RNC’s Reince Priebus, Joe diGenova and Grover Norquist joined WMAL on Monday morning.

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, April 13, 2015

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Smith

5am – A/B/C Hillary Jumps Into the 2016 Presidential Race:

• Hillary hits the campaign trail with a road trip to Iowa in the “Scooby Doo van”.  Hillary Clinton has begun her presidential campaign with a 1,000-mile road trip from New York to Iowa in a van christened “Scooby” after the cartoon Scooby Doo.  The 67-year-old candidate is driving across a third of the way across the United States in a small convoy joined by a group of her closest aides. Her campaign gleefully tweeted out pictures of Mrs Clinton surprising families and drivers at a petrol station on on the side of the motorway.
• Clinton is making her first campaign trip to Iowa on Tuesday.
• Hillary Clinton’s Long-Awaited Presidential Announcement Has a Typo. Due to an error in her years-in-the-making presidential announcement, Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Sunday that she has “fought children and families all her career.” What the campaign meant to say of course is that she’s fought for children and families. Clinton’s campaign quickly corrected the statement on its website and confirmed to Boston.com that the former secretary of state has not been secretly fighting children all these years.
• ‘SNL’ takes on Clinton campaign announcement. “Saturday Night Live” is offering a behind-the-scenes look the launch of Hillary Clinton’s expected 2016 presidential campaign. “My gosh, I don’t know if I have it in me. I’m scared,” Clinton, portrayed by cast member Kate McKinnon, tells a staffer in the show’s cold open as they discuss a video announcement on social media. “I’m kidding. Let’s do this.” “Citizens! You will elect me! I will be your leader,” Clinton says in the first take of the video, shot on her cellphone. When the staffer later tells her to delete a statement, she responds: “I know a thing or two about that, right?” Darrell Hammond also reprised his role as Bill Clinton, saying he would make a great “first dude.” “Buckle up America, because the Clintons are back!” she says at the end of the sketch.

5am – D         CBS taps John Dickerson to succeed Bob Schieffer as ‘Face the Nation’ host. (CNN) — CBS named its political director, John Dickerson, as the new host of “Face the Nation” on Sunday. The news was announced on air by broadcasting legend Bob Schieffer, who has hosted the Sunday morning political show for 24 years. He said on Wednesday that he would retire.  Dickerson has been the political director for CBS News since 2011. He will take over the program on June 7. What Dickerson lacks in star power, he makes up for in reporting power. Journalists across Washington praised his appointment on Sunday, even as some sounded openly surprised by it. “WOW,” tweeted CBS congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes. “One of the most insightful reporters in DC who is kind and funny to boot will take the helm of Face The Nation.” CBS News president David Rhodes also highlighted Dickerson’s reporting chops. “John is first and foremost a reporter — and that’s what he’ll be as anchor of ‘Face the Nation,'” Rhodes said in a statement. “His work in the studio will always be informed by what he’s learned in Iowa, in New Hampshire, on Capitol Hill — anywhere there’s news.” Dickerson said, “I’m thrilled. I have watched Bob my whole professional life not just as a viewer but as a daily reporter who also covered the Hill.” CBS said Dickerson has made 83 appearances on “Face the Nation” over the years.

5am – E         Maryland Legislature News:

• Hogan offers compromise, may hold some funds. (AP) — ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan warned Saturday that he will not release money Democrats earmarked for certain school districts if there is no agreement on the overall budget before the legislative session ends Monday at midnight. “I think that it’s a real bad deal for them if they can’t come up with any kind of a fiscally responsible budget,” Hogan said, hours after presenting a compromise proposal that added some additional funds for schools and employee pay raises. “It’s going to be really bad news for them.” The standoff between the first-term Republican governor and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly continued Saturday over the budget, the governor’s legislative agenda, employee raises and top lawmakers’ push for additional funding to aid school systems that face high operating costs. The General Assembly is expected to pass a budget version by midnight Monday.  Hogan cannot veto the spending plan, but he can choose not to spend some funds the General Assembly has targeted for its priorities.
• Legislature sends fracking ban to Hogan. (Baltimore Sun) — Maryland lawmakers on Friday voted to send Gov. Larry Hogan a two-year ban on the natural gas extraction process known as fracking. The action marks the first time the legislature voted for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and its most decisive statement yet on curbing the controversial practice. It is unclear whether Hogan plans to sign the bill, which passed the House Friday 102-34 and cleared the Senate Tuesday 45-2. Both are veto-proof margins. The proposed law both forbids any permits for natural gas drilling and requires the state to enact regulations for the process by 2016.   Hogan, a Republican, has not taken a position on the bill but said he supports fracking as a way to bring jobs to economically depressed Western Maryland as long as the process can been done safely. Environmentalists had backed a three-year moratorium that also called for further studying health and environmental impacts of fracking, but lawmakers instead passed a compromise that grants a shorter moratorium and forgoes another study. “We are unconvinced that a regulatory approach can protect Maryland, and we are also disappointed the panel to review the available public health studies on fracking was removed from the original bill,” said Mitch Jones, a member of the Don’t Frack Maryland Coalition.

6am – A/B/C Child Protective Services Investigating Md. “Free-Range” Parents Again. (NBC News) — A Maryland couple previously found responsible for “unsubstantiated child neglect” in March after allowing their two children to walk home from a Montgomery County park by themselves are under investigation again. A concerned citizen reported two unaccompanied children in a Silver Spring, Maryland, park about 5 p.m. Sunday. Child Protective Services confirmed it is investigating reports Danielle and Alexander Meitiv’s children were alone again Sunday. CPS investigated them after police stopped their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter about halfway through a mile walk home Dec. 20 in Silver Spring. Police said they stopped the children and drove them home after someone reported seeing them. The Meitivs said they’re responsible parents who are teaching their children self-reliance and responsibility. They said the investigation infringed on their parental rights and invaded their privacy. The parenting style has been labeled “free-range.” The previous finding of “unsubstantiated child neglect” will be expunged after five years if there are no other incidents. The “unsubstantiated” ruling typically occurs when CPS “has some information supporting a finding of child neglect or has what appear to be credible reports that are at odds with each other or does not have sufficient information to reach a more definitive conclusion.” Danielle Meitiv said then they planned on allowing her children to continue walking alone to and from the park.

6am – D         Marco Rubio set to announce presidential bid Monday. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the son of Cuban immigrants whose rapid political ascent was nearly blocked five years ago by national Republican leaders, will formally launch his campaign for president Monday evening in his hometown of Miami. Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, will make the announcement in front of the city’s Freedom Tower, an iconic, Ellis Island-like downtown landmark where the federal government once processed Cuban immigrants fleeing the Castro regime. The announcement is expected to launch Rubio near the top of a crowded field of GOP presidential candidates even as recent polls have suggested that he will have to compete for support among other frontrunners, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.).

6am – E         Barack Obama and Raul Castro meet, launch new era of U.S.-Cuba ties. (CNN) — Panama City, Panama -Ending a decades-long standstill in U.S.-Cuba relations, President Barack Obama met for an hour Saturday with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro, the first time the two nations’ top leaders have sat down for substantive talks in more than 50 years.  The meeting in a small conference room on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas came as the two countries work to end the Cold War enmity that had led to a total freeze of diplomatic ties. And while both leaders proclaimed progress had been made, a key stumbling block — Cuba’s place on the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terror — remained unresolved. “This is obviously an historic meeting,” Obama said at the beginning of his session with Castro, claiming that decades of strain had done little to benefit either Cubans or citizens of the United States. “It was time for us to try something new,” he said. ‎”We are now in a position to move on a path toward the future.”

Rubio: Obama’s Cuba thaw ‘ridiculous’. (The Hill) — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Saturday slammed President Obama’s recent overtures towards Cuba as absurd given the Castro regime’s long-term support of terrorism.  Rubio’s criticisms come as Obama meets Cuban leader Raul Castro in a landmark encounter at the seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama. Rubio, whose parents are Cuban, said the president was letting his guard down on the danger Havana presents to American interests. “It’s ridiculous,” Rubio argued of the Obama administration’s debate over removing Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, in an interview with Breitbart. “It doesn’t make sense,” he added. “I don’t see how they can rationalize taking them off the list, other than the president’s desire to achieve a legacy issue that he’s the one that opened up Cuba and changed fifty years of policy.” Rubio cited Cuba’s spying and aid of known terrorist groups as proof of Obama’s missteps. The Castro regime’s actions, he charged, displayed clear hostility towards the U.S.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – REINCE PRIEBUS – REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN – weighed in on Hillary Clinton hitting the campaign trail.

7am – B         Mom dangles, drops son, 2, into cheetah pit at Cleveland zoo. (Fox News) — A toddler fell into the cheetah pit at a Cleveland zoo Saturday afternoon after his mother dangled him over the railing and he slipped out of her grasp, authorities said. Zoo officials said the cheetahs never approached the boy, 2, or his parents, who jumped in to rescue him. Fox 8 in Cleveland said the boy injured his leg. The station said the mother would be charged with the crime of child endangerment. The near tragedy at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo horrified witnesses who heard screams after the boy slipped out of his mother’s grasp and fell 10 feet. “You just hear these screams, then all you could see is the adult that jumped in, got the child and then somebody pulled him out,” one witness told Fox8. “It was a heavier-set guy with the kid. They started screaming and that’s when they started blocking everybody off. The zoo’s executive director, Chris Kuhar, said the mother appeared to be at fault. “Unfortunately, we have a number of eyewitness accounts that point to the strong likelihood that the child was dangled over the railing,” Kuhar said. He told Fox8 the cheetahs “made no attempt to interact” with the child or his parents at any time.

7am – C         Grilled cheese lovers have more sex, study says. (Fox News) — Here’s yet another reason to love grilled cheese:  Fans of the ooey, gooey sandwiches have more sex, a new study has found. Thirty-two percent of grilled cheese fans have sex at least six times a month, versus 27 percent of those who don’t like the sandwich, according to the dating and social-networking site Skout, which released the findings before National Grilled Cheese Day on Sunday. “32 percent of grilled cheese fans have sex at least six times a month, versus 27 percent of those who don’t like the sandwich.” Also, 73 percent of those who said they like the sandwich had sex at least once each month, compared with the 63 percent of those non-grilled cheesers. Getting to what’s really important, the survey found that U.S. eaters favored American cheese most by 41 percent, followed by cheddar (33 percent), mozzarella (10 percent), Swiss (8 percent), provolone (6 percent) and brie (2 percent). White bread was the most popular bread with 51 percent of responders, then wheat (29 percent), sourdough (13 percent), rye (4 percent) and baguette (3 percent).  The network did a survey of 4,600 users to find out about their sandwich preferences, but it doesn’t just relate to people’s taste buds. Not only do grilled cheese lovers have more sex, they also have bigger hearts and are more adventurous, the study discovered.

7am – D         INTERVIEW — JOE DIGENOVA – LEGAL ANALYST AND FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY TO THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA – discussed Hillary Clinton’s run for president and the remaining unanswered questions lingering about Benghazi and email server.

7am – E         Things you missed if you didn’t watch the MTV Movie Awards:

• Some singing. Sure, the MTV Movie Awards hand out Golden Popcorn trophies to movie stars, but there are musical performances. The most notable, however, was by an actor. Vin Diesel went into his rendition of the Paul Walker tribute song See You Again before he presented an award.
• Lots of risque jokes. Host Amy Schumer didn’t shy away from joking about everything from her “no gag reflex” superpower (“When kids found out about my superpower, they called me a freak, then they called me all the time”) to how the Magic Mike cast is doing their part to help the California drought by “making it rain in my Spanx.” She poked fun at the nominated movies and even MTV: “Don’t worry about your speeches going too long. MTV is the one network that refuses to play music.”
• Sweet speeches. Robert Downey Jr. gave lots of advice, including “Keep your nose clean.” Ha-ha-ha.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – GROVER NORQUIST – President of Americans for Tax Reform and author of new book “End the IRS Before It Ends Us”

• DISCUSSED HIS NEW BOOK: “END THE IRS BEFORE IT ENDS US”

As the recent scandal shows, the IRS is big, bad, and out of control. Grover Norquist analyzes the problems within the agency and presents solutions to rein them in. Norquist has a plan for cutting taxes for working Americans and for the major corporations that are fleeing for foreign shores. As president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist is the go-to expert on taxation. Now, Norquist makes the case for a major tax reform, including a possible flat tax. On the current path, America will coast through inertia to ever-growing government and taxation, as entitlements consume more of our national economy. Norquist presents an alternative future where government spending is reformed, and taxes and the IRS radically curtailed.  END THE IRS BEFORE IT ENDS US lays out what taxation in America should look like. Norquist offers a solution where America thrives, and Americans keep their hard-earned cash.

• 2016 CANDIDATE LIST IS GROWING: TED CRUZ, RAND PAUL, HILLARY CLINTON on Sunday, MARCO RUBIO to announce today.… Grover weighed in how the GOP field is shaping up.

8am – B         Child Protective Services Investigating Md. “Free-Range” Parents Again. (NBC Washington) — A Maryland couple previously found responsible for “unsubstantiated child neglect” in March after allowing their two children to walk home from a Montgomery County park by themselves are under investigation again. A concerned citizen reported two unaccompanied children in a Silver Spring, Maryland, park about 5 p.m. Sunday. Child Protective Services confirmed it is investigating reports Danielle and Alexander Meitiv’s children were alone again Sunday. CPS investigated them after police stopped their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter about halfway through a mile walk home Dec. 20 in Silver Spring. Police said they stopped the children and drove them home after someone reported seeing them. The Meitivs said they’re responsible parents who are teaching their children self-reliance and responsibility. They said the investigation infringed on their parental rights and invaded their privacy. The parenting style has been labeled “free-range.”

8am – C         Masters 2015: Jordan Spieth smashes records to win first major title at Augusta. (CNN) – He might not yet be the next Tiger Woods, but Jordan Spieth served notice to the golfing world with a record-breaking first major victory at the Masters on Sunday. The 21-year-old became the second-youngest player to win at Augusta, behind only Woods’ 1997 effort, and just the fifth man to lead the prestigious tournament from start to finish. The American went into Sunday’s final round with a four-shot lead, extended that by one after his opening nine holes, and at the next beat Phil Mickelson’s Masters record of 26 birdies for the week.

8am – D         Hillary Jumps Into the 2016 Presidential Race.

TOMORROW:          Larry Kudlow