Latest / INSIGHT TODAY / Former ethics czar slams Trumps grift 'The ultimate guardrail is the American people'

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Former ethics czar slams Trumps grift 'The ultimate guardrail is the American people' · INSIGHT TODAY

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  Speaker 1: At Democracy Defenders Fund. We've targeted each one of these
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: corrupt actions with one or another form of legal activity.
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  Speaker 1: For example, that golden Katari plane, we filed a complaint
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  Speaker 1: with the GAO Independent Agency to take a look at
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  Speaker 1: what has happened here and to block that. With Crypto,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes you need to be in the court of law alsia,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes you need to be in the court of public opinion.
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  Speaker 1: With Crypto, we've led the way in exposing the stunning
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  Speaker 1: amount of wealth. And then it's not only the new
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  Speaker 1: fangled digital corruption, also old fashioned real estate deals in
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  Speaker 1: the Gulf, around the world, and I have to say
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  Speaker 1: the ultimate guardrail is the American people and clearly that
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  Speaker 1: eruption on this scale is part of the reason that
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  Speaker 1: President Trump has such historically low approval ratings. We're going
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  Speaker 1: to continue to litigate the issues. It's outrageous, Angelou.
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  Speaker 2: We used to call it conflicts of interest, and the
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  Speaker 2: lines were blurred during the first Trump administration, but this
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  Speaker 2: one has just been flagrant in so many ways. If
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  Speaker 2: you just look at the projects that have been announced
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  Speaker 2: by the Trumps in which he's still profiting. There's hotel
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  Speaker 2: projects in the Maldives, in Oman, in Jordan Dubai a cutter.
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  Speaker 2: Of course when it comes to crypto. We don't even
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  Speaker 2: understand the full extent of how many, potentially billions of
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  Speaker 2: dollars the Trumps have made for themselves in just these
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  Speaker 2: first ten months. How do you believe that this message
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  Speaker 2: can effectively be conveyed that the Trumps are not divesting
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  Speaker 2: from their assets here in a way that goes beyond
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  Speaker 2: conflicts of interest to that point of corruption.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that we're getting close. You know, has
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  Speaker 3: to be his own people turning on him, right, I mean,
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  Speaker 3: and you know, obviously there's norm pointed out. There has
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  Speaker 3: to be this steady effort in pressure and push to
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  Speaker 3: hold accountability, to raise these stories into the consciousness of
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  Speaker 3: But we're not there, and I don't know if that'll happen,
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  Speaker 3: probably closer to twenty twenty eight, to be honest. It's
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  Speaker 3: got to reach the fever pitch. Right now, it's just
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  Speaker 3: kind of percolating. The water is not boiling yet. But
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  Speaker 3: and here's partly why Trump inoculated himself against this, you know,
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  Speaker 3: part of his story. You know, we think about tough
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  Speaker 3: and all these other things. One of the things that
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  Speaker 3: he told pretty early on was said, yeah, I break
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  Speaker 3: the rules sometimes, you know, Yeah, but because I'm smart.
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  Speaker 3: And the other part of his story was I'm uncorruptible. Yeah,
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  Speaker 3: I'm gonna do some stuff to make money, but that's
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  Speaker 3: me being clever. That's capitalism, that's American dream. But you
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  Speaker 3: can't buy me. I'm a billionaire already, and that's actually
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  Speaker 3: pretty intuitive for most Americans, Like, what's somebody gonna do
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  Speaker 3: bribe a billionaire? It's like, well, that doesn't make any sense.
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  Speaker 3: So he was pretty open about that in the lead
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  Speaker 3: up to his first term. Now, he didn't do as
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  Speaker 3: much corruption, right, there wasn't as heavy as an ATTENSEI
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  Speaker 3: of a grift, and that's the difference maker. It was
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  Speaker 3: very small on the edges. And the second part is
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  Speaker 3: that his family didn't do it in such a brazen
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  Speaker 3: and clear cut way. So the crypto things, for example,
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  Speaker 3: that Norm was pointing to before, the right wing media
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  Speaker 3: has largely been advocating for that or defending it, and
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  Speaker 3: as an illustration, Fox hasn't covered the controversy at all.
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  Speaker 3: The three segments that they've done on it, two were
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  Speaker 3: with his sons promoting the crypto scheme. So you know
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  Speaker 3: that we're not there yet. The right wing media has
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  Speaker 3: to turn on, and that's when it'll start to rot
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  Speaker 3: from the inside. And that's where I just think it
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  Speaker 3: has to be a steady drum beat the more his
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  Speaker 3: popularity goes down, and then there needs to be some
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  Speaker 3: knives out to start going against Trump. Is the piece
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  Speaker 3: of fit. Corruption is going to be a twenty twenty
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  Speaker 3: eight theme. My guess is that Vance is going to
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  Speaker 3: be the one ultimately leading the charge on that.
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  Speaker 4: And this is why Angelo's my guy on this stuff.
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  Speaker 5: It just it just clarifies it so so succently, norm
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  Speaker 5: and the reality of everything that our friends just said,
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  Speaker 5: there is this get on the grift train, the grift city, because.
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  Speaker 4: That's what it's about. You're either gonna You're either gonna
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  Speaker 4: be in a space where you're gonna benefit or you're
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  Speaker 4: gonna be in a space where you don't. And the
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  Speaker 4: people who are benefiting are the Trumps and the millionaires
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  Speaker 4: and billionaires who who are right in the checks that
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  Speaker 4: we don't know because we can't see we turn down
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  Speaker 4: the East Wing, but we don't know who's paying for it.
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  Speaker 4: We don't know how much it's gonna cost, right, But
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  Speaker 4: you know, it's all good because Trump's doing it. And
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  Speaker 4: so if that becomes the attitude, the only result is
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  Speaker 4: what we're seeing play out. Money that should be diverted
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  Speaker 4: to taking care of people who need better health care,
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  Speaker 4: right who need resources to educate their children. They're left out.
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  Speaker 4: And so I guess too, to Angelo's point, at some
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  Speaker 4: point this becomes a boil. I don't I don't know
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  Speaker 4: if the boiling starts inside of the right wing media,
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  Speaker 4: because they're part of the grift train. They're not going
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  Speaker 4: to cut themselves off from that. We've seen that from
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  Speaker 4: the podcast community, from the on air TV community. So
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  Speaker 4: it's left to people. It's left to people like you
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  Speaker 4: and organizations like yours to turn the temperature up.
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  Speaker 1: Well, if you look at the issues that are driving
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  Speaker 1: the American people and pushing that Trump pulling down to
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  Speaker 1: historic lows, what are they?
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  Speaker 4: Number one?
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  Speaker 1: Affordability, Number two healthcare, and number three corruption and the
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  Speaker 1: affordability crisis that we face. And the healthcare crisis is
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  Speaker 1: driven by the corruption. Why did we give away billions
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  Speaker 1: of dollars to the already wealthy in the Trump Bill,
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  Speaker 1: the Big Ugly Bill, at the same time tear away
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  Speaker 1: healthcare the American people are not stupid. They're aware of that.
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  Speaker 1: They don't like it. They see these developments. So I
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  Speaker 1: think that that animus is already there. Donald Trump was
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  Speaker 1: not elected to serve his personal interest. He was elected
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  Speaker 1: to serve the public interest. And I think people are
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  Speaker 1: very upset about it, and the boiling is already beginning.
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  Speaker 6: I mean, come on, Angela, I mean, he's out there
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  Speaker 6: telling people it's time to ration pencils, like the idea
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  Speaker 6: that what applies to him need not apply to everyone else.
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  Speaker 6: I almost have to wonder if some of this would
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  Speaker 6: be forgiven if the economy were booming. People felt like
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  Speaker 6: they were getting theirs and they felt like he were
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  Speaker 6: focused on delivering for them. But he's not even doing that.
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  Speaker 3: Angelo, You're right, and I don't want to be cliv
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  Speaker 3: Kapalier about it. It's a certain outrageous I just what
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  Speaker 3: I want to just really underscore is that these people
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  Speaker 3: live in a different world. You know, there's a thirty
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  Speaker 3: plus percent of his in so that you can't reach
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  Speaker 3: unless somebody like you know, somebody like a Sean Hannity
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  Speaker 3: or Fox News or some talk radio host talks about it.
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  Speaker 3: Because you know, people have been going after Trump with
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  Speaker 3: scannals and complaints and cries. People just they don't believe it.
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  Speaker 3: They think everything that's said about him is nonsense. It
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  Speaker 3: has to, it has to in a way, the truth
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  Speaker 3: in a strange way, has to strangely be laundered or
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  Speaker 3: at least packaged and distributed like you know, like a
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  Speaker 3: pill and a piece of cheese for a dog, you know,
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  Speaker 3: for his audience, and it has to go through that vehicle.
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  Speaker 3: So to Norm's point, we have to create the pressure
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  Speaker 3: on the outside for people that live in reality but
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  Speaker 3: in the alternative universe, the part that actually has political
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  Speaker 3: consequences to shake things up and to deliver real accountability,
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  Speaker 3: because that's his backstop, that's his political power. The fact
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  Speaker 3: that that thirty percent still thinks that he's basically Paul
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  Speaker 3: Bunyan two point zero and can do no wrong. It's
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  Speaker 3: even though he's doing all this wrong, because they just
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  Speaker 3: haven't heard it yet, and also they think there's a
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  Speaker 3: possibility that they may get some you know, and because
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  Speaker 3: the things they're hearing about these things is it is
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  Speaker 3: you know, he's they're buying ads, they're out there promoting it.
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  Speaker 3: You can buy some of that crypto you know, you
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  Speaker 3: can get in on one of these things. It's just
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  Speaker 3: it's not there yet. And I don't want to be clinical,
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  Speaker 3: but your point is it's there. He's saying all the
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  Speaker 3: wrong stuff and every once in a while it blows back. Right.
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  Speaker 3: He didn't pay himself. Is that two hundred million dollars
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  Speaker 3: for his legal fees because the right wing media cannibalized
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  Speaker 3: him for that. No one defended him within the right media,
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  Speaker 3: and he's shut up about that. He hasn't said he's
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  Speaker 3: going to pillage the coffers again. He realized that was
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  Speaker 3: a bridge too far. And I think that, to me
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  Speaker 3: is the illustration that I go back to, is that
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  Speaker 3: what was the thing that actually changed his behavior once
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  Speaker 3: it penetrated the right wing really fast, because it actually
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  Speaker 3: got right to his audience and they were like, no,
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  Speaker 3: we're not having it. You're not telling us to buy
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  Speaker 3: less Christmas presents and then writing yourself at two hundred
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  Speaker 3: dollars million dollar check with tax pair of dollars. So
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  Speaker 3: there is this moment. You know, he's creating more tension,
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  Speaker 3: and that means when that boot, when that band snaps,
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  Speaker 3: it's going to be much more intense and big