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April 11, 2024 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
40:24
20240411_dr-phil-on-tiktok-china-elon-ozempic
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Family Under Attack by Technology 00:02:19
Given how dominant TikTok is on young people, is there an argument to ban it?
Our number one adversary programming an entire generation with information.
China's been buying up farmland around American military bases and you think this is very concerning.
Why?
Is this just coincidence that they happen to buy the land?
I don't want to become a conspiracy theorist, but I don't want to be naive either.
I don't think a problem, Phil, is what Elon Musk calls the woke mind virus.
I think it has been weaponized.
People are now pursuing narratives that are trying to hijack core values in this country.
I don't want to be unkind to Oprah.
One of the key faces of Weight Watchers, and it turns out you've been secretly on a Zenpic, that is a deceit on the American people, isn't it?
What the hell business is it of anybody?
Oprah could have kept her mouth shut, not said a word to anybody, doesn't owe anybody an explanation.
He's longly known as America's Shrink.
Now the legendary Dr. Phil has decided it's time to put the United States onto his couch.
His new TV network will tackle taboos and debate the thorniest issues dividing the country.
After decades counseling stars and subjects on primetime TV, he's dispensing tough love on everything from cancel culture and childhood anxiety to the rising threat of China and the crisis at America's border.
Now Dr. Phil goes uncensored.
Dr. Phil, great to see you.
How are you?
Good to see you, my friend.
How's it going?
Well, I've known you a long time.
I've known your tremendous ability to condense very complex issues into quite simple scenarios that can be resolved.
America's a very complicated issue, isn't it, in totality?
What is your take?
It really is.
What is your take, Phil, on where America is right now?
Well, I'm glad you asked that question in the way that you did, because I think America is experiencing, like a lot of countries in the world, but I think even more so in America, I think a lot of change right now.
You know, we're all experiencing change from technology, Pierce.
We know that for sure.
Manipulated Children and War News 00:15:34
I think that a lot of unintended consequences are really impacting family.
And I think family is the backbone of any society.
And I think family in America is under attack.
I think it's under attack as part of unintended consequences from technology.
We can talk about that.
And I think some of it is an intentional assault on family values in America.
And I focus on family because I do think it's the backbone.
I think if the family falls apart and starts to erode, then I think everything falls behind that.
I think it all goes down the tubes if the family falls apart.
Yeah, I mean, you call the book We've Got Issues, How You Can Stand Strong for America's Soul and Sanity.
People talk about artificial intelligence, so we can come to that.
They talk about climate change.
They talk about these things which could be an existential threat to the world.
How big a threat do you think to people's well-being, particularly young people, is the cell phone?
I think it's probably the biggest change we've faced since the Industrial Revolution.
The biggest change.
And I know the Industrial Revolution can be divided up in maybe three or four industrial revolutions, but I think it's the biggest change.
When the smartphone happened in 08, 09, Kids started, they stopped living their lives and started watching lives being lived.
And then, when they started doing that, they started comparing themselves to what they were seeing on these screens.
And what they were seeing on these screens were not real, they were fictional.
We had so many of these influencers and all putting these lives out there that were just produced, they were made up.
And so, kids, by comparison, were saying, Wow, I don't have these fancy clothes.
I don't go around in private jets, I don't live the way they do.
So, their self-worth really suffered.
And we saw anxiety, depression, loneliness reach the highest levels since records were started being kept.
We saw young people go into a mental health crisis, and it's just kept getting worse.
And then, when COVID happened, it really spiked because of the mismanagement of COVID, which I think was atrocious.
I think the way young people were treated during this extended quarantine yanked their support system out from under them needlessly and put them in a real bind by pulling away their social development, emotional development, educational attainment, and left them in a real crisis that they're going to suffer for the rest of their lives.
And so will this country.
So, I think it had a profound effect.
People just started focusing.
I mean, think about it.
Everybody's would go through life this way.
Then, when the phone came, everybody started walking through life with their head down looking at this screen.
They started dating later.
They started getting their driver's license later.
They started having sex later.
They started everything got pushed aside by living virtually.
And in terms of the extraordinary explosion in anxiety, I've seen this amongst young people, people I know, unable to deal with what I would categorize as normal life issues and really finding just existing very difficult, despite in many cases having, on the face of it, very, you know, content and comfortable backgrounds and lifestyles.
How much of it is another part of what a smartphone does?
I think you and I have discussed this before, actually, when I did your podcast, which is a sensory overload of negativity.
And I think you gave an example of like when you were young, if something bad happened locally, you know, say someone got eaten by an alligator on a golf course, it would be very unlikely that anyone outside of that locality would even hear about that incident.
Whereas now, kids from Mumbai to Sydney to New York to London will be watching the alligator eat this golfer on their smartphone within 20 minutes.
Um, and they're getting that 24/7.
And then you add in a war like Ukraine or Gaza and the amount of stuff that I see on my phone.
And I'm a, you know, I'm a hard-bitten old journalist, but if I was an impressionable 19, 20-year-old watching the horrific imagery coming in 24/7 from war zones, that alone is going to screw people up.
Never mind all the fear of missing out stuff.
Well, you're exactly right.
And I saw a great example of this right after 9-11.
I was still doing Oprah at the time, and we did a show about 9-11 with Mrs. Bush, myself, and Oprah.
And we had a group of really young children there, which amplified it even more.
And what we learned, they were just watching on television then, not the smartphone, but on television.
But they taught me a lesson that I'll never forget.
We sat there and talked to these young children, and it became apparent because they watched it on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, all these different channels.
Those young children thought every building in America had been knocked down.
They didn't realize that these were different angles of the same building.
They didn't realize that they were seeing it over and over and over from different angles, from different points of view.
And they thought they were all different buildings.
They actually thought all the buildings in the United States had been knocked down because they were bombarded with so many images.
And that's an analogy to the smartphone in that these kids get all of these happenings, all of these images amplified so much that it takes on a life of its own.
And I think they overreact to it.
And I saw a stat the other day that said a significant percentage of young people around 18 years of age get 100% of their news from TikTok.
So if it's being programmed, if it's being, if you've got propaganda being fed to them, then that's all they have.
And I learned a long time ago working with juries that people make up their mind based on what they see and hear, not on what they don't see and hear.
And that's a real problem.
They don't realize that there's something else out there that they should take into account.
So there is a debate, Phil, about TikTok, isn't there, in America, with many Congress people wanting to ban it, actually, because they think that China is trying to surreptitiously attain information about Americans.
You've got many people like Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy on the right disagreeing and saying that companies like Facebook and the way they accumulate information, Google, X and so on, are just as culpable in this area.
But given how dominant TikTok is on young people, and it's the number one news source in the world now for under 24s, I read.
Given that fact, is there an argument to ban it?
Or, you know, you're like me.
We believe in free speech and we believe in people having the right to access information if they want to.
Is it contrary to that?
Well, I'm really concerned about the free speech aspect of this, but I'm also concerned that we do have our number one adversary programming an entire generation with information.
And I don't think it's an either-or situation.
I am also very concerned about what's happening on Facebook, Instagram, those sorts of things, because I've written this new book, We've Got Issues, How to Stand Strong for America's Soul Insanity.
And this is a very prescriptive book.
I hate people that criticize and don't have a better, don't have a better plan.
Sam Rayburn, former Speaker of the House is Texan, he said, any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one back.
And I think I want people to be carpenters.
And I look at some of the research that's been done on TikTok and these other platforms.
They feed young people information that upsets them.
And why would they do that?
Well, because they click more when they're emotionally invested.
They click more than if they're watching puppies do cute things.
They'll watch that for a little while and go, yeah, that's really cute.
But then they lose interest.
But if they're emotionally invested, if they're all upset about it, if they're really anxious about it, they're going to click more and hit and hit and hit.
So that means more ad dollars.
And the research shows that the algorithm will feed them upsetting information to keep them clicking.
And we know that when they got these smartphones and got involved in this, anxiety, depression, and loneliness went to the highest level it's ever been, as I mentioned before.
So they know that they got access to the same research that I do, but they keep doing it.
So I do think that there is a right to free speech, but I think at the same time, we have to realize that our young people are being fed to the mill.
Would you ban TikTok, Phil?
From America?
I would not ban TikTok, but I think I would certainly go on a very aggressive campaign to educate young people about what's going on.
Children don't, young people, certainly teens are pretty rebellious against authority.
They don't like being manipulated.
They don't like being fed what they see and don't see.
And I think they need to be educated that they are being manipulated.
I think they'll work this out on their own if people will just let them know what the hell is going on.
The wider threat from China, you've talked about this recently, that China's been buying up farmland around American military bases.
And you think this is very concerning.
Why?
Well, let's look at it on its face.
I did an analysis of this.
And look, I'm no politician.
I'm certainly no geopolitical expert at all.
But I also have common sense.
And I know that we can't go into China and buy farmland, but they come over here and buy farmland.
So what I did is I put on a map all of the biggest purchases that China's making of farmland.
And then I did an overlay of strategic military installations.
And that farmland that's being purchased is surrounding so many of these strategic institutions.
Well, we have your map.
We have a copy of your map.
I'm just going to bring it up here.
And it is, on the face of it, actually quite concerning.
And it does beg the question: why has it been left to you to do this?
Why is the United States government, I mean, paying more attention to what may be happening?
Yeah, no kidding.
I mean, let's look at, you see, the red is the land that they're buying.
And then I've identified the strategic military installations.
And there's a third level that's not shown here that identifies what's actually happening at these bases.
And what's actually happening is like training for the stealth bomber, different drone programs, all of these things that are going on that are pretty confidential and pretty strategic.
Now, why would they, is this just coincidence that they happen to buy the land surrounding these military installations?
That they have wind farms around some of these where there doesn't happen to be any wind and the big fans are just sitting empty.
I mean, they're just not spinning, but there are cameras and recording devices on top of the big pillars that have the fans on.
The fans aren't spinning, but there's cameras on top of all of it.
Now, come on.
I mean, Lil Abner could figure this out.
Of course, nobody but you and I are old enough to know who Lil Abner is.
I know who he is, obviously.
I mean, that just doesn't make common sense to me that we would allow that.
Going to China and try to buy up land around their military installations and see how far you get.
I don't think you get very far.
In terms of American politics, a massive election coming in November, it's got very toxic and tribal, even by American political standards, hasn't it?
That the landscape here.
Donald Trump, by the nature of his character, is going to make people feel visceral pro against him.
And then you have the issue with Joe Biden and his health and his cognitive ability and so on.
What is your take on these two and what it says about America?
That once again, we're going to have Biden v. Trump with one in his 80s, one about to head to his 80s, one facing 90-odd criminal charges, the other one barely able to stand on his feet.
What do you feel about this?
Well, that seemed pretty old until recently.
The older I get, the younger that seems.
But, you know, I really do think that it's a bad commentary on where we are.
But I think we've put ourselves there by, you said it, being so tribal and so given to identity politics.
And, you know, I always say I don't say much about politics because, frankly, I don't know much about politics.
I don't think that makes me a lot different than people who do talk about them.
I think a lot of people that talk about them don't know much about it either.
Admitting Political Ignorance 00:12:08
I'm just willing to admit it.
My focus is on the culture.
And I think one of the things that we need to do, and in my new book, We've Got Issues, How to Stand Strong for America's Soul and Sanity, I talk about the fact that we do have issues in this country.
And look, Pierce, we've known each other a long time.
You know, I love this country.
I stand up when the flag goes by.
I put my hand over my heart when the national anthem plays.
And I love it enough to admit that we got problems.
I'm not defensive about that.
We have big problems in this country, but I still love it.
I'm proud to be an American.
I'm tired of people apologizing for America every time they open their mouths.
And I think it's a great country, but we've got issues, and I think our political system is pretty broken.
But I have to tell you, I feel better when we're not all of the same party.
If we've got a Republican president and a Democratic House or Senate, I feel a lot better than if they're all the same because gridlock keeps them from screwing up too terribly bad.
If they were all of one party and they could just kind of run their agenda, I would be really, really nervous.
I think we are safer when there is that check and balance of a gridlock system.
And how big a problem, Phil, is what Elon Musk calls the woke mind virus.
And the reason I say that is a study came out of Finland.
They asked 5,800 college students to rate statements like if white people have on average a higher level of income than black people, it's because of racism and a statement like trans women are women.
They found that those who aligned with woke ideals had higher incidence of anxiety and depression.
In other words, being too woke and chasing the woke mind virus agenda, as Elon would put it, actually does make you more anxious and depressed.
Well, I'm not surprised.
I was not surprised to read that at all.
I think that one of the things, you know, being woke, as it was originally defined, was a good thing, right?
Because being woke described having sensitivity to those that had greater challenges in their life, whether it was physical disabilities or facing social challenges or whatever.
And being sensitive to that was a good thing.
But I think it has been weaponized.
I think it has been turned on its head.
And people are now pursuing narratives that are trying to hijack core values in this country.
And it's gone beyond saying, look, live and let live.
If we feel this way and this is how we want to live or identify or whatever, then we have the right to do that.
The activists have pushed it beyond that.
I call it the tyranny of the fringe.
It's not enough to say, hey, listen, if that's what you want to do, it's a free country and you're entitled to do that.
That's not enough anymore.
Now it's got to be, you have to stand up and declare that I'm right.
You have to stand up and declare that this is the new rules.
This is the new science.
This is the new biology.
This is the new, or we'll attack you with a vengeance.
And I'm telling you, Pierce, I think they've pushed too far, too hard, too long, and are getting a lot of pushback from that middle 80% that have said, look, enough's enough and too much is too much.
Well, we saw it, didn't we, Phil, with the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light fiasco?
We've seen it with Disney having a lot of problems when they've woked up their movies and there's been a huge backlash.
You're seeing it time and again now, where I actually chart it back to when Gillette did that advertising campaign during the Me Too scandal.
And they basically redid the whole feel of a Gillette advertising campaign from being something that embraced masculinity as a good thing to something that said, if you're basically too masculine, you are automatically toxic and borderline Harvey Weinstein until you can prove otherwise.
And I wrote at the time, this is an absolutely catastrophic failure to understand its audience.
And sure enough, $9 billion later, off the bottom line, they did a screeching U-turn and went back to celebrating masculinity.
But, you know, as a Gillette customer, I won't forget what they did or how they tried to make their male customers feel.
And I thought it was disgraceful.
Well, I couldn't agree more.
And you saw people that don't want to take the risk of speaking out voted with their pocketbooks.
They voted with, because they can do that anonymously.
But I think it sent the message that we aren't nearly as aligned as you may think.
And, you know, I'm very concerned.
I've been really looking into what's being taught in the universities today.
And, you know, they used to talk about toxic masculinity, but now they talk about masculinity as toxic.
And I think that they consider a lot of things masculine, like aggressiveness in business, entrepreneurship, setting goals and pursuing them.
Those things are been taken away from females and said, well, that's just masculine.
And that's ghost.
You shouldn't do that.
And I really wonder where those people are going to be five years down the road when those young men are out married and they have a child and they're having to pay for child care or braces or whatever.
Those professors that are peddling that, you're not going to be able to find them with both hands and a flashlight because they're going to be gone when these guys are out there trying to compete in a dog-eat-dog world that's very competitive.
We're not preparing these young people for the next level of life, and that's tragic.
I completely agree.
You mentioned Oprah Winfrey earlier.
You've known her for a long time.
I've known her for a long time.
What did you make of the whole Zempic Weight Watcher thing that she got herself into?
I mean, I thought she got out of it in very Oprah style, which was to turn it all into a kind of, you know, a TV special, as Oprah does very brilliantly.
But did you feel that, let's take a look at it first.
Let's take a look at this.
I took on the shame that the world gave to me.
For 25 years, making fun of my weight was national sport.
And then I read the headline that Mr. Blackwell, the tastemaker of the time, called me bumpy, lumpy, and downright dumpy.
Because when I tell you how many times I have blamed myself, because you think I'm smart enough to figure this out.
And then to hear, all along, it's you fighting your brain.
Now, like I say, Oprah did what Oprah does best.
She turned it into basically about her being a bit of a victim and people picking on her.
And this isn't what it seems.
But on the face of it, Phil, I don't want to be unkind to Oprah, but I think if you're one of the key faces of Weight Watchers, encouraging millions of American women that they should be losing weight in a certain way as dictated by Weight Watchers, and it turns out you've been secretly on a Zempic, which is a drug that makes you stop having pangs of hunger.
That is a deceit on the American people, isn't it?
Well, I don't know what timeline you're looking at, but I can tell you this.
When I pick up a news article or see something online that says, so-and-so admits to using Ozempic or whatever.
You know, as you know, I spend a lot of my time in the litigation arena.
And I associate the term admit with a confession of wrongdoing.
And I see these different stars and they come out and say, you know, this female movie star admits using Ozempic or this male actor admits using this.
What the hell business is it of anybody what somebody's doing in terms of their medical management?
And what does it mean admit using it?
Is there some wrongdoing in somebody with their physician?
I would counter that.
Something with their physician?
I would say generally you're right.
But on the Oprah case, and again, I've got an enormous respect for Oprah.
She's an absolutely brilliant businesswoman.
She's a brilliant television person, et cetera, and has done me a few big favors over the years.
But if you're representing Weight Watchers and that is not actually how you yourself are losing weight and you get caught out having denied you're using one of these drugs and then you have to admit it, you're kind of admitting not a crime, but you are admitting that you've been deceiving people, aren't you?
She didn't have to say anything at all.
I think what Oprah did was discover that there was really some breakthrough science that has identified that there are certain functions at a neurological level that cause people to be weight loss resistant and they have spent years degradating themselves,
putting themselves down, suffering in terms of self-worth, self-esteem, self-blame, being the butt of criticism and jokes.
And she discovers, you know, all of that time that I've been degrading myself, I've learned that there's something more to it than that.
And so I'm doing something about that.
And so I'm here to tell you of this revelation that I've had and share that with you so you can escape that suffering the way I have.
Oprah could have kept her mouth shut and not said a word to anybody, doesn't owe anybody an explanation, doesn't have to say anything about it, but she chose to do so because she discovered something that she thought a lot of people, particularly women, were suffering through.
And I think she thought, look, I'm going to take some heat for this, but I owe it to people to share this revelation and give them an exit ramp, just like I've taken.
And I commend her for doing it.
I mean, obesity is a massive problem in America, isn't it?
How much of obesity is down to, in the United States, is down to diet, fast food, all the obvious things.
And how much of it is down to mental strength, the ability to, you know, reject the temptation, if you like, of all the fast food and so on?
I think it's a complex issue.
Out-of-Control Border Situation 00:08:45
And I think there are some people that they have a metabolism that, you know, they could eat a cow and everything that goes with it and not be affected whatsoever.
And then there are some people that can, you know, walk by an ice cream parlor and it just seems by osmosis.
They just absorb it and can't get rid of it.
And I think that there's a whole spectrum there.
And whether you're on an Ozimpic type drug or not, you're going to have to make lifestyle adjustments or, you know, there's no quick fix.
There's no easy way out.
You're still going to have to do the things that are necessary for long-term success.
And there's a behavioral component, there's a mental component, there's a medical component, there's a neurological component.
And it's not just one size fits all.
The other thing I wanted to talk to you about, there's so many things I could talk to you about, but you went down to the border on the southern border in the United States.
Obviously, it's completely out of control.
That doesn't matter whether you're on the left or right.
There's been a combined failure, I think, to properly regulate the border for decades now under endless administrations from both sides.
But when you went down there, again, you're a guy that takes a complex issue and can often provide a simple solution.
And I've seen you do it.
It's a magical gift that you have for doing this.
But the southern border, again, very complicated issue.
What's the answer?
Well, you know, I look at America as my home.
And if I had guests or I had people come to my home and knock on the door, before I let them in, I'd want to know who they were, wouldn't you?
Yeah.
I mean, if somebody comes to your home, you'd want to know who they were.
And right now, that border is not really a border.
We have ports of entry and they're located in different spots where you go through and you process and make application.
But then we've got hundreds of miles of the Rio Grande River in Texas, and then you've got a thousand miles of border, however many miles you've got across Arizona and California that aren't ports of entry.
And I think people are just pouring across it.
And I understand why people want to be in America.
As I said, I love this country.
I get why they want to be here.
But when you come in uncontrolled, we have no idea who's coming in.
I think it is an out-of-control situation.
And I think the border needs to be controlled.
And I talked to Brandon Judd, who is the head of the union for the federal border guards down there, I believe is his correct title.
And I asked him, What do you need?
Can this get under control?
And he's been down there on that border for a long time, years and years and years.
He said, we don't need any more agents.
We don't need any more money.
We don't need any more laws.
We just need to enforce the ones that are on the books.
That's all.
And we'll get this under control and we can get it under control right now.
Right now, I think the border is controlled by the cartels.
I think the fentanyl that's being manufactured in China is being routed to the Sinaloa cartel, and it's coming across the border like it's a drug highway.
We have 100,000 fentanyl poisonings in the United States.
They're picking people up that'll have 10,000 pills in a backpack coming across the border.
And those pills are 100% counterfeit.
And the DEA says 40, 42% of them have lethal doses of fentanyl in them.
And they're just coming across.
Between 2010 and 2020, there were maybe 1,100 Chinese that came across the border.
In the first 11 months of 2023, there were close to 30,000.
Now, look, a lot of those people are probably trying to escape the oppressive government in China.
But it would be naive to think that so many military-age men are coming across the border without sponsorship of the government.
We have no idea where they're going.
You think they're spying?
You think they're spying, Phil?
I think they're organizing in America.
And there were so many that there were Chinese police departments being set up on the sly to control these guys.
We don't know where they are, but let me ask you this, Pierce.
If let's say there's 5,000 of them in the country and they spread out across the country, and on a particular day they decide to attack the energy grid in different strategic cities around the country, could they create havoc?
I certainly think they could.
And I think we would be naive to not consider that.
I don't want to become a conspiracy theorist, but I don't want to be naive either.
I think we've allowed people from Syria and Chinese and China and other places whose interests are not aligned with our own to come across that border and not be tracked in the United States.
We don't know where they are.
We don't know what they're doing.
We do know they own some farmland and we know where that is.
But other than that, we don't know where these people are.
And if that doesn't concern America and its allies, it should.
And I think we're just foolish.
And I am very pro-immigration.
Let me tell you, we got a 1.6 birth rate right now.
We need 2.1 to support our infrastructure.
We need immigrants in this country.
We need them to work and pay taxes and have babies and become part of this society.
I'm very pro-immigration.
But it shouldn't be easier.
It should not be easier to come into the United States illegally than it is to come into the United States legally.
And that's the problem.
That's the problem.
And I think we have some ownership in it because it takes seven to ten years to get a proper hearing and get in.
And some of them say, what am I supposed to do for seven to ten years?
You know, we've got to meet people where they are and understand that some of them truly are seeking asylum.
And we've got to have some tracking system to know where these folks are.
Yeah, I agree.
Phil, just want to ask you about something that happened in the UK recently.
Puberty blockers have been banned now, which most people have thought is long overdue, should never have been allowed in the first place.
Do you think a similar ban should happen in the United States?
Well, it's happened in the UK.
It's also happened in other countries there that have done really substantial studies with large sample sizes that they have tracked across a number of years.
And the reason for approving these, according to the medical associations, has been that there's a high degree of suicidal ideation and suicidality among these young people that feel trapped.
Testosterone Blockers and Suicide 00:01:36
And so they say, you know, we've got to alleviate that.
And so they do suppression hormones.
They do testosterone blockers.
In some cases, they actually do the surgery.
They've done studies where they have compared groups that have gone through these different hormone suppressors, testosterone blockers, and or surgeries, and compared them to another group where they did just psychotherapy to deal with the emotional comorbidity that occurs with their body dysmorphia.
And at two years, three years, five years, they found them to be in similar positions.
So they got to the same place without the suppression, blockers, or surgeries.
Says it all.
So they hadn't changed their bodies and wound up the same place.
It seems to me that that's certainly the better route to go.
And I think that's why the UK did what they did.
Yeah, completely.
Phil, it'd be great catching up with you.
Thank you so much for being on our sensor.
The book is We've Got Issues, How You Can Stand Strong for America's Soul and Sanity.
It's a fantastic book.
You have a brilliant insight into these problems.
And I hope people read it and listen to you.
Thank you very much.
Great talking to you, Pierce.
Brilliant.
Great to see you, Phil.
Best of luck with the new network.
I'm sure it'll be, like everything you do, a massive hit.
I hope so.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
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