John Fund, Amb. John Bolton and Larry Kudlow joined WMAL on Tuesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C The GORRILLA DEBATE:

• Did Harambe the Gorilla Have to Die? Here’s What You Need to Know. The furor over the fatal shooting of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo over the weekend, after a 4-year-old boy fell into its enclosure, continued well into Monday night, with opinion increasingly divided on whether killing the large primate was necessary and justified. The gorilla was shot by zoo officials Saturday after he dragged the boy around the enclosure. The boy escaped relatively unscathed, with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
• ‘Parental negligence’: Thousands sign petitions condemning killing of Cincinnati Zoo gorilla. The 181-kg male gorilla, known as Harambe, was killed on Saturday after a four-year-old boy climbed through a public barrier at the zoo’s Gorilla World section and then fell into the exhibit’s moat. A number of petitions have been launched on Change.org, one of which, entitled “Justice for Harambe,” has accrued over 160,000 signatures. The petition describes as “heartbreaking” the decision to kill the “beautiful gorilla” instead of using a tranquiliser, before going on to criticise the child’s parents for “not keep[ing] a closer watch on the child.” “We the undersigned believe that the child would not have been able to enter the enclosure under proper parental supervision,” the petition reads. “It is believed that the situation was caused by parental negligence,” it adds, before calling for “the parents to be held accountable for the lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life.”

5am – D         Should The Libertarian Party Be On The Debate Stage?

• Libertarian Party selects Gary Johnson, William Weld for presidential ticket. ORLANDO, Fla. — Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld secured the Libertarian Party’s respective nominations for president and vice president Sunday, capping off the party’s weekend-long biennial convention.
• According to NY Times: If Gary Johnson reaches 15% in polls, he’ll be on debate stage with Trump, Clinton. He’s now in 10-11% range.
• NYT: Political analysts were taken by surprise this spring when two separate polls showed Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and the 2012 Libertarian Party nominee, pulling 10 percent and 11 percent of the national vote. The party chose Mr. Johnson again as its standard-bearer at its nominating convention on Sunday. If he can get to 15 percent in polls, he can stand on the debate stage as the first third-party candidate to do so since Mr. Perot in 1992. The feat would provide a bounty of free news media attention for a party that does not have the money for expensive advertising or voter-outreach efforts.

5am – E         Hillary News:

• Clinton Took to State Department Hallways to Check BlackBerry
• USA Today Editorial Board: Hillary Clinton broke the rules: Our view
• Politico: 4 Ways How Hillary Loses
• Clinton adds more campaign stops to avert a Sanders upset in California

6am – A/B/C Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a ‘public service.’ Chicago (CNN) Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a “public service” by triggering a debate over surveillance techniques, but still must pay a penalty for illegally leaking a trove of classified intelligence documents. “We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made,” Holder told David Axelrod on “The Axe Files,” a podcast produced by CNN and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. “Now I would say that doing what he did — and the way he did it — was inappropriate and illegal,” Holder added.

6am – D         CRITTER NEWS:

• Talking turkey: Maryland hunters break record. So how was your turkey season? It’s over now, of course, the last of it ending May 23 in Maryland. A total of 3,874 bearded turkeys were killed in the five-week Maryland season, 3 percent higher than the previous record set last year and way above the 10-year average of 3,131 birds. Highest totals for the state came once again from western Garrett County, with 387 turkeys, although that was slightly down from the 2015 high there of 421.
• Md. man charged for killing 2 goats. An Eastern Shore man was charged with aggravated animal cruelty after officials say he killed two goats and maimed a third at a state park.  Mervyn Jay Downes III, 21, of Ridgely was charged with three counts of animal cruelty, according to Maryland Natural Resources Police. Two goats were found dead with their throats slit on April 8 and police say another goat was attacked on May 2. The third goat survived the stabbing.  In December, Downes was charged with multiple counts of illegal deer hunting. Police say he pleaded guilty to one charge and was given probation and fined $1,500, all of it suspended. Police say he is on probation until Sept. 3.  If convicted, Downes faces up to three years in prison and a fine of $5,000.
• Off-Duty DC Officer Shoots Man With Gun Allegedly Stealing Crab Legs. A man who was attempting to steal crab legs from a grocery store was shot by an off-duty D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer working as security for the store after the man pointed a gun at the officer, according to a police report.The report said officer approached the man and found the bag contained two bags of crab legs, which had been taken from the store without payment. The officer asked the man to follow him to the back of the store, but the man refused and drew a handgun, pointing it at the officer. Officer drew his service weapon and fired once, striking the man, according to the report. The man fell to the ground and was later transported to the Washington Hospital Center.
• Washington Post: I have three cats, but don’t call me a crazy cat lady
  By Samantha Paige Rosen May 30 at 7:00 AM  — Under America’s diagnosis, I am a “crazy cat lady.” This is a judgment, an accusation, a scarlet “C” scratched into my forearm by one of my three cats. Google the phrase and you will find scores of women frantically defending their right to have cats without being branded as “crazy.” Here’s a checklist I’m supposed to consider as I sit on my bed surrounded by three purring cats:
  “Do you talk excessively about your cats and refer to them as your babies?” Of course — they are my babies.
  “Do you bring up the most tedious details about your cats when socializing or at work?” My cat anecdotes are both interesting and humorous, thank you.
  “Do you avoid social situations such as dating or having an evening with friends to be at home with the cats, fearing they’ll be lonely or sad without you?” They do love spending time with me …

6am – E         Maggie McMuffin not allowed on JetBlue flight due to ‘inappropriate shorts. ‘ A woman from Seattle was stopped from boarding her flight in Boston because air hostesses thought her shorts were ‘too short’. Maggie McMuffin had been trying to board a flight from Boston to Seattle when she was told that ‘she was dressed inappropriately’. The crew told her she would not be allowed to board the JetBlue flight unless she covered up, despite arriving in Boston on a connection with the same airline. A woman from Seattle was stopped from boarding her flight in Boston because air hostesses thought her shorts were ‘too short’. Maggie McMuffin had been trying to board a flight from Boston to Seattle when she was told that ‘she was dressed inappropriately’. The crew told her she would not be allowed to board the JetBlue flight unless she covered up, despite arriving in Boston on a connection with the same airline. The airline’s policy states that they have the right to remove anyone from a flight ‘whose clothing is lewd, obscene, or patently offensive’. Maggie said that though the company apologised for the incident, the pilot did not apologize. She told MailOnline Travel: ‘They refunded my shorts and offered me a 162 dollar credit.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — JOHN FUND – national-affairs columnist for National Review

• Libertarian Party selects Gary Johnson, William Weld for presidential ticket. ORLANDO, Fla. — Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld secured the Libertarian Party’s respective nominations for president and vice president Sunday, capping off the party’s weekend-long biennial convention.
• According to NY Times: If Gary Johnson reaches 15% in polls, he’ll be on debate stage with Trump, Clinton. He’s now in 10-11% range. NYT: Political analysts were taken by surprise this spring when two separate polls showed Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and the 2012 Libertarian Party nominee, pulling 10 percent and 11 percent of the national vote. The party chose Mr. Johnson again as its standard-bearer at its nominating convention on Sunday. If he can get to 15 percent in polls, he can stand on the debate stage as the first third-party candidate to do so since Mr. Perot in 1992. The feat would provide a bounty of free news media attention for a party that does not have the money for expensive advertising or voter-outreach efforts.

7am – B/C    Should The Libertarian Party Be On The Debate Stage?

7am – D/E     The GORRILLA DEBATE:

• Did Harambe the Gorilla Have to Die? Here’s What You Need to Know. The furor over the fatal shooting of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo over the weekend, after a 4-year-old boy fell into its enclosure, continued well into Monday night, with opinion increasingly divided on whether killing the large primate was necessary and justified. The gorilla was shot by zoo officials Saturday after he dragged the boy around the enclosure. The boy escaped relatively unscathed, with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
• ‘Parental negligence’: Thousands sign petitions condemning killing of Cincinnati Zoo gorilla. The 181-kg male gorilla, known as Harambe, was killed on Saturday after a four-year-old boy climbed through a public barrier at the zoo’s Gorilla World section and then fell into the exhibit’s moat. A number of petitions have been launched on Change.org, one of which, entitled “Justice for Harambe,” has accrued over 160,000 signatures. The petition describes as “heartbreaking” the decision to kill the “beautiful gorilla” instead of using a tranquiliser, before going on to criticise the child’s parents for “not keep[ing] a closer watch on the child.” “We the undersigned believe that the child would not have been able to enter the enclosure under proper parental supervision,” the petition reads. “It is believed that the situation was caused by parental negligence,” it adds, before calling for “the parents to be held accountable for the lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life.”

8am – A         INTERVIEW — AMBASSADOR JOHN BOLTON – Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations

• Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a ‘public service’ — Chicago (CNN) Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a “public service” by triggering a debate over surveillance techniques, but still must pay a penalty for illegally leaking a trove of classified intelligence documents. “We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made,” Holder told David Axelrod on “The Axe Files,” a podcast produced by CNN and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. “Now I would say that doing what he did — and the way he did it — was inappropriate and illegal,” Holder added.
• South Korea says North Korea missile launch likely failed. (Fox News) — SEOUL, South Korea – A North Korean missile launch likely failed on Tuesday, according to South Korea’s military, the latest in a string of high-profile failures that somewhat tempers recent worries that Pyongyang was pushing quickly toward its goal of a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach America’s mainland. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that the missile was a powerful mid-range Musudan. If true, that would make it the fourth failed attempt by the North to conduct a successful test launch of the new missile, which could potentially reach far-away U.S. military bases in Asia and the Pacific. Yonhap, citing an unidentified government source, said the missile exploded at a mobile launch pad as soon as a launch button was pressed. The report, if confirmed, suggests the missile may have even failed to lift off. Yonhap did not say how its source obtained the information. Seoul defense officials said they could not immediately confirm the report.
• Bolton wrote a NY Post op-ed that was critical of Obama’s Hiroshima visit last week. What did he think of President Obama’s Asia visit?
• Donald Trump reacts to Obama’s visit to Hiroshima: ‘Why doesn’t he discuss Pearl Harbor?’ (Business Insider) — Donald Trump on Saturday invoked the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in reaction to President Barack Obama’s Friday speech in Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first atomic bombing. In a tweet, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee criticized Obama for visiting the site while neglecting to mention the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

8am – B         Entertainment News:

• Snoop Dogg rails against ‘Roots’ in expletive-filled video. (USA Today) — Rapper and actor Snoop Dogg is calling for a boycott of the new Roots miniseries in an expletive-filled social media post. In the video on Instagram and Twitter, Snoop Dogg rails about the remake of Roots, which premieres Monday as a four-night series on History, A&E and Lifetime channels. The remake is based on ABC’s landmark 1977 miniseries of the same name, taken from author Alex Haley’s 1976 novel, which explored the horrors of American slavery. “I’m sick of this. … How the (expletive) they gonna put Roots on Memorial Day?” a subdued Snoop Dogg asks in the selfie video. “They just going to keep beating that (expletive) into our heads as to how they did us, huh?”
• #JonSnow is inspiring men to get perms — but is it the next hair trend for men? (WUSA) — Turns out Jon Snow knows something — about hair care. While our favorite man of the Night’s Watch defied death this season on Game of Thrones, he may have done something even more improbable: set off a demand for the “man perm.” Kit Harington’s luscious locks may have inspired men to head to hair salons and barbershops in an attempt to replicate those glorious curls — with a modern twist, of course. The soft, tousled waves — not at all like the tightly-wound ‘70s and ‘80s curls that we associate with men’s perms — are often partnered with a high and tight haircut. “It’s not your 1980s perm anymore, the science has technically advanced,” men’s grooming expert and celebrity stylist Diana Schmidtke told USA TODAY. ”The stigma against the perm goes back to the big hair of the ‘80s. And you can see now they’re using very large perm rods, which give looser curls.” The curls are achieved through a procedure called the cold perm, which can take up to one to two hours, but do less damage to hair.
• ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ rules, ‘Alice’ struggles at holiday box office. (USA Today) – In ‘X-Men Apocalypse,’ the young X-Men take on the very first mutant, Apocalypse, who wakes up after thousands of years of slumber with a mission to annihilate humankind. X-Men: Apocalypse opened with $80 million for the long Memorial Day weekend, destroying competition that included Alice Through the Looking Glass, which disappointed with $34.2 million over four days. The Bryan Singer-directed X-Men filled the multiplexes with a cast of mutants that included newcomers Sophie Turner and Tye Sheridan, along with franchise marquee names such as Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender.

8am – C         D.C. Would Like To Know How To Spell ‘Croissant.’ Last year, we had trouble with ‘tongue.‘ This year, at least according to Google, Washingtonians struggled to spell a certain flaky French pastry. You know the one, the crossant … crosant … croissant. In honor of the Scripps National Spelling Bee—11-year-old Nihar Janga and 13-year-old Jairam Hathwar tied in the televised final last night—Google pulled data on the search query “how to spell” by state. While Jairam got ‘Feldenkrais’ and Nihar spelled ‘gesellschaft’, we collectively struggled with croissant. Our neighbors in Virginia and Maryland had an issue with ‘cancelled’ (which to be fair is an actual matter of debate). Elsewhere in the country, North Dakotans asked about ‘attitude’, Utahns had questions about ‘leprechaun’, West Virginians wondered about ‘giraffe,’ and Californians, unfortunately, needed to learn how to spell ‘desert.’ While Alaskans wanted to know the correct spelling of ‘Hawaii,’ Hawaiians asked about ’boutineer.’ Massachusetts residents, meanwhile, weren’t exactly sure about ‘Massachusetts.’ Other terms made an appearance in multiple states, among them: ‘vacuum,’ ‘pneumonia,’ ‘definitely,’ ‘diarrhea,’ ‘gray,’ ‘appreciate,’ and ‘beautiful.’ Now if we could just find out “When Is Ramadan” and “Where Is Obama Today”? It turns out, those are the questions that D.C. asks more frequently than any other state, according to a recent analysis by Estately.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — LARRY KUDLOW- CNBC Senior Contributor and host of The Larry KudlowShow on WMAL Saturdays at 7 pm

• KUDLOW AND MOORE: The real housing market crash villains. (The Washington Times) — It’s the Clintons and their contributions to the Great Recession. By Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore – – Sunday, May 29, 2016 — I’m going to reveal the grand secret to getting rich by investing. It’s a simple formula that has worked for Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn and all the greatest investment gurus over the years. Ready? Buy low, sell high. It turns out that Donald Trump has been very good at buying low and selling high, and it helps account for his amazing business success. Now Hillary Clinton seems to think it’s a crime. Campaigning in California last week she’s wailed that Mr. Trump “actually said he was hoping for the crash that caused hard working families in California and across America to lose their homes, all because he thought he could take advantage of it to make some money for himself.” She’s assailing Mr. Trump for being a good businessman — something she would know almost nothing about because she’s never actually run a business, though she did miraculously turn $1,000 into $1 million in the cattle futures market many years ago. Her new TV ads say that Mr. Trump predicted the real estate crash in 2006 (good call) and then bought real estate at low prices when the housing crash came in 2008 that few others foresaw. Most builders went out of business during the real estate crash, Mr. Trump read the market perfectly and profited off of others stupidity and greed. What is so hypocritical about the Clinton attacks is that it wasn’t Trump, but Hillary, her husband, and many of her biggest supporters who were the real culprits here.
• Libertarian Party selects Gary Johnson, William Weld for presidential ticket. ORLANDO, Fla. — Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld secured the Libertarian Party’s respective nominations for president and vice president Sunday, capping off the party’s weekend-long biennial convention.

8am – E         SPORTS NEWS:

• NATS WIN:
  • Daniel Murphy rallies Nationals as Harper leaves after being hit by pitch
  • Bryce Harper leaves game after being hit in knee by pitch
  • French Open washed out for 1st time in 16 years. PARIS (AP) — Not so much the French Open as the French closed. For the first time in 16 years, unrelenting rain Monday washed out a full day of play at the only Grand Slam tennis venue without a retractable roof over its show court, clogging the schedule with unfinished and postponed matches and prompting the frustrated tournament director to plead — again — for a roof as soon as possible. “Our roof is a necessity,” Guy Forget said, as players were sent back to their hotels and thousands of would-be spectators told to apply for refunds for their unused tickets. “I’m a bit annoyed today, to say the least.” Chopped and changed plans to modernize Roland Garros now call for a retractable roof by 2020 over Court Philippe Chatrier, as part of a modernization of the cramped clay-court venue in the west of Paris. But opposition and legal action from local residents and environmental activists has slowed the ambitious project, which would expand Roland Garros into botanical gardens next door. Tournament organizers hope a ruling expected in September from the Council of State, France’s highest administrative authority, will allow work to proceed.