RUSH: Man, oh, man. I watch this corrupting obsession that the anti-Trump forces all over this country, highlighted, of course, by the Drive-By Media, have. And it’s everything I can do to avoid laughing and feeling snarky and so forth. I feel like I’m watching people — and I do watch this in the daytime. I don’t watch cable news at night, as you know, but I watch this and I actually think I’m watching people lose their minds. This is what it looks like.
If you have had the occasion, sad occasion in your life to witness a friend or family member lose their mind, this is what it is. This is a collective. This is a joint effort to lose a collective mind. And it is, I don’t know, breathtaking and stunning to watch. No, none of it frightens me. None of this scares me, especially this.
The Washington Post in one story in the past year actually referred to the fact that they had as many as 15 of these kinds of sources informing them on one story. All told, I think the Washington Post has actually cited 30 different unnamed sources. I can’t recall them off the top of my head, but just remember, if you will, generic sense, all of the bombshells — and it seemed like for the last six months there has been one every day.
And for a period of a month there was a bombshell every afternoon at five o’clock. It was guaranteed to make the nightly news. There was carryover that night into cable programming and to set the stage for panel discussions the next morning on cable TV. Think about all of those bombshells. You don’t even have to remember the specific bombshell. All you have to remember is that each one was treated as the smoking gun, the answer.
Every one of those stories was treated as the gotcha, this is it, we’ve got the goods on Trump. Every one of those stories, if you read down far enough, had to include a sentence or maybe a short paragraph acknowledging no evidence for the allegations has yet been found, but suspicions remain high, or some such thing. Think about all of these bombshells, all of these reports, all of the time spent.
Media Research Center, our buddy Brent Bozell and his gang at NewsBusters actually chronicle the usage, and they found in the — I forget what the universe was, nightly news or cable news, whatever, 353 minutes was devoted to anti-Trump stuff like this and 45 minutes was devoted to stuff that was not critical of Trump. I mean, the balance here has been so out of whack and out of proportion.
But again, try, if you can, search your memory and remember all of the days — and there are many — there are more than a hundred days of news stories featuring a conclusion or a supposition or a good likelihood or whatever that this was it, we finally have come across the bit of information that’s gonna nail Trump. This is it. This is what proves the collusion, every day for I don’t know how many days.
None of it is being linked, none of this Trump Jr. stuff is being linked to anything that’s happened in the past. Michael Flynn’s name does not appear in this story. Michael Flynn, which was the focus of the original bout of these stories, is long gone by now. The proof is wide open here, that they’ve got nothing. After a year they are going bananas over this. And they’re going bananas because after a year of nothing, they think this is it.
This is the story that’s gonna get Trump thrown out of office. This is the story that’s gonna cause an uprising among the American people. Except they have done that practically every day for the last year, and certainly for the last six months. Every day for the last six months we have been treated to a version of what we have gotten the past two days. And in every instance prior, it has led to what? Absolutely zilch, zero, nada. And the proof that it is zilch, zero, nada is how much they have invested in this latest.
They’ve got nothing. They never have had anything, on this collusion business, on the Russians working with Trump to steal the election from Hillary. They’re not taking this story and adding it to all these previous stories and trying to sell a cumulative pile of evidence. This is a standalone. Some stories I’ve seen have featured the terminology, “Finally we have the evidence we’ve been looking for,” admitting that they haven’t had any evidence they’ve been looking for prior to this iteration of the story.
Does anybody remember the last episode like this one? It only lasted a couple of days because it was a nothing burger. Let me refresh your memory. There is a now-deceased — he was 81 years old when he passed away — former Republican operative named Pat Smith. And Pat Smith claimed to have had contact with someone over here that knew someone over there that might be the smoking gun that everybody’s been looking for to prove that Trump colluded. And the media went nuts over this guy, even though he had passed away.
You ask, how long can this go on? It can go on as long as they want it to. I think now that this has become a way of life. I think getting up, if you’re a modern-day American journalist working in Washington or New York — well, hell, in the Washington establishment. LA Times reporters there would suffice as well. I think this become a lifestyle now.
This is not just a story that people are pursuing; this is a lifestyle. This has become a mechanism whereby these people state their identities. They are now defining themselves on the basis of the pursuit of this story. They can’t stop it. They cannot help themselves. They will never get to the point, even if there is ever incontrovertible evidence that it didn’t happen, they are not going to be able to accept it; they are too invested.
And it’s not professional investment; this has gone now into the psychological. It has gone to the personal. And it is an erosion of principles; it is an erosion of objective; it is journalism consuming itself. It’s journalism eating itself. And you know what happens after you eat enough; you have to go to the bathroom. And that’s where all of this stuff is headed. And it is breathtaking to watch this.
And I look at all the people who have been corrupted, every guest, other than the assigned Trump supporters on every cable channel, every expert guest, I don’t care who, have also bought hook, line, and sinker into the story. Some people say they’re doing it because it’s good ratings. Some people think they’re doing it because it’s a way to differentiate themselves. It may have been that at some point, but now it’s gone beyond business. It’s gone beyond pursuing ratings or any of that.
There is literal self-worth tied up into this, as far as the people that are engaging in it. And they’re in a competition. All the analysts are competing with all the other analysts to come up with the unique take on every story that will focus everybody’s attention on that particular analyst. Everybody’s trying to be the smartest guy in the room, the most perceptive guy in the room.
There is no legitimate trail of news here. There’s no legitimate pursuit of facts or evidence. There is a theory. There is a result. There is a narrative. And the outcome has already been implanted in all of their heads, and now they’re pursuing whatever they can do to make that true, the exact opposite of what journalism’s supposed to be.
And as I say, I’m watching this, and I’m looking at these people literally lose their minds. And I like it. Don’t misunderstand. I think it’s fun to see. This is a self-immolation that is happening here, and they’re not even aware of it because they fool themselves into thinking that they represent the majority of thinking in America. They believe if they believe something, everybody else does. Call that hubris or arrogance or what have you.
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RUSH: You know what this whole thing reminds me of? The way the dossier was pitched. You may not remember, but the dossier — the golden showers dossier — was pitched to the media in an email-type message. It was reviewed and it was highlighted, what it contained — and it was designed to be seductive. And this has much the same ring to it. This babe calls Trump Jr. under a false premise, claiming she’s got dope on Hillary Clinton, and they take the meeting ’cause who wouldn’t want to get oppo research on your opponent?
What did the Russians get out of it? Nobody got anything out of this meeting! The Russian honey pot didn’t get anything she wanted. The Trump campaign did not get what they thought they were gonna get. It’s a big nothing. Now, some Never Trumpers simply can’t bring themselves to admit that. To them, it’s a smoking gun. “There may not be a lot of smoke, but there’s a lot of smell to the smoke that we can’t see, and it deserves further investigation.” But nobody got anything out of this meeting. The whole meeting took place under false premises.
Nothing changed because of the meeting. Not a single thing changed! In fact, my friends, there is more evidence that this Russian lawyer was working with Fusion GPS to discredit Trump than anything else. That’s the same outfit that did the golden showers dossier, and that’s why I think there’s a similarity. I think all of this was aimed at getting Trump, if you want to know the truth — and the way the media’s covering it I think proves that.
Fusion GPS is the same Fusion GPS who funded the phony Trump dossier, which surfaced around this very same time. The only thing that came out of this meeting was the meeting itself and how inattentive… Manafort kept looking at his iPhone. Jared Kushner got up and left after a couple of minutes. Remember my theory on how the golden showers memo became news? ‘Cause there’s nothing to it. It’s all lies; it’s totally made up; it’s outrageous. Remember how it became news? They showed it to Trump. Once that happens, then it’s become a news story. Doesn’t matter true or false, it’s a news story.
The same thing is happening here.
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RUSH: Okay, another teachable moment here on how this happens. CNN right now. I’m not listening. They’ve got a graphic the bottom of the screen that says, “Email to Trump Jr.: anti-Clinton info is very high level, part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump.” That’s the email that Trump Jr. received from the Russian honey pot, “Anti-Clinton info very high level, Russia and government support for Trump.”
This is so obvious. I mean, folks, one thing about this, this is not clean and pure as the wind-driven snow. The Trump campaign gets this email. Why Donald Trump Jr., by the way? Here’s another thing. If there was collusion going on — all this happens in June of 2016 — if there was collusion going on, then how in the hell it an email like this get everybody’s attention and bring a stop to everything? If Trump and the Russians were already colluding, this would have been a nothing burger anyway. They’d have been so far beyond this, if there was actual collusion.
If there was collusion, Trump would already know that the Russians are trying to help him get elected. So an email that shows up from a Russian honey pot — and of course that’s subjective; it’s the eyes of the beholder — but if you get an email from a Russian honey pot claiming anti-Clinton information, “I have big anti-Clinton information, very high level, it’s from the Russian government, it’s support for Mr. Trump.” If there was collusion going on, why would that register? That would have been old news.
Well, there wasn’t any collusion going on. It’s why they took this meeting. But the point is none of that was ever discussed because the Russian honey pot did not have any such high level information. She didn’t impart any high level information. She was not representing the Russian government. She didn’t have any anti-Clinton information. And she had no knowledge of whether or not the Russian government was supporting Trump or not. All of this is totally made up.
And do you want to know the piece de resistance? The New York Times has not yet even seen the email that CNN just quoted. Nobody has seen the email. How many times in this story has that been a factor, that the document in question or the allegation in question, nobody’s actually seen it among the journalists reporting it, but they have been told about it. Four reporters were assigned to this. That’s designed to make it look like it’s really complicated and it’s really serious.
But there’s nothing here. And the email that I just quoted, CNN’s graphically putting up on their screen, “Anti-Clinton information very high level, Russia and government support for Trump.” Nobody’s seen that email. The New York Times admits they haven’t seen it. They just used the word there are indications the email contains what. And do you know who provided the email? Some bozo music publicist named Goldstone in the U.K., a guy who tweets selfies of himself all over the place wearing Russian general caps. He’s a fruit burger. And this is the prime mover behind the story.
But see, folks, they can’t ignore it. They can’t see it for what it is. They’re too invested in this. Let me get to Erick Erickson’s, how shall I say, analysis of the New York Times story. He focuses on a couple, three paragraphs here.
“First paragraph: ‘Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.’
“Got that? Donald Trump, Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort. Hold on to that a minute. Where did Trump, Jr. get the email?” Where did it come from? Who sent this email?
Next paragraph. “The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.”
The lawyer is the honey pot, not Goldstone. “So the email that informed Trump, Jr. ‘the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy,'” came from a music publicist in the U.K. by the name of Goldstone.
“Now the New York Times adds some meat to this story with the third paragraph: ‘Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people –‘” they haven’t seen it. “‘– indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.'”
Well, then where do you guys get the idea that it comes from the Russian government to hurt Hillary and help Trump, if it doesn’t say that? If it doesn’t elaborate on that wider effort, then why is it there?
“So Goldstone’s message ‘as described,'” not as seen. The New York Times, nobody has seen Goldstone’s email that got all this going. “So Goldstone’s message ‘as described'” to the New York Times by three different people, “indicated ‘the Russian government was the source'” of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate the email on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign. Well, then how and why and where did the New York Times figure that that’s part of it?
“So Goldstone’s message ‘as described’ indicated ‘the Russian government was the source’ of information. Notice the second sentence reads as if it is a foregone conclusion that this dealing was a part of that wider effort,” but it wasn’t. The wider effort is not detailed in the email that nobody has seen, that only three reporters have been told about.
So let’s summarize those three paragraphs. Rob Goldstone, music publicist in the U.K., emailed Donald Trump Jr. The email informed Trump Jr. that the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton. The email made clear to Junior that the Russians wanted to help his father’s campaign. That’s what those three paragraphs mean.
“It is unclear whether Mr. Goldstone had direct knowledge of the origin of the damaging material.” Nobody knows whether Goldstone knows what he’s writing about. Nobody knows whether Goldstone has the slightest clue what he’s talking about.
“One person who was briefed on the emails said it appeared that he was passing along information that had been passed through several others.” So Goldstone did not even know if what he was passing on was true! He might not have even had direct knowledge of the origin of the damaging material. But the New York Times just reports that Goldstone said it was the Russians. And then they sneak in that it’s unclear whether Goldstone knew it was the Russians.
“So he might not have really known who it came from but the Times is asserting it as factual that Goldstone definitely told Trump, Jr. the Russians wanted to help his dad and had damaging material about Hillary Clinton?” And yet the New York Times admits that it’s unclear whether Goldstone had direct knowledge. They forget that and they just write as though he did.
This is — you can’t even call it journalistic malpractice. This is journalism eating itself. This is journalism destroying itself. This is journalism imploding and collapsing on itself. This is journalism, “Gee, I want this to be true, so I’m gonna write that it is. I don’t care if my primary source looks like an absolute lunatic, and I don’t care if the guy has no credibility whatsoever. We’ve got somebody saying it, or somebody that we can say is saying it, and we’re gonna do it.” And that’s what they’ve done. Now, if you’re thinking something doesn’t add up here, you’re right.
“Something just does not add up in this and it has nothing to do with Trump, Jr. and everything to do with anonymous sources building a rather inconsistent narrative to feed reporters. Goldstone, according to these sources, makes a whole lot of definitive pronouncements about information and its sources, but one person who has never even seen the email (‘one person who was briefed’) offers up a guess as what Goldstone might not have known.”
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RUSH: Now, this is kind of funny. Donald Trump Jr. at 11 o’clock this morning released the entire email chain regarding the Russian meeting. Little Brian Stelter over at CNN was very upset about that. Little Brian tweeted, “Confirmed from an NYT source: ‘We were preparing to publish’ story [containing the email chain] — Don Jr. camp ‘asked for more time’ to comment ‘and then pre-empted us.'” So the Trump campaign figured out the New York Times was gonna publish the email timeline and they wanted a comment from Trump Jr.
They said, “Give me some more time to comment,” and then Trump Jr. preempted them and released the timeline himself. The Fox News story on this says that there is “nothing contained in the emails to suggest that Trump Jr. was informed of the larger alleged Russian effort to meddle in the U.S. presidential election,” and I have the email chain here. I’m not gonna read this whole thing to you. It’s got names that we haven’t discussed yet and all of this. But the bottom line here is that Catherine Herridge is reporting that there is nothing in the emails.
There was “nothing contained in the emails to suggest Trump Jr. was informed of the larger alleged Russian effort to meddle in the presidential election.” But in the email, Goldstone, the music publicist in the U.K., does say, “This is obviously very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump.” Now, again, the thing that stands out to me about this is if there was collusion going on — as they have been alleging for the past year and intensely the last six months. If Trump was colluding with Putin and the Russians to steal the election, why would an email like this be much any consequence?
This would not have been news! “Very high-level, sensitive information, part of the Russian effort and support for Mr. Trump”? They’re looking for opposition research on Hillary. Again, the honey pot shows up, and there’s none of this. She doesn’t have anything. She says she’s got no ties to the Kremlin whatsoever. This smacks of setup like I can’t believe! But regardless, if the collusion were already going on, this email would have been received with a yawn. Now, back to Erick Erickson, just to finish this up. At the bottom of the story, we got these paragraphs about what Goldstone told the New York Times:
“‘He (a client of Goldstone’s) said, “I’m told she has information about illegal campaign contributions to the DNC,”‘ Mr. Goldstone recalled… He said he then emailed Donald Trump Jr., outlining what the lawyer purported to have.” The honey pot. “But Mr. Goldstone, who wrote the email over a year ago, denied any knowledge of involvement by the Russian government in the matter, saying that never dawned on him. ‘Never, never ever,’ he said. Later, after the email was described to the Times, efforts to reach him for further comment were unsuccessful.”
So Goldstone is denying, ladies and gentlemen, that he had any idea that the Russian government was supporting Trump! He was denying that he had any access to information, high-level information from the Russian government that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton and the DNC. He’s denying it! This email is over a year old. He “denied any knowledge of involvement by the Russian government in the matter,” which is CNN’s whole story. That graphic is still up there. “Email to Trump Jr.: Anti-Clinton Info Very High-Level Part of Russia and His Government Support for Mr. Trump.”
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RUSH: (interruption) Oh, yeah. I know. I know. There’s a whole lot of people on our side who think this is it, folks. They don’t see a way out of this. “Donald Trump Jr. just nailed himself to the wall! This is over. This proves everything.” I know they’re out there. But I’m not through trying to tack this all together. Just stick with us here for a few more — maybe one more — segment.
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RUSH: Now, let me say here at the outset, I’m well aware that there are many so-called conservative Trump supporters who now think it’s over. I’ve read ’em. I’ve got emails: “This is it, Rush. You have to admit, this is it. I mean, they got him now, they’ve got him.”
I said, “What do they got?”
“Well, I don’t care whether it was discussed or not, Rush. But this babe calls up and says that she’s got high-level information from the Russian government designed to help Trump beat Hillary, and they took the meeting.”
“Yeah? And that proves what?”
“It’s collusion, Rush, there’s no question, it’s collusion.”
“Okay, but what happened?”
“It doesn’t matter what happened, Rush. What happened is what they got sucked in by. Trump Jr. got sucked in. The offer from some Russian lawyer to give him information from the Russian government to hurt Hillary proves that the Trump people were willing to do that. It’s over, Rush, it’s over, don’t you see it?”
There’s something out there called the Miginsky Act, and it has to do with refugees and deportations, not deportations, but adoption sanctions or some such thing she wanted relaxed so that victims of the Miginsky Act could benefit somehow. And once they figured out they closed the meeting out and everybody involved left and went home and that was that. So there wasn’t any collusion.
And my defeatist conservative buddies, “Doesn’t matter, Rush, the fact that that was the pitch and that Trump Jr. took it and was fully prepared. Rush, they’ve got ’em, it’s over, don’t you see it, don’t you?” This is what I’m facing today. Is that how you all see it in there? You do? You’re a little worried about this one, are you? Okay. Well, let’s run through this. What we have here.
I’m just gonna share with you some common sense that I have. Well, you can judge whether it’s common sense or not. Some observations I have combined with the facts as we think we know them. We have a British PR flack named Rob Goldstone, who over a year sends an email claiming to have high government information from Russia that will help the Trump campaign because the Russian government wants Trump to win and wants Hillary to lose. And on the basis of that, Trump Jr. eagerly accepts the meeting, and the Russian babe who shows up doesn’t know anything about that.
The New York Times today in a story says that the flack, Goldstone, denies saying this. Now, if Trump was colluding with the Russians, I don’t think this would have mattered much because it would have already been known. If Trump was colluding with Putin — let’s just put it out there — if Putin and Trump were working together to steal the election from Hillary and all of a sudden Trump Jr. gets an email saying somebody has high-level information from the Russian government, a lawyer nobody knows and is requesting a meeting to talk about it, what would the Trump campaign’s reaction be?
A lawyer we don’t know has information, we’re already colluding, what could this woman have? We don’t need to take this meeting. We’re already colluding in my hypothetical. Does that have no impact on you? I mean, seriously. If Trump and Putin are colluding and Junior — you know what’s going on here, don’t you? Folks, don’t you know what’s going on here? Don’t make me have to say this stuff.
I hate having to say the obvious. You know, the obvious is something a lot of people don’t want to say. Junior wanted to be a player. If you go back and you look at the campaign, who are the big names in the campaign? You got Eric out there, he’s doing his appearances, Donald Trump Jr. is doing some appearances, so is Ivanka, Bannon’s star is rising, Trump is owning it out there. The thing that’s happening to that family is something that most of us will never experience. That kind of high, that kind of rush — no pun intended — and everybody wants to be in on it. Nobody wants to be a straggler. Everybody wants to be considered a player and relevant and so forth.
Now, the Goldstone quotes that are being cited are a little misleading. Rob Goldstone is actually quoting what he was told by somebody else. Remember, nobody has seen this email, including the New York Times. Goldstone is quoting what he was told by somebody else, the someone else being a Russian pop star named Emin Agalarov.
Agalarov’s father was Trump’s partner in bringing the Miss Universe pageant to Russia in 2013. Goldstone was just passing on what the son of Trump’s partner told him in his email to Don Jr. For instance, he quotes the son, Emin, when he wrote, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Those are not Goldstone’s words; those are words of the son of the guy that partnered with Trump on Miss USA in Russia telling Goldstone.
I’m trying to see how this is genuinely damaging. Even if Trump Jr. wanted to hear dirt that was supposedly from the Russian government.
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RUSH: “The email chain — purported to be between Trump Jr. and publicist Rob Goldstone — occurred in June 2016. Goldstone went on to set up the controversial June 9 meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, whom he identified in the emails at one point as ‘The Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow.’ … ‘This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.'” These are the people that worked with Trump on the Miss USA pageant, not the Russian government.
“Trump Jr. said in a statement on Tuesday he knew ‘Emin’ from helping to organize the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Russia. That person appears to be Emin Agalarov, whose father, Aras Agalarov, is a billionaire with reported ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump Jr. replied in the email chain: ‘Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.’
So we have, again, nothing, like the golden showers dossier is nothing. But I’m well aware, folks, I’m well aware there are all kinds of people that are Trump supporters who think this is it, it’s over, Junior stepped in it, Junior just buried himself, Junior is shoveling the dirt on his own grave here by publishing this email timeline. It’s over. It shows you, I think, the power of this never-ending narrative to which there has never been a shred of evidence or substance.
People just have an inability to say this is BS and then treat everything that comes after it as BS because they always have a little part of their brain reserved for the possibility that it could be true. And once there’s the slightest morsel, “Oh, my God, it’s over, Rush, it’s over. I’m surprised you don’t see it. Oh, they got him.” I know that’s what many people think. I’m not there yet.
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RUSH: Now, the Russian lawyer, the Russian honey pot, let’s see how she just falls into play here. The Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr. last summer said members of the campaign were looking for dirt on the Clintons. It’s quite possible that maybe they were longing for such information,” she told NBC News today. “They wanted it so badly.” But I didn’t have it. I was just there about the Miginsky Act.
So she’s falling right in line. Oh, yeah, they thought I had some dirt. They really wanted it. They weren’t interested in what I really wanted. Well she was there because they were told she had the dirt.
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RUSH: Okay. I have made a decision. This is it for today. No more of this garbage the rest of the day. There’s other stuff in the Stack here, and some of it, interestingly, is about how well Trump is doing, the implementation of his agenda. Now, half the sound bites are about this crap — pardon the use of the word, but that’s what it is to me, but I’m gonna find some diamonds in the rough out there.
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RUSH: CNN is still running that graphic. You see? We cannot escape this drivel. Anti-Clinton info, very high level, part of Russia and its government support — that’s all I need to know that this is bogus, that they’re pushing something that didn’t happen. Ah. I promised I was not gonna do any more on this.
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