Joe diGenova, Washington Post’s Liz Clarke and Trevor Matich joined WMAL on Monday!

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, August 22, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C   Mila Kunis Won’t Spoil Her Kids. She says you just have to remind children that Mom and Dad are rich — not you. (LifeZette/Heather Hunter) — Actress Mila Kunis and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, both grew up poor and consider themselves to be self-made. And they are determined not to have spoiled children themselves. “It’s a matter of teaching them from a very early age that, you know, ‘Mommy and Daddy may have a dollar, but you’re poor,’” Kunis recently told an Australian podcast. “‘You are very poor. You have nothing. Mommy and Daddy have a bank account.’” Kunis has a point. Technically, children have done nothing, own nothing, won no awards, and pursued no real endeavors. To paraphrase President Obama, they didn’t build that — their parents did.

5am – D         Pres. Obama to visit flood-stricken Louisiana on Tuesday. (CNN) President Barack Obama will visit flood-stricken Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Tuesday after outcry that he didn’t end his Martha’s Vineyard vacation to visit the area. The White House said Obama was “eager to get a first-hand look at the impact of the devastating floods, hear from more officials about the response, including how the federal government can assist and tell the people of Louisiana that the American people will be with them as they rebuild their community and come back stronger than ever.” Obama’s trip won’t interfere with his summer vacation, as he was scheduled to return to Washington on Sunday. The announcement comes hours after Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump toured areas affected by the floods in Baton Rouge with his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence. They visited Baton Rouge and toured the areas damaged by flooding, meeting with residents about their concerns and helping distribute supplies. They were there for a few hours.

5am – E         Clinton News:

• Clinton Foundation Needs ‘Some Time’ Before Cutting Foreign Money. Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager defended her commitment to transparency and trustworthiness Sunday amid continuing doubts about her honesty and integrity. The decision of the Clinton Foundation to stop accepting foreign donations should the Democratic nominee become president as well as State Department emails that sparked fresh questions about access to Clinton were discussed on CNN’s “State of the Union” by campaign manager Robby Mook, who suggested that Clinton gets extra scrutiny because she has been so transparent.  Host Dana Bash asked why the Clinton Foundation would wait to cut off foreign donations rather than doing it now or during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. Mook suggested that the foundation’s ongoing work would require a slower effort to cut foreign ties, although he tried to change the subject after being pressed on the point by Bash.  “The foundation is doing an enormous amount of work, and it takes time when you’re in a number of countries around the world to retool, refocus the mission and adapt,” Mook said. “They receive a great deal of funding through these streams. And it will just take some time for them to readjust. Look, what we’re focused on right now is making sure Hillary Clinton is elected president, so nobody wants to get ahead of themselves. But we’re glad to hear that they have once again taken an unprecedented step in terms of transparency and rules.”
• With a comfortable lead, Clinton begins laying plans for her White House agenda. (Washington Post) — Hillary Clinton’s increasingly confident campaign has begun crafting a detailed agenda for her possible presidency, with plans to focus on measures aimed at creating jobs, boosting infrastructure spending and enacting immigration reform if current polling holds and she is easily elected to the White House in November. Some Clinton boosters remain concerned that, with an election focused so heavily on Trump’s deficiencies, she could enter the White House without a clear mandate. But Clinton’s team is hopeful that a trouncing of her Republican opponent in November could soften the ground for a robust set of proposals that could be implemented both with and without congressional action.
• Colin Powell sets record straight on involvement in email scandal. Colin Powell has broken his silence about his alleged involvement in the Hillary Clinton email scandal, saying her team is falsely trying to blame him. When asked by the FBI about her email use at the State Department, Clinton reportedly told investigators that former Secretary of State Powell had advised her to use a personal email account at a private dinner. But Powell, who had said last week in a statement that he had no recollection of the conversation, told Page Six at Saturday’s Apollo in the Hamptons event, “The truth is she was using it (her personal email) for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did [during my term as Secretary of State].  “Her people have been trying to pin it on me.” When asked why Clinton’s team were attempting to blame him, he responded, “Why do you think?” Despite appearing angered by the situation, he added, “It doesn’t bother me. It’s okay, I’m free.”

6am – A/B/C At all-boys’ D.C. high school, ‘young kings’ find discipline, community. (Washington Post) — SANDY SPRING, Md. — “Good morning, young kings!” At the invocation, about 100 young African-American high school freshmen look up from their breakfasts — teetering stacks of waffles and piles of scrambled eggs and bacon — and await a message from Benjamin Williams. They’ve just arrived on big yellow school buses for the second day of a two-week orientation for Ron Brown College Preparatory (RBCP), Washington, D.C.’s new boys-only public high school and one of only a handful nationwide. The academic year doesn’t officially begin in D.C. until Aug. 22, but for these kids — Brown’s inaugural freshman class — school is already in session. Their school will open later this month in D.C.’s Deanwood neighborhood, but this week, the boys occupied part of a well-groomed prep school about an hour’s drive north of downtown Washington, D.C., as Williams, 36, the school’s founding principal, and his small staff got to know them. Part of D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s $20 million “Empowering Males of Color” effort meant to give kids like this a chance they wouldn’t ordinarily get in a typical urban public school, RBCP will be smaller than most, never growing larger than 600 students. It’ll be more intimate and geared exclusively toward the needs of young African-American and Hispanic men.

6am –C          Virginia’s McAuliffe to announce restoration of voting rights to 13000 felons. (Washington Post) — RICHMOND — Gov. Terry McAuliffe will announce Monday that he has restored voting rights to 13,000 felons on a case-by-case basis after Republicans and state Supreme Court justices last month stopped his more sweeping clemency effort. McAuliffe’s planned action, confirmed by two people with knowledge of it, comes about a month after the Supreme Court of Virginia invalidated an executive order the Democratic governor issued in April. With that order, McAuliffe restored voting rights to more than 200,000 felons who had completed their sentences. McAuliffe said his original order would move Virginia away from a harsh lifetime disenfranchisement policy that hits African Americans particularly hard. Republicans, incensed that it covered violent and nonviolent offenders alike, said the move was really a bid to add Democrat-friendly voters to the rolls ahead of November’s presidential elections, when the governor’s close friend and political ally, Hillary Clinton, will be on the ballot.

6am – D         Olympics News:

• Simone Biles Held Up the Olympics Closing Ceremony Because Everyone Wanted a Selfie With Her. And on Sunday night, during the closing ceremony, it seemed every top athlete from around the world wanted a slice — er, a selfie — with Biles. Biles had the honor of carrying the American flag during the closing ceremony on Sunday. But as luck (and fame) would have it, other athletes from various countries kept stopping Biles during the ceremony to take the perfect selfie with her. As one NBC commentator put it, “they’re trying to get a Biles smile.”
• Japanese PM Shinzo Abe appears in disguise as Super Mario at Rio Olympics Closing Ceremony
• DANCING BROCCOLI???  (The Guardian) — I really thought we were reaching the end when the dancing vegetation arrived. But I just checked the programme and there’s another quarter of an hour to go. Unless this really is the shared acid trip it looks like and I’m actually back in a bar in Copacabana staring at a plate of broccoli.
• Ryan Lochte Says ‘My Mistake Was Over-Exaggerating’
• Final Rio medal count: USA nearly doubles total of closest country. The Americans dominated the podium once again at the Rio Olympics.  The U.S. continues to dominate the Summer Games, as the Americans were all over the podium at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Team USA finished with a total of 121 medals — 51 more than second-place China. That is the largest margin by any country in a non-boycotted Olympics since 1931, when the U.S. beat Italy by 67 medals. The Americans also topped their previous high of 110 Olympic medals, which they set in Beijing in 2008. Michael Phelps once again took home the most medals of any Olympian (six), while Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles will each leave with five. U.S. women took home 27 gold medals, by far the most of any country’s female contingent, and 61 medals total.
• US swimmer Jimmy Feigen told he cannot leave Rio – after flying home. A Brazilian judge provided another twist to the saga of the four US swimmers embroiled in a scandal at the Olympic Games, suspending permission for one of the athletes, Jimmy Feigen, to leave the country, even though he had flown home hours earlier. Feigen went home on Friday night, police sources said, after agreeing in an earlier hearing to pay a 35,000 reais (£8,400) fine for lying about being robbed at gunpoint in an incident that marred South America’s first Olympics. Prosecutors quickly appealed against the penalty as being too lenient, persuading the judge to suspend the earlier ruling that had given Feigen the green light to leave.

6am – E         Woman crashes, flips SUV during test drive in Va. WASHINGTON — A test drive took a dangerous turn Friday when a woman trying out a Mercedes struck four cars and flipped the vehicle on its side at a dealership in Virginia, NBC Washington reported. At about 11:30 a.m., a female driver and three passengers were test-driving a Mercedes SUV in the parking lot of the Mercedes-Benz of Arlington dealership on North Glebe Road in Ballston when the woman accelerated at a high rate of speed, according to the report. The driver then struck four vehicles in the dealership parking lot before taking a sharp turn and crashing the white SUV on its side. Fire officials said a dealership employee riding in the SUV at the time asked to be checked out by medics at the scene but that there were no reports of injuries.

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

• Clinton Foundation Needs ‘Some Time’ Before Cutting Foreign Money
• With a comfortable lead, Clinton begins laying plans for her White House agenda
• Colin Powell sets record straight on involvement in email scandal
• Virginia’s McAuliffe to announce restoration of voting rights to 13000 felons

7am – B         Critter News:

• Alligator Bayou owners wrangling gators who escaped in the flood. PRAIRIEVILLE, LA (WAFB/WSFA) – Before the levee near Spanish Lake can be cut to release some of the tension of the flooded area, the alligators need to be rounded up.  Owners of Alligator Bayou are searching the area for six of the 30 alligators that escaped when the flood waters rose high enough for the large gators to swim out of their pen.  Some of the alligators are hanging out near the construction equipment, preventing the construction workers from getting to the equipment, much less doing their jobs. If they can’t capture all the alligators, officials may have to kill them in order to avoid a levee breach.
• The National Zoo’s giant baby panda, Bei Bei, is celebrating his 1st birthday this weekend: National Zoo gives Bei Bei a birthday party, but he poops out before his cake. (Washington Post) — The National Zoo’s giant panda cub, who slept through his media debut in December and then snoozed through his public debut in January, demonstrated again on Saturday that he might benefit from an alarm clock. When the time came for the 70-pound cub’s first birthday bash, he was a no-show — sprawled out on the cool concrete floor of his indoor pen while thousands baked in the heat outside for a chance to wish him well. “Oh, no,” said Heiko Ramsey, who had planned a trip from Florida around the panda party, jokingly referring to Bei Bei as his “other baby” he came to see in the District — not just his son attending George Washington University. After a while, however, Bei Bei’s mother, Mei Xiang, decided to devour her son’s frozen birthday “cake,” a 100-pound block of flavored ice packed with chunks of apples and sweet potatoes.
• Ten-year-old girl who was bitten by a camel at a drive-thru zoo as she sat in the back of a wagon while attending a birthday party gets $155,000 settlement. (Daily Mail) — A 10-year-old girl who was bitten by a camel at a safari park in Virginia will get a $155,000 settlement. Madison Holland’s family has reached a settlement with the Virginia Safari Park in Natural Bridge, according to court documents obtained by The Roanoke Times. She suffered serious injuries to her forearm when she was bitten while attending a birthday party at the drive-thru zoo in May 2015.
• Manatee sightings in Virginia’s waterways? STAFFORD, Va. (ABC7) — The Magraths were on their boat Thursday when they spotted something in the Aquia Creek. “I was like, ‘Is there is a giant crocodile that is going to eat us’,” joked Andrea Magrath. The mysterious creature turned out to be a Manatee, which swam close enough for the Magraths to snap a couple of pictures. “You could see the whiskers. It took a breath two feet from the bow of the boat,” said Brad Magrath.  Manatee sightings are not unheard of in Virginia’s waterways, but there were only about a dozen last year and just four in 2014, according to the Virginia Aquarium. Experts at the aquarium also explained that manatees swim north for the summer, but staying here too long could be deadly. Manatees are sensitive to water temperatures below 68-degrees. If you harass or poach one, you could be fined up to $50,000 and/or imprisoned for up to a year. If you see one, stay away and report its location to wildlife officials.

7am – C   KFC’s secret recipe found in a scrapbook? The Chicago Tribune is reporting that it may have uncovered Col. Harland Sanders’ secret original recipe for his famed fried chicken, the linchpin of KFC’s global franchise of some 18,000 restaurants in 115 countries. In a story posted on the Tribune’s website Friday, a freelance reporter for the newspaper said he stumbled upon the recipe at the home of Joe Ledington, a nephew of the colonel by marriage, while paging through a scrapbook once owned by Sanders’ late wife, Claudia Sanders. But in an email to the Courier-Journal, a KFC spokesperson said the recipe isn’t theirs. “Many people have made these claims over the years and no one has been accurate – this one isn’t either,” the email said. “Though, we imagine that might make some tasty fried chicken, too.” Ledington, in an interview with the Courier-Journal, said the scrapbook was passed down through various family members since Claudia Sanders died in 1997. Ledington said the book – which contains photos of the Sanderses’ wedding, original franchise agreements and original photos of overseas restaurant openings – has been in his possession about four years. The recipe was handwritten on a piece of paper tucked into an envelope that contained a copy of Claudia Sanders’ will, he said.

7am – D/E     Trump’s Immigrant Deportation Force ‘to Be Determined,’ Kellyanne Conway Says.  Donald Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, on Sunday said that the creation of a “deportation force” for undocumented immigrants under a Trump administration was “to be determined.” Throughout the Republican primary, Trump supported the forcible removal of the some 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to live in the United States. Last November, he called for a deportation force to do the job. In an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he said, “You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely.” Trump has made the vilification of immigrants a central part of his campaign: from his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border (and claims that Mexico will “pay for it”) to his call to ban people who are Muslim from traveling to the United States. He made headlines in June for saying that an American-born judge presiding over a Trump University lawsuit could not be impartial because of the judge’s Hispanic ancestry.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – LIZ CLARKE – sportswriter for The Washington Post – IN RIO

• Simone Biles Held Up the Olympics Closing Ceremony Because Everyone Wanted a Selfie With Her. And on Sunday night, during the closing ceremony, it seemed every top athlete from around the world wanted a slice — er, a selfie — with Biles. Biles had the honor of carrying the American flag during the closing ceremony on Sunday. But as luck (and fame) would have it, other athletes from various countries kept stopping Biles during the ceremony to take the perfect selfie with her. As one NBC commentator put it, “they’re trying to get a Biles smile.”
• Japanese PM Shinzo Abe appears in disguise as Super Mario at Rio Olympics Closing Ceremony
• Ryan Lochte Says ‘My Mistake Was Over-Exaggerating’
• Final Rio medal count: USA nearly doubles total of closest country. The Americans dominated the podium once again at the Rio Olympics.

8am – B         LOUISIANA FLOODING: Pres. Obama to visit flood-stricken Louisiana on Tuesday.

8am – C         D.C. rapper ‘Swipey’ shot and killed in Prince George’s County early Sunday. (Washington Post) — D.C. rapper Swipey, who had amassed a dedicated fan base in the region and thousands of followers online, was shot and killed early Sunday in Prince George’s County, police said. Swipey, whose real name was Douglas Brooks, was found shortly after 1 a.m. outside a home in the 3600 block of Parkway Terrace Drive in Suitland. Police had responded to a call of gunshots and found Brooks, 18. He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Police said Sunday that they do not believe the shooting was random but that they were still working to determine a suspect and motive. They are offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to an arrest and indictment in the killing. The young rapper’s death triggered an outpouring of grief on social media, where friends described him as a promising rapper whose life and career were cut short.

8am – D         INTERVIEW – TREVOR MATICH – WMAL’s Redskins Analyst

• Jets’ starters stink it up in ugly preseason loss to Redskins. LANDOVER, Md. — A common expression around the NFL is, “The preseason means nothing.” The Jets better hope so. Gang Green looked awful in a 22-18 loss to the Redskins at FedEx Field on Friday night. The starting offense could barely function. The starting defense could not stop a Washington team that did not even play starting quarterback Kirk Cousins or wide receiver DeSean Jackson. The Jets’ backups played better in the second half, but it was an ugly, ugly performance for the starters. But the good news for the Jets is that it is only August and no one will remember this game in three weeks when the regular season begins.  It is hard to figure out which performance was worse: the offense’s or the defense’s. The Redskins opened the game with a nine-play drive that chewed up 9:24 off the clock. Washington started backup quarterback Colt McCoy and he carved up the Jets, who only were without defensive end Muhammad Wilkerson. Washington converted a third-and-15 and made it all the way to the Jets’ 8. A touchdown pass was negated by a penalty and then Darrelle Revis intercepted McCoy in the end zone to keep the Redskins off the scoreboard.

8am – E         Washington Monument to remain closed for next 10 days for inspections. WASHINGTON — The Washington Monument will remain closed for at least the next 10 days so technicians can perform a “top-to-bottom” inspection of the monument’s elevator, National Park Service officials announced Friday. The monument, which has been plagued by persistent elevator outages and other technical problems this summer, has already been shuttered for repairs since Aug. 17 after a compensation cable that stabilizes the elevator unexpectedly broke loose. NPS spokesman Mike Litterst said the evaluation will help park officials understand the reasons for a series of recent equipment failures, which include a low-voltage power incident and glitches in the computer system that operates the elevator. “It makes it very difficult to pinpoint a specific cause or to keep things up and running when it’s not the same thing time and again,” Litterst told WTOP. During the upcoming 10-day closure, crews will inspect and clean the elevator shaft, check the integrity of circuit breakers using thermal imaging, and inspect and repair fans at the top of the elevator, according to NPS. The monument was closed for nearly three years and underwent extensive repairs following the 2011 earthquake that rocked the D.C. region. Since the monument reopened to the public in May 2014, officials have closed it on 24 separate occasions, Litterst said.