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Aug. 4, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
44:32
Episode 165 Scott Adams: Meeting President Trump (without details of course), Don Lemon Tweet
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Time Text
Oh don't mind me.
I'm just reading. Nothing going on today.
Hey, you should really check out Greg Guffeld's new book.
I just read it on the plane, and it's great.
If you like Greg, and you like The Five, and you probably do, this is a good read.
I enjoyed it very much.
Now I like to, when I'm reading a book, sometimes I like to make notes in it.
And I probably do it the same way you do when you make notes in a book.
You probably use your official White House presidential pen.
What? You don't have one of these?
I feel so sorry for you.
Everybody needs their own presidential pen.
It's got a signature on there.
In case I ever want to forge the president's name, I've got a little example right there.
Yes, it's an actual functioning pen.
It used to sign, I think, the Farm Bill or something.
All right. So, before I talk about my experience meeting the president, and I'll tell you in advance, I'm not going to tell you what we talked about, there were no state secrets, but I'll just give you sort of the atmospheric vibe of it all, because I think that's pretty interesting.
Let's talk about the president's tweet this morning.
It's another classic.
It's a great weekend tweet.
All right, here's the president's tweet.
So keep in mind, I guess LeBron James was being interviewed by Don Lemon.
And LeBron, whether you love him or hate him, He's apparently doing some really good stuff, funding a school for...
I forget what it is.
It's some kind of special school.
And so that's all great and wonderful and should be commended.
But as you know, LeBron James is a big critic of the president, and so is Don Lemon from CNN. So here's the president's tweet.
I'm going to try to read this without laughing before I get to the end of it.
It's not going to be easy.
The tweet says, LeBron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon.
He made LeBron look smart, which isn't easy to do.
I like Mike. Referring to Michael Jordan.
Now, there's a lot in this, and it's all funny.
First of all, if you know anything about basketball, and I won't assume that most of you do, one of the big questions in basketball Is who is the best player ever?
And of course, LeBron is very much in that conversation.
And, you know, Michael Jordan, of course, is the other, you know, in the top two or three, whatever you want to, however you want to slice it.
So he goes right to like an emotional, you know, something that's probably important to LeBron.
You know, he's done all this work.
He could be like the greatest scorer if he plays a few more years and stuff.
But the president says, I like Michael Jordan.
Now, you may know that Michael Jordan famously was asked his opinion about something political.
And he said, Michael Jordan says, Republicans buy sneakers too.
So he was smart enough to not get into it.
So the reference is smart on two levels.
One level is that emotionally a comparison to Michael Jordan would be something that would bother, you'd think it would bother LeBron James probably because they're battling for the best ever.
But Michael Jordan also has that great example of how to be smart.
I sell shoes to everybody.
But here's my favorite part.
I told you about how the president always makes you think past the sale.
And here's another one. He's making you wonder who is dumber, LeBron James or Don Lemon?
And I actually found myself wondering that.
I've never had that thought before.
Not once in my entire life have I ever said, I wonder which one of those guys is dumber.
Is it LeBron?
Or is it Don Lemon?
So it's like an entirely new thought that's in my head.
And it's pretty hilarious.
But here's the funny part, and I don't know if you've connected this yet.
The funny part is that Don Lemon has to cover the story.
Because once it becomes a presidential tweet, you can't really ignore it.
Now, it probably was not the best timing because I don't think Don Lemon has a weekend show.
He's just a weekday show, I believe.
But he'll still have to talk about it, even on Monday.
So he's got the entire weekend, this is Don Lemon, to stew about it.
And then, how is he going to cover the story About the President of the United States, publicly calling him by name, the dumbest man on television.
He cannot cover the story, right?
And if he covers the story, of course, he's going to put his Don Lemon spin on it and say negative things about the President.
But you're already used to the negative things about the president, especially coming from CNN. But what the president's added is that he also has to cover the fact that he's been called the dumbest guy on television.
You can't not say it.
So he's going to actually have to insult himself Frequently on this story, and you'll probably have a panel discussion about whether he's the dumbest man on television.
Alright, so that's funny.
Alright, the question you all want to hear from me is, what is it like to meet the president?
And again, I'll caution you, I'm not going to give you details of what he said or I said, because that's just something you don't do.
But on Thursday, I had the The great honor of meeting the president and getting my picture taken in the Oval Office.
And we got to chat a little bit.
I'm not going to give you any details about that.
But I want to tell you about how it feels.
Did I use the bathroom?
I used the West Wing guest bathroom, yes.
I didn't use the one that's off, I guess there's a bathroom off of the Oval Office, I don't know.
So here's the fun parts that are not confidential and I can tell you that are easy to talk about.
First of all, I didn't own a suit.
So when I got the request, I actually had to go to the men's warehouse and figure out, how do you buy a suit?
I don't think I bought one in 15 years or something.
And I was hoping to go the rest of my life without owning one.
Both of my parents have passed away, so I don't need one for their funerals.
And I'm just thinking, well, I just might never need a suit again.
So, but I got a suit.
And man, those things are uncomfortable.
Now if you've ever been to Washington DC in the summer, they have this thing called humidity.
And we don't get a lot of that in California.
Now imagine me, the first time I'm not wearing shorts, the entire, you know, from, if you live in California, you put on shorts sometime in May, and you just don't take them off until around October.
You wear different shorts, but you're pretty much wearing shorts for half of the year.
And so I put on this little suit thing with a necktie, and I get out of the cab at the White House entrance, and there are a few layers of security, and you have to walk out doors for a fairly extended time.
Extended being, let's say, two blocks.
So when you walk outdoors in Washington, D.C. in the middle of the summer in high humidity wearing a suit, by the time you actually get to the entrance of the West Wing, you're completely liquid.
It looked like I just went for a swim.
So here I am, I'm going to be meeting the president in a few minutes and I'm just like a pile of wet.
But as luck would have it, I got there early enough to use the guest bathroom and towel myself off enough to look like I just hadn't come out of a rainstorm.
Let me tell you how it felt.
This is really the strangest part about it.
I was anxious slash nervous about not being late.
Because I didn't really know what's the process once you get there.
How long does it take you to get through security?
Is there anything that could go wrong?
What if I go to the wrong entrance?
So I worried about all that stuff.
Because I normally worry about travel connections.
But nothing special.
So I didn't have any special anxiousness about it other than making sure I got there.
And once I got there, it was very relaxing.
Now I'll tell you... You know, you can imagine that there's an outer waiting area and you have to wait for your time to go in.
I'm not going to tell you about who I talked to in between or those details, but I will tell you I did have the pleasure of meeting Ivanka and Jared Kushner.
So just briefly got to meet both of them.
And it's completely surreal.
The best way I can describe the experience is it was like being on mushrooms.
And I've described that before.
Being on mushrooms You can understand how everything works.
A door is still a door, a chair is still a chair, but they look brand new, even though you're completely familiar with them.
And you have these two worlds that you hold in your head when you're doing...
I've done mushrooms exactly once, decades ago.
But the feeling is that things are both completely new and simultaneously completely familiar.
Which is a very strange feeling.
And this was like that. Because how many times have you seen the Oval Office in movies and television, you know, pictures?
We've all spent, mentally, we've all spent a tremendous amount of time actually in the Oval Office.
But we haven't actually been in the Oval Office.
So when you go in there, The Oval Office is, first of all, not very large.
You've seen it. It's not a giant room.
But you feel completely familiar because you've seen this so many times.
And even though you're looking at the decorations and everything, I'm looking at, you know how the Oval Office has the two couches that face each other?
And you've just seen that picture so many times of presidents sitting on one couch and the advisors on the other couch.
And you're standing right there, right next to that little couch thing, and you think, my God, this is so familiar.
And yet, you're standing in the most, like, I don't know, famous, important power center of the known universe.
So it's an incredible, just what it does to your head is amazing.
But here's the thing, it's totally comfortable.
Now, I will tell you that without getting into the details, The part you're going to wonder about the most is, what's it like actually shaking hands with the president and having a brief chat?
And I'll tell you, it is so comfortable that you wouldn't believe it.
So the president, as well as the other folks I met there, I'll be vague about that, but the other White House folks, and Ivanka and Jared, who I met also briefly,
are so charismatic and so down to earth and easy to talk to That this is the hard part to imagine, that standing in the Oval Office and having a brief chat with this president is as comfortable as talking to your next door neighbor.
And if you had said that in advance, that it would feel that just completely normal, I wouldn't have believed it.
So the president's Charisma level, one-on-one, is just off the charts.
It's like talking to the most interesting person you've ever talked to, and you already know each other, which is half true, because if you've watched as much of the political process as I have, and I've been watching President Trump for my entire life, it seems, You have a sense in your head that you already know Him.
Don't you? Don't you feel like you already know him?
If you were going to meet him in person, if you take away the, you know, President of the United States parts, don't you feel like you already know him?
So that was the feeling you get, even though you're completely familiar or you're completely aware that this is extraordinarily unique experience.
And, you know, well, I don't even know how it's hard to say enough.
About how unique it was.
To say it was a life highlight is just, it's not even saying enough.
But he is so good at putting you at ease, and this is the president I'm talking about, he has such a social skill that you feel immediately like you're just talking to a friend.
Immediately. It was instant.
And there was not one awkward Element of it at all.
It was just totally comfortable.
Yeah, so, you know, the other question you're wondering is, is he actually crazy?
And the answer is, no, he's not.
He's in perfect control of his facilities, perfect control of the room, delightful sense of humor, casual.
And here's the part I wasn't expecting.
And maybe I should have, but I didn't expect this.
Because of the context of the meeting, I was the guest in the White House.
And the White House is sort of, you know, nobody owns the White House, right?
It's the country's White House.
So in a weird way, it was my house too.
It's not really the president's house.
It's everybody's house.
But I was the guest.
And so I was treated like a guest.
And it's just crazy.
It's crazy. And when I say treated like a guest, it means like you're the focus of attention.
And imagine, if you will, the experience of being the guest who's the focus of attention In the actual Oval Office.
It's the craziest feeling.
People have said this about Bill Clinton, I've heard this, that when he's talking to you, the rest of the world just disappears.
It feels like he's...
I'm talking about Bill Clinton.
People would say he had this charisma that would just make everything else melt away and it was like you were the son of the world.
President Trump has that, like nobody's business.
For the brief time that I was with him, it was like nothing else in the world mattered to him except his brief chat with me.
And that is a weird feeling.
Imagine how hard that is to do.
Think about how many things he has on his mind.
Think about whatever he did just before I came in.
And whatever he was doing right after I left, right?
Big world, you know, changing important things.
But for the moment that I talked to him, he treated me like I was the only thing in the world.
It was crazy.
It was just crazy. I don't think I could do that.
Um... Yeah.
So, that's what it was like.
You could probably interpolate what his personality is like in person if you just work backwards from his rally personality.
His rally personality is big and theatrical.
But if he's doing a press conference, he still goes big, but it's not as big.
If he's talking to a head of state, then he gets smaller.
But if it's in public, let's say he's doing a meet-and-greet with a leader or something, in public, it gets smaller and smaller.
But when you actually get down to a personal conversation, It's just like a personal conversation with anybody else you know.
His in-person personality is completely in control.
The way he speaks is incredibly engaging.
By far the most interesting person I've ever met.
That's easy to say.
If you were to say, who's the most interesting person you've ever met?
It would be him, and then nobody.
You're like, who's number two?
Who's the second most interesting person you ever met?
And I'd just say, I don't even want to talk about it.
It's like, there's no competition.
So, he's funny, he's engaging, he's smart, very smart.
And I don't know if it's our New York personalities or not, but we got along.
Perfectly. And when you ask me, gosh, I wonder if it's safe to have him talking to heads of state and dictators and people with nuclear weapons and stuff.
I'll tell you, based on my experience, the absolute best thing this country could do is put that president in a room with a private conversation with another leader that we would like to play better with us.
Because he does have that skill like nobody's business.
So when he says stuff like, you know, he would meet with Khomeini, I guess he said recently.
And if it were anybody else, I'd say, I don't know.
It might be... Might be a little risky or something.
Maybe something go wrong. But his one-on-one personal skills are so good that you spend a few minutes with him and you say, okay, I would put him in the room with anybody and you're going to get a good result.
All right. Do you have any questions that I... Oh, let me...
You know, I said I... It's sort of a presidential standard, if you will, that you don't talk about anything that you've said with the president.
All right. Which doesn't mean it was important.
So I'm not saying that there were any state secrets.
I'm not saying there was anything important that the world would need to know about.
All I'm saying is that just generally speaking, even a casual conversation, you just don't talk about it.
And so I'm going to maintain that standard.
And somebody's saying, who invited you?
I don't want to get into those details either, because I don't know what is the right level of how much to talk about.
So I'd rather err on the side of being cautious.
Somebody said, did he give me a gift?
Yes, he gave me this lovely presidential signing marker.
Somebody said, did he read Winbiglia?
I can't answer that question, but I'll say generally speaking that my book Win Bigly is well known in the White House.
Did he say he'd seen your periscopes?
We didn't talk about that.
I doubt it. My guess is no, but I didn't talk about that.
Can I show the pen again?
Yes, I can. It's plastic, actually.
All it is is a plastic marker pen with the President's name embossed on it.
Are there aliens? Okay, you got me.
We talked about aliens. Did you notice he used persuasion on me?
Yes. Yes.
But it was the good kind of persuasion.
It was the personal persuasion.
Meaning that he is persuasive by nature.
I can't imagine anything he would talk about which would not conform to being persuasive.
So, yes. Definitely.
What did the room smell like?
I can't answer that because I don't have a sense of smell.
I lost my sense of smell a couple decades ago.
Somebody says it was a waste of time for him.
Well, you assume it was a waste of time for him.
Let me put it in context a little bit.
You probably saw in the news That the President contacted Rush Limbaugh, just called into his show to congratulate him on 30 years.
And it's not unusual for the President to have people over to the White House and visit in the Oval Office and get a picture.
So it's a fairly routine thing.
That any president and this president also would have meetings with people who have some kind of relevance at the moment.
So that's very normal.
How is the handshake?
Normal. I'll tell you the...
The handshake was when I made sure that for a moment I did not make eye contact.
Because you don't want to be this guy, the guy you go to shake hands and somebody grabs your fingertips and does that.
Because when you make eye contact, you're not watching your hand.
So somebody can give you a bad handshake.
So he extended his hand and I looked down at the hand and made sure I made a good solid handshake there.
Handshake, solid, normal, business handshake.
I did not have any contact with Melania, no.
I can't tell you anything about the content.
It was just a brief chat, but I can't tell you anything about that.
Does he really seem not affected by criticism?
I'll give you a general answer to that, which is I've never seen anybody so relaxed at that job.
I mean, he seems so comfortable doing what he's doing in the brief time that I saw him.
He looked like he was just meant to have that job.
Did he pull?
Somebody's asking me about the handshake because sometimes he does the pulls you in and pats you on the arm and stuff like that.
And no, it was a just standard handshake.
Is he a nice guy personally?
He is so nice personally.
He is instantly likable and has more personality than 10 people.
Did I eat there?
No, I didn't.
Did not eat in the West Wing.
And you're part of history now.
I guess so. There's an official photograph of me standing there, so I'm a tiny, tiny part of history.
How long did you meet?
Rather not say. I'll just say brief.
You can make of that what you want.
Would you do it different if you had a chance to meet him again?
I would not. And the reason I wouldn't do it differently is because the hard part to convey is how you can be in such a big moment and be completely relaxed.
So I guess, just to tie it all together there, my own feeling of being there and actually talking to the most, literally the most important person in the universe right now, that's fair, right?
When you say that President Trump is, at the moment, If you had to pick one person, wouldn't he be the most important person in the universe?
The known universe of human beings anyway?
And the moment is so amazing, but here's the part that's like being on mushrooms.
Completely comfortable.
Like how that happened, I don't know.
But no nerves, no nothing.
It was just like talking to your best friend and it was instant.
I talked about LeBron when I first got on.
You may have missed that. So I hope this was...
I hope it was worth...
Oh, yeah, somebody just said that they saw him in person and he looked good.
In person, he looks better than he looks on camera.
So when you see him in person, he's got an energy and a charisma and a personality.
He's a good-looking guy.
I don't know how often you say that for somebody who's over 70, but he's a good looking guy.
Did you get a chance for a second photo?
So the way it's done is that there's an official photographer.
So I don't know how often the photographer hangs around, but I got the feeling the photographer might be just, you know, on staff and there as much as the president is there.
So the photographer takes several pictures.
I did not bring him a gift.
Oh my goodness.
I was allergic to your question.
Now there were no autographs going on.
Did you pace him?
We were pretty much on the same wavelength to start with.
So the question about pacing in the persuasion sense, pacing really wasn't a variable because our ways of thinking were not that different to start with.
So there wasn't anything to match to because we were both already there.
Did you drink Coca-Cola?
I didn't see one. Is it true that he's looking younger?
I've actually said that he might be the first president who leaves office looking younger than he went in.
Because like I said, the job looks like it just fits him like a glove.
He just seemed completely settled in.
Was it your first time at the White House?
It was not my first time at the White House.
But I don't talk about that either.
It's the first time in this administration.
Yes, there's a picture on my Twitter.
Did they offer you to choose to publish?
I have a few different pictures, different angles and stuff, and I just picked one of them.
And yes, I got permission to post the picture.
So I didn't post the picture until I had permission, and it's actually the official photographer's picture, so that was allowed.
Did you get a picture to take home?
Well, yeah, I have the digital copy of several pictures.
Are you both similar height?
No, but if you saw the picture you see that he does a similar picture with most if not all of his guests where he sits at the resolute desk and then the guest stands next to him and one of the benefits of that is that if we were both standing It would be obvious how small I am compared to him, which would just look like a bad picture.
But when he sits at his desk, and you get to be the one standing, and you probably saw the picture of Kim Kardashian.
She had, you know, a similar kind of pose.
Now, I don't know how tall Kim Kardashian is, but it's the same situation.
She would be, you know, way below his height, and it would look like a weird picture.
But when he lets you be the tall one, and this is...
Let me...
Let me give you a surprise.
So I'll give you one thing that maybe you were surprised about.
What's the biggest complaint you hear about the president?
It's like, he's a narcissist.
Everything's about him.
That's what the critics would say, right?
In person, I can tell you, he makes it completely about you.
So, he's a strange kind of narcissist because he actually is entirely invested in the guest that he's talking to.
So, I did not feel like it was all about him.
He made it feel like it was all about me for the brief time that I was there.
So, I've been saying from the start that what people see as his ego is actually a tool.
In other words, he can ramp it up when he needs to, let's say, for a rally.
And when he's talking to somebody in person, where it would be obnoxious to be all about him, it's not.
He made it all about me for the time that I was there, which was impressive.
All right.
How much time in advance?
I'd heard that there was some interest, but the actual scheduling was maybe two weeks ahead of time, something like that.
Somebody said he seems sharp for his age.
You don't get any sense of age whatsoever.
His energy and his quickness, there's no way you could...
If you didn't know his age and you didn't have any visual cues, you couldn't tell anything.
I mean, he's as sharp as anybody can be sharp.
Did he compliment me?
Yes. I mean, in a social sense, yes.
Alright, but that's all I want to tell you about that.
I mean, we were both on our best behavior, so I'll just say it that way.
I have no reason to believe that he's ever seen my periscopes, but that topic didn't come up.
I mean, it would be amazingly unexpected, so I'm guessing no.
All right. I think most of your questions now are the kind that I can't answer.
So... Yeah, somebody says and I didn't tell you.
I didn't want to tell you because I also didn't know what I could and could not talk about publicly.
And I didn't know why I was going, frankly.
So keep in mind that I didn't know why I was invited.
I assumed it was, you know, no state secrets involved.
Oh, to answer one question, some people asked me, was it a job interview?
It was not. So there was no discussion of any kind of a role ongoing or anything like that.
So there was nothing like that involved.
Yeah, so I can't tell you anything about what we briefly chatted about, but nothing surprising.
I'll tell you that. I'll tell you it was nothing surprising in terms of, you know, no state secrets, no breaking news, nothing like that.
I think that's all I can say about that.
So, do you have other questions?
If you do... I'll answer them.
Don't ask details about who else was there or who said what.
Those are the ones I can't answer.
Was it your best day ever?
First or second best?
You know, I compared it to the one day I took mushrooms 30 years ago, using that same example.
And the reason I use that example is that they were the two days of my life That are so unlike all of the other days that they just stand alone.
So yes, it was...
I don't think I'll ever be able to top that for cool experiences.
There's no sightseeing you could ever do.
I just can't even imagine what would come close to that.
It was just crazy.
Totally crazy.
I couldn't sleep that night.
Because, you know, sometimes you go to sleep and then you forget a few details of what happened that day, sort of the normal process of sleeping.
And I couldn't go to sleep that night because I didn't want to degrade my memories.
So I was pretty exhausted yesterday.
Yeah, I don't have...
Yeah, most of your questions I can't answer.
Oh, did I stay at the Trump Hotel?
I did. So I stayed at the Trump International in D.C., which is pretty close to the White House, so that was convenient.
I got such a dose of the word, just the word Trump, because if you're staying in a Trump property, The word Trump is on every object in the room.
I think everything except the water glass had the name Trump on it.
It was Trump, Trump, Trump everywhere.
It's a beautiful building by the way.
It's a really cool place.
How far away from the White House before I ditched the tie.
So when I left...
So here's the other funny part.
So you go from literally talking to the President of the United States in literally the White House, in literally the Oval Office.
The most intense, cool experience you could ever have.
But when you're done...
Because, you know, I was traveling alone.
When I'm done, I walk out and I don't have a car service or anything, you know, and it's pouring rain.
I mean, it's just the sky opened up and it's just pouring rain.
I had my umbrella and I walk out and I just walked because, you know, your head is sort of in that place still.
You can't get your head out of where it was a few minutes ago.
And so I just walked in the rain for a while, just sort of absorbing it.
Not the rain, but the experience.
I was absorbing quite a bit of rain at the same time.
So I just walked back to the hotel, and I just wanted to feel it for a little while, you know, just to make sure the memory stayed.
Yes, the Trump International is built atop, the base of the building is the old post office.
And then they kept that part and they built up from it, which gives it a really cool look.
Did I choose to stay at the Trump Hotel and book it yourself?
Yeah, I did all of the travel arrangements myself, yes.
So it was my choice.
So on the way over, I just took a cab from the hotel.
It was just a few blocks, but I didn't wanna walk it.
And my cab driver was an African immigrant.
So he still had a thick African accent, but he spoke really good English.
He still had his African accent.
I don't know exactly which country.
We didn't ask. But as we were pulling up to the White House, I said to him, What do you think of President Trump?
Now, he didn't know that I was going to visit the President himself, but he knew I was going to the White House, which is a fairly regular thing.
You know, most of the cab drivers have driven people to the White House, so that's fairly routine.
So I said to him, what do you think of President Trump?
And he had the greatest reaction.
We're inside a cab with the windows closed, right?
There's nobody else there. It's me, the cab driver, nobody else, windows closed.
And he actually lowered his voice to answer the question.
He goes, you know, he sort of looks over his shoulder a little bit, sort of the best eye contact he can while he's driving, and he goes...
You know, a lot of people in this town don't like him, talking about the president.
And he goes, but I like him.
And he tells me how much he likes that the president's the only person who seems real.
Everybody else seems like a big phony and a bunch of liars.
But for this recent African immigrant, he was very pro-Trump, but apparently he doesn't admit it.
If you could have had a more perfect ride to the White House, it was that.
Like, nothing would have been more perfect as a way to get to the White House than the cab driver who's an African immigrant who's a secret Trump supporter but can't tell his friends.
It was just perfect.
Yes, he did get a big tip.
So you go to the Trump Hotel, and people are very
nice there, but the other thing you're taken by is that at least the downstairs staff from the curb to the hotel to the staff is very heavily African-American.
So the Trump International Hotel, at least the people you see, I'm gonna say a hundred percent African-American or Hispanic or at least some kind of immigrant flavor.
So I don't know how much of that is a coincidence or maybe that's just typical in all the hotels.
I don't know. The mattress rating?
It was a good mattress. Do they typically pay for a flight?
No. I paid for the...
So it was an expensive trip.
I had to buy a suit. I had to get flights when it was close to the time I was leaving at the peak of summer.
So it was kind of an expensive trip.
Alright, that's about it.
I think that's enough to talk about that.
Yeah, I did fly into an end of Reagan National Airport.
People keep asking me about Q. I'll stick with my theory that Q is not real.
But it is entertaining.
If people like it for the entertainment, that's fine.
Alright. And that's all for now.
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