Bernie Sanders talks about Elon Musk and the billionaire class
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Hi everyone and welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. I'm your host, Will Walden. And if you're new here, this is a show all about Elon Musk and his groundbreaking work that he's doing with his various companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and of course, X.

And before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to share a quick insight from our show's analytics. It turns out that 45% of you listening right now are subscribed to the show, and thank you for that. But that means that 55% of you are not.

So I'm offering you a deal. I promise to do everything in my power to keep bringing you the latest and most interesting news about Elon Musk every single day and about his companies if you'll do me one favor and hit the subscribe or follow button on your podcast platform right now. That's it. Pretty simple and straightforward. It takes just a second for you, but it makes a huge difference for the show. One of the great progressive trade union leaders in America.

So brothers and sisters, we got some problems in this country. We have an administration that is leading us to oligarchy, an administration that is leading us to an authoritarian form of society, and an administration that is leading us toward kleptocracy.

And what I see happening, and I was just in Kenosha yesterday, we were in Altoona, Wisconsin earlier today, I see this incredible, do you know how many people we have here? We've got a bunch of rooms. We've got over 6,000 people. So what I see happening all over America is people, not just Democrats or independents, but Republicans as well, saying we fought back.

For too long and too many people died for democracy. We're not going down with him. You know, it's a funny thing that we are right here in Abraham Lincoln High School. And I thank the high school for allowing us to use their facilities. So I want to tell you a little story. In Vermont, on Memorial Day, I usually go to a parade, a beautiful parade, one of the largest in the state.

in a town called Vergennes, Vermont, in the northern part of the state. And at the end of the parade, people assemble at the town green and people give speeches. And the organizers always bring up some kids from the high school to say a few words. And what they ask the kids from the high school to say, one of the speeches, is to recite Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. You all remember that?

Let me remind you what he said because it was really prescient and it was really quite extraordinary. Here he was in 1863, I think it was a few days after the terrible Battle of Gettysburg, thousands and thousands, maybe tens of thousands of soldiers had died in the fight against slavery. And he looks out on that field and this is what he says, and you'll all remember this. He said,

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people of the people, shall not perish from the earth. That is why we are here today.

We're here today to, in fact, make sure that after so many people in our country have fought and died for democracy, that we are going to stay a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And I want to tell you what we are up against, because you've got to know what this struggle is about, and I think you all do. And I want you to think back just six or so weeks ago when Donald Trump was inaugurated.

Now, think about who the people were. Now, I had a box seat. For whatever reason, I got pushed to the front of that. So I was like three feet away. And right behind Trump, sitting behind him, were the three wealthiest people in America. Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, and Mr. Zuckerberg. That's not all. Behind them were 13 other billionaires who Trump nominated for

to head major government agencies. In other words, they weren't hiding anything. They were telling the American people and the world that instead of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, we have now become a government of the billionaire class, for the billionaire class, and by the billionaire class. That is what, brothers and sisters, we are taking on.

And I want to say something that I really fully do not understand. Maybe we have some psychiatrists in the audience. And I mean that seriously, who can help us here? Because look, everybody wants to make money. Everybody wants to live comfortably. Nothing new about that. In this country today, in Vermont, breaks my heart, and I'm sure in Michigan, we have major addiction problems, right? We all know people...

who are addicted to drugs and what's happening to their lives. We know people who are alcoholic. We know people who smoke too much, people who are overweight, eat too much, people who have addictions. But I will tell you what the most serious addiction is in this country. Boy, it's a smart group of people. That's right. It is the addiction of greed by the billionaire class. Now, you might think...

that if somebody had a few hundred million dollars, had their own jet plane, had their own island or whatever these guys do, it might be enough. But it is never enough. They are addicted to more and more and more, and they don't care how many people they step over in order to satisfy their greed. And right now,

what they are in the process of trying to do, and that's why I'm here in Warren to stop them. What they want to do is at a time when we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had, when the billionaire class, the people on top, have never, ever, ever had it so good, what they want to do is give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1%, and they

by cutting $880 billion from Medicaid, over $200 billion from nutrition and other programs that the working class of this country needs. So in other words, this is the Robin Hood proposal in reverse. Instead of taking from the rich, giving to the poor, they're taking from the poor and giving them to the rich. We ain't gonna let that happen.

And I want to explain for a moment what $880 billion in Medicaid means. It means that when in the midst of a health care crisis, millions of children will be thrown off of the health insurance they have. If you have a mom or a dad in a nursing home or somebody who may need nursing home, understand

The two out of three people in nursing homes get there through Medicaid payments. Cut Medicaid is going to be harder to get people into nursing homes. Quality of care will deteriorate. We have 32 million people in community getting their health care at community health centers, something that I've worked very hard on, primary health care.

40% of the revenue for community health centers comes from Medicaid. Slash Medicaid, it'll be harder for millions of people to get the primary care, the dental care, the vision care that they need. We are not going to allow them to slash Medicaid in order to give tax breaks to the rich.

The reason we are in Warren and we're in Kenosha and we're in Altoona is that all of these congressional districts have Republican members of Congress who won by a very slim vote. Your Congressman is Mr. James, John James. Apparently you know Mr. James. So my request of Mr. James is very simple, you know. I'm from Vermont and I am here doing a town meeting in Warren, Michigan.

Mr. James, I think your constituents here in Warren would love to do a town meeting with you. And I think that town meeting should be respectful. People, he has the right to make his case. Let him speak. You have the right to ask him questions. And I think the question that is most on people's minds is,

is why would any member of Congress vote for massive tax breaks for billionaires and then cut Medicaid, education, and nutrition? But Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump are not only going after Medicaid and nutrition programs, they're going after Social Security.

I think I speak for every member of the Senate in telling you that we get calls every single day from seniors, people with disabilities, saying, I'm trying to reach Social Security. I've got a problem. I want to talk to somebody. It's taken forever to do that. In fact, shamefully so.

Some 30,000 people die every year waiting for an understaffed Social Security. They are way understaffed today to approve disability benefits. You got that? So people are sick, they're on disability, takes them forever to get their issue dealt with, and they die in between. What Musk and Trump are proposing are massive cuts,

to Social Security staffing, which would make it harder for people to get their claims addressed. That would mean more people will die. That is not acceptable. And I'll tell you what else they are trying to do. One of the honors of my Senate life was I chaired for a while the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.

And I'm very proud of that, and I had the opportunity to meet people, great veterans, not only from Vermont, but all over the country. And I think no matter what your political view may be, I think there is nobody or very few people in America who would disagree that when a man or a woman puts their lives on the line to defend us, we honor our commitment to those veterans. But at the behest of Mr. Musk...

The VA has announced that they intend to lay off 83,000 employees of the veterans. That will mean for veterans to go into VA health care, a deterioration in the quality of care they get. For veterans who are waiting for their benefits, it will take them longer to get. Now, just yesterday, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the second largest veterans organization in the country, said, quote,

We now call upon VA to reconsider its planned reduction of 83,000 employees. The VFW is right. I call on the Trump administration, rescind that order. We are not going to balance the budget on the backs of our veterans or our seniors. I'll tell you something else.

In their proposal, the Republican proposal, not only do they have $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid, they have $230 billion in cuts to nutrition programs. Now you tell me, in what universe, in what world, in what religion is it acceptable to give tax breaks to the very richest people and cut food programs for hungry kids?

That is disgusting and grossly immoral. Obviously, one of the ways you dismantle programs is you cut staffing. You cut massive amounts of workers in Social Security and VA. They can't deliver the services that people need. So right now, they are in, Trump and Musk are in the process of laying off hundreds of thousands of federal employees. And put yourself...

We have any federal employees right here? Yeah. All right. And we thank them for their service. When you get fast and reliable internet at Verizon, you can also save on the entertainment you love. Save on your favorite funny flicks, adrenaline rushes, rom-commers, and can't-miss games.

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And I can tell you that, and it's not hard to imagine, you're a federal employee, everyone's on pins and needles. They're wondering, they're going to get a letter from Mr. Musk tomorrow telling them that they're gone. People have worked for years. People have done great work. Gone. Out on the streets. Now, I want you to think for a moment. If Mr. Musk can do this arbitrarily, fire hundreds of thousands of federal employees,

Think about what will happen when the technological revolution of artificial intelligence and robotics really gets hold in this country. Think about it. Everybody knows that this revolution is coming, and that means that many millions of workers in the private sector are going to be displaced. If Musk can simply throw out onto the street

for no decent reason, hundreds of thousands of federal employees, what do you think they're going to do when robotics and artificial intelligence comes? They're going to replace those workers and they're going to throw them out on the street as well. This is a prelude to what they're going to do in the private sector. And all I happen to believe that technology unto itself is not a bad thing. If it can work,

result in increased worker productivity, that's great. But what we want to make sure is that workers benefit from that worker productivity increase. We'll watch CEOs all over this country say, hey, we've got a machine to replace you. We don't need you anymore. You're out on the street. Now, what we are up against is not only the incredible greed

of the billionaire class. We're up against something that we really have never experienced in this country. And I'm not going to stand up here and tell you with a straight face that politicians never lie, never stretch the truth a little bit. Occasionally that happens. But what we're up against right now, and this is enormously important, is we're up against a phenomenon that we have never seen, and that is the big lie.

The big lie is not just stretching the truth. The big lie is not just fibbing. The big lie is creating a parallel universe, a set of ideas that either have no basis in reality or in the great scheme of things are nowhere near the most important concerns that the American people have.

What some of these people on the right are doing is saying outrageously false statements. They say it over and over again, and then they have the right-wing social media blast it out to hundreds of millions of people until people actually believe it.

And then, rather than having the kinds of discussions and debate that we should have in a democratic society, what are the issues? You have your view. I have my view. Let's debate. Let's come up to some consensus or we'll vote on it, whatever it may be. We spend half our lives trying to refute outrageous lies. Let me just give you a few examples, which you're familiar with. Trump claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

and that he won by a landslide. A lie. All of you remember the terrible January 6th insurrection where they tried to prevent... Well, Trump claimed that that was a day of love, and by the way, pardon all of those insurrectionists. Trump has claimed that millions and millions of undocumented people vote in American elections. A lie.

Trump has claimed that climate change is a hoax originating in China, Iran. And very recently, Trump has claimed that Ukraine started the horrific war with Russia. And I'll give you an idea how bad this is. A couple of months ago, and I was involved in this, there was what we call in Washington a continuing resolution of CR, keep the government going.

And people, Democrats and Republicans, worked together for months. And we had, I was chairman of the Health Education Committee, a lot of provisions in there which would have cut the cost of prescription drugs, would have expanded health care, et cetera, et cetera. We were involved in that debate. Anyhow, months and months of discussion, debate, arguments, finally an agreement was reached. Literally the day before that was going to be voted on and passed in the House,

Mr. Musk sent out on Twitter emails that said there was a 43% increase in salaries for members of Congress. Tell your member of Congress not to vote for it. They're going to get a 43% increase. A total lie. It was a 3.4 inflation. That's all it was. Percent increase. Total lie. And as a result of what Musk did and the emails that he sent out,

Republicans refused to go forward and that bill died. And it doesn't stop. If some of you have heard Trump's State of the Union speech, he claimed he picked up on something that Musk had started, and that is, you all heard, millions, zillions of people who are 200, 150 years of age, 500 years of age, they're all receiving social security benefits. All right, I got two questions. Why would he do that?

What is the thing? No. What is, if you say to people, the average American, you know, that social security system is really corrupt. You got all these people there, 200 years of age. They're getting it. It's all corrupt. What is the goal? All right. I can raise one verse and raise the other. I can't hear anybody. Yeah. It's right. Yes. Yes. What else you got? Yep. That's right. All right. All of this stuff.

is to tell you give up on your government. Government can't do anything. It's all fraud. Social Security is broken. It's fraudulent. Medicare, Medicaid, it's all. And if you do that, what is the end result? The privatization of everything. You're going to give all this stuff over to large corporations. So the truth is, the truth is that well over 99%

of Social Security checks are going out to the people who earned those checks. 70 million people and nobody who is 150 or 200 gets a Social Security check. Absolute lie. Now, the purpose of all this lying is not just to push his right-wing ideology. It's more than that.

It is, and this is big stuff that we got to stay on. What they are trying to do is deflect attention away from the real issues, the very serious issues that the working class of this country is facing. And those are issues that Musk and Trump do not want to address because it's not in their financial interest to do so. So as a case in point,

Trump gave his State of the Union speech. It went on for about 28 hours. It was the longest State of the Union, I think it was 100 minutes. And in his 100 minutes, this is what is extraordinary. It's not what he said, it's what he didn't say. He spoke for over an hour and a half, and he almost completely ignored the issues that

that are keeping working families up at night as they worry about how they are going to survive in these very difficult times. So let's do something radical. You ready to do something radical? Let's do what President Trump did not do. Let us take a real look at what is going on in America today, okay? We are the richest country. We are the richest country.

in the history of the world. But you know what? 60%, six zero percent of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. Now, unlike Trump, I grew up in a family that lives paycheck to paycheck. And I know a little bit about that, as I expect many of you do. So what does living paycheck to paycheck mean?

Tell me. Raise your hands. It'd be loud. Yes, right here. It means surviving. How you survive. Yes. It means little money. What is it? Yes. Stress. Hold it one at a time. Yeah. Survival. Exhaustion. Fear. Fear of what? A fear of everything. What? Medical care. Yes, ma'am. No money for emergencies. Yes. Making difficult choices. Ma'am.

Okay. All right. Right there. Yeah. No future. All right. Here is the reality. And I think you've all said it in a few minutes. Millions of Americans today are wondering how they're going to be able to pay their rent and what happens if the landlord raises their rent. What do they do?

where your rents are going up all over the country. What do you do with the landlord raising your rent? You got to move? Where are you going to move to? You got to take your kid out of school? Where's it going to go? She's going to go. People are worried that your child or your parent becomes sick. You can't afford to take that person to a doctor or you cannot afford the prescription drugs that your mom or your kid may need. What's going on today in America is people are worried. Just something as simple as basic.

Your car breaks down. You got an old car, right? Your car breaks down. And the guy at the repair shop says it's going to cost you a thousand bucks to get it fixed. Now what happens if you don't have the thousand bucks? You can't get your car fixed. If you can't get your car fixed, you can't get to work. If you can't get to work, you're going to lose your job. If you lose your job, how are you going to survive? That's because millions of people don't have a thousand dollars in the bank.

In America today, and this is a remarkable, remarkable fact, it is not just that our life expectancy, you all know what life expectancy, how long we live. It's about four years shorter than people in other wealthy countries. And we should wonder why that is so. But here's something that is never talked about. Now, I want to throw that out to you. I want you to digest it. If you are working class in this country,

your life expectancy on average will be seven years shorter than if you are wealthy. Do you all understand what that is about? That means that being working class in this country in many respects is like a death sentence. You're rich, you're going to live a long life, you're working class, seven years shorter. Why is that? A stress. What stress is about stress is not some concept, oh, we're stressed out,

Stress is a physiological reaction. Doctors frame it as the disease of poor people who have to struggle every single day. Stress wrecks your body and it has a terrible impact on your mind. If you have to worry every single day, how are you going to survive? How do I feed the kids? How do I pay the rent?

What happens if I get a call that I have to be at work at midnight for the midnight shift? You add all that together, people are living on pins and needles day after day, year after year. Stress kills. And in the richest country in the history of the world, millions of people should not have shorter lives than they otherwise should because of the economy that we have.

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We are all proud. I think we wake up in the morning. We know it. It's part of who we are as Americans. We are proud that we are the longest standing democracy in the world. And we are proud. We are proud. And I mean this sincerely, that all over the world, people read our Declaration of Independence. They read the Constitution and they say, you know what? That's what we want our country to be like, a country that is free, a country that is democratic.

But I have to tell you that for the first time in our 250-year history, we have a president who is turning his back on democracy and allying us with authoritarianism. No, Mr. President, Ukraine did not start this war. No, Mr. President, Zelensky is not a dictator. Vladimir Putin is.

We must not abandon the people of Ukraine who were invaded by Putin. This country must stand for democracy, not dictatorship. And there is another issue that I have worked long and hard on, and that is, as all of you know,

There was a terrible attack by Hamas against Israel. 1,200 innocent people were killed. Israel had a right to respond. But Israel did not have the right to wage an all-out war against the Palestinian people. And as a result of that all-out war, 45,000 people, most of whom

most of whom are women and children are dead and as a result of that war well over 100,000 have been injured and as a result of that war the infrastructure, the healthcare, the schools, the water systems, the wastewater plants in Gaza have been virtually destroyed. Now tragically

Trump wants to follow Biden's very mistaken policy and provide more weapons to Netanyahu's right-wing extremist government. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that Netanyahu does not get those arms. And while we have got to be very vigilant every day as to what Trump and Musk and these guys are doing and fight back,

That is not good enough. It's not good enough just to be on the defense. We have got to play offense as well. And here is a secret that the corporate media will not tell you. And that is the progressive agenda is wildly popular all over this country. It is exactly what the American people want. And at the top of the list,

Whether you're a Democrat, Republican, Independent, you know that we have a corrupt campaign finance system. This is America. Billionaires should not be allowed to buy politicians. It is beyond insane, beyond insane that Musk was able to contribute $270 million to Trump's campaign and then his reward?

He becomes the most powerful person in the government. But it is not just Musk, it is not just Musk and Republicans, it is Democratic as well. We need to end this disastrous and corrupt campaign finance system. We need to overturn the Citizens United decision. And we need to move to public funding of elections.

Billionaires should no longer be able to buy elections. And I'll tell you something else that the American people, Democrats, Republicans, Independents feel strongly about. At a time of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, they don't want the billionaire class to get another nickel in tax breaks.

When many millions of our people are trying to survive on starvation wages, the American people understand we've got to raise that federal minimum wage. Today, an abysmal $7.25 to a living wage, at least $17 an hour. All over America. We've got any trade unionists here? People in unions, raise your hand. All right, thank you.

All over this country, workers know that if they're going to earn decent wages, benefits and working conditions, you've got to have a union at your back. Unions have never been more popular than they are right now. But what's going on is that many of these corporations are acting illegally in trying to prevent workers from joining a union.

They're threatening them, they're threatening to move the plant to China, take them in back rooms and doxorinate them, all of which is illegal. That is why we've got to pass legislation I just reintroduced called the PRO Act that punishes companies to act illegally when workers are on the union. If you can believe it, hard to believe, but it is true, 22% of seniors in America are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less.

Half of seniors trying to get by on $30,000 or less. No, Mr. Trump, we aren't going to cut Social Security. We're going to expand Social Security benefits. How many people in this room think our current health care system is working? You're right. We are spending twice as much per person on health care as the people of any other country. Here we've got $85 million uninsured or underinsured. Many of you have large deductibles, right? Yes.

All right. We have 60,000 people a year in America dying because they can't get to a doctor on time. All right. They get sick. They wait. They wait. They walk into the doctor's office. It is too late. The time is long overdue for this country to do what every other major country does, guarantee health care, all people as a human right. I need your help. We're going to reintroduce Medicare for all. Let's get it passed.

Unbelievably, in our broken health care system, one out of four people who get a prescription from their doctor cannot afford to fill that prescription. We pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, sometimes 10 times more than people in other countries.

Congress has got to have the guts to take on big pharma and make sure that we cut prescription drug costs in this country by 50%. And here's another concept which is not radical. It already exists around the world. It is common sense. We live in a competitive global economy. We need the best educated workforce in the world.

It's not just that we need more doctors and nurses and dentists, we need more carpenters and electricians and sheet metal workers. We need more teachers. It is totally insane that when we have a desperate need for skilled workers, educated workers, that young people are going 30, 50, 100 thousand dollars or more in debt to get an education.

Instead of giving tax breaks to billionaires, let's make public colleges and universities tuition break. And despite what Mr. Trump may think, climate change sadly is not a hoax. It is an existential threat. We can create millions of good-paying union jobs by transforming our energy system into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. And by the way,

By the way, when we talk about freedom, and I hear that word a lot in Washington, D.C., you know what freedom means? It means that every woman in this country should have the right to control her own body.

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Now, I know that a lot of folks throughout the country here in Michigan are feeling angry and you're feeling frustrated. And some of you may feel a bit hopeless. So let me say this. At this moment in history, this very difficult moment, despair is not an option. Giving up is not acceptable. That is what the oligarchs want you to do.

So let us never forget real change, the change that we have experienced over the hundreds of years of our nationhood, only occurs when ordinary people stand up against oppression and injustice and fight back. That's how it changes.

Change does not take place from the top on down, it's the bottom on up. And I want you to think in this difficult moment to understand that this is not the first time in American history that we have faced serious, serious challenges. And I want you, and I don't want to be overly romantic here, but I want you to think back to the 1760s, 1770s, where you had these people here in the colonies, then colonies,

And they said, you know what, we want independence. We want to be able to make our own decisions. And they stood up to the entire British Empire, the King of England, the most powerful guy on earth. And you know what? They beat him. I want you to think about the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, people in the abolitionist movement who said, you know what, slavery must be abolished once and for all from this country.

and they were taking on some very powerful people and we were engaged in a horrible, bloody civil war but we prevailed, slavery was abolished. Sean Sain of the UAW was up here a few minutes ago and I was just thinking, I was reading something today about the labor movement. All of you know or know anything about labor history. Been in the early parts of the 20th century. You know, we had kids, little children working in factories

We had workers working seven days a week. We had workers who paid horrible wages. And what workers said, they said, "You know what? We want to form a union." And what the companies would often do is fire these workers. They would have workers beaten up. Sometimes they were workers were killed because they wanted to form a union. I was just reading today, I don't know how many of you know this, that in 1936,

when people were forming the United Automobile Workers. Workers faced enormous opposition from General Motors and the other big automobile companies. You know what workers did? They actually took over GM's factories. They waged a sit-in, and as a result of that, the UAW was formed. As a result of that, other great unions were formed, and the unions helped create the American middle class. They struggled and they won. And we all remember or read about

the extraordinary bravery of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement and their struggle against segregation. We all know the history of the women's movement. Women fought and died for the right to vote, for the right to control their own bodies. It was not an easy struggle. And we got the environmental movement and the gay rights movement. In other words,

In other words, nobody, Frederick Douglass said that, nobody ever gives you freedom. You got to fight for it. So yes, the oligarchs are enormously powerful. They have endless amounts of money. They control our economy. They own much of the media. And they have enormous influence over our political system. But from the bottom of my heart,

I believe that if we stand together, we can beat them. You know, Nelson Mandela made a very profound statement. He said, everything is impossible until it is done. You know, like, oh my God, can't happen, it can't happen, then it happens, oh, no big deal, you know, yeah. Well, all right. So, well, I love you too. So what I want you all to appreciate, I want you all to appreciate,

that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, if we stand together, if we do not let the right wing divide us up by the color of our skin or where we were born or our religion or our sexual orientation, if we stand together fighting for an agenda that works for the working class of this country, nothing can stop us. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's not Bernie, it is you. I'll do my job and you've got to do your job. I've just been informed by a staff member that right here in Warren, Michigan today, we have over 9,000 people of attendance. So I think in addition to this room, we've got an overflow room and an overflow overflow room. And what that tells me

It's the people not only in Michigan and Vermont, but all over this country. We're prepared to stand up. We're prepared to fight, and we're going to win. Thank you.

Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit this subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I'd greatly appreciate it. It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never miss an episode. And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more, go to patreon.com slash stage zero.

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