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Since the beginning of Trump’s war-of-choice on Iran, the administration has been telegraphing its inability to defend US aggression by refusing to let real decision-makers like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth do interviews on the Sunday morning news shows, instead only sending economic advisors to struggle to justify the war.

And in a move that only confirms this acknowledgement of indefensibility, this week Pete Hegseth finally gave Sunday morning interviews on the day that a peace deal was announced, allowing him to claim victory without being pressed on why the US lost the Strait of Hormuz and broke the economy.

Unfortunately for Pete, however, peace these days doesn’t warrant cheers: Katie and Aaron watch every AIPAC crony from Mark Levin to Cory Booker to Morning Joe melt down over Trump’s peace announcement, complaining that the US is “sending a lifeline” to the Iranians. Because Dems and Republicans agree that death is what is best for the people of Iran.

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This week we’re welcoming back to the show Useful Idiots fan-favorite California Congressman Ro Khanna to discuss his efforts to reign in Trump’s war on Iran, what’s happening with the Democrats in the aftermath of Graham Platner’s victory in Maine, and why he’s calling out other Dems like the AIPAC-owned Chuck Schumer and Josh Gottheimer.

Useful Idiots: You’ve been critical of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on multiple issues, including on Iran because he opposed the Iran nuclear deal and he supported regime change inside Iran. How has he been on this issue?

Rep. Ro Khanna: He’s been weak. He opposes the war, but he was not clear when Trump was threatening the genocide of the Iranian people. He basically issued a weak statement saying ‘consult Congress’ instead of saying that this is a war crime that an American president should never contemplate.

He’s not clear in saying that this is an immoral, illegal, unstrategic war.

Useful Idiots: What do you think the connection is between people’s support of this war, especially Democrats, and their support of Israel?

Rep. Ro Khanna: It’s correlated. There’s no secret that Netanyahu has been wanting this war for the past thirty years. There’s no secret that he has talked Trump into it and that Trump basically went along with it.

And even when Democrats oppose it, you hear many of them saying, ‘Well, we agree there should be action that takes out Iran’s nuclear capability. We just don’t agree that Trump did this without consulting Congress or consulting our allies.’

Well, there should not be a military solution there. Can there be negotiation like Obama did to have a JCPOA of the modern times? Absolutely. But there are a number of Democrats who are secretly applauding this goal of striking Iranian sites because that is something that Netanyahu also has wanted for two decades.

Useful Idiots: Want to name any names?

Rep. Ro Khanna: I don’t think there’s much to hide. I mean, [NJ Congressman] Josh Gottheimer, et cetera, he’s very open about it. They’re very clear that they support the goal of the military destruction of the Iranian people.

But the military has not been affected. We may have degraded Iranian capability, but they still have a nuclear capability. If anything, you’ve told Iran that the way to prevent America from attacking is to develop a nuclear weapon. And now Iran is less willing to have a fatwa banning nuclear weapons. Now they’re not willing to. So they’ve actually strategically made a blunder.

Watch our full interview with Rep. Ro Khanna on Graham Platner’s victory, working with Republican Congressman Thomas Massie on Iran and the Epstein Files, and why he’s working to lift the fuel blockade on Cuba and oppose Trump’s illegal regime change war.

Plus, subscribe to watch our full second interview with journalist Adam Johnson, author of How to Sell a Genocide, which focuses on the liberal media’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We go through his reporting and data which shows a bigger difference than we realized in the media’s reporting of Israelis vs Palestinians, plus, what he found most shocking in his research.

And don’t miss this week’s recap of the craziest people on corporate media, the Friday Free-for-All: Trump Accidentally Tells Iran He’s Secretly Stealing Their Oil

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“Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning?”

A simple enough question from a reporter unravels Trump into first ripping off a line on inflation that is now haunting every Republican member of Congress in press conferences, and then into a somehow worse slip of international piracy secrets.

“No, I love it, the numbers were great,” Trump says. “You know what I really love? I love inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know I can say it now… something you didn’t know…”

At this point you can see in his eyes that he considers the moment. It’s not too late to stop himself, but the thrill of spilling is too good.

“Did you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran.” He thinks quick. “Until right now.”

And the fallout’s been immediate. Mike Johnson and Republican congresspeople all the way down are being forced to dodge questions from reporters about why Trump loves inflation (we watch one guy embarrassingly get caught faking a phone call while running away). And even worse for the MAGA camp, Energy Secretary Chris Wright got blasted in Congress when pressed on whether he was aware that the US has been illegally stealing millions of barrels of oil from Iran:

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Watch this week’s Monday Mourning here:

Trump met up with Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker for a literally and metaphorically stormy interview in which he failed to defend his disastrous war on Iran and insisted that he never promised to be an anti-war president.

Right from Welker’s welcome, Katie and Aaron turn on the gas and don’t let up on the lying president, right up to the point where he storms out of the interview.

It’s a beautiful takedown, watch the full, free episode on YouTube.

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The Trump Administration just announced their latest achievement: it’s a ceasefire in Lebanon!

One problem: they excluded from their ceasefire talks Israel’s main target, Hezbollah. The US is fully backing Israel’s continued assault, which has included the bombing of civilian infrastructure, killing over 3,000 people since March and displacing over 1.2 million.

What this means for the so-called ceasefire: Hezbollah must withdraw from its own territory in the south of Lebanon and Israel has no terms. Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah has rejected this deal, declining the opportunity to freely hand over their own territory to the invading Israeli army.

While corporate media has reported this simply as Hezbollah refusing peace, we’re digging deeper into the story to find out what’s actually happening in Lebanon: where is Israel attacking, what is Hezbollah’s goal, to what extent will Iran back Hezbollah, and why are the US and Israel failing to take control in Lebanon.

To do this, we speak with Michael Young, senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center and author of The Ghosts of Martyrs Square. He is based in Lebanon.

Michael has a different perspective on Hezbollah and Lebanon than most of our guests, but rather than giving you the same perspective every week, we want to feature different voices who may disagree with us, which gives us a fuller picture of the conflict. So speaking from Lebanon, Michael Young gives his take on the dilemma that Lebanon faces and what he thinks is the best way to stop Israel’s invasion.

Subscribe to support our work! You’ll get the ad-free version of our episode PLUS our Friday Free-for-All: Former Biden and Obama Official Wants You to "Put Aside the Horrors of Gaza" For a While...

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Did you know that Congress is working on a new plan to “distance” the US-Israeli relationship by slowing US aid to Israel and replace it with a “financial partnership”? A partnership which has the power to not only increase the amount of money and weapons the US sends to Israel but also future-proof it from being dismantled by future presidents and lawmakers?

And do you know who invented this plan that allows members of Congress to become more independent from Israel?

Let the words of GOP Rep. Marlin Stutzman speaking on CNN enlighten us all: “This was actually something that came from Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

This, and a whole slew of other remarks that will make your skin crawl were topics of what many people are calling the antisemitic events of the year! The American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum, where Zionists gave speeches on and cheered for things that, if we had said them, would get us immediately kicked off YouTube for being antisemitic.

From bragging that the “Jewish coalition” spent five million dollars to oust Thomas Massie and control US elections, to explaining that Jews can now use AI to “manage and control” social media content, to laughter at John Fetterman’s celebration of Israel’s pager attacks in Lebanon that killed and blinded children and civilians, it was one antisemitic trope after another.

And no condemnations from the Fraudfather over at the ADL yet…

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After months of struggling and failing to inflict enough damage on Iran that they reopen the Strait of Hormuz to US ships, Trump is now coming out with a new talking point that he hopes will convince the world that defeating Iran militarily was never actually his goal:

“Their military we’ve sort of left it alone because we think their military is somewhat moderate. Mistakes have been made in wars where you wipe out everybody and then you have a country that for 40 years can never rebuild. You look at what happened with Iraq, we did so bad that was such a foolish thing. Shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

Donald, you’re so close! Just change the word ‘Iraq’ to ‘Iran’ and you’ve got it! You won’t have to do this embarrassing backpedaling about the military, you can just go home and not have a war!

Maybe he’s been listening to Useful Idiots but on double speed so he missed some key points…

Also in this Monday Mourning: Democratic Senator Chris Murphy claims he OPPOSES the war on Iran (but only because it somehow “strengthens Russia”), Ukrainian President Zelensky also wants peace in the Middle East (so that Ukraine can go back to being the US’ primary weapons recipient), and Chuck Schumer speaks at a “Jew Klux Klan” rally.

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It’s been a while since we’ve covered the proxy war in Ukraine, so who better to give us an update than Useful Idiots fan-favorite Lev Golinkin, the Ukrainian-American journalist and author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka.

The big takeaway: remember Ukraine’s whole neo-Nazi problem? It’s gotten worse.

Lev explains how this began:

Lev Golinkin: Right when Zelensky came to power, a TV company in Ukraine wanted to set up something called the Telemost [Russian for TV bridge]. It’s an echo back to the Soviet days in the 80s where you had television studios in Moscow and television studios in America and everyday people in the studios could talk to each other. The whole idea was for them to try to see each other as human beings.

So there was somebody who wanted to revive that and do it between Kiev and Moscow. Andriy Biletsky, the main neo-Nazi who is being whitewashed right now, put out a short video telling Zelensky, ‘You have until tomorrow morning to cancel this, or if not, we’re going to have our next conversation in your office.’

Within a half hour, the program was canceled.

Lev reveals why Biletsky wanted war with Russia, and why he can be considered the real winner of the war:

“If there’s one guy from this war who is winning,” he tells us, “it’s Beletsky. He went from being a street gang leader, a thug, to having untold number of men at his command, to being a general, and to being blown by Reuters and by other media institutions”

So now, with the nation’s top neo-Nazi installed as brigadier general, Zelensky, whose own family died in the Holocaust, is using his power to give a re-burial ceremony and high honors to a man named Andriy Melnyk, a World War II Nazi collaborator who helped hunt down Ukrainian Jews in the Holocaust.

In case you had any doubts, Fraudfather Jonathan Greenblatt and the ADL have been completely silent on this.

To see the full interview where we watch Reuters’ (as Lev himself describes it) metaphorical “blowing” of the neo-Nazi Biletsky, as well as Zelensky’s former press secretary reveal some huge secrets about Zelensky to Tucker Carlson, please subscribe here!

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We also speak with Irish activist Cat Graham, who journeyed to Gaza this month on the Global Sumud Flotilla, and was kidnapped and detained by Israeli forces. In a now infamous video posted by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Cat can be seen bravely chanting ‘Free, Free Palestine!’ at Ben Gvir, before being violently wrestled to the ground.

She joins us to share the story of Israel’s brutal treatment of global activists and the far worse and less-televised treatment of Palestinian prisoners.

It’s a Useful Idiots double header: subscribe to watch the full episode as well as our Friday Free-for-All: AIPAC PANICS As It Realizes It’s Losing Control Over Voters

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This week at the Emmy Awards for News, student journalist Santiago Campos won CBS’s Mike Wallace Memorial Scholarship. Here’s what he said in his speech:

“While I want to thank CBS News for funding this generous gift towards my education, I want to also acknowledge how the recent direction of the outlet stains the legacy of Mike Wallace.

As corporate elites take hold over the very pipes through which our information flows, journalism that serves the people becomes increasingly harder to come by, yet ever more crucial. And what people want is the truth.

So if at any time you hesitate to utter the word genocide or remain silent in the face of blatant lies, remember to ask yourself: who is this for? I hope you choose us.”

There is currently an existential battle over the future of journalism, with pro-Israel billionaires like the Ellisons and Jeff Bezos attempting to suck up media outlets and install pro-Israel activists like Bari Weiss, Jake Tapper, and Jeffrey Goldberg into positions of power, taking on the rapidly accelerating explosion of independent media, which has brought on the mass exodus of viewers from corporate news outlets like CNN, Fox News, and the New York Times.

With young journalists like Santiago boldly taking the side of independent journalists, the corporate elites may not stand a chance.

Also in this Friday Free-for-All: DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin thinks he can shut down international flights to sanctuary cities during the World Cup, Fraudfather/ADL head Jonathon Greenblatt tries to talk away a mass shooting at a San Diego mosque, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz wants Democrats to get credit for being more Israel-first than Donald Trump.

It’s a sickening week as always, but with a bright twist that gives us some hope. Keep on supporting independent journalism and catch the full episode here:

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After starting two regime change wars in Venezuela and Iran, Donald Trump is now ramping up his campaign to overthrow the government of Cuba, and in the process impose serious misery on its people by tightening his blockade and deepening the country’s humanitarian crisis.

And much like in Venezuela and Iran, there are suddenly reports of an imminent threat from Cuba, the tiny, starving island off the coast of the United States: Members of the Trump administration have begun claiming that Cuba has hundreds of Russian and Iranian drones that they will use to attack Florida.

It seems to be the same exact playbook each time: claim an “imminent” threat, increase sanctions, take out the leader, and start a regime-change war.

And as if to prove to the world that this is indeed the game plan, the CIA just made an uncharacteristically overt trip to Cuba.

So to discuss the humanitarian crisis and potential regime-change war in Cuba, we’re speaking with Peter Kornbluh, Director of Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects for the National Security Archive, who has been unearthing classified documents showing the reality of US foreign policy in Cuba.

In his latest piece, The CIA Goes to Cuba, Kornbluh examines the CIA’s aggressive operation in Cuba, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s “do or die” ultimatum to the Cuban government. Kornbluh reveals documentation that proves US officials “don't believe Cuba is an imminent threat, or actively planning to attack American interests,” and explains how Marco Rubio seeks to benefit from a false flag attack.

It’s the latest in Trump’s “empire-building” scheme that now spans across the globe, all fueled by neocons like Marco Rubio, and would be a sizable “Cold War trophy” to boost Trump’s imperial ego. Watch and share Peter Kornbluh’s full analysis (ad-free version):

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This week, Kentucky GOP Rep. James Comer went on Newsmax, the furthest to the right a cable news network can be, to discuss the US’s sudden increased aggression against Cuba, and proceeded to say the wrong thing so many times that even the Newsmax host Rob Finnerty sounded like he could be hosting Useful Idiots.

Read this excerpt from the interview, then we’ll talk:

Finnerty: This Cuba thing -- people struggle with how this is America first when gas is $4.55 a gallon right now.

Rep. Comer: You’re absolutely right, but at the end of the day, Cuba has always been a national security threat. We’ve been negotiating with Cuba since before I was born! The negotiations have gone nowhere, Cuba’s leader is at the end of his lifespan, the Cuban people clearly, unlike maybe the Iranian people, want a regime change in Cuba.

Finnerty: But do you really think Cuba’s a threat?

Rep. Comer: If some country went in and loaded Cuba with the same drones Iran had when we first started bombing Iran, then yes I think it could be a threat. The CIA’s on the ground as we speak. We’ve to be on guard because of the new types of warfare that’s out there with these new drones and technology.

Finnerty: I’ll be honest, to me this just sounds like we’re trying to make the case to attack Cuba. I don’t buy it. It sounds like a false flag operation.

Katie and Aaron have about a million ways to mock this dude.

First, who has been negotiating with Cuba? The US has famously refused to negotiate, choosing instead to strangle them with an embargo and destroy their economy with murderous sanctions. That’s what could be called the exact opposite of negotiation.

Second, when he says Cuba’s leader is at the end of his lifespan, what is he talking about? President Miguel Díaz-Canel is 66 and at a quick glance seems to be healthy. Which means that unless that’s some weird mafia-style riddle threat, Comer thinks that Raúl Castro is still the president of Cuba. He doesn’t know the leader of the government he’s trying to run a regime-change against!

Third, (and yes we’re still only on his first answer) did he just admit that the Iranian people, against every talking point that the Trump Administration and their bosses in Israel have worked so hard to convince Americans of, don’t want regime change? The Newsmax host stares at his guest as Comer accidentally undoes a year of propaganda. And it only get’s crazier:

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From Lindsey Graham’s mouth to God’s ears: when asked on Meet the Press if the Iran War was worth losing the midterms over, Senator Lindsey Graham proclaimed: “It’s worth losing my job!”

Finally, something to agree with arch-Zionist warmonger Lindsey Graham on!

And speaking of God’s ears, Trump held a Christian Nationalist party to celebrate the US’s 250th birthday, where speakers claimed that it took God two centuries to bring us Donald Trump so that he could finally put a ballroom in the White House. That’s not a joke they really said that.

From Lindsey Graham to Mike Johnson to John Fetterman to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, we’ve got a Monday Mourning that oscillates between the importance of bombing civilian infrastructure in Iran to the importance of that ballroom. It’s a ridiculous and jam-packed episode.

Thanks for supporting our work! Subscribe to the show to become a Useful Idiot and get bonus content! Plus, join our new fundraiser on YouTube for Global Health Partners to help get urgent medical aid to Cuba – click donate next to the video on YouTube linked above!

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It’s another classic Useful Idiots double header!

First up we’re speaking with Rami Elghandour, biotech CEO whose company is developing transformative immunotherapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases. He’s also executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab and The American Doctor. (note to other CEOs: it’s possible to do good things with your money)

Rami was scheduled to give the convocation speech at Rutgers this week but was abruptly canceled, being told by a dean that “we’ve had a few students who feel that your social media posts are opposed to their beliefs.”

Here is the tweet that got Rami canceled:

“Forget a free ride. They’ve committed genocide. They’re running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners... Weapons embargo is the absolute minimum. Sanctions and diplomatic isolation are beyond justified. This we’ll sell them weapons won’t fly…”

Rami reveals his full conversation with the dean and shows us a clip of the speech he would have given, which is now available on YouTube.

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We also speak with Wyatt Reed, journalist at the Grayzone who is currently reporting in Lebanon and Iran. As one of very few western journalists to actually go to Iran, Reed’s reporting is crucial to understanding what’s really happening on the ground, what actual Iranians feel about the US and the war, and how Trump’s attacks inadvertently pushed Iranians to rally around their own government.

“Every night in cities all across Iran, there are pro-government protests in the major squares and town centers. This is happening throughout the entire country.

Before the war, the die-hard support for the government was relatively limited to people who tended to be more conservative or more religious.

After their country came under an existential threat, an existential attack that sought to topple not only their government, but clearly was not distinguishing between their government and their civilian population at all, this expanded to include a huge part of the population.

So, the irony is that if they wanted to overthrow this government in Iran, they’ve done basically the opposite. They have solidified support for it through every segment of Iranian society. Iranians came to understand that basically their choice was between ruling themselves in a somewhat authoritarian manner or being ruled by an occupying foreign power which clearly seeks to conduct basically a genocide against them. It’s not hard to understand why more and more people began to side with their government.”

Wyatt also shares footage of his reporting of the US bombing on the Minab elementary school, as well as the Israeli bombings of a hospital and synagogue in Tehran. It’s tough to watch, but Wyatt’s journalism is some of the only western journalism we’ve seen from Iran. Help to share his reporting!

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“I hear people say, ‘I don’t want anything to do with Israel,’” says US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on a podcast called JC ZC, which stands for Judeo-Christian Zionist Congress (which is also the only type of podcast that religious fanatics like Huckabee can get on anymore).

He continues: “I say, ‘Okay, give up your cell phone. Give up car navigation. Give up conveniences like cherry tomatoes and seedless watermelons. I’m sorry to break it to you, but if you hate Israel that much, you’re going to be living a very different kind of life.”

This is the state of Zionist arguments in 2026, a sure sign that they’re struggling desperately as they lose their propaganda war. Does Huckabee really think that we won’t have phones and GPS without a tiny apartheid state in the Middle East? And even crazier: does he think he’s going to win hearts and minds with “You can’t have cherry tomatoes without genocide!”

[Those cherry tomatoes, by the way, are grown on occupied Palestinian soil]

And that’s not the only front on which the elites are losing the global narrative. Donald Trump’s new White House ballroom is set to cost hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Congressman Greg Casar of Texas asked Education Secretary and former WWE executive Linda McMahon:

“For the $1 billion we're being asked to spend on Trump's ballroom, we could fund 217 million free school lunches and 15,000 more teachers. As secretary of education, which do you think helps our nation more?”

Then comes a pause big enough to fit a seedless watermelon. Finally, McMahon responds: “I think those are incredibly weird comparisons.”

As dark as these days may seem, something tells us that slowly but surely we’re getting to these people, as the one thing the elites hate the most is to be mocked. Watch Katie and Aaron do what they do best, from JD Vance to Mike Johnson to Kash Patel, we’re taking them down.

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From UN Ambassador Mike Waltz all the way up to the top: Benjamin Netanyahu, it was a disastrous affair watching the Sunday Morning News Shows. Katie and Aaron pick apart every lie: why oil prices are actually skyrocketing, how Iran never actually wanted to build nuclear weapons, why Trump’s fake negotiations will never work, and how Netanyahu, who seems to clearly own the 60 Minutes anchor, is deliberately sabotaging US-Iran peace talks.

It was a nightmare to watch corporate media this weekend: do yourself a favor and watch with Katie and Aaron so you can laugh instead of cry at it all. And if you want to support our work, please consider subscribing here:

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Despite recent attacks from both sides, a ceasefire is technically in effect between the US and Iran: Is peace at hand? Or are these shaky truce talks just a break before the return to full-scale military conflict?

What’s likely to move the scale in one direction or another are recent embarrassing headlines that could push President Trump to panic: the Washington Post reports that the CIA “says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months,” as opposed to days or weeks, which the administration has been claiming.

Another headline claims that “Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.” And just this week Marco Rubio announced that the new goal of the war is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and get everything "back to the way it was" before Trump launched the first attacks.

Will these revelations force Trump into a corner and get him to take the win of a ceasefire, claim victory in Iran, and leave? Or does the embarrassment of losing on the global stage send him and Cartoon Pete Hegseth back out to war?

To analyze all the latest in Iran, from a technical weapons level to the geopolitical ramifications of it all, we spoke with Dr. Sajjad Safei, researcher, lecturer, and analyst specializing in Middle Eastern geopolitics. Plus, we watch the latest right-wing commentator to once again prove the Useful Idiots thesis: “At this point, I think it’s in Israel’s interests to act against Iran in a way that blows up this deal.”

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