Legal analyst Joe diGenova, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele & Redskins analyst Trevor Matich joined WMAL on Monday!

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, November 9, 2015

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C MEDIA WAR ON BEN CARSON

• Ben Carson Blasts ‘Political Hit Job’ After West Point Story Questioned. After a series of reports questioning stories told by Ben Carson, the Republican presidential candidate has fired back, blaming the media for a “political hit job.” Carson found himself facing scrutiny for saying he had been offered a full scholarship to West Point Military Academy. His campaign later clarified that he never formally applied nor was admitted, but maintained that he was invited to apply by a local ROTC officer. “People are clearly able to see what’s going on,” Carson said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “You look at the political hit job this week. I mean — even some of you guys in the media called him out on that. It’s pretty bad,” added Carson. His campaign communications director, Doug Watts, said he believed Carson was referring to Kyle Cheney, who filed the report on West Point for Politico, which later clarified its reporting.
• Carson thanks ‘biased media’ for $3.5M fundraising haul. Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson claims his campaign has pulled in $3.5 million in fundraising dollars this week thanks to “biased media” coverage. “We the People have made 10,000 donations each day this week, raising $3.5M this week alone. Thank you biased media,” Carson tweeted Saturday. Carson’s dig at the media comes amid heightened scrutiny of the his extraordinary life story as he has risen to the top of the GOP primary polls. A Politico report claimed Carson fabricated a story from his youth about being offered a full scholarship to attend West Point. Another report from CNN questioned whether the candidate embellished tales of his violent upbringing in Detroit. Carson reacted with fury Friday, accusing the media of conducting a “witch hunt” against him.

5am – D         Citing Climate Change, Obama Rejects Construction of Keystone XL Oil Pipeline. (NY Times) — WASHINGTON — President Obama announced on Friday that he had rejected the request from a Canadian company to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ending a seven-year review that had become a symbol of the debate over his climate policies. Mr. Obama’s denial of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of carbon-heavy petroleum from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast, comes as he seeks to build an ambitious legacy on climate change. “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” Mr. Obama said in remarks from the White House. “And, frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.” The move was made ahead of a major United Nations summit meeting on climate change to be held in Paris in December, when Mr. Obama hopes to help broker a historic agreement committing the world’s nations to enacting new policies to counter global warming. While the rejection of the pipeline is largely symbolic, Mr. Obama has sought to telegraph to other world leaders that the United States is serious about acting on climate change.

5am – E         Critter News:

• Goliath the baby cow lives like a Great Dane. Goliath is just another member of the Hubbs family. He eats food from a bowl, snacks on dried prunes and lounges on the couch inside his Danville, California, home. But Goliath isn’t your average dog; he’s actually a cow. Goliath the cow enjoys napping on the family’s dogs’ beds. “My cow thinks he’s a dog…We left the door open for five minutes,” 17-year-old Shaylee Hubbs wrote as she tweeted a photo of the baby cow laying on a couch. The tweet was shared by more than 30,000 people. The Hubbs family got the “drop calf” from a dairy farm when he was just one day old. Weak and fragile, the sick cow was struggling to eat without help. Two days later, with medication and health care from veterinarian Ann Marie Buonanno, the cow eventually started to gain strength.
• 5-foot venomous cobra captured 24 hours after escaping from Florida home. A 5-foot venomous cobra that escaped from a Florida home Friday was found more than 24 hours after it slithered off, The News-Press reported. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and volunteers scoured brush in Buckingham near where the snake was last seen on Friday and most of Saturday, the paper reported. It was captured at about 4 p.m. Saturday, 200 yards from where the sighting was reported. Before the capture, wildlife officials were warning residents in southwest Florida to be on the lookout after the snake escaped from its home. Witnesses began seeing the 5-foot Asian monocled cobra Friday afternoon and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission warned residents not to approach the snake or try to capture it.

6am – A/B/C Atari founder Nolan Bushnell says that in the future cities will ban self-driving. (USA Today) — SAN FRANCISCO – Nolan Bushnell knows a thing or two about predicting what might be hot. He started a little company called Atari, whose rudimentary video game Pong arguably is the great-grandfather of high-def virtual onslaughts such as Call of Duty. And he launched Chuck E. Cheese, a chain that represents nirvana for kids and, well, not so much for ear-plugging parents. So when Bushnell made a prediction Friday at USA TODAY’s weekly Tech Deep Dive podcast about the future of transportation, we leaned in. His take: In 20 years or so, it will be downright illegal to drive a car in cities yourself, given that the job will handed over to growing fleets of autonomous vehicles.

6am – D         Border agency rejects use of body cameras after internal review. (AP) — SAN DIEGO – Customs and Border Protection staff concluded after an internal review that agents and officers shouldn’t be required to wear body cameras, positioning the nation’s largest law enforcement agency as a counterweight to a growing number of police forces that use the devices to promote public trust and accountability. The yearlong review cited cost and a host of other reasons to hold off, according to two people familiar with the findings who spoke on condition of anonymity because the findings have not been made public. It found operating cameras may distract agents while they’re performing their jobs, may hurt employee morale, and may be unsuited to the hot, dusty conditions in which Border Patrol agents often work.

6am – E         Principal sends scathing email to parents hosting teen drinking parties. (WTOP) — WASHINGTON – “Find another way to bond with your child. Please.” Those are the words of a Bethesda high school principal sent in an email to parents who he says are hosting drinking parties for their kids. “It’s really hard to fathom how some people are still making these poor decisions,” says Walt Whitman High School principal Alan Goodwin. After hearing of multiple drinking parties last weekend hosted by parents of students, he sent an email to the parents’ listserv pleading with them to stop. “All principals will have safety programs at their schools. They’ll have speakers, put up posters. They make appeals to parents and kids, but there’s still some people who don’t get it,” he says.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — JOE DIGENOVA — legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia

• Hillary Clinton Signed NDA Laying Out Criminal Penalties for Mishandling of Classified Info
• Newly released State Department ‘watch logs’ detail Benghazi response. The first mention of Clinton in the watch log after word of the attacks comes at 5:38 p.m. “1738 The Watch patched the Secretary to Central Intelligence Agency Director [David] Petraeus.” Clinton was connected with Libyan National Congress President Mohamed Magriaf at 6:49 p.m., and President Barack Obama was connected with Clinton at 10:27 p.m., the logs show. Testimony at a House Benghazi Committee hearing with Clinton last month established that she was at home by the time of the latter call. The logs show Clinton next contacting the operations center at 7:15 the following morning. The death of Ambassador Chris Stevens appears to have been reported to the operations center at 2:55 a.m. on Sept. 12. Three other Americans also died in the attacks.
• Joe’s thoughts on the attacks on Ben Carson and how the media didn’t vet Obama and Hillary

7am – B         ‘You’re a Hack!’ O’Reilly Explodes at George Will for Attacking His ‘No-Facts Zone’ Book. (Mediaite) — Bill O’Reilly exploded and repeatedly called George Will a “hack” tonight in a fierce battle over whether O’Reilly’s book Killing Reagan is factually accurate. O’Reilly’s gotten criticism from people close to Reagan over the book, and he fired back by saying they don’t want the truth being told. Will yesterday took things one step further when he tore into O’Reilly’s book and called it a “no-facts zone.” Well, responding last night was not enough for O’Reilly, and he invited Will on today. To start, O’Reilly said that Will libeled him and claimed Will was supposed to call him before running the column and didn’t. Will said he had no such obligation and snarked that it wouldn’t be the first time O’Reilly’s gotten something wrong.

7am – C         ‘Spectre’ tops box office with $73 million, becoming 2nd biggest James Bond opening after ‘Skyfall.’ James Bond had a license to kill at the box office and executed with a $73 million tally, according to studio estimates. Daniel Craig’s fourth turn as James Bond easily outpaced a strong showing for The Peanuts Movie, which still thrived at $45 million in its debut. Both movies provided a needed spark to a box office that has been slumping — down dramatically last weekend vs. the year before in what was an overall tough October for new releases. “It’s a great story, James Bond and Charlie Brown, two iconic characters over 50 years old,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior box office analyst for Rentrak. “It took Bond and Brown to get the box office back on track.” Spectre is the second-biggest Bond opening behind 2012’s Skyfall, which took $88.4 million. The U.S. tally fell short of analysts’ initial expectations for the weekend, following Spectre’s record opening in the United Kingdom.

7am – D         Some Christians Are Super Offended By The New Starbucks Red Cup Design. Seeing red. (BuzzFeed News) –‘Tis the season for “War on Christmas” stories, and this year Starbucks is the first major group to offend due to its holiday-themed red cups. Last week, the coffee giant unveiled the design of this year’s cups, which have become something of a Starbucks tradition. The company’s designers went for a minimalist look “with a bright poppy color on top that shades into a darker cranberry below.” “We have anchored the design with the classic Starbucks holiday red that is bright and exciting,” said Jeffrey Fields, Starbucks vice president of design and content. “The ombré creates a distinctive dimension, fluidity and weightedness.” Sure, why not. But the design looks slightly different than years past, which have featured snowflakes and other wintery icons. This absence of holiday symbols is, of course, making people FURIOUS.

7am – E         Looking ahead: Israeli PM Netanyahu will meet with POTUS Obama on Monday at the White House. Obama and Israeli PM Netanyahu meet Monday, but there’s little expectation of progress on Middle East peace. When President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet Monday, the two leaders will focus on a Middle East that is transformed from 20 years ago when many believed Israelis and Palestinians were on the verge of a solution that would bring lasting peace to the region.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — MICHAEL STEELE – MSNBC contributor, former Republican National Committee chairman and former Maryland Lt. Governor – discussed the upcoming GOP debate and the attacks on Ben Carson.

8am – B         Trump bump gives SNL its biggest ratings in three years, Helps ‘SNL’ To Biggest Ratings Since 2012. Though given the show’s slumping ratings, that’s not saying a lot. Donald Trump proved yet again that he’s ratings gold, this time helping “Saturday Night Live” to its biggest overnight ratings since 2012, according to NBC figures.

Latino activists say they will pay Larry David $5,000 for heckling Donald Trump on ‘SNL.’

8am – C         Pope News:

• Pope Francis releases first ‘pop-rock’ album. (Telegraph) – Wake Up!, an 11-track Vatican-approved album, features many of Pope Francis’s addresses laid over rap, pop-rock and Latin rhythms. His wise homilies and moving speeches already attract worshippers in their millions. Now Pope Francis will be hoping his popularity translates into record sales after his first pop-rock album was released in Italy on Friday. Wake Up!, an 11-track Vatican-approved album, features many of the most moving addresses of Pope Francis’s papacy laid over rap, pop-rock and Latin rhythms.
• Fiat tops Consumer Reports’ list of 20 worst cars for reliability. (USA Today) — Consumer Reports magazine created the ratings, which hit this week in the December issue, based on thousands of responses to its owner surveys. Fiat Chrysler vehicles, including Fiat, Dodge, Chrysler and Ram, finished generally near the bottom of the pack, as brand’s go. Fiat 500L was the least reliable single model. The same problems, however, crop up among many of the cars on the list. They include balky transmissions, leaks, climate controls that don’t control the climate and a raft of issues around fancy navigation and in-car entertainment systems.

8am – D         INTERVIEW – TREVOR MATICH — Redskins elite long snapper and WMAL’s Redskins analyst – recapped the Washington Redskins vs New England Patriots game.

• Tom Brady and the Patriots make it look easy in 27-10 victory over Redskins

8am – E         Democratic Forum Recap:

• Rivals’ Gloves Come Off Against Clinton In Democratic Forum. They didn’t share a stage during Friday night’s South Carolina Democratic forum, but Hillary Clinton’s rivals still managed to throw plenty of elbows trying to question the frontrunner’s liberal bona fides. Trying to stunt the former secretary of state’s rise in the polls, both Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley jabbed at Clinton during their interviews with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow at Winthrop Unversity, criticizing her environmental positions, her coziness with Wall Street and more.
• ‘SNL’ Mocks MSNBC’s Democratic Forum. (Newsbusters) – Last night, Saturday Night Live used its cold opening to mock MSNBC’s Democratic presidential forum with cast member Cecily Strong portraying moderator Rachel Maddow. Strong described the forum as a “debate that no one watches.” After SNL’s Maddow briefly spoke to Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, portrayed by Taran Killam, Kate McKinnon appeared on set as Hillary Clinton and the SNL cast member hilariously did her best to mock Clinton’s attempts at appearing authentic.

TOMORROW: Michelle Malkin and Larry Kudlow