Dr. Bob Moffit, KT McFarland, Steve Moore and Daily Mail’s David Martosko joined WMAL on Wednesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C INTERVIEW — DR. ROBERT “BOB” MOFFIT – Senior Fellow, Heritage Foundation, former deputy assistant secretary for legislation at HHS, author of best seller “Why ObamaCare is Wrong”

• Average Obamacare premiums to rise 22 percent. Obama administration confirms double-digit premium hikes

5am – C         The WMAL Diner Tour is back! WMAL’s bringing Mornings on the Mall with Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor to your neighborhood… just in time for Election Day. Larry and Brian are taking the pulse of area voters (that means you!) in Maryland and Virginia with a series of live broadcasts leading up to the election. Stop by to join the conversation live with Mornings on the Mall and WMAL! // DINER LOCATIONS:  Friday, October 28^th / Silver Diner Rockville, 12276 Rockville Pike,  Rockville, MD 20852  / In Federal Plaza Shopping Center / 5am to 9am

5am – D         WikiLeaks Update:

• Clinton Campaign Chairman Had Multiple Dinners With Top DOJ Official During Clinton Email Investigation
• In a September 2015 email, Podesta noted of Hillary, “We’ve taken on a lot of water that won’t be easy to pump out of the boat. Most of that has to do with terrible decisions made pre-campaign, but a lot has to do with her instincts.”
• Huma Abedin says Clinton ‘still not perfect in her head’ in WikiLeaks email. (Washington Times) – Rumors about Hillary Clinton’s health are not likely to be quashed anytime soon due to a cryptic statement written by top aide Huma Abedin in April 2015. WikiLeaks’ document dump of personal emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta show Ms. Abedin on April 21, 2015 — just days after the her boss’s campaign kicked off — mentioning the candidate’s cognitive difficulties. The remark came at the tail end of a conversation about Jeb Bush’s utilization of Super PACs. “I will leave commenting on campaign tactics to others. What I have made absolutely clear is that corporate money and secret money have no place in our democracy and we should get rid of it once and for all,” Joel Benenson said in the penultimate email provided by WikiLeaks. Ms. Abedin then responded with multiple top advisers copied, “She’s going to stick to notes a little closer this am, still not perfect in her head.”
• Clinton State Dept. Official Gives Exact Same Answer to 90 Email Scandal Questions During Deposition. (IJR) – Another State Department official linked to Hillary Clinton’s private email scandal pleaded the Fifth on Monday after being ordered by a judge to appear for a deposition. John Bentel, former director of State Department’s Office of Information Resources Management, previously claimed he only learned about Clinton’s private email server through news reports in 2015. However, a judge determined that emails suggest he knew of the private server as early as 2009. Judicial Watch seized on the “significant discrepancies,” but they were unable to get answers In response to more than 90 questions from Judicial Watch on Monday, Bentel answered: “On advice from my legal counsel, I decline to answer the question and I invoke my Fifth Amendment rights.”
• Clinton aide talked of needing to ‘clean’ up Obama’s comments on email server

5am – E         Trump News:

• Trump stops holding high-dollar fundraisers that were raising big cash for the GOP. (Washington Post) – Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has no further high-dollar fundraising events planned for the remainder of the campaign, dealing another serious blow to the GOP’s effort to finance its get-out-the-vote operation before Election Day. Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s national finance chairman, said in an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday that Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the party and the campaign, held its last formal fundraiser on Oct. 19. The luncheon was in Las Vegas on the day of the final presidential debate. “We’ve kind of wound down,” Mnuchin said, referring to formal fundraisers. “But the online fundraising continues to be strong.” While Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is headlining her last fundraiser Tuesday night in Miami, her campaign has scheduled 41 other events between now and Nov. 3 featuring high-profile surrogates such as her daughter, Chelsea, running mate Tim Kaine and the entertainer Cher, according to a schedule sent to donors this weekend.
• Pence to make late campaign visit to Utah. With less than two weeks until the election, Mike Pence will be campaigning Wednesday in Utah, a state that last voted for a Democrat for president in 1964. The Salt Lake City rally was announced Monday evening.  The move, so late in the campaign, underscores the danger of a landslide now facing Donald Trump. Recent Utah polls show Trump in a dead heat in the state not just with Hillary Clinton but with independent conservative candidate Evan McMullin. McMullin, a former House Republican staffer and CIA operative, has almost no national name recognition but is making a serious play in Utah, where the conservative Mormon population has been particularly cold to Trump. McMullin is also a Mormon, as well as a native of Utah and graduate of Brigham Young University. The trip is part of a Western swing for Pence that will include stops in Reno, Nevada, and Colorado Springs on Wednesday.
• Trump bows out of fight for space outside hotel grand opening. (Washington Post) – Every time Donald Trump holds an event at his new Washington hotel they’ve been there. Out front. With signs. And sometimes a bullhorn. Protesters have not allowed the presidential candidate to peacefully promote the Old Post Office project or his candidacy there, despite the federal government giving Trump’s company unusual leeway over the property outside his $212 million hotel. Wednesday morning will be no different, as Trump plans to hold a grand opening celebration at the hotel and two anti-Trump groups have applied for sidewalk permits to protest two weeks before the election. In the past, Trump Organization officials have either ignored the noise out front or stationed a security guard at the front of the hotel, located in the Old Post Office pavilion on Pennsylvania Avenue. But this time Trump hatched a unique plan top keep opponents away from his event. A subsidiary of Trump’s company applied for its own public space permit for Wednesday morning, which could have given the magnate some control of the sidewalk along Pennsylvania Avenue and possibly forced protesters across the street. Trump Old Post Office LLC, which leases the building from the federal government, applied for a permit to hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the sidewalk Wednesday. The company requested space for 300 people, 200 chairs and 30 camera tripods. Permits are typically issued on a first-come, first-serve basis and different groups are sometimes given different sections of space on the sidewalk or street. For Wednesday’s event, Trump was second in line in terms of requests, but late Tuesday withdrew its request. Permits went to the local chapter of the AFL-CIO, which received permission to form a picket line to support workers at a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, similar to a previous event the group held recently.

6am – A/B/C ‘You are fascinated with sex,’ Newt Gingrich tells Megyn Kelly in heated exchange. (USA Today) — Former speaker of the House and top Donald Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich got into a heated exchange with Fox News host Megyn Kelly over the women who have accused Trump of groping them. Gingrich felt the media has given an inordinate amount of coverage to the accusers while ignoring the information that has been revealed in the leaked Clinton campaign emails. “If Trump is a sexual predator … ” Kelly began. “He’s not a sexual predator!” Gingrich exclaimed. “You can’t say that. You could not defend that statement. Now, I’m sick and tired of people like you using language that’s inflammatory that’s not true!” “Excuse me, Mr. Speaker. You have no idea if it’s true or not,” Kelly replied cooly. Kelly said she had not taken a position one way or the other. Gingrich said that Kelly took a position as soon as she used the words, “sexual predator.”

6am – D         Biden-Trump Fight:

• Matthews Presents Biden With Boxing Gloves for When He Takes Trump ‘Behind the Gym’ / Chris Matthews began his interview with Joe Biden by actually giving him boxing gloves. You may recall that last week, Biden was so outraged by Donald Trump‘s comments about women, he said, “I wish we were in high school and I could take him behind the gym.” So Matthews told Biden tonight he thought he could use some boxing gloves for that. The VP went on to explain what he meant by that remark about Trump, saying that he was in locker rooms a lot when he was in school and it’s “not true” to say what Trump said on that bus in 2005 is “locker room talk.” “He is,” Biden said, “trying to dumb down––he’s insulting everybody in the neighborhoods I come from and the people who play ball… This is just absolutely unacceptable behavior, period.”
• Donald Trump: I’d ‘love’ to fight Joe Biden. Tallahassee, Florida (CNN) Donald Trump said Tuesday he’d “love” to fight Vice President Joe Biden, days after Biden said he wished he could fight the Republican nominee. “I’d love that. I’d love that. Mr. Tough Guy. You know, he’s Mr. Tough Guy. You know when he’s Mr. Tough Guy? When he’s standing behind a microphone by himself,” Trump said. “Some things in life you could really love doing,” Trump added. Trump’s response to the vice president came after Biden said last week he wished he could “take him behind the gym” during a stump speech Friday as he slammed Trump’s 2005 comments that resurfaced earlier this month in which Trump bragged about being able to grope and kiss women without their consent, which Biden called “the textbook definition of sexual assault.” “The press always ask me, ‘Don’t I wish I were debating him?’ No, I wish we were in high school — I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish,” Biden said.

6am – E         Milo speech at U-Md. canceled because security fee was too high, supporters call it censorship. A scheduled speech by conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of Maryland was canceled because a student group was unable to raise enough money to cover fees the university required shortly before the event, including more than $2,000 for security. The costs led to complaints from students and others that the university was silencing a potentially contentious speech rather than encouraging free and open debate. But a spokeswoman for the school countered that the security fee included the speaker’s request to have officers present, and that university officials had worked to help the students. “This garbage about a fee for security . . . it’s a con job,” said Yiannopoulos, a provocative speaker who supports Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and had been invited by the group “Terps for Trump” to speak on campus. He said he doesn’t charge speaking fees and brings his own security. “It’s censorship.”

7am – A/B/C Trump Signs Vandalism:

• How angry does Donald Trump make me? Angry enough to steal 40 Trump signs. How a middle-aged mom became a political vandal. (Washington Post/ Betta Stothart) — FALMOUTH, Maine — I committed a crime this month, along with two of my friends. I’m not the lawbreaking type. In fact, as a 52-year-old mom, my life is pretty predictable and boring. But this election, a particular candidate’s boasts about women pushed me over the edge. In the suburban, upper-middle-class part of Maine where I live, Republicans and Democrats live together mostly in harmony. In every election cycle, there’s some tension. But the 2016 presidential campaign has been different. Tensions in my town are running at a fevered pitch. Which is how three middle-aged moms came to be running down the road, tearing up the Donald Trump signs along our version of Main Street. We’d been talking about the infamous Billy Bush tape and the women who have since come forward to share their own stories of abuse. We were angry. Getting Trump’s name off our median strip seemed like the best way to express our rage. In retrospect, I realize I shouldn’t be proud of my transgression. Hanging out with a bunch of moms, we started grousing about the proliferation of signs. Can you believe someone would put that many Trump signs so close together on our roads? It’s so rude. Who is this jerk? We felt assaulted by the number of signs. The idea of “cleansing” our streets seemed like the fastest way to restore balance and alleviate our election stress — at least, that night it did. The escapade was not premeditated: We simply jumped into my Jetta wagon, drove down to the strip and got to work. In all, it took less than 20 minutes. We grabbed about 40 signs and threw them in the hatchback. I hadn’t really thought about what I would do with the signs; I just wanted them gone. At the time, we believed we were doing the right thing. There were so many Trump signs up and down our main drag — it was destroying all sense of equilibrium in our community.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – KT MCFARLAND – Fox News National Security Analyst @KTMCFARLAND

• Battle for Mosul: Why Turkey Is Bombing Anti-ISIS Fighters in Iraq, Syria
• NATIONAL SECURITY AND WOMAN VOTE:  At one stage, it looked like Trump was gaining traction with female voters; in July, one poll found him trailing by only 4 points in the coveted demographic, largely on the back of concerns about terrorism and national security in the wake of the Orlando terror attacks.  These so-called security moms, a demographic that places the safety of family and community as a priority and ranks thwarting terror and ensuring national security as the fundamental role of government, were trending toward Trump.
• KT thinks the internet going out on FRIDAY was a really big deal.

7am – E         Entertainment News:

• No, Justin Timberlake Isn’t Going To Jail For Taking A Selfie While Voting. (TMZ) — Update: Even though the Shelby County D.A.’s Office told TMZ that they were looking into a possible criminal violation in connection with JT’s selfie at the voting booth, they’re now reporting that “no law enforcement agent, election commission official or police officer had filed a formal complaint,” so the issue wasn’t even on the table for review. (TMZ) – Justin Timberlake could go to jail for 30 days for taking a selfie in a voting booth.  JT posted a pic of himself back home Monday at the polling place.  Problem is … Tennessee law prohibits voters from taking pics or recording conversations in the sacred rooms. Violators can be slapped with a 30 day jail sentence and a $50 fine. A rep from the Shelby County D.A.’s Office told TMZ  that Timberlake case is “under review.” The law was passed last year, but TMZ reported that no one has been prosecuted so far.
• Cleveland Indians beat Chicago Cubs 6-0 to win first game of World Series.  (CNN)Until Tuesday night, Corey Kluber had never pitched in the World Series.  But the Cleveland Indians ace looked like a Fall Classic veteran, setting records along the way as he, coupled with catcher Roberto Perez’s two home runs, powered the Indians to a 6-0 win against the Chicago Cubs in Game 1 at Progressive Field in Cleveland. Kluber, the 2014 American League Cy Young Award winner, made history in his World Series debut, becoming the first pitcher to strike out eight batters through three innings. At that point, fanning eight batters already was an Indians’ World Series single-game record.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — STEVE MOORE — Economist and a Trump economic adviser

>> OBAMACARE DEBACLE

8am – B/C     ‘You are fascinated with sex,’ Newt Gingrich tells Megyn Kelly in heated exchange.

8am – D         INTERVIEW – DAVID MARTOSKO – US Political Editor, Daily Mail

• MARTOSKO has been traveling with Trump in Florida and is now in DC to cover the grand opening of the Trump DC hotel this morning
• Trump stops holding high-dollar fundraisers that were raising big cash for the GOP. (Washington Post
• New Polls: Donald Trump holds a slim 2-point edge in a new Florida poll from Bloomberg Politics
• Trump bows out of fight for space outside hotel grand opening

8am – E         The WMAL Diner Tour is back! WMAL’s bringing Mornings on the Mall with Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor to your neighborhood… just in time for Election Day. Larry and Brian are taking the pulse of area voters (that means you!) in Maryland and Virginia with a series of live broadcasts leading up to the election. Stop by to join the conversation live with Mornings on the Mall and WMAL! // DINER LOCATIONS:  Friday, October 28^th / Silver Diner Rockville, 12276 Rockville Pike,  Rockville, MD 20852  / In Federal Plaza Shopping Center / 5am to 9am