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Speaker 1: We have a quorum. For this week's minnesot we have

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Speaker 1: Adam Davidson joining us.

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Speaker 2: Great to be with you guys.

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Speaker 1: So this week two Russians were arrested planning to sabotage

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Speaker 1: and attack a US military base in Bavaria. So this

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Speaker 1: is like a real conspiracy. These guys were going to

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Speaker 1: attack and probably kill Americans. And I want to talk

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Speaker 1: about the conspiracy theory for a minute. That why Putin's pacoderms,

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Speaker 1: the Putin wing of the Republican Party, why they think

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Speaker 1: the Russians are still so great Russian television today, said

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Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green. They called her a beauty. If al

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Speaker 1: Qaeda was caught planning explosive attacks or attacks on a

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Speaker 1: US military base, people would be all upset. And I

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Speaker 1: don't think there'd be anybody in the Republican Party that

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Speaker 1: would think that. It's like, hey, that's great, So what

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Speaker 1: is it, Adam and John.

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Speaker 2: I'm actually going to push back on the kind of

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Speaker 2: thing because look at the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia is

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Speaker 2: a complex country. There's a lot going on, but there's

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Speaker 2: zero question that the highly financed of Wahabism around the

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Speaker 2: world is a major cause of al Qaeda and all

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Speaker 2: of the modern terrorist offshoots, and we have lots and

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Speaker 2: lots and lots of super elite people bending over backwards

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Speaker 2: to become friends with Saudi Arabia, even knowing that the reason,

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Speaker 2: whether it's some big golfer or some political figure, that

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Speaker 2: the reason they're making ungodly amounts of money is precisely

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Speaker 2: the al Qaeda attacks. There's no reason why someone would

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Speaker 2: accept hundreds of millions of dollars to start a golf

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Speaker 2: tour if it was not because this is dirty money.

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Speaker 2: You are being complicit. So I'm not making the stronger

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Speaker 2: argument that Mohammed Bin Salomon NBS, the leader of Saudi Arabia,

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Speaker 2: is an active supporter of al Qaeda, but he is

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Speaker 2: an active supporter of a whole bunch of systems that

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Speaker 2: are definitely wildly outside of US interest, and it's just accepted.

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Speaker 2: I have so many friends in Hollywood, as an example,

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Speaker 2: who have been approached for insanely lucrative jobs Jewish friends,

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Speaker 2: by the way, a lot of Jewish friends insanely lucrative

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Speaker 2: jobs to help Saudi Arabia enter Hollywood. There's similar things

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Speaker 2: going on with architecture, with engineering, with on and on

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Speaker 2: and on, and not one of those people I know

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Speaker 2: said a blanket, no friggin way, I'm not interested. So

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Speaker 2: I think that the human brain is a wonderful machine

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Speaker 2: for justifying things. You know, as Sinclair Lewis said, when

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Speaker 2: someone has paid a lot of money for something, it

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Speaker 2: is very hard for them to see anything.

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Speaker 1: Wrong with that's just greed.

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Speaker 2: But it's more than greed. I would say it is

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Speaker 2: an understanding of how the human brain works. That we

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Speaker 2: think of rationality and explanation as a precondition for action,

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Speaker 2: But as I understand it, it actually seems to be

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Speaker 2: a post condition. You know, we do what we do

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Speaker 2: for sex and resources and power, and then our brain

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Speaker 2: comes up with a reason why that was exactly the

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Speaker 2: right thing to do. And so I think that Marjorie

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Speaker 2: Taylor Green and others are part of a very pre

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Speaker 2: out human lineage of doing horrible, horrible things for money

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Speaker 2: or power or resources and then justifying it as the

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Speaker 2: most obvious moral thing to do.

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Speaker 3: Well, Jerry, if the Germans caught two people working for

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Speaker 3: the Russians, how many do you think, really you're doing it?

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Speaker 3: Because if the Germans can pack too, that means there's

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Speaker 3: probably a lot more because the Germans aren't the best

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Speaker 3: at this. I have to say, no, they're not. No

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Speaker 3: that we somebody probably tipped them off.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm just saying yeah. I think there's lots.

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Speaker 3: To Adam's point, though there's also a long history of

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Speaker 3: a poker's just in general politics. You see just in

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Speaker 3: the last few days Mody and India, as he's running

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Speaker 3: for election again, is saying horrific anti Muslim things and

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Speaker 3: spreading anti Muslim hate in India. But we're not going

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Speaker 3: to say anything about that or criticize him because we

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Speaker 3: now would like India to be a bulwark against China.

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Speaker 1: Again. The Russian faction of the Republican Party, I don't

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Speaker 1: think they're doing it for money, are they.

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Speaker 2: First of all, there is a lot of money being

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Speaker 2: poured around, so that is just true. Something like half

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Speaker 2: of Russian wealth has left Russia. We're talking about trillions

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Speaker 2: of dollars. And when I was running Planet Money, this

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Speaker 2: was a thing we would try and convey that it's

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Speaker 2: hard for people to take in the relative size of money.

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Speaker 2: Trillions is real money, that's actually real money. It is

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Speaker 2: real money that can shift the fabric of a political

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Speaker 2: economic system. So when you have trillions of dollars pouring

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Speaker 2: in to the West and you have an ability to

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Speaker 2: access that money in all sorts of ways, you know,

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Speaker 2: Goldman Sachs has been caught. Bank of America has been caught.

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Speaker 2: It just to see has been caught all sorts of ways,

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Speaker 2: legally or illegally. Because the law isn't moral, it necessarily

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Speaker 2: the morality of it finding ways to help both the

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Speaker 2: Russian state at Russian oligarchs, the Russian mob, and John

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Speaker 2: are those three distinct groups?

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Speaker 3: Or no, not necessarily.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. One way to get rich is to create products

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Speaker 2: and services that meet a need of some group and

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Speaker 2: sell it at a competitive price and compete with others

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Speaker 2: in a marketplace to create real value. Another way is

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Speaker 2: to cozy up to dictators and get money and the

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Speaker 2: machinery for getting that money into pockets. There's so many

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Speaker 2: ways to be invited. To be a guest lecturer at

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Speaker 2: this for forty thousand dollars. There are lots of people

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Speaker 2: where I don't see how you explain it other than yes,

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Speaker 2: they're actually getting rich. Some of them might be stupid

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Speaker 2: enough to not realize that they can't also get rich.

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Speaker 3: Let me give you the non money piece of this too,

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Speaker 3: because I think there is a conspiracy here, and you're right,

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Speaker 3: I agree money plays a part of it, but it's

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Speaker 3: very easy, for example, when Jerry's talking about the extreme

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Speaker 3: right to say, oh, they're getting paid off by the Russians.

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Speaker 3: I've never seen any evidence that that's the case. I

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Speaker 3: think they have a political reason to do it, but

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Speaker 3: I do think it's a conspiracy. And the conspiracy is

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Speaker 3: this is when there was a lot of public pressure

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Speaker 3: on Donald Trump when he was running for election in

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Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, claiming that the Russians were supporting him, and

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Speaker 3: the Russians were involved in the DNC hack, and the

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Speaker 3: Russians were doing all sorts of things to spread this

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Speaker 3: to help the Trump campaign. His answer was a conspiracy.

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Speaker 3: He said, no, that's not true. It turns out it

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Speaker 3: was the Ukrainians that were interfering in the American election.

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Speaker 3: If you remember, he said there was a server at

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Speaker 3: the DNC that was owned by Ukrainian company, and therefore

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Speaker 3: it wasn't the Russians at all, and it was the Ukrainians.

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Speaker 3: And he's continued that for period of time. I mean,

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Speaker 3: he said, for example, I even wrote it down quote,

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Speaker 3: Ukraine tried to take me down, and so political followers

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Speaker 3: of him have just followed in line. And since that

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Speaker 3: time there's been efforts to work against Ukraine, to call

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Speaker 3: Ukraine corrupt, to cut back their funding. It took months

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Speaker 3: and months just to get Speaker Johnson to be able

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Speaker 3: to pass a very simple bill that passed in an

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Speaker 3: overwhelming way to support the Ukrainians who've been invaded by

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Speaker 3: the Russians. So I think the conspiracy in that sense

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Speaker 3: is Trump decided he had to take pressure off himself

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Speaker 3: for the Russian stuff. He said it was Ukraine, and

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Speaker 3: therefore all these political people had to say the same

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Speaker 3: if they wanted Trump's backing.

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Speaker 1: Said folks out there thinking, ah, okay, these are three

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Speaker 1: guys who don't like Republicans. I don't think that's true

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Speaker 1: at all. I think if you're looking at Republican members

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Speaker 1: of Congress are saying that Russian propaganda has infected parts

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Speaker 1: of the Republican party. Right, people like Mitch McConnell are

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Speaker 1: saying that Trump personally is responsible for holding up aid

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Speaker 1: to the Ukraine, which has resulted in the death of

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Speaker 1: a lot of Ukrainian soldiers for no reason whatsoever other

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Speaker 1: than American politics.

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Speaker 2: So this is something that's been on my mind for

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Speaker 2: a few years now, as you can tell, because I'm

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Speaker 2: getting all worked up that if you talk to like

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Speaker 2: the most boring economic analysts, this isn't even complicated. It's like, Yes,

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Speaker 2: money has a bunch of uses, and one of the

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Speaker 2: uses is to co opt people in ways that I

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Speaker 2: think we can call a conspiracy, and it's very good

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Speaker 2: at it.

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Speaker 3: Well, there's actually a lot of national security people who

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Speaker 3: run over to Saudi Arabian places. It's hard to turn

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Speaker 3: down money if you haven't had much money in the past.

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Speaker 1: So John, we're not going to broadcast from Riad or

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Speaker 1: Moscow next week.

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Speaker 3: Depends on the price.

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Speaker 2: But here's how it's going to happen. One of us

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Speaker 2: is going to call the others and say, listen, guys,

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Speaker 2: I know this is ridiculous. I know what you're thinking,

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Speaker 2: but listen, there's a real reformer. This guy is the

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Speaker 2: real data and he really sees us.

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Speaker 1: The VLED has turned over a new leaf.

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Speaker 2: I mean, there is a taboo that's been broken. It

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Speaker 2: would have been harder in twenty fourteen, two thousand and seven,

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Speaker 2: it's much easier now. Our dear friend Jan, the former

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Speaker 2: Russian government money launderer, talks about they just were studying

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Speaker 2: and studying and studying how do we get money into

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Speaker 2: the American system.

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Speaker 3: So today's Many episode was great. We didn't get to

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Speaker 3: talk about Tucker Carlson on the Joe Rogan Show. We

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Speaker 3: can do that at another time. Apparently, Tucker on the

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Speaker 3: Joe Rogan Show said that the theory of evolution has

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Speaker 3: now been proven false because of these supernatural beings in

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Speaker 3: the ocean.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the Joe Rogan Show will always give us

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Speaker 1: lots of conspiracy grist for the mill.

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Speaker 3: But our next episode will be with Denver Ringleman. Denver

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Speaker 3: was an investigator with the January sixth Committee and has

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Speaker 3: a lot to say about January sixth and is surrounding that.

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Speaker 3: So join us then,