Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, Joe diGenova, Ed Meese and Newt Gingrich joined WMAL on Monday!

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, March 7, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A         SUPER SATURDAY RECAP:

• Ted Cruz Wins CPAC Straw Poll. Ted Cruz has won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C. Four in ten activists at the conference, known as CPAC, picked Cruz as their preferred candidate, while Marco Rubio won 30 percent support, Donald Trump won 15 percent and John Kasich won eight percent.
• Cruz gains steam with 2 wins on ‘Super Saturday’; Trump calls on Rubio to drop out. The 2016 election barreled forward Saturday as five states held presidential nominating contests across the country. On a day dubbed “Super Saturday,” Republicans voted in Louisiana and caucused in Kansas, Maine and Kentucky. Democrats also voted in Louisiana and caucused in Kansas and Nebraska. Trump won the Louisiana primary and the Kentucky caucuses, underscoring the extent to which the Republican nomination race has become a contest between him and Cruz.
• DELEGATES: (AP) – Trump still leads the field with at least 378 delegates, while Cruz has at least 295. Rubio and Kasich lag far behind in the race to reach the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination. Rubio and Kasich desperately need to win in their home states of Florida and Ohio on March 15 to have any credible case for staying in the race.

5am – B/C Donald Trump calls on Marco Rubio to drop out of race. (Business Insider) – Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said Saturday that rival Marco Rubio should drop out of the race. “I think it’s time for Marco to clean the deck. I really do. And I say that respectfully,” Trump said at a press conference in Florida. Trump held the press conference after four states held primaries or caucuses earlier in the day. Trump was projected to win Kentucky and Louisiana, while Cruz won Kansas and Maine. “I think Marco Rubio had a very, very bad night,” Trump said. “And personally I’d call on him to drop out of the race. I think it’s time now that he drop out of the race. I really think so. I think it’s probably time.” Trump’s call echoes that of another presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, who has urged the non-Trump candidates to drop out so that a coalition can form against the Republican frontrunner. Rubio, a Florida senator, has only won one state — Minnesota — while Cruz has also notched victories in Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Alaska.

5am – D         INTERVIEW _ CRAIG SHIRLEY – Reagan biographer and author “Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan”

• Reagan Biographer Craig Shirley on the Passing of Nancy Reagan: Washington, DC— Nancy Reagan, the first lady of the United States during the tenure of her husband Ronald Reagan, has died at the age of 94. “Nancy and Ronald Reagan were one of the great love stories of the American presidency,” said Craig Shirley, Ronald Reagan Biographer & Presidential Historian. “During the 1980 campaign, Governor Reagan was asked if Nancy Reagan would have a cause if he won and he joked, ‘Probably me, mostly.’ They were utterly devoted to each other for over fifty years but she also did have the cause of the ‘Just Say No’ anti-drug campaign, the returning Vietnam POW’s, and bringing grace and dignity back to the White House. Nancy Reagan was not only the First Lady; she was a Great Lady.       Nancy Davis Reagan, Rest in Peace.” Craig Shirley is a bestselling author who has written three books about Ronald Reagan. His newest one, “Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan,” tells the story of Reagan’s final years as president and his post-presidency. Shirley’s earlier books were “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America,” which detailed Reagan’s 1980 campaign, and “Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All,” about Reagan’s failed 1976 presidential challenge to Gerald Ford. When not writing history, Craig Shirley is president of the influential government relations and marketing firm Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. He has lectured at the Reagan Library, is the Visiting Reagan Scholar at Eureka College and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Reagan Ranch.

5am – E         Email News:

• RIP inventor of modern email Ray Tomlinson, who helped change how we communicate: Raymond Tomlinson, the inventor of modern email and a technological leader, has died, his employer said Sunday. Tomlinson died Saturday, the Raytheon Co. said; the details were not immediately available. Email existed in a limited capacity before Tomlinson in that electronic messages could be shared amid multiple people within a limited framework. But until his invention in 1971 of the first network person-to-person email, there was no way to send something to a specific person at a specific address. Tomlinson wrote and sent the first email on the ARPANET system, a computer network that was created for the U.S. government that is considered a precursor to the Internet. Tomlinson also contributed to the network’s development, among numerous other pioneering technologies in the programming world. At the time, few people had personal computers. The popularity of personal email wouldn’t take off until years later and would ultimately become an integral part of modern life.
• Hillary Clinton “delighted” State Department aide granted immunity in email investigation. Hillary Clinton said she was “delighted” to learn this week that the State Department aide who set up her private email server had been granted immunity by the Justice Department. The former secretary of state told CBS News she viewed Bryan Pagliano’s cooperation with the FBI investigation as reason to believe “we’ll be moving toward a resolution on this.” Pagliano, a 2008 presidential campaign staffer to Clinton, pleaded the Fifth Amendment last month in a congressional hearing about his involvement. In response to a question on “Face the Nation” on the immunity deal, typically employed by prosecutors seeking more information, was good news, Clinton said “absolutely.”
• Report: Clinton sent 104 classified emails as secretary of state. Hillary Clinton wrote 104 emails using her private server as secretary of state that the State Department has since designated as classified, an analysis released Sunday found. Recipients included diplomats, top administration officials and foreigners who did not hold security clearance in the U.S., according to the report published by the Washington Post. Clinton initiated some of the exchanges, but was most often responding to messages sent to her. The analysis found that an additional 300 emails on Clinton’s server written by other parties also contained what State has since designated as classified information. Some of those involved low-level State Department employees who similarly violated federal policies by using improper accounts to send the messages.

6am – A/B/C RIP Former First Lady Nancy Reagan: What Will Be Her Lasting Legacy?

6am – D/E     Stafford volunteer firemen suspended over child’s transport. (The Free Lance-Star) — FREDERICKSBURG — Two volunteers from the Falmouth Fire Station in Stafford County were suspended after transporting an 18-month-old child to the hospital in a fire engine, according to firefighters from the station. Capt. James Kelley and Sgt. Virgil Bloom were the first to arrive on the scene at a McDonald’s restaurant Feb. 27, said Kelley, the officer in charge. He said the child was having a seizure and was blue from her chest to her head. “I immediately told the driver to turn on the engine. This child was in dire need of a hospital,” he said. Kelley did not think a medic unit would be available for at least 10 to 15 minutes. He said that while he was on his way to the McDonald’s, a medic unit called in over the radio to say they were the closest unit. But Kelley had heard the unit’s prior call was in North Stafford on White Pine Circle. Kelley said he did not receive an answer from the medic unit after he asked for its location. After his second request, the medic unit answered only “southbound on Route 1.” “That caused major chaos,” Kelley said.

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

• FBI investigating if Clinton aides shared passwords to access classified info. (Fox News) — The FBI is investigating whether computer passwords were shared among Hillary Clinton’s close aides to determine how sensitive intelligence “jumped the gap” between the classified systems and Clinton’s unsecured personal server, according to an intelligence source familiar with the probe. The source emphasized to Fox News that “if [Clinton] was allowing other people to use her passwords, that is a big problem.” The Foreign Service Officers Manual prohibits the sharing of passwords.
• Hillary Clinton “delighted” State Department aide granted immunity in email investigation.

7am – B         RIP Former First Lady Nancy Reagan: Remembering Her Legacy.

7am – C         Best Street Name Ever? Virginia’s Warp Drive. (Slate) – Driving down Route 28 in Dulles, Virginia, those with their sensors on full might notice a road sign that promises to catapult them to warp speed, but really it is just a clever attempt by an aerospace company to get people to like them. Once upon a time, the short stretch of road known as Steeplechase Drive was just another offramp street in an industrial part of town. Then the headquarters of the Orbital Sciences Corporation moved in. A Virginia-based company, Orbital specialized in manufacturing rockets for uses ranging from civilian to military. Unsurprisingly, Orbital was also apparently staffed by space geeks with a love for Star Trek. This became clear when the company lobbied the city to change the name of Steeplechase Drive to the can’t-believe-no-one-had-thought-of-this name Warp Drive. While it may not come as a shock that the company nerds requested the new science fiction moniker, what is surprising is that the city was cool with it. A number of the county supervisors turned out to be Trekkies themselves, approving the name change with a vote that was sprinkled with dorky quotes from the show. There were some buzzkills who wanted to point out that “warp” can have other meanings, although they did not elaborate. These naysayers were voted down, and Orbital was able to change the name, provided they pay some $500 for a new road sign. A small price to pay for greatness. Today, signs for Warp Drive can be seen surrounding the Orbital campus, each one reminding drivers that it’s a Trekkie’s world, we’re all just living in it.

7am – D         AUDIO: DEMOCRATIC DEBATE HIGHLIGHTS

7am – E         Political correctness devours yet another college, fighting over mini-sombreros. (Washington Post) – On Saturday, two members of Bowdoin College’s student government will face impeachment proceedings. What heinous transgression did they commit? Theft, plagiarism, sexual assault? Nope. They attended a party where some guests wore tiny sombreros. Two weeks ago, some students threw a birthday party for a friend. The email invitation read: “the theme is tequila, so do with that what you may. We’re not saying it’s a fiesta, but we’re also not not saying that :).” The invitation — sent by a student of Colombian descent, which may or may not be relevant here — advertised games, music, cups and “other things that are conducive to a fun night.” Those “other things” included the miniature sombreros, several inches in diameter. And when photos of attendees wearing those mini-sombreros showed up on social media, students and administrators went ballistic. College administrators sent multiple schoolwide emails notifying the students about an “investigation” into a possible “act of ethnic stereotyping.” Partygoers ultimately were reprimanded or placed on “social probation,” and the hosts have been kicked out of their dorm, according to friends. (None of the disciplined students whom I contacted wanted to speak on the record; Bowdoin President Clayton Rose declined an interview and would not answer a general question about what kinds of disciplinary options are considered when students commit an “act of bias.”). The statement deemed the party an act of “cultural appropriation,” one that “creates an environment where students of color, particularly Latino, and especially Mexican, students feel unsafe.” The effort to purge the two representatives who attended the party, via impeachment, soon followed.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – ED MEESE — Former US Attorney General in the President Reagan administration and currently The Heritage Foundation’s Ronald Reagan distinguished fellow emeritus. BIO: Perhaps best known as U.S. attorney general during Reagan’s second term, Meese’s service to the conservative icon stretched from the California governor’s mansion in 1966 to the White House in 1981 before he went to the Department of Justice four years later.

• Reflected on the life and legacy of former First Lady Nancy Reagan

8am – B         SUPER SATURDAY RECAP:

• Ted Cruz Wins CPAC Straw Poll. Ted Cruz has won the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C. Four in ten activists at the conference, known as CPAC, picked Cruz as their preferred candidate, while Marco Rubio won 30 percent support, Donald Trump won 15 percent and John Kasich won eight percent.
• Cruz gains steam with 2 wins on ‘Super Saturday’; Trump calls on Rubio to drop out. The 2016 election barreled forward Saturday as five states held presidential nominating contests across the country. On a day dubbed “Super Saturday,” Republicans voted in Louisiana and caucused in Kansas, Maine and Kentucky. Democrats also voted in Louisiana and caucused in Kansas and Nebraska. Trump won the Louisiana primary and the Kentucky caucuses, underscoring the extent to which the Republican nomination race has become a contest between him and Cruz.
• DELEGATES: (AP) – Trump still leads the field with at least 378 delegates, while Cruz has at least 295. Rubio and Kasich lag far behind in the race to reach the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination. Rubio and Kasich desperately need to win in their home states of Florida and Ohio on March 15 to have any credible case for staying in the race.
• Donald Trump calls on Marco Rubio to drop out of race. (Business Insider) – Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said Saturday that rival Marco Rubio should drop out of the race. “I think it’s time for Marco to clean the deck. I really do. And I say that respectfully,” Trump said at a press conference in Florida. Trump held the press conference after four states held primaries or caucuses earlier in the day. Trump was projected to win Kentucky and Louisiana, while Cruz won Kansas and Maine. “I think Marco Rubio had a very, very bad night,” Trump said.

• Romney touts Cruz wins over Trump, will not reject GOP nod if drafted at convention. (Fox News) — Mitt Romney said Sunday that GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz winning two primary states this weekend proves the Texas senator can stop front-runner Donald Trump, but declined to rule out his own White House scenario. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee, repeated remarks from last week, telling “Fox News Sunday” that he wouldn’t launch an eleventh-hour campaign for president. But he declined to reject being “drafted” at the GOP convention in July to be the party’s general election candidate. “It would be absurd to say that if I were drafted I’d say no,” Romney said. “We have four strong people running for the nomination. One of them will be the nominee.” Romney has occasionally weighed in on the 2016 GOP race. But he emerged in full force Thursday when he gave a speech in which he called Trump a “phony” and urged voters to instead back an establishment candidate like Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

8am – C         End of GOP?

• The Republican Party Is Shattering: Stop Trump? Unite behind him? No matter the outcome, nothing will ever be the same. (WSJ/By Peggy Noonan) – “I’m interested in where we are. I think we are seeing a great political party shatter before our eyes. I’m not sure I see a way around or through. I said so on TV the other night and got a lot of responses on social media. They said: Good. They said, “They are corrupt,” and “I am through.” Good riddance to bad rubbish. Next.”
• Peggy Noonan: GOP ‘is ending’ (Washington Examiner) – Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal columnist and former speechwriter to Ronald Reagan, is declaring an end to the Republican Party. In her column Friday, Noonan said proof that the GOP is coming apart is evident by the rise of Donald Trump, his unorthodox conservatism and the party’s elder statesmen’s refusal to accept that he may become their presidential nominee. “[W]e are witnessing history. Something important is ending. It is hard to believe what replaces it will be better,” wrote Noonan. “No one knows where this goes. The top of the party and the bottom have split. They disagree on the essentials.” Trump currently has by far the most delegates in the GOP primary. But his main rivals, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, with encouragement from the party’s old guard, are pushing to deprive him of the number needed to lock up the nomination. Some Republican operatives are even pursuing a brokered convention in July, which would require the party to reorganize and select its nominee during the event, rather than through the normal primary process. “If party forces succeed in finagling [Trump] out of the nomination, his supporters will bolt, which will break the party,” Noonan said in her column. “And it’s hard to see what kind of special sauce, what enduring loyalty would make them come back in the future.”

8am – D         INTERVIEW — NEWT GINGRICH — former Speaker of the House, former presidential candidate and author of book “Duplicity” and hosted film documentary “Rendezvous with Destiny” – discussed the legacy of Nancy Reagan and shared his thoughts on the state of play of the election.

8am – E         Entertainment News:

• ‘Zootopia’ and ‘London Has Fallen’ unseat ‘Deadpool’ at top of box office. A profane superhero was no match for a computer-animated rabbit-fox duo or a Morgan Freeman action thriller at the weekend box office. “Deadpool,” in its third week, fell to third place behind new releases “Zootopia,” from Disney, and Focus Features’ “London Has Fallen.” “Zootopia” grossed an estimated $73.7 million in the U.S. and Canada to take the top spot. It beat analyst expectations of $60 million, becoming the fourth-largest March opening weekend in industry history.
• Farewell to Downton Abbey, and to a More Gracious Time. The appeal of ‘Downton Abbey’ was the access it offered viewers to a fantasy land of elegance and gentility — values that seem especially quaint now that the era of Trump is upon us. Even after most critics stopped caring, I have adored all six seasons of Downton Abbey, that escapist soap bubble of a series. But, yes, it was time for the show to end. After all, it had always worked best as a wish-fulfillment fantasy: The aristocratic Crawley family was glamorous and enviable, and the downstairs servants didn’t even resent them. But as the story moved from its start in 1912 through the last scenes, with the clock ringing in New Year’s 1926, the class structure beneath that fantasy began to crumble — and the strain on Downton showed.