Sen. Jim Inhofe, Trevor Matich, Gordon Chang and Jake Tapper joined WMAL on Friday!

Mornings on the Mall

Friday, September 25, 2015

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C Who Is More Of A Threat: China or Russia?

• President Xi Jinping of China will arrive in Washington on Thursday for high-stakes meetings with President Obama. The president plans to raise a number of contentious topics on Friday, White House aides said, including cyberattacks on American companies and government agencies, China’s increasingly aggressive reclamation of islands and atolls in disputed areas of the South China Sea, and Mr. Xi’s clampdown on dissidents and lawyers in China.
• Putin and Obama to meet in New York on Monday.

5am – D         INTERVIEW: SENATOR JIM INHOFE – R-Oklahoma – analyzed the Pope’s comments before Congress.

5am – E         Supermoon, lunar eclipse to light the sky Sunday in rare event. WASHINGTON — Get ready for a rare double feature this weekend in the sky this weekend that will make it an event you won’t want to miss. Let’s hope for clear skies this Sunday night as we will want to see a rare celestial event that last occurred in 1982 and won’t happen again until 2033 — a supermoon total lunar eclipse. Add to it that this will also be the harvest full moon and the closest full moon of 2015 and you have what I consider to be the skywatching event of 2015. The harvest full moon is the full moon that occurs closest to the Autumnal Equinox. In days gone by, farmers used the light of the full moon to harvest their crops, according to NASA. The term “supermoon” has made its way into everyday usage, but it is not an astronomical term. When the moon orbits the Earth each month, it passes a point where it is closest to our planet — perigee — and farthest — apogee. When the full moon occurs within 24 hours of perigee it is a perigee full moon or what is now known as a supermoon.

6am – A/B/C Should White House Put The Clock Boy’s Invite On Hold?

• Nerds Rage Over Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock. (Daily Beast) — Last week, Ahmed Mohamed’s homemade clock got him arrested and then invited to the White House. This week, the conspiracy theory backlash against his ‘invention’ begins. The Muslim teen who became an overnight celebrity after Texas cops mistook his homemade clock for a bomb has received a White House invitation, shoutouts from Facebook, MIT, and NASA, and more than $15,000 for an academic scholarship. But some engineers say something’s fishy about the high schooler’s invention, and the Internet has been lit aflame by claims of conspiracy. The fact that a teenager was put in handcuffs over his clock appears to be less of a concern to some people than the apparently shoddy engineering of the “invention” in question. Electronics experts who examined photos of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed’s creation called it a fraud loudly enough to grab the attention of famed atheist and biologist Richard Dawkins, who on Sunday tweeted: “We were all fooled.”
• Mavericks owner Mark Cuban on conversation with Irving teen Ahmed Mohamed and what he should have done. (Dallas News) — On HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban revealed he talked with Ahmed Mohamed, the Irving teen who was detained for bringing a clock to his high school that was mistaken for a bomb. Cuban was impressed with the ‘science geek’ and ‘great kid’ in their discussion but noted an awkwardness to him. “I talked to the kid,” Cuban said. “He’s from Dallas, and I’ve talked to the people in the school district. The kid is a super smart kid. Science geek. We talked about science, but while I’m talking to him on the phone, as I ask him a question, ‘Tell me what happened because I’m curious.’ Right? His sister, over his shoulder, you could hear, listening to the question, giving him the answer. So, I don’t know all the details of what happened, but what I do know, when I talked to him about science, when I talked to him about magnets, when I talked to him about creating things, he was very, very engaged.” As the panel discussed whether Mohamed’s arrest was related to his skin color or his faith, Cuban argued that many are missing a key point. “All he had to do was engage with the teacher, and he didn’t. That’s the point that was missing,” Cuban said. “It was wrong that he got arrested, but all that he had to do was talk to the teacher, but he didn’t.”
• Ahmed drops in on Google’s Science Fair. Outside the Google Science Fair, a middle school student bounced up and down, pointing excitedly at someone famous he just spotted. “This is Ahmed!” he shouted to his friends. To the kids who gathered at Google on Monday, there is probably no bigger celebrity right now than Ahmed Mohamed. The 14-year-old from Irving, Texas, landed in the spotlight last week after he was detained by police for bringing a homemade clock to school. The trip to California to visit Google’s (GOOG) Mountain View campus was his first since the incident made him the subject of international news coverage. He received a flood of invitations to visit major tech companies and even President Obama at the White House. Inside the fair, projects far more complicated than a homemade clock were on display. Twenty finalists from around the world, 9 girls and 11 boys, presented projects primarily focused on the environment and health.

6am – D/E     INTERVIEW – GORDON CHANG – Foreign policy analyst and author of “The Nuclear Showdown” and “The Coming Collapse of China”

• China has been creating and claiming islands, now the U.N. is looking into the legality
• President Xi Jinping of China will arrive in Washington on Thursday for high-stakes meetings with President Obama.
• China obtained 5.6 million fingerprints in OPM hack.
• China to Announce Cap-and-Trade Program to Limit Emissions

6am – E         John Boehner Bursts Into Tears While Standing Next to the Pope. In a now-regular occurrence that no longer surprises anyone in Washington, Speaker John “Real Men Do Cry” Boehner burst into tears while standing next to Pope Francis on Thursday morning. CNN captured the moment the tears started pouring out of the Ohio Republican’s eyes while he stood next to the pontiff on Capitol Hill.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – TREVOR MATICH — Redskins elite long snapper and WMAL’s Redskins analyst

• RECAP: Washington Redskins (1-1) vs New York Giants (0-2), MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey
• Giants start fast, finish off Redskins for first win: The Giants ended up on the wrong side of NFL history last week when they became the first team ever to start the regular season by blowing two straight double-digit leads in the fourth quarter. The third time was the charm though for the Giants on Thursday as they held on to their fourth quarter double-digit lead to beat the Redskins 32-21 at MetLife Stadium.

7am – B        2016 News:

• Ailes, Trump to meet next week about Fox News’ coverage. Following the latest flare-up between Fox News and Donald Trump, the network’s chairman and CEO, Roger Ailes, and the Republican presidential front-runner will meet next week “to discuss their differences of opinion regarding Fox’s coverage,” of his campaign, a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement. The meeting will also include other senior executives from the network.
• Ivanka Trump is pregnant with her third child. Ivanka Trump, a would-be first daughter, said Thursday she is pregnant with her third child and is due in the spring. Trump, 33, the daughter of billionaire real-estate mogul-turned-reality-TV-star-turned Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, announced the news in a long post, with a video, on her Facebook page. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner married at Trump National Golf Club on October 25, 2009 in Bedminster, New Jersey.
• Kanye West Just Called This Republican Candidate ‘Brilliant’ – Possible 2020 Ticket? (Daily Caller) – In an interview with Vanity Fair published Thursday, West said he still plans to run and that he thinks Ben Carson is a “brilliant” candidate. “When I run for president, I’d prefer not to run against someone. I would be like ‘I want to work with you.’” “As soon as I heard [Ben] Carson speak, I tried for three weeks to get on the phone with him. I was like this is the most brilliant guy.”

7am – C        Escaped tarantula grounds plane overnight near Baltimore. LINTHICUM, Md. (AP) — An eight-legged creature that escaped in the cargo hold of a passenger flight from BWI to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International grounded the plane and sent passengers onto another flight. Brian Kruse, spokesman for Delta Airlines, tells The Baltimore Sun that baggage handlers noticed a baboon tarantula had gotten out of its container on Flight 1525 Wednesday night. Kruse says the captain grounded the plane so it could be searched for any additional arachnids. Passengers were put on another flight. Kruse says the spider was confined to the cargo hold and never entered the cabin. No other tarantulas were found.

7am – D         Thursday was National Punctuation Day (!!!)

It’s a day to pay homage to the commas, periods, and apostrophes in our lives — the casualties of our 140-character world. Remember when the word “don’t” had an apostrophe? And when commas divided sentences? Or when questions ended with actual question marks? It’s a day to pay homage to the commas, periods, and apostrophes in our lives — the casualties of our 140-character world. A recent study from American University revealed that only 39 percent of college students punctuate the end of texts and 45 percent punctuate the end of instant messages. What’s more, the rules of punctuation have been twisted and tossed out completely now that tweets limit us to 140 characters and Facebook serves as our digital diary. Exclamation points are multiplied. The asterisk indicates actions like a *cough* and a *raised hand,* and the comma, that strong and steady separator of thoughts, has been dismissed as stuffy and dropped altogether. Time to panic? Matt Davis, a professor of English at UMass Boston, is not worried about it. He pointed to the famous 1975 Newsweek story, “Why Johnny Can’t Write,” as evidence that these cultural worries are cyclical.

7am – E         Hillary Clinton sits for interview with Lena Dunham. In an effort to reach out to millennial women voters, Hillary Clinton will appear in an interview opposite Girls star Lena Dunham, set to post online Tuesday, POLITICO has learned. The already-taped segment also includes comedy sketches filmed at Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign headquarters, including a cameo by comedian Amy Schumer. The pair make something of an odd couple: Dunham is the queen of oversharing, while Clinton can come across as overly scripted. But in a short clip of the interview reviewed by POLITICO, the former secretary of state appears relaxed. In the full interview, Clinton will engage with Dunham in an intimate discussion about what her own life was like in college, and the ambivalence she felt in her early 20s about her own life and career path, according to a spokesperson for Dunham’s new website, LennyLetter.com. The interview will be available to the site’s newsletter subscribers. Clinton will discuss campaign issues that resonate with Dunham’s target audience, like student debt and women’s health. In the clip, Dunham, dressed in a checkered jumper, sits across from Clinton in a folding chair and asks: “Do you consider yourself a feminist?”

8am – A/B/C             INTERVIEW – JAKE TAPPER – host of CNN’s The Lead and The State of the Union

• Jake will be in PHILADELPHIA this SUNDAY to discuss the Pope with GUESTS: NANCY PELOSI, MARTIN O’MALLEY and BOB CASEY
• Jake’s discussed Obama’s upcoming meetings with China and Putin and shared his thoughts on the Pope in DC this week.
• Army rejects appeal from soldier discharged after confronting accused Afghan rapist. Even as the U.S. military denies reports that American troops were told to ignore Afghan child abusers, an 11-year Green Beret who was ordered discharged after he confronted an alleged rapist was informed Tuesday that the Army has denied his appeal.

8am – B/C     Mayor wants all welfare recipients publicly identified. Lewiston Mayor Robert Macdonald wrote in a letter to the editor to the Twin City Times that he will advocate for the submission of a bill to the Legislature that would crete a website that contains the names, addresses, length of time on assistance and the benefits being collected “by every individual on the dole. After all, the public has a right to know how its money is being spent. “Our liberal, progressive legislators and their social-service allies have made [social service recipients] a victimized, protected class,” wrote Macdonald. “It’s none of your business how much of your money they get and spend. Who are you to question it? Just shut up and pay!” It’s unclear through what means or through which lawmaker Macdonald will pursue the legislation.

8am – D         SENATOR JIM INHOFE – R- Oklahoma – discussed the Pope speaking before Congress.

8am – E         Complete State Fair of Virginia 2015 Guide, now including deep-fried butter. The State Fair of Virginia returns this year, Sept. 25-Oct. 4 and includes all-time favorites as well as new attractions, shows and extreme fair food. New food additions this year include homemade pork rinds by Sparky’s Crunchie Pig, deep-fried butter and bacon from Ristick Concessions and Coco Bongos’ frozen drinks served in coconut shells. There will be a maple theme: maple cotton candy, maple jerky and maple lemonade by — believe it or not — Simply Maple. Most food vendors will be located along the fair’s Festival Loop area, just outside the Farm Bureau Center exhibition hall. You can also count on fried catfish, fried chicken, pizza on a stick, pasta dinners, barbecue, rib-eye sandwiches, roasted corn on the cob, boiled peanuts and fresh-squeezed lemonade.