Cliff May, Joe diGenova, Rod Wheeler, Larry Kudlow and guest host Scottie Nell Hughes joined WMAL on Tuesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Hosts: Larry O’Connor and Scottie Nell Hughes

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C Trump secures victory in Electoral College, as bid to flip electors flops.  Trump easily surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win, as representatives tabbed to cast ballots in accordance with their states’ Nov. 8 decision mostly adhered to the election results. After all the states had voted, Trump finished with 304 votes and Clinton had 227.

5am – D         Scientists have found evidence that pregnancy can change parts of a woman’s brain. Brain changes seen in pregnancy, may help preparing for baby. NEW YORK (AP) — Pregnancy affects not only a woman’s body: It changes parts of her brain too, a new study says.  When researchers compared brain scans of women before and after pregnancy, they spotted some differences in 11 locations. They also found hints that the alterations help women prepare for motherhood. For example, they might help a mother understand the needs of her infant, Elseline Hoekzema, a study author at Leiden University in the Netherlands, explained via email.

5am – E         Activists Hold Unintentionally Hilarious ‘Funerals’ for Dead Turkeys at Whole Foods. Activists apparently staged “funerals” for dead turkeys at grocery stores across the country, from New York City to Oakland during the Thanksgiving month of November. The group ‘Direct Action Everywhere’ on Friday posted a video on its Facebook page showing the demonstrations. The video is accompanied by a dramatic soundtrack that sounds like a mix between Halloween and something from an M. Night Shyamalan film — you know, the music that comes the moment some dark truth is finally revealed. Some of the vegan activists are seen taking out whole turkeys and placing them on blankets on the floor for some reason. Others were more creative and set up a cardboard fixture that at least somewhat resembled a coffin for the little guys. The “coffin” was then lined with more dead turkey bodies.

6am – A/B/C Merriam-Webster picks “surreal” as word of the year. In a year that saw an explosion in fake news, Brexit, a World Series win by the Chicago Cubs and an unexpected victory by President-elect Donald Trump, Merriam-Webster picked “surreal” as its word of the year. The pick capped an election-centric list of the most searched words that also included “bigly” and “deplorable.” Definition searches for “surreal” spiked multiple times in 2016, including during multiple outbursts of terrorism and violence around the globe, but perhaps predictably hit their highest point after President-elect Donald Trump stunned the world with his surprise Election Day win. Merriam-Webster defines surreal as “marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream,” a meaning applied liberally by many to describe Trump’s surprise ascendance to the presidency.

6am – D         INTERVIEW — CLIFF MAY – President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Russian ambassador killed in Turkey. Mevlut Mert Altintas, a police officer who killed Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, could handle a firearm with ease. His first of multiple shots was a direct hit, piercing the back of Andrey Karlov as he spoke about the exhibit — a series of photographs of his homeland. The ambassador fell to the floor. Altintas circled his body, visibly agitated as he smashed photos hanging on the wall.  After firing multiple rounds, the gunman shouted: “Allahu akbar (God is greatest). Do not forget Aleppo! Do not forget Syria! Do not forget Aleppo! Do not forget Syria!” “Only death will remove me from here. Everyone who has taken part in this oppression will one by one pay for it,” he said.
• Investigators said they suspect the driver of a truck that plowed into a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 48, did so in a deliberate terrorist attack, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said he may have been an asylum-seeker. The truck crashed into people gathered on Monday evening around wooden huts serving mulled wine and sausages at the foot of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church – left as a ruin after World War Two – in the heart of former West Berlin. A German security source said the suspect was a 23-year-old migrant from Pakistan known to police for committing minor offences. The source said the man had been staying at a refugee accommodation center in the now defunct Tempelhof airport. Merkel told reporters: “There is much we still do not know with sufficient certainty but we must, as things stand now, assume it was a terrorist attack.”
• Trump pins killings in Turkey, Germany on radical Islamic terrorism. President-elect Donald Trump blamed Islamic terrorism for deadly violence in Turkey and Germany on Monday and vowed to eradicate regional and global terror networks. Trump said the Islamic State group “and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad.” Trump called the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey at a photo exhibit “a violation of all rules of civilized order.” He added that a “radical Islamic terrorist” had assassinated the diplomat Adrew Karlov.

6am – E         MTV Suggests New Year’s Resolutions for ‘White Guys’ (Video). Just in time for the holiday season, MTV News has issued a series of New Year’s resolutions exclusively for white males — because, the network says, white guys could “do a little better in 2017.” A video posted to MTV News’ Twitter account Monday afternoon features a group of millennials lecturing so-called “white guys” as to how they can improve themselves in the New Year. Suggestions include recognizing that America was never “great” for minorities, and to stop bragging about being “woke.” “Can we all just agree that ‘Black Lives Matter’ isn’t the opposite of ‘All Lives Matter?’” one of the people in the video says. “Black lives just matter. There’s no need to overcomplicate it.” “Also, Blue Lives Matter isn’t a thing,” adds another. “Cops weren’t born with blue skin. Right? I mean, yeah. They weren’t born blue!”

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

• Trump secures victory in Electoral College, as bid to flip electors flops.  Trump easily surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win, as representatives tabbed to cast ballots in accordance with their states’ Nov. 8 decision mostly adhered to the election results. After all the states had voted, Trump finished with 304 votes and Clinton had 227.
• Obama adds to historic number of federal prisoners granted clemency.President Obama pardoned 78 people and also granted commutations to 153 nonviolent drug offenders who were sentenced under harsh and outdated laws and would have received lighter sentences if convicted today. In total, Obama has pardoned 148 people and granted 1,176 commutations for federal inmates under the clemency initiative that he and former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. launched two years ago. Obama plans to issue more commutations before he leaves office, White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston said.
• Mills, State Department oppose video release in Clinton email case. Lawyers for the State Department and former Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills are opposing a conservative group’s move to unseal videos of depositions taken in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit relating to Clinton’s use of a private email account.

7am – B/C     Norman Lear Sitcoms ‘All in the Family,’ ‘The Jeffersons’ Being Eyed by Sony for Reboots. Sony Pictures Television is in very early stages of rebooting several classic sitcoms from TV legend Norman Lear as miniseries — including “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Good Times” — Variety has learned exclusively. The idea currently being discussed by Lear and Sony executives would be to have new actors recreate classic episodes of the shows, working from the original scripts, and package them as short, six-episode anthologies. The scripts would be treated similar to plays being mounted in new productions. “There is some talk about doing some of the original shows, redoing them with today’s stars,” Lear told Variety. “There is a possibility that we’ll do ‘All in the Family,’ ‘Maude,’ ‘The Jeffersons,’ “Good Times.’”

7am – D         INTERVIEW — ROD WHEELER – former D.C. Homicide Detective

• Investigators said they suspect the driver of a truck that plowed into a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 48, did so in a deliberate terrorist attack, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said he may have been an asylum-seeker. The truck crashed into people gathered on Monday evening around wooden huts serving mulled wine and sausages at the foot of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church – left as a ruin after World War Two – in the heart of former West Berlin. A German security source said the suspect was a 23-year-old migrant from Pakistan known to police for committing minor offences. The source said the man had been staying at a refugee accommodation center in the now defunct Tempelhof airport. Merkel told reporters: “There is much we still do not know with sufficient certainty but we must, as things stand now, assume it was a terrorist attack.”
• Trump pins killings in Turkey, Germany on radical Islamic terrorism. President-elect Donald Trump blamed Islamic terrorism for deadly violence in Turkey and Germany on Monday and vowed to eradicate regional and global terror networks. Trump said the Islamic State group “and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad.” Trump called the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey at a photo exhibit “a violation of all rules of civilized order.” He added that a “radical Islamic terrorist” had assassinated the diplomat Adrew Karlov.

7am – E         Watch the Most Painfully Awkward Interview of 2016: 7 Minutes With Jerry Lewis. The famously difficult comedian made things tough for THR. The Hollywood Reporter set out to interview 10 nonagenarians in the business — people in their 90s and beyond still vital and working — and nine of the interviews went great. One was a trainwreck. I had a bad feeling the about how the conversation with Jerry Lewis was going to go the second I walked into his Vegas house — the interview was scheduled for a few off days in his touring schedule — and saw him watching TV with his headphones on. He looked angry. I already knew Lewis’ reputation for being difficult and acerbic with his audiences and in interviews. And he’s a well-known control freak. Throughout the photo shoot, Lewis complained about the amount of equipment in the house, the number of assistants and how the shots were set up. By the time we sat down for the interview about an hour later, Lewis had worked up a full of head of steam, and it seemed like he was punishing THR by doing the interview but being as uncooperative as possible.

8am – A         Trump secures victory in Electoral College, as bid to flip electors flops. (Fox News) – Donald Trump won the Electoral College vote on Monday and secured his election as the 45th president of the United States, as the latest – and perhaps last – stop-Trump movement failed to gain traction in state capitals. A fervent push by anti-Trump forces to persuade electors to defect had turned the normally mundane civic procedure into high drama.  But Trump easily surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win, as representatives tabbed to cast ballots in accordance with their states’ Nov. 8 decision mostly adhered to the election results. After all the states had voted, Trump finished with 304 votes and Clinton had 227.

8am – B         Obama News:

• President Obama dines at high-end Ala Moana Center restaurant.     ASSOCIATED PRESS President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Friday in the briefing room of the White House in Washington before departing for Hawaii. President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, dined tonight at Vintage Cave, a high-end French-Japanese restaurant at Ala Moana Center with a $295 tasting menu. Earlier in the day, he played golf at Mid-Pacific Country Club, one of his usual haunts on his annual vacation in Hawaii.
• Michelle Obama talks standing in her truth in farewell interview with Oprah. It’s that last one that Oprah Winfrey zeroes in on during CBS’ hour-long broadcast, First Lady Michelle Obama Says Farewell to the White House: An Oprah Winfrey Special, Monday. “What allowed you to stand in your own truth and find your way?” she asks. “Being a grown-up,” Obama replies. “Let us not forget: I didn’t just wake up first lady,” she adds before firing off her credentials. “I mean, I went to law school, I practiced law, I worked for the city, I ran a nonprofit (and) I was an executive at a hospital. I’ve been in the world. I’ve worked in every sector, and you don’t do that without coming up against some stuff. You know, having your feelings hurt, having people say things about you that aren’t true. … Life hits you, so over the course of living, you learn how to protect yourself in it. You learn to take in what you need and get rid of the stuff that’s clearly not true.” But that’s not to say that being reduced to a cheap trope — the “angry black woman” — didn’t faze her. “That was one of those things that you just sort of think, ‘Dag, you don’t even know me,’ you know?” Obama said. “And then I thought, ‘OK, well, let me live my life out loud so that people can then see and then judge for themselves.”

8am – C         Redskins News:

• RECAP: Carolina Panthers (6-8)  26   vs    Washington Redskins (7-6-1)  15
• PREVIEW: Saturday .. the ‘Skins take on the Bears in Chicago.
• Redskins’ Jay Gruden: ‘We were flat out-coached’ The Washington Redskins entered Monday night controlling their path to the playoffs. They laid an egg. “We were flat out-coached,” coach Jay Gruden said after the 26-15 loss to the Carolina Panthers, via ESPN.com. “There’s no question about that. We weren’t as ready as I would have liked to have been. We didn’t execute like I would like to have seen. That falls on my shoulders.”

8am – D         INTERVIEW —  LARRY KUDLOW – CNBC Senior Contributor and host of The Larry Kudlow Show on WMAL Saturdays at 7 pm – discussed changes in interest rates and Trump considering Kudlow for Council of Economic Advisers.

8am – E         In the Chappaqua woods, a search for Hillary Clinton. (Washington Post) — CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. — The other day, Carol Meyer and her friend Ellen went walking in the woods of Chappaqua. For all they knew, they might see a coyote or some rare mushrooms or Hillary Clinton. “I just have a sense — ” said Ellen, putting on her gloves. “You think so?” said Carol, adjusting her scarf. A Clinton sighting was hardly unlikely. She and her husband were Chappaqua neighbors who enjoyed an invigorating, mind-clearing tromp in the local nature preserve as much as anyone else.  And now, of course, she was back in town. Ellen had already seen her in the woods twice since she lost the presidency, and she wasn’t the only one. Two days after the election, a young woman had spotted Clinton and taken a photo with her that went viral, leading to fake news stories alleging that the whole thing was staged, which was said to prove once again that Hillary Clinton couldn’t do anything that did not strike a false note. But Chappaquaians knew better.