brent Baer that the thing was 12 to 13 months away.
It wasn't this weekend.
I know.
And this is by his own thing.
And we also know that it was a decapitation.
As we said on Friday, it wasn't just about the nuclear program.
It's a decapitation of total leadership.
So this is a total regime change, which, by the way, you may have a plan for regime change, it's fine, but you've got to bring the American people along.
Let me go back.
By the way, I said that publicly last week.
The point of this is regime change.
I know everyone involved.
I know.
I'm telling the truth.
I have no weird motive here.
Yeah.
So it was not about the nuclear weapons.
It was about regime change.
And that's why they had the decapitation strike.
They knew there were no nukes.
You know, the question still is asked: will the United States enter the war with Iran?
Yeah.
But they already have.
And you know what?
You have to give them credit to managing what they want to manage.
Be involved, become more powerful, spend more money, have a larger empire with no body bags.
And that's important because they know the American people couldn't handle the body bags.
But they ought to start worrying about some of the economic chaos that is created by deficits and inflation here at home.
And we're seeing we don't have body bags, but he have more and more people liking to shoot each other because of the economic crisis that is building.
But we've been involved for a long time.
We always are involved.
And so they're sort of being successful.
Their empire is preserved.
It gets bigger.
But you know what?
I don't think they have a handle on because they don't think it's possible is the credibility.
And there's more and more people, you know, in the monetary system and foreign policy.
We're losing a lot of credibility and people are getting more annoyed with us.
And I would think that that would wake up people.
But I would think the inconsistencies that you so well pointed out right now would be bothering some of these other countries about, you know, trying to figure out what is the position of the United States?
You know, how do we understand this?
Because they're in the middle of these guns going off.
And what is going on?
And what is our responsibility?
I think the basic bottom line really is what is our moral responsibility for this involvement.
And it certainly isn't morally justified our foreign policy now, nor are the people who think the solution is militarism and bombing and fighting and killing.
Because I think the moral responsibility, you know, they still do take the oath of office.
Most people in Washington, they take the office, the oath of office.
They're supposed to follow the rules and then, you know, and live within those means.
But that's not what's happening.
As long as they succeed in building the power and the scope of the empire, they can live with it and think and they convince themselves they are morally superior and they are speaking on the side of morality.
Well, you mentioned no bodybuilds.
And I would, unfortunately, I would say yet, because we know that there are upwards of up to 80,000 American military personnel within missile range of Iran right now.
And President Trump has put each and every one of these Americans directly in harm's way so that he could backstop Israel's desire to do a regime change in Iran.
He's put the heads of every one of these 50,000, 70, 80,000 American soldiers at risk to do the bidding of a foreign country.
And that's why his base is furious with him.
Furious.
Let's skip ahead to Marjorie Taylor Greene's.
I'm going to skip a couple of those clips.
But Marjorie Taylor Greene had a blistering, blistering post today on X.
And I'm going to read a little bit of it because she was always one of President Trump's top backers.
But she is now, like a lot of Trump's MAGA base, is furious.
Here's what she had to say.
Everyone is finding out who are real America First MAGA and who were fake and said it just because it was popular.
Unfortunately, the list of fakes are becoming quite long and expose themselves quickly.
Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel-Iran war is not America First MAGA.
Wishing for murder of innocent people is disgusting.
We are sick and tired of foreign wars, all of them.
And this one will quickly engulf the Middle East, BRICS, and NATO as countries are required to take sides.
Real America First MAGA wants world peace for all people and doesn't want our military killed and forever injured physically and mentally.
Now, go to the next one.
She continues: We love our U.S. military and love them helping secure our borders and our cities for the defense of our people and our country.
They are our friends, spouses, cousins, nieces, nephews, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters.
We spent trillions in the Middle East.
We've dealt with the aftermath of death, blown apart bodies, never-ending suicides, and disabling PTSD.
All because they told us propaganda as to why we must sacrifice our own to defend some other country's border and some other country's borders.
I don't want to see Israel bombed or Iran bombed or Gaza bombed.
I don't want to see Ukraine bombed or Russia bombed.
And we do not want to be involved or required to pay for any of it.
We're 38 plus trillion in debt and have mountains of our own problems.
I know this is long, but I wouldn't mind continuing if you will indulge me, Dr. Paul.
She says we have giant planks sticking out of our own eyes.
Well, we complain about splinters in other eyes.
You can put the next one on.
Every country involved and all over the world can be happy, successful, and rich if we all work together and seek peace and prosperity.
Taking this position is not anti-Semitic, it's rational, sane, and loving toward people.
Taking this position of peace and prosperity for all is not isolationism.
It leads to great trade deals and great economies that help all people.
It's what Americans voted for in 2024.
America first.
She says it twice.
That is how you make America great again.
I liked her use of peace and prosperity there.
I wonder if she's been watching the show.
Good for you.
Well, I wonder if she should be concerned about being invited to the next picnic.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
She might be uninterrupted.
Yeah, disinvited.
But you know, even a lot of the Trump supporting outlets, the Federalists, a few of the other ones, I slipped my mind.
I was just browsing them this morning.
They're mad.
They're furious with President Trump.
He risks losing a huge chunk of his base because a huge chunk of American conservatives now are against war.
They don't want these wars.
But I want to do one other thing, if you don't mind, Dr. Paul, which is one of the things that's happening is the U.S. has a carrier group in the region, the Nimitz.
The UK has one.
So the U.S. just announced, actually, if you can put this last clip on.
Now, this is open source.
The USS Nimitz and its strike group are now moving toward the Middle East, joining the USS Carl Vinson and the UK's HMS Prince of Wales.
If confirmed, that places three powerful aircraft carriers within striking distance of Iran's shores.
Note, this also puts our aircraft carriers and other ships within range.
As stake goats, steak goat tactics are tactics are used in hunting, etc., etc.
So I would just say, I don't think they're going to be put within a thousand miles of Iran.
But if they are put within striking distance, this can get very dangerous.
And I did have one final video clip.
I'm going to skip the middle one and just do the last one.
This is a very, we don't even need our earpieces for this.
This is a very quick clip, so don't blink.
But this is one of the first times we've seen Iran's hypersonic missiles in action.
And I have never seen a force this powerful, this shocking.
I actually watched it over and over because I could not believe what I was seeing.
Let's watch this.
It's very, very short.
And you saw it come down like a bolt of lightning.
Gotcha, just play it again if you don't mind, because you could have missed it the first time.
Boom.
That was in Haifa.
That was the Iranians destroying the refinery capabilities.
That's where the Israelis refined gasoline for their aircraft.
So that missile is unbelievable.
And one of those hitting an aircraft carrier, it's gone.
Unbelievable Missile Strike 00:03:37
It's toast.
It's sunk.
You know, sometimes I wonder whether the aircraft carrier is a modern weapon.
Absolutely.
No, it is utterly tragic of what happens with human beings who won't accept a few basic principles.
And most of these principles have been around for a long time, and that's natural law.
People should decide: well, what would the world be like if they gave up lying, shit, killing, cheating, and doing all these things?
It's been natural for most people to endorse these principles, but everybody has an excuse and do something else.
And the money is no issue until there's no money.
And that's what's happening.
So we're progressing in the wrong direction.
And yet, our country had a tremendous start, and probably some of the most brilliant people ever to try to put a document together.
But I think the sentiment for the original document is not very strong.
But then when you come across and see somebody like Congresswoman Green, all of a sudden you say, you know, in a way, you know, she didn't have quite the conversion like Walter had, but she's going to be strong.
She's not going to back away with what she just said.
She can't.
She can't.
It's incredible.
So I'm going to conclude now.
We ran over a little bit, I guess.
There's a lot going on.
But everything that we've seen over the last few days, if you're like me, I've been glued.
I wake up at three in the morning and go onto Telegram to see what's going on because it's shocking.
But if you put that bonus close, oh, by the way, I do want to thank Conrail 2020 and Georgist for kicking in some money to help us today on the show.
And we appreciate everyone who does help support the show.
But put that last one up.
If you've seen what's happening over the weekend and you haven't rushed to click on and purchase a ticket for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity's summer conference, you, I don't know what's wrong with you because blueprint for peace, it couldn't have come at a better time.
It couldn't have, the topic couldn't have been better either, Dr. Paul, for us at this point.
And we have some of the people who know best, who know the most about this conflict.
Colonel Doug McGregor will be one of our top speakers.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb will be one of our top speakers.
We'll announce some more this week.
You've got to join us 16th of August, Dolas, Virginia.
I'll put a link in the description, but if you don't see it, just go to ronpaulinstitute.org.
There's a banner on top of our homepage where you can click and get this discounted tickets for the next couple of weeks, save a little bit of money, and let's figure out how we can stop these wars.
Over you, Dr. Paul.
That's a good idea.
You know, I think most people, if you go out and do a polling of the American system, the American people say, yes, we want prosperity.
We want a decent house.
They're not all people who think they have to have $10 million to be happy.
They just want to be able to live in a decent way.
But the one thing is, it's much more difficult to have that without peace.
Peace comes before the prosperity.
And sometimes people think it's the other way around.
Let's have a war and a lot of people will be employed and they're going to have more money.
I think that is so horrible.
And that argument is still being used today.
How did we get out of the depression?
Oh, well, we had a war, World War II.
Peace Before Prosperity 00:01:03
Yeah.
You send off thousands of people to get shot at and die.
And that's not the prosperity I'm talking about.
I'm talking about prosperity that comes from volunteerism and sound money.
And that is available to us.
It's not difficult.
It's not complicated.
It's just a matter of being able to get that message out to notice available to everybody that wants to follow a few basic rules.
And that is the rules of nonviolence.
You can't go around.
doing these things, killing people for your personal desires.
And there's a lot of people that way that I've met over the years that endorse these ideas, but they feel very frustrated because they vote for people who say these things, and then they wish you washi and they switch around and they're on different sides.
And all of a sudden, once they're in office, different things.
So I do want to compliment Congresswoman Green for staying true to her colors because she's been conservative, but her statement today was outstanding.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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