Eli Lake, Trevor Matich, Jake Tapper and Bret Baier joined WMAL on Friday.

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Mornings on the Mall

Friday, October 23, 2015

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Smith Hunter

5am – A/B/C BENGHAZI HEARING: Clinton confronted for contradictions on video’s role in Benghazi attack. (Washington Times) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton brushed aside emails Thursday that showed she privately told family and world leaders that the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi was a terrorist assault, and said Ambassador Christopher Stevens was responsible for his own decisions regarding skimpy security ahead of his death.

5am – D         Is Kirk Cousins coddled & swaddled while RGIII is thrown under the bus? ESPN 980 host blasts racial aspect of Kirk Cousins coverage as ‘disgusting hate-mongering’ (Washington Post) — Virtually every D.C. sports radio program this week has tackled the question of whether Redskins Coach Jay Gruden has treated Kirk Cousins differently than he treated Robert Griffin III in his public remarks. Several shows have also gone further, exploring the controversial but not hard-to-find suggestion that there has been a racial component to the way the two quarterbacks are treated by the culture at large.

5am – E         Paul Ryan officially declares his candidacy for House speaker. Paul Ryan is in, will seek job of House Speaker. WASHINGTON — Rep. Paul Ryan officially announced his bid Thursday night to become the next House speaker after securing backing from the three major political factions inside the House GOP conference. “I never thought I’d be speaker,” Ryan wrote in a letter to his Republican colleagues.

6am – A/B/C Trump hints at making Ben Carson his running mate: ‘I like him. He likes me. Stranger things have happened.’ (Daily Mail) – Could the two leading GOP candidates pull together to become the ultimate outsider ticket? Top Republican Donald Trump didn’t say no to joining forces with the man polling at No. 2, Dr. Ben Carson. ‘Well, I like him, he likes me,’ Trump said. ‘I mean stranger things have happened.’ Though the billionaire frontrunner said he’s not counting his chickens before they hatch. ‘But it’s too early to think about,’ Trump said yesterday during an interview with CNN. Trump was asked about this ticket after a new CNN/ORC poll had Trump and Carson as the only Republicans with double-digit levels of support.

6am – D         INTERVIEW — ELI LAKE – Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes about politics and foreign affairs – analyzed the Benghazi hearing.

• Clinton Says Source of Libya Intelligence Was a Mystery. (Bloomberg / By Josh Rogin & Eli Lake) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified Thursday that she wasn’t aware of the source of information about Libya provided by her friend Sidney Blumenthal and that it didn’t matter. Republican lawmakers and former officials were shocked she had so little curiosity about information she shared with top members of her staff, and thought it relevant that Blumenthal was working with a partisan former intelligence official as well as a longtime friend of the Clinton family.

6am – E         Police: Parking dispute leads driver to threaten another with hatchet. (WTOP) — WASHINGTON — When tempers flared, a hatchet was pulled during an argument over a parking space in Annandale earlier this week. It started at 7:27 a.m. on Oct. 19 when two drivers set their sights on one parking spot at an apartment complex on Sutter Lane in Annandale. One driver told police he was in the process of making his way into a spot when another driver slipped into the space. “There was a discussion that took place and neither person was happy,” said Lucy Caldwell with Fairfax County Police. At some point in the argument, Kamadin Atabaki, 20, of Annandale was accused of retrieving a hatchet from his apartment and threatening the other driver. Police were called to the scene. No one was hurt. Officers found the hatchet and arrested Atabaki, charging him with attempted malicious wounding.

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

• PREVIEW: Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs Washington Redskins / Sunday, October 25, 1:00 PM on FOX, FedEx Field, Landover, Maryland
• Redskins: Offense looks to receive huge boost this week
• Is Kirk Cousins coddled & swaddled while RGIII is thrown under the bus?

7am – B         BENGHAZI HEARING: Clinton confronted for contradictions on video’s role in Benghazi attack. (Washington Times) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton brushed aside emails Thursday that showed she privately told family and world leaders that the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi was a terrorist assault, and said Ambassador Christopher Stevens was responsible for his own decisions regarding skimpy security ahead of his death.

Democrats To Decide Whether To Pull Members From Benghazi Committee After Clinton Testimony. (Daily Caller/Kerry Picket) – WASHINGTON — House Democrats will decide whether to pull their members from the Benghazi Select Committee following the committee’s hearing Thursday with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told The Daily Caller during her weekly press conference Thursday. “We’ve been having this debate since they came up with this taxpayer scheme to undermine Hillary Clinton,” Pelosi said. “People said, ‘Don’t even appoint people.’ And so we had that debate back and forth in our caucus. We chose the path that Mr. Cummings described. You have to be in the room to defend the truth.”

7am – C         NASA to Los Angeles: Get ready for a big quake. “There’s enough energy stored.”   (NEWSER) – NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is out with a study predicting that Los Angeles has a 99.9% chance of experiencing an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater within the next two and a half years. “There’s enough energy stored to produce about a magnitude 6.1 to 6.3 earthquake” with an epicenter in La Habra, which was hit by a quake in 2014, says a JPL geophysicist, per CBS LA. Earthquake scientists used information from the La Habra quake to make their predictions, and found that there’s a 35% chance of an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 or greater, the Los Angeles Daily News reports.

7am – D/E     Wiffle Ball A Finalist For The National Toy Hall Of Fame. BOSTON (CBS) – A staple of backyard entertainment has a real shot to be inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in upstate New York. The Wiffle Ball, Inc., a family run business in Shelton, Connecticut has been manufacturing Wiffle balls and bats for more than 60 years. And it’s now a finalist for entrance to the Toy Hall of Fame.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — JAKE TAPPER — Anchor of “The Lead” and “State of the Union” – discussed the Benghazi hearing and his show w/ Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Marco Rubio this Sunday.

8am – B         Transit News:

• Metro-Themed Eatery Spawns A Whole Lot Of #WMATArestaurant Jokes. (DCist) — The latest trendy restaurant has brought out more than just the usual eye rolling about small plates, overpriced cocktails, or sexy steakhouses; it has spawned WMATA jokes. A restaurateur looked out the windows of a new space in NoMA and was inspired by the tracks outside, according to the Washington City Paper. So he went full Metro on the place: “Every detail of the restaurant draws inspiration from the District’s transportation system: From the white and yellow subway tiles that line the walls to the train-themed cocktails on the menu… The finished look is designed by Maggie O’Neill, who also worked with Gardner on Irish Public House and Copperwood Tavern, and includes framed street maps, crosswalk-themed wallpaper, and even a full-sized stoplight. The cocktail menu adds to the theme, with drinks like the Redline, a sour made with peppercorn-infused tequila.”
• Pastors: 6th Street Bike Lanes A ‘Cancer’ That Will Destroy Church. (Washington City Paper/Will Sommer) — The United House of Prayer on 6th and M streets NW has survived the District’s changing demographics and criticism over its real estate empire. But now the church billed as “God’s White House” faces a dire threat: bike lanes. “We consider it a threat to our existence,” UHOP pastor A.D. Cunningham said, speaking at a District Department of Transportation-sponsored meeting about proposed bike lanes near the church. UHOP parishioners, along with opponents from other churches and bike lane supporters, crowded into the packed meeting room at the Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Neighborhood Library Thursday night to talk about the bike lane proposal. The audience was nearly all African American and nearly all opposed to the bike lanes.

8am – C         Local Starbucks stores push for alcohol sales in new program. (Capital News Service) — WASHINGTON — Five Starbucks stores in the District of Columbia have requested licenses to serve alcohol in an effort to bring more nighttime business. This news comes after Starbucks announced a new menu lineup late last year called “Starbucks Evenings.” The program provides small savory meals, beer, wine and coffee-based drinks, in addition to the regular menu. The area stores, two around Washington’s Dupont Circle and one each in the city’s Chevy Chase, Georgetown and the Penn Quarter neighborhoods, are taking the initiative to bring “Starbucks Evenings” to the nation’s capital. All five stores filed a request with the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, listing hours of alcohol service from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays and 12 p.m. to 11 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, according to the report.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — BRET BAIER – Anchor of Special Report, Fox News Channel, weekdays at 6 pm

• Gov. Chafee drops out: The Associated Press (@AP): BREAKING: Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee says he’s dropping out of Democratic presidential race.
• BENGHAZI HEARING: Clinton confronted for contradictions on video’s role in Benghazi attack. (Washington Times) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton brushed aside emails Thursday that showed she privately told family and world leaders that the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi was a terrorist assault, and said Ambassador Christopher Stevens was responsible for his own decisions regarding skimpy security ahead of his death.

8am – E         Entertainment News:

• Adele gives fans a long-awaited ‘Hello’ in new single. (CNBC) — London-born Adele dropped “Hello”, her first single and music video in over three years, on Friday morning and fans can’t get enough of it. “Hello” comes from Adele’s upcoming third studio album, “25”, dubbed as her “make-up record”, which features 11 tracks with songs such as “I Miss You” and “Send My Love (To Your New Lover).” The lyrics begin “Hello, it’s me, I was wondering if after all these years, you’d like to meet to go over everything. They say that time’s supposed to heal ya, but I ain’t done much healing…”
• Star Wars: Resellers want up to $10,000 for opening night tickets. So what would the Jedi master think of hucksters trying to resell their Star Wars tickets for up to $10,000? Across eBay and Craigslist, ticket-holders for opening night screenings of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Dec. 17 are trying to pawn their seats for exorbitant amounts. There’s the $1,000 tickets for a 3D showing at 10:20 p.m. in Los Angeles, $750 tickets for a IMAX 7 p.m. show in Austin, a whopping $8,000 package for a Force Awakens event in Orlando (which includes just one ticket), and countless others.
• America’s Got Talent’ adds Simon Cowell as judge. (USA Today) — America’s Got Talent has a new judge to fill the departing Howard Stern’s seat on the NBC reality competition: Simon Cowell. Cowell, an executive producer and creator of the top-rated summer series, will serve as a judge during next summer’s eleventh season. He announced the news Thursday on NBC’s Today Show. Englishman Cowell, a music executive who became a huge star in the United States as an original judge on Fox’s onetime megahit American Idol, hasn’t been a judge on American TV since low-rated The X Factor ended its run on Fox in 2013.
• Hillary Clinton to appear on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’: Hillary Clinton will continue making the late-night rounds as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday, Nov. 5, EW has confirmed with ABC. It will be Clinton’s first time appearing on the show since she announced her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

MONDAY: Joe diGenova and Trevor Matich