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Trump Health Care Plan; White House Press Briefing; No Evidence To Support Trump Wiretap Claim; GOP Health Care Bill; February Jobs Numbers; Credit for Jobs Numbers; Tax Reform Possibilities; Health Care Proposal. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired March 10, 2017 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.

Up first, halfway through the first 100 days, we're following several major stories developing on day 50 of the Trump presidency from health care to wiretap claims to Russia. That means a lot to cover in today's White House press brie briefing this hour.

Take a look at the live pictures coming in from inside the White House briefing room. The press secretary, Sean Spicer, he'll be taking questions from reporters fairly soon. We'll bring that to you live once it begins.

The Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare is likely to come up. The president used his weekly address to push for the plan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: On my 50th day in office, I want to talk about an issue of paramount importance to families across our nation, health care.

Seven years ago this month, Obamacare was signed into law. House Republicans have put forward a plan that gets rid of this terrible law and replaces it with reforms that empower states and consumers.

The House plan follows the guidelines I laid out in my recent address to Congress, expanding choice, lowering costs and providing health care access for all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Let's bring in our White House Correspondent Athena Jones and Congressional Correspondent Phil Mattingly and our CNN Money Investigative Reporter Jose Palieri.

Athena, it sounds like the president is now all in on the House Republican leadership plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Is he?

ATHENA JONES, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Wolf. Well, it does sound like that. And the White House would say that he is all in on this plan.

You know, when it was first rolled out, soon after it was first rolled out this week, in a public way, the president tweeted about the wonderful plan. He said it was open for negotiations and review.

And just yesterday, he tweeted that despite what you may be hearing in the press about health care facing issues in Congress, things are going great. It's going to end in a beautiful picture.

The problem, Wolf, as we've been talking about, is that there isn't a lot of concern within the Republican Party. Forget about the Democratic Party. The president knows, the White House knows they're going to be facing a wall of opposition from Democrats on Capitol Hill.

But it's also getting all Republicans on board to get the votes that are needed to get this bill through the House and, of course, then through the Senate which is yet another challenge and another hurdle.

And there are a lot of conservative Republicans who have an issue with the House GOP plan. One main area is the fact that it maintains the expansion of Medicaid until 2020.

We learned, late in the day yesterday, that the president has privately expressed to conservatives on Capitol Hill that he would be open to sunsetting that Medicaid expansion sooner.

The problem with that bit of negotiating, Wolf, is that it could mean that the bill loses support on the more moderate side when it comes to Republicans.

So, there's still a long road ahead for this bill. And it'll be interesting to see what the White House -- what they say in the press briefing, what the press secretary says about this supposed openness to sunsetting Medicaid -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, we'll have live coverage, as I said, of that briefing once it begins.

Phil, the president is reportedly privately backing some calls from these Republican conservatives for earlier roll back of Medicaid expansion, as we just heard from Athena. But some Republican leaders today are rejecting that idea.

Update us right now where things stand in the health care debate among Republicans.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Wolf, if changes are going to come to this bill, the House, this chamber I'm standing in right now, is not going to be the venue for them. That's according to House Republican leaders and committee chairs today. Some of the very committee chairs who then shuttled over to the White House to meet with President Trump.

Their reality is this. The bill that they have put forth, the bill that's moving through the chamber right now, is a bill that was drafted with a lot of people involved, including the White House. Several top staffers involved in the final decision-making on the provisions. Several top staffers of the White House involved, agreeing to the strategy that they have put forward.

Now, I think they did a really good job of laying out the Medicaid issue on the whole. But if you want to look at the dynamics that are actually at play here, Wolf, it's not just Republicans, conservative and moderate.

Of course, that's the huge issue here on Capitol Hill, where you also have to factor in the governors. A lot of red state governors did take that expansion. That expansion covered 11 million people in 31 states and the District of Columbia. They want to ensure that there's no major coverage gap there.

The number they came up with, the year that they came up with on the sunset, 2020, that was a compromise agreement that took into account, the governors, the moderates, the conservatives.

[13:05:00] And that's why you're seeing House leaders, Wolf, saying, look, we hear you. We get it. We know maybe even the president, himself, is amenable to some of these changes, some of these concerns.

But at least, at this point, this is the bill. This is how it's moving forward. And if you all want changes, the Senate may be a better option -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, stand by.

Jose, let's talk about another important issue facing the Trump campaign, the Trump administration right now, I should say. And that would be Russia.

Update us on what officials are saying about the odd contact between computer servers for the Trump organization, the business organization and a Russian bank. What's the latest and what's likely to happen next?

JOSE PAGLIERY, CNNMONEY INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: So, what we've got now is that the same FBI team, the counter-intelligence team that's looking into Russia meddling in the U.S. election in 2016, that team is still investigating the potential connection between a server at a Russian bank and a server that was used by the Trump organization.

What we've got here is that the server of the Russian bank was repeatedly looking up the contact information for this server used by the Trump organization. This is equivalent to looking up a phone number over and over and over again. It doesn't indicate a phone call but it could mean that they made a phone call.

So, what we know is this was done some 2,800 times by this Russian bank, more look-ups than this Trump server received from any other source. The only entity doing this many look-ups was Spectrum Health.

Other than the bank, it was Spectrum Health, a medical facility chain led by Dick DeVos, who's the husband of Betsy DeVos, who was later appointed, by the president, as U.S. education secretary.

Those two entities alone, the bank and this medical entity, made up 99 percent of the look-ups.

Now, computer scientists that we spoke to found that very strange. But all the corporations involved do say that they never ever communicated, by e-mail, with the Trump organization. And they have different explanations about what might have been going on but they haven't actually provided proof. And don't agree with what might have happened.

For example, the Russian bank thinks it was maybe receiving spam marketing e-mail from Trump hotels. A very simple explanation. But it hasn't provided CNN with a single e-mail to back that up.

Meanwhile, the American marketing company for Trump hotels that would have been sending those e-mails says it wasn't doing so at the time they we're talking about.

And so, there are still questions to be asked. Alpha bank (INAUDIBLE) stressed that none of its executives have any affiliation, or had any affiliation, with President Trump or the Trump organization.

BLITZER: Very quickly, Jose, that Trump organization computer server physically was not located at Trump Tower in New York, right?

PAGLIERY: That's correct. That's correct. That's something that a lot of reports seem to be getting wrong here. This server was located outside of Trump Tower. It was, as far as we can tell, in Pennsylvania and it was -- the Trump organization was renting space on some other company's server farm.

And so, the -- what we're looking at here is whether or not this Russian bank sent any communication to that server because all we know is that it looked up the contact information for that server.

It's as if I pulled up your number, Wolf, 2,800 times. Was I trying to call you? We don't know. And that's what the FBI is trying to figure out.

BLITZER: And that investigation continues right now. All right, Jose, thanks very much.

Another issue certain to come up at this hour's White House press briefing. President Trump's explosive and still unsubstantiated wiretapping claims. Out Senior Congressional Reporter Manu Raju asked the chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee whether they've seen anything to back up the president's accusations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Is there any evidence to substantiate what he's been saying about President Obama spying on him?

ADAM SCHIFF (D), RANKING MEMBER, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever to substantiate that. And I think when Sean Spicer isn't even willing to talk about it, you know there's a real problem.

RAJU: Huh. Do you think that on March 20th, at that hearing, Comey's going to be prepared to talk about this issue?

SCHIFF: He's certainly prepared for the question. And I don't see any reason why he can't answer it. He may even welcome the opportunity.

REP. DEVIN NUNES (R), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: I am anxious to know if any Americans that were either unmasked or if there were any FISA requests that went in. We want to find that out. But, at this point, I don't have anything to tell you, new.

RAJU: And on Monday, you said that you have no evidence yet of wiretapping. Does that mean you -- does that comment still stand, when you say, I let my comments stand?

NUNES: Yes, that's -- yes, same as what I told you Monday or whenever that was.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Those comments follow the meeting they had with the FBI director, James Comey.

Our Senior Congressional Reporter is up on Capitol Hill, as he always seems to be. Manu, update us on what we know right now.

RAJU (live): Well, right now, Wolf, we know the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee are moving forward and trying to get answers to a number of key questions.

The House Intelligence Committee actually sending letters to the entire -- to a lot of people within the intelligence community to get records. Records they hope to obtain by next week, ahead of a hearing on March 20th, where James Comey and a number of other intelligence officials will be discussing the issue of Russia in an open public setting. A very rare move to be testifying publicly.

[13:10:08] And on the Senate side, we know that the members, who sit on that Intelligence Committee, are heading over to Langley, Virginia, coming through raw data. And now, want to meet with members who sit -- who are former Trump associates. People who allegedly met with Russians during the campaign.

And try to tie that data, understand that data and to ask the questions specifically to those Trump associates. And determine whether or not there was any, sort of, effort to influence or what happened to the election, work with the Russians. They're trying to make those connections.

But, Wolf, interesting to hear about Nunes and Schiff, the top two members on that House Intelligence Committee saying they have not seen evidence yet of wiretapping, even after meeting with the FBI director, James Comey, yesterday in that private briefing on Capitol Hill -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Which would seem to suggest Comey did not provide them with any evidence to back up the president's assertion.

All right, Manu, thanks for the great reporting.

The unfounded wiretap claims, the Russian investigations, the critically important health care debate, all subjects on the agenda right now. Let's discuss this with Republican Congressman Dave Brat of Virginia. Congressman, thanks very much for joining us.

REP. DAVE BRAT (R), VIRGINIA, BUDGET COMMITTEE: You bet, Wolf. Thanks.

BLITZER: We've got a lot to go through. As you know, it's been almost a week, tomorrow morning will be a week, since the president made the wiretap allegation in a tweet against President Obama. But no one has produced any evidence at all to back it up. What do you make of that?

BRAT: Yes, I'm not in the intelligence space but I think -- you know, I don't think he's saying President Obama personally is following him around. I think they're making -- I saw some "New York Times" story that said something about wiretapping. And so, the White House is saying, well, if "The New York Times" is printing that, what's going on? So, it's, kind of, a circular firing squad right now.

And I think you're right. We just need to wait for real evidence on any of this business and our oversight committees will get that right.

BLITZER: Yes. Well, he did say flatly in one of those four tweets early Saturday morning. He said, I bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October just prior to the election. That was the flat statement that the president made in that tweet.

And no one, including anyone at the White House or any other executive branch agency or in Congress, has any evidence to back that up. So, let me repeat the question. If no evidence shows up, what's your conclusion?

BRAT: Yes. I -- it kind of speaks for itself. I think they're going to -- he usually doesn't go out that far on a limb. I think they're going to find a little bit of evidence, not that Obama did it but that something in the executive branch went wrong. And the intelligence agencies right now, I think it's fairly well known, are leaking all over the place on a lot of stuff.

And so, I don't know if that's what he has in mind. But I'll keep you posted as I find out.

BLITZER: But you agree, the president's got to be really precise. He's no longer a candidate. He's no longer a business leader. He's the president of the United States. He's got to be precise in his words, right? BRAT: Yes, well, he's -- I think he'll come through. He shocks a lot

of people. He'll put out a statement and a few months later, all of a sudden, the evidence rolls in. And I wish there was this degree of investigation for the Hillary Clinton Foundation. She had $2 billion from international sources. $2 billion, that's like 2,000 millionaires donating.

And we never reached resolution or heard any questioning even on that. That's some -- that's some -- a lot of meetings with a lot of people from international bodies that had business before our executive branches while she's running for president. And so, --

BLITZER: Let's talk --

BRAT: -- I mean, the need for fair and balance here I think would be good.

BLITZER: All right. Let's talk about some other issues. The Congressional investigations ongoing right now to Russian interference cyber-attacks in the 2016 presidential election. Where do you think those investigations on the House side, the Senate side are going right now?

BRAT: Well, I think they're going where the broad body of evidence lies. The Russians are involved. They have been involved for decades and we know that. It's never been, again, brought up for such scrutiny until right now with Trump as president. But it's been an ongoing issue. And I think we ought to dig into it because it is -- it is concerning.

And, I mean, I remember this stuff going back to Stuxnet with Iran and China and all the -- it's been going on for a long while. So, it's good we're going to take a good look under the hood and see what's going on here.

BLITZER: All right, let's talk about the repealing and replacing of Obamacare. You said you can't support the current plan. What changes -- specific changes do you need in order to join the speaker and the president to vote in favor of this legislation?

BRAT: Yes, my major problem is the federal nature of it. And so, the big problem is we're doing -- we're going to vote on bucket one, right? And it's relying on bucket two. And I just heard your clips on Trump. Trump wants people to shop across state lines. That comes in budget -- in the bucket two.

[13:15:03] And then, lowering the regs. If he wants to reduce cost from the 20 percent trajectory right now, that's in bucket two. And all of that is very hard to do.

And so we've kind of got the cart before the horse. We're doing bucket number one like Obama did eight years ago. We're talking about coverage only, right, massive coverage, but then all the free market stuff, the shopping across state lines, the cost savings comes in bucket two under Secretary Price. And if you can do that, let's do it now, because we're putting up the scaffolding and the architecture for one-fifth of the economy. As a free market economist, what the government - federal government runs isn't going so well right now. We're 100 trillion light already on unfunded liabilities. Medicare's insolvent in 2034. Social Security's insolvent. We're going to add another entitlement when we're already broke. That's on top of 20 trillion in debt we're putting on the kids' backs. So we've got to get this thing right.

And I'll just give you one short example. It's not clear for a young person whether they will be able to go out under our plan that we pass and buy a cheap catastrophic health care plan at the age of 25 or so. The insurance regs, which we can't get rid of in this bill, and that because all these arcane Senate rules called the birdbath and all that kind of thing, are keeping us from assuring that people can shop for insurance. And that's the big deal.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: But let's -

BRAT: Yes.

BLITZER: Here's the - here's the problem you have in getting repealing and replacing Obamacare through. You might squeeze it through the House of Representatives, but the majority that the Republicans have in the Senate, 52-48, is tiny. You lose three Republicans -

BRAT: Right.

BLITZER: And there are several - maybe a half a dozen, maybe a dozen, who are already expressing grave doubts about this legislation, you lose that -

BRAT: Right.

BLITZER: It's all-for-naught and this whole effort for repeal and replace dies. Don't you have to come up with something that can pass the Senate?

BRAT: Yes, we do. And the - the premise - Paul Ryan has told us all in - the entire premise for the whole thing is, you've got to bend the cost curve down. So under Obamacare, costs are going up by 20 percent. Bending the cost curve down means you've got to get down to negative one to actually reduce prices and premiums and give your family back home some relief. That's a hard project. The three buckets we have in place right now don't assure us of that outcome. You can't find any evidence that that's going to happen. So we want to go back a notch, slow it down, and make sure we bend that cost curve down. We don't want to add any more entitlements. And while we're doing the coverage, every plan I know of, we're going to take care of pre-existing conditions, we're going to make sure the rug's not pulled out from anyone, right, that's in every single plan I know of. But it's - but as Milton Friedman, the Nobel Laurette would have said, look, when you aim - when you do policy, aim at the target. If you have 5 percent of the folks who are over 50 percent of the cost, let's take them over here and let's solve that problem, right, with state risk pools, et cetera, but don't ruin the entire health care system for 300 million people, right? The free market system is what's made us rich. China and India are now coming out with a free market system and they're getting rich.

BLITZER: All right, very quickly -

BRAT: Yes.

BLITZER: The current legislation, if passed as it is right now -

BRAT: Yes.

BLITZER: Would ruin it for 300 million Americans?

BRAT: The law enacted - Obamacare is in a death spiral right now, right? So if you follow that logic where we focus solely on coverage for 18 million but we never lowered the cost curve, we never brought costs down, we never allow people to shop. Obama said you can keep your doctor, you can keep your health care plan, we're going to bend the cost curve down, he did not bend the cost curve down. It's going up by 20 percent per year. That means prices double in five years for every American out there. That's why we're in a death spiral. We've got to fix it, but we need assurance that the regulations - the insurance regs are the biggest cost driver and we're not even sure right now whether the silver, gold, platinum stuff is out of our new bill or not.

BLITZER: All right -

BRAT: That's still uncertain as of today.

BLITZER: Congressman Dave Brat, thanks very much for joining us.

BRAT: You bet. Thanks, Wolf. Thank you.

BLITZER: Coming up, new job numbers. The job numbers, they are up. Illegal border crossings are down. Democratic Congressman Scott Peters standing by, he'll discuss that and a lot more when we come back.

Plus, we're only moments away from the White House press briefing. We'll have live coverage of that once it begins.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:23:13] BLITZER: Take a look at some live pictures from the White House. Once again, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, will be taking reporter's questions any moment now. We'll bring it to you live once it begins.

President Trump has called the jobs report, at least during the campaign, fake and phony. But at the briefing, you can expect the White House to tout the latest numbers just released today. It shows the U.S. added a very healthy 235,000 jobs in February. The unemployment is ticked down a little bit to 4.7 percent from 4.8 percent.

Our Money correspondent, Cristina Alesci, is here to break down the numbers for us.

Cristina, the administration can tout these figures but that - but can they actually claim credit for the president for these good numbers?

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Unclear, Wolf. You know, you have the president actually re-tweeting some of these positive headlines today. But what's really important is to put them in historical perspective here.

February is usually a very strong month for jobs. If you look back the last three Februarys in a row, we've had almost the same rate of growth, the same number of jobs created every February for the last three. So unclear how much credit he can take. Also, you pointed out, the unemployment rate is at 4.7 percent. Well, we've been below 5 percent for nearly a year now.

So this trend has been going on for quite some time. That's not going to prevent probably President Trump from taking credit for it. He actually also may point to very strong growth in construction jobs. You're talking about 58,000 jobs added. That's pretty strong. Some economists say that may have been because of the warmer weather.

But, look, no doubt about it, it's early in the Trump administration. Some conservative economists are saying we have to see if he's able to implement some of the growth policies that he's talking about. But if he keeps up this number over the next couple of months, he is on track to deliver that 25 million jobs, those 25 million jobs that he so consistently speaks about.

[13:25:20] BLITZER: Cristina Alesci with the latest numbers for us. Cristina, thank you very much.

Let's talk about jobs reports, health care, a lot more. Joining us now, Democratic Congressman Scott Peters. He's on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which approved legislation in the GOP's health care bill yesterday.

We can get to that in a moment. But does the president deserve credit for these good jobs numbers in February?

REP. SCOTT PETERS (D), CALIFORNIA: Well, I'm sure he'll claim it's a wonderful picture that he painted, but really I think we're all interested in, is can he implement those growth policies that he talked about. That's what I think people are optimistic about to the extent they're optimistic. Let's work together and do tax reform and infrastructure and keep it going.

BLITZER: Because the markets -

PETERS: But it's great news.

BLITZER: The markets have been impressive since his election on November 8th.

PETERS: Right.

BLITZER: The Dow Jones is going up. The S&P is going up. There seems to be a lot of confidence in potential policies he's going to try to push through. PETERS: Right. And there's a lot of optimism that in a new

administration we'll get - we'll get a lot done. And certainly I'm ready to work with him on those job creating growth strategies. It's just a matter of time to see whether he can actually accomplish that.

BLITZER: You're ready to work in terms -

PETERS: I'm absolutely ready to work.

BLITZER: A trillion dollar infrastructure piece of legislation. You're - a lot of Democrats would love that.

PETERS: Well, I think a lot of Americans would love the jobs it would create and the things it would do for trade. Yes, I think there's a lot of (INAUDIBLE).

BLITZER: But that's an area where there can be - what about tax cuts?

PETERS: Tax - I think tax reform is something that we want. We know that we're uncompetitive internationally. We know that we have a lot of money stranded overseas. A lot of Democrats, like me, want to work with him on that, too.

BLITZER: Because he wants to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent maybe down to 20 percent. Are you with him on that?

PETERS: Possibly. You have to get rid of a lot of the loopholes and the, you know, the deductions. And we've been talking about streamlining it for a long time. I'm ready to go.

BLITZER: On healthcare, you see their effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. The Democrats I think uniformly oppose all of this. You're among the Democrats. You oppose it, right?

PETERS: Absolutely. It was a terrible - we sat in a 27 hour hearing this week and we hardly did anything to help the health care situation. Look, there's two things that we've talked about. A lot of Republicans told stories about increased premiums. Democrats told stories about people who are relying on health care to take care of their families, their kids and it's brought a lot of coverage to a lot of people.

The deal that they propose in estimated now by Standard & Poor's, which is not a left wing organization, a Wall Street organization, throw 10 million people off coverage. Brooking Institution, a non- partisan think tank, 15 million estimated off coverage. Plus we just saw the Molina Healthcare CEO say that we're going to see the individual market, the prices in the individual market rise by 30 percent because there's no incentive for the young people - less incentive for young, healthy people to get into the pool.

BLITZER: The Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, they're supposed to come out with their estimate on Monday.

PETERS: Yes.

BLITZER: But you already hear officials at the White House saying, look, their numbers have been way wrong in the past.

PETERS: Right.

BLITZER: You've heard some of the Republican leaders in the House say their numbers - don't, you know, don't waste your time looking at that CBO. Your reaction?

PETERS: Yes. Well, think about what you just said. We have - we could have waited until Monday to hear what the Congressional Budget Office said about what this is going to cost the American taxpayer and who it's going to cover and who it's not going to cover. That was information we could have had waiting just until this Monday, but we had to ram this through on a bill that was declassified basically on Monday. It got no hearings. And so the notion that there's some sort of bipartisan effort, I think that's out the window. But the real issue is that people haven't had a chance to look at this and really - and really talk about it, really address what we should be doing to fix where the health care system needs help. We're just returning through with this thing, which the more and more we learn about it, opposition from doctors, the American Medical Association, the Hospital Association, AARP, speaking up for seniors, Catholic Charities, nobody seems to like this.

BLITZER: You think it can pass?

PETERS: You know, that's up to Republicans. It won't get any Democratic votes, although many of us would like to fix the problems in the existing health care system. We want to make the system better. I don't know -

BLITZER: Was there any outreach to Democrats at all -

PETERS: Zero.

BLITZER: In coming up with this legislation?

PETERS: Zero. Zero. And the justification for that is that's what happened in 2009. But that's the -

BLITZER: When Obamacare was introduced.

PETERS: Yes. Yes. But if your kids -

BLITZER: It was passed strictly on - among the Democrats.

PETERS: Yes. Yes, and that's fine. Sixty percent of Congress - almost 57 percent of Congress wasn't here then. We're all new. But that's also, you know, that's the kind of justification for bad behavior that you hear from your child when they say, well, he started it. The American people deserve better than that. They deserve a bipartisan approach that's open, that looks for real solutions, And we didn't get it this week and it doesn't look like we're going to get it on the House floor.

BLITZER: Scott Peters, the Democrat from California, thanks very much for coming in. PETERS: Thanks so much, Wolf.

BLITZER: Appreciate it.

PETERS: You bet. Thank you.

BLITZER: We'll have you back.

Take a look at this. Once again, we're getting some live pictures from the White House Briefing Room. The press secretary, Sean Spicer, he's going to take to the lectern momentarily, start answering reporters' questions.

[13:29:55] We'll be right back.

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