He is part of a group of extreme right-wing hawks devoid of ethics set to run Trump’s foreign policy team
President-elect Donald Trump named Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his nominee for Secretary of State, an abhorrent choice that shows Trump’s claim to be a peace candidate to be a complete illusion.
The New York Times reported that, since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rubio has “staked out a position as a foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba in particular.”
Supportive of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, 2011 U.S. bombing of Libya and genocidal U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen, Rubio has further expressed unalloyed support for Israel’s war in Gaza, claiming that Hamas was to blame for Palestinian civilian deaths.[1]
The New York Times emphasized that Rubio has been among the most outspoken senators on the need for the U.S. to be more aggressive on China.
While sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee, he demanded that the Biden administration block sales to Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, after it released an artificial intelligence processor chip-powered laptop.
Sanctioned by the Chinese government for supporting an anti-Chinese uprising in Hong Kong, Rubio introduced the “Taiwan Peace Through Strength Act” that would fast-track U.S.-Taiwan military coordination, and has called for Taiwan to increase its defense spending, which is not a majority view in Taiwan.[2]
Zhu Junwei, a former researcher in the People’s Liberation Army and director of American research at Beijing’s Grandview Institution think tank, told the Australian Financial Review that Rubio’s appointment would “be a nightmare coming true.”
Rubio’s selection is also a nightmare for Cubans, given his stature as a leader of Miami’s anti-Castro Cuban expat community.
Falsely claiming that the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime has served as a puppet for Communist China, Iran, and most recently Russia, Rubio’s overriding priority as Secretary of State will be to achieve Washington’s long-standing goal of overthrowing Cuba’s socialist government by expanding on an already crushing embargo, and by supporting dissident movements through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other State Department-linked agencies.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio asserted on the campaign trail that his family came to the U.S. to escape persecution by Fidel Castro’s government. However, a review of government immigration records revealed that Rubio’s parents actually came to Miami in 1956 in order to escape persecution by U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista whom Castro overthrew.
Rubio’s grandfather Pedro Victor Garcia went back to Cuba after the Cuban Revolution to take a job in the Cuban Treasury Ministry, though later had a falling out with the Castro regime.
During Rubio’s 2016 presidential run, The New York Times quoted from a Havana resident living on the street where Rubio’s father grew up who gave Rubio a vigorous thumbs down when asked about him. Héctor Montiel, 66, said that, “if Marco Rubio becomes president, we’re done for. He’s against Cuba in every possible way….Rubio and these Republicans, they are still stuck in 1959.” Echoing similar sentiments, Alain Marcelo, 46, told The New York Times: “He [Rubio] wants to kill us!…Viva Fidel. Rubio’s our enemy!”
Born in 1971, Rubio was an indifferent student who played football at Tarkio College in Missouri before earning degrees from the University of Florida and the University of Miami School of Law.
Rubio’s dishonesty was evident when he claimed to be unaware of his brother-in-law Orlando Cicilia’s direction of a $75 million cocaine smuggling ring from his home in West Kendall, Florida, in the 1980s where Rubio lived as a teenager.[3]
Rubio’s introduction to right-wing politics came as an intern in the office of rabid anti-Cuba hawk Ileana Ros-Lehtinen after working in a law firm run by Al Cardenas, a Cuban-born kingmaker and ally of the Bush family.
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Following his election to the Florida State House, Rubio became a “foot soldier” for then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush who helped him defeat Charlie Crist for a seat in the U.S. Senate.
From the beginning, Rubio’s political career was bankrolled by the billionaire Fanjul family, Cuban exiles supportive of a hard-line policy towards Cuba who owned American Sugar refining, the largest sugar-processing conglomerate in the world.
Over the years, Rubio has done many favors for the Fanjuls, including supporting large government subsidies for their business, keeping wages low, protecting them from being held accountable for abhorrent labor practices, and eviscerating environmental laws that have enabled them to pollute Florida’s Everglades.
During the first Trump administration, Rubio was said to have served as the “virtual Secretary of State for Latin America.”
In this capacity, he supported harsh sanctions and regime-change operations targeting left-wing governments in Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela among others that tried to assert control over their countries’ natural resources and place limits on multi-national corporations.
In an interview with The New York Times about Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Rubio stated: “He’s picked a battle he can’t win. It’s just a matter of time. The only thing we don’t know is how long it will take—and whether it will be peaceful or bloody.”
In 2019, as part of an opening salvo, Rubio recognized rightist Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader, even though Guaidó was largely unknown to the Venezuelan population.
Guaidó is a protégé of Leopoldo López, a notorious right-wing figure with whom Rubio is also close, who triggered violent anti-government protests in Venezuela in 2014.
Journalist Anya Parampil noted that the Trump administration’s step to recognize Guaidó—whom she calls an “imperial incubator baby”—was unprecedented as never before had the U.S. offered legal recognition to a new government before an actual change in leadership had taken place.
The venality of Guaidó and members of his entourage was apparent when money for a planned uprising staged along the Colombia border—to be financed from “humanitarian aid” provided by USAID under the rubric of refugee relief—was embezzled.
Known locally as the “Bay of Piglets” in reference to the bungled CIA-directed invasion of Cuba in 1961, Operation Gideon was another foiled plot led by a former U.S. Green Beret, Jordan Goudreau, to capture and kill Maduro.
Goudreau worked for a Florida-based mercenary company called Silvercorp USA, which was contracted to oversee training and weapons procurement for Operation Gideon.
Rubio tried to legitimate right-wing insurrection by claiming that Maduro headed a criminal syndicate made up of high-ranking military and regime officials involved in a series of illicit operations, ranging from drug trafficking and money laundering to gold smuggling and widespread embezzlement of government funds.
Venezuelans are afraid today that they could be the target of a U.S. military invasion, which Rubio said he would not rule out. Maduro has even requested prayers from the Pope.
Other left-leaning Latin American leaders may also need prayers. Rubio supported a violent coup attempt against Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega and Bolivian socialist leader Evo Morales, and has characterized Brazilian leader Lula da Silva as “the latest far-left leader who whitewashes the criminal nature of the Maduro narco-regime.”[4]
Rubio’s attacks on the Biden administration for adopting a supposedly “weak foreign policy” toward “tyrants in our region” is generally a signal that he will support more aggressive regime-change operations in Latin America that could lead to war.
Hypocritically, Rubio supports the most authoritarian government in Latin America, that of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, which human-rights groups have accused of carrying out arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances, and torture. Salvadoran lawyers documented thousands of cases of innocent people who were caught in the dragnet with no legal recourse as part of Bukele’s overzealous war on crime.[5]
Rubio praised the latter for bringing security to El Salvador that could allow in his view for greater foreign investment, which is the main priority of Rubio and the class that he serves.
Filling Cabinet with Other Hawks
Trump’s selection of Rubio follows a wider pattern of his selecting war hawks despite claims of being a candidate for peace.
For the position of National Security Adviser, Trump has chosen Mike Waltz, a Republican from Florida, a former Green Beret known for taking a tough line on China and Iran and who has repeated Trump’s calls to allow Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza.
An early supporter of the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine, Waltz was one of the few members of Congress to suggest the U.S. send “military advisers” into the country following the February 2014 U.S.-backed Maidan coup that overthrew pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych, and once said he wanted to “take the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine.”
The New York Times reported that, in 2020, in the days after Mr. Trump authorized the drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran, Mr. Waltz was included in a small group of Republicans invited to the White House who received a briefing on the strike.
Having served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, Waltz vehemently opposed President Biden’s withdrawal of troops from there, having stated in 2017 that “the US should be ready to remain in Afghanistan for several generations until the very ‘idea’ of radical Islam is defeated.’”
Trump has selected Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as U.S. ambassador to the UN. Stefanik, a protégé of ultra-conservative former House Speaker Paul Ryan and former aide to George W. Bush, made a name for herself interrogating university presidents for allegedly being too soft on anti-genocide protesters whom she baselessly claimed were anti-Semitic.
Journalist Dave DeCamp described Stefanik as a “hawkish swamp monster whose political career was primed in some of the most odious neo-conservative think tanks in Washington.”
Stefanik’s racist views were evident in her repeated warnings about immigrants “swarming our streets.” She has ridiculously accused the UN of being plagued by “anti-Semitic rot” while proposing blocking funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees at a time of growing desperation of the Palestinian population.
Stefanik’s views on Israel-Palestine parallel those of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Trump’s selection as U.S. ambassador to Israel, who has voiced strong support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Newsweek reported that Huckabee’s selection led to rejoicing among Israel’s right-wing settlers and advocates of Israel’s territorial claims in the occupied West Bank, which Huckabee supports.
An evangelical Christian, Huckabee believes that God granted historic Palestine to Israel, putting him on the same wavelength as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he is close.[6]
For years, Huckabee led paid tour group visits to Israel, which were advertised in conservative news outlets. During his 2008 presidential campaign, Huckabee said that Palestinian identity was “a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”
In 2017, he said that he thought Israel had title deeds to Judea and Samaria, biblical terms for the West Bank that are used by far right-wing proponents of a Greater Israel like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the man currently in charge of Israeli settlements who congratulated Huckabee for his selection on X.[7]
Huckabee is a long-standing war-hawk, having supported the Iraq War when he was governor of Arkansas. In 2007, Huckabee was named by Judicial Watch, a conservative political watchdog group, as the sixth most corrupt politician in the U.S.
Judicial Watch’s report quoted from the Associated Press, which stated that “[Huckabee’s] career has…been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office.”
These comments do not inspire confidence in Huckabee’s leadership qualities, which fit with the debased moral standard one has come to expect from Donald Trump and other politicians in the second U.S. Gilded Age.[8]
New Pentagon Chief Wrote Book with Fascist Sub-Theme
For Defense Secretary, Trump has nominated Fox News host Pete Hegseth, a combat veteran of the Afghan and Iraq Wars and two-time Bronze Star recipient who served as a guard at the infamous Guantánamo Bay torture house, which he defended against criticism.
Heading a Koch Brothers financed veterans organization that tried to “rally the country to complete the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hegseth successfully lobbied for the pardons of Lieutenant Clint Lorance and Major Mathew Golsteyn during Trump’s 1st administration, and pushed support for Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, each of whom were facing charges or convictions related to war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With Hegseth now running the Pentagon, there will likely be limited rules of engagement in combat zones and far fewer military prosecutions for war crimes.
In his book The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Kept Us Free (Northampton, MA: Broadside Books, 2024), Hegseth railed against efforts to expand the diversity of the U.S. military and recruit women and members of the LGBTQ+ community, which he claims has left the military “weak and effeminate.”
Trump said that Hegseth’s book “reveals the leftwing betrayal of our warriors, and how we must return our military to meritocracy, lethality, accountability, and excellence.”[9]
However, a genuine left-wing viewpoint would not prioritize greater diversity in the U.S. military but cuts in military spending and the deployment of the military purely for defensive purposes and not to sustain the U.S. empire.
Hegseth’s book advances a fascist “betrayal narrative” that scapegoats liberals for allegedly undermining the U.S. Armed Forces and their supposedly heroic operations, which Hegseth celebrates in other books he has written.[10]
The Nazis adopted a similar narrative in blaming liberals, Jews and pacifists for undermining the German army in World War I.[11]
In the U.S. case, its Armed Forces have been on the front lines of imperialist wars that have resulted in countless deaths and the ruination of entire countries to the benefit of parasitical military contractors and Wall Street and oil industry billionaires who want to open up foreign countries to economic plunder—something Hegseth, of course, does not discuss.
Hegseth’s promotion of a dangerously nostalgic view of the U.S. military and its supposed past golden age while railing against liberal cultural values is a toxic brew portending disasters yet to come. One of the chapters recycles the tired conservative argument about U.S. soldiers having had their “hands tied by politicians, lawyers and ‘woke’ military leaders,” which Hegseth suggests has prevented them from achieving victory in America’s endless wars.
Hegseth wrote that the wars never end “because we are not allowed to fight [them] properly. We do not bring the enemy to their knees until they will give up. Just look at the pressure on Israel. They need to go into Gaza and kill every member of Hamas. Politicians have their schemes. I make the argument in the book that rules of engagement need to be loosened to kill the bad guys. This is what Trump did against ISIS. We fight an enemy that does not play by the rules.”
These comments reflect an extreme right-wing view that, essentially, advocates for genocide. In another passage Hegseth echoes old colonialist tropes by writing that America’s enemies fight like “savages.”
Hegseth goes on to claim that American enemies have no regard for human life, though American military operations are known to have caused massive loss of life among foreign civilians, whose lives the military has little regard for and U.S. media rarely if ever report on.[12]
As horrible as Hegseth is, it is unlikely that he could do much worse in his new position as General Lloyd Austin, former head of the U.S. Central Command and board member of Raytheon, a leading weapons contractor that Austin rewarded with over $10 billion in Pentagon contracts in just his first six months as Defense Secretary alone.
![General Lloyd J. Austin III at his confirmation hearing. [Source: euractiv.com]](https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/general-lloyd-j-austin-iii-at-his-confirmation-he.jpeg?resize=696%2C392&ssl=1)
Hegseth interestingly wants to rename Defense Department back to its original moniker, the War Department, and implement a 10-year ban on generals working for defense contractors after retiring from the military.
New CIA Director Will Continue Business As Usual
As CIA Director, Trump has nominated John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and House member from Texas who served as a partner in a law firm with John Ashcroft, George W. Bush’s Attorney General who is infamous for his support for torture and evisceration of civil liberties in the so-called War on Terror.
Known for his ultra-conservative voting record in Congress, Ratcliffe supported a bill, signed into law by Barack Obama, establishing greater cybersecurity cooperation between the U.S. and Israel and authorizing the Department of Homeland Security to work more with Israel on border control and maritime and aviation security.
Graduate of Notre Dame and Southern Methodist University, Ratcliffe is a supporter of sweeping government surveillance powers, having lobbied for the extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to spy on American citizens without a warrant.
In 2023, Ratcliffe and several other former Trump officials, including Mike Pompeo and Bill Barr, sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to support the extension.
Dave DeCamp reported that Ratcliffe is known as a Trump loyalist for pushing back against unfounded allegations about Russian election interference in his role at the DNI.
Fitting a tradition of advancing disinformation to whip up the public against a foreign enemy being targeted for regime change, Ratcliffe has pushed claims about Iran allegedly hacking Trump campaign computers and plotting to kill the president-elect, charges Tehran has strongly denied.
Ratcliffe has used the allegations to call for the U.S. to join Israel in taking a harder line against Iran.
Like Rubio, Ratcliffe is also a China hawk and has called for the U.S. to prepare for a “confrontation” with Beijing.
Ratcliffe wrote in an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal in December 2020: “If I could communicate one thing to the American people…it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II.”
Ratcliffe’s selection is a good indication of the Trump administration’s pivot to China and Iran as targets for regime change and war rather than Russia.
A New York Times report highlighted that as DNI Ratcliffe “approved selective declassifications of intelligence that aim[ed] to score political points,” and “made public assertions that contradicted professional intelligence assessments,” which does not inspire confidence that he will end the politicization of intelligence work.[13]
A wild-card appointment by Trump designed to cater to elements of his base that are anti-war is the selection of Tulsi Gabbard as DNI to replace Avril Haines.
Gabbard criticized Kamala Harris during the 2020 Democratic primaries for her hawkish foreign policies and anti-Russia obsession and gave an anti-war speech at the 2023 Rage Against the War Machine rally in Washington, D.C., warning about the dangers of nuclear war breaking out as a result of U.S. military provocations in support of Ukraine.[14]
Abigail Spanberger (D-VI), a former CIA agent who has served three terms in Congress declared in a post on X that she was “appalled” by the selection of Gabbard, stating that “not only is [Tulsi] ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin.”
Notwithstanding these Neo-McCarthyite attacks, Gabbard’s appointment is encouraging compared to the others. But overall, we can expect business as usual at the CIA, Pentagon, and Foggy Bottom in spite of much hullabaloo that Trump was a victim intent on reigning in the “deep state” and spreading peace.
Rubio is also staunchly pro-NATO. Last year, he introduced a bill to prevent a future president from leaving NATO. ↑
In 2020, Rubio met with Taiwan’s then vice president-elect, Lai Ching-te, a member of the Beijing-skeptic Democratic Progressive Party who is reviled in China for being a “separatist.” Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered its gratitude to Senator Rubio and former Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO)., for rejecting Chinese President Xi Jinping’s proposal (or demand) that Taiwan accept “one country, two systems.” ↑
Anya Parampil, Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire, foreword by Jorge Arreaza (New York: OR Books, 2024), 109; Tim Elfrink, “Marco Rubio’s Ties to a Drug-Smuggling Brother-in-Law Were Closer Than Advertised,” Miami New Times, October 26, 2016. Cicilia frequently appeared with Rubio at campaign events. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison but secured early release in 2000. Michael Fisten, a former Miami-Dade homicide detective who wrote a book about the Cicilia case, told Miami New Times that “For anyone to argue that teens or adults living at this time in Miami didn’t know their family members were in the coke business is total horseshit. My own brother was involved in the dope business, and I knew it immediately.” Firsten continued: “There’s just no way you didn’t know. The sudden wealth, the sudden distribution of money to other family members, the new lifestyle from someone who had no real job.” Cicilia’s boss in the drug ring, Mario Tabraue, the son of a Bay of Pigs veteran, was the prototype for Al Pacino’s psychotic character, Tony Montana, in Scarface. ↑
Ironically, Lula made a point of excluding Venezuela from BRICS. Rubio attacked Colombian President Gustavo Petro as a “spokesperson for a criminal drug dictatorship like the one in Venezuela. In order to obtain the support of intermediaries like Maduro and Castro for ‘negotiations’ with the ELN terrorists, Petro is willing to lobby for a vile dictatorship.” ↑
Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern (D) said that there was no equivalent in Latin America to the levels of abuses taking place under Bukele, “not even during the worst years of military dictatorship.” Ilhan Omar (D-MN) wrote in a letter to President Joe Biden that President Bukele was overseeing “the militarized harassment of the legislature, a significant erosion of judicial independence, and the de facto criminalization of civil society.” According to Human Rights Watch, between March and November 2022, El Salvador’s prison population increased from 30,000 to 90,000 detainees. Mass incarceration under Bukele has aggravated historically poor conditions in detention, including extreme overcrowding, violence, and poor access to goods and services essential to rights, such as food, drinking water, and health care. Some of the few people who were released from detention reported inhumane conditions and, in some cases, torture and other forms of ill-treatment. According to Salvadoran authorities, 90 people died in custody during the state of emergency. Authorities have failed to meaningfully investigate these deaths. In some cases, detainees who died in prison did not receive access to the medication they needed, family members said. Human rights Watch wrote that “widespread human rights violations were enabled by President Bukele’s swift dismantling of democratic institutions since taking office in 2019, which has left virtually no independent government bodies that can serve as a check on the executive branch or ensure redress for victims of abuse.” ↑
When he was Governor of Arkansas in the early 2000s, Huckabee justified his support for the Iraq War by claiming that democracy takes a long time to develop among a people long oppressed by a dictator. ↑
During Huckabee’s 2015 run for president, Huckabee suggested that if a Palestinian state were to be created, it should be in neighboring countries like Egypt, Syria or Jordan, rather than within Israel’s borders. Huckabee reiterated that point during a 2015 interview on Israeli TV, in which he argued that a two-state solution was “irrational and unworkable” and said “there’s plenty of land” outside of Israel in the “rest of the world” for a Palestinian state. ↑
Trump’s selection of Steven Witkoff as a Middle East envoy is also fit for the new Gilded Age. Witkoff is owner of a real estate empire worth an estimated $500 million and advocates for lower corporate tax rates. He has been a close friend of Trump for many years. ↑
Trump said during the election campaign that, “on Day One, I will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our U.S. armed forces.” ↑
Hegseth’s book Modern Warriors: Real Stories from Real Heroes (Northampton, MA: Broadside Books, 2020) was the basis for a hit show on Fox News. There are reports that Hegseth has Christian themed tattoos that are adopted by some white supremacist groups. One was emblazoned with the words, “deus vult,” Latin for “God wills it.” This was a battle cry during the Christian Crusades to take back the Holy Land and slaughter Muslims. The tattoo led Hegseth to be flagged as a potential “insider threat” by a fellow service member when he served in the U.S. military. ↑
See Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: NYU Press, 1998) for comparison. ↑
For the lack of regard for civilian casualties in America’s wars, see John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). ↑
In 2016, Ratcliffe was forced to withdraw his nomination to become director of National Intelligence after it was revealed that he had “exaggerated” resume by claiming he was a terrorist-fighting federal prosecutor in East Texas under George W. Bush, even though court records showed no there were “no significant national security prosecutions in that jurisdiction during his tenure.” Ratcliffe also took sole credit for a major crackdown on the employment of undocumented immigrants by a poultry producer when the case was actually “a multistate, multiagency operation.” ↑
Gabbard in her speech said that “the people at the Rage Against the War Machine rally were united in one thing: They valued human life and don’t want to die in a nuclear holocaust.” Gabbard further noted that she had “warned about the danger of the new Cold War during the 2020 Democratic primaries but that, sadly, things have worsened since that time, with the advent of this proxy war with Russia that could easily now turn into a direct and nuclear war.” ↑
He is part of a group of extreme right-wing hawks devoid of ethics set to run Trump’s foreign policy team President-elect Donald Trump named Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his nominee for Secretary of State, an abhorrent choice that shows Trump’s claim to be a peace candidate to be a complete illusion. The New York […]
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Left on Left.” He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency .
The post Marco Rubio an Abhorrent Choice for Secretary of State first appeared on CovertAction Magazine.
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