Sarah Westwood, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, Larry Kudlow and guest host Vince Coglianese joined WMAL on Tuesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C Obama’s Farewell Speech Tonight:  What to Expect From President Obama’s Farewell Address. President Barack Obama will return to his adopted hometown of Chicago on Tuesday to deliver a farewell address to the American people. In an email announcing the speech to supporters last week, Obama said the speech would be “a chance to say thank you for this amazing journey … and to offer some thoughts on where we all go from here.” In giving a final speech, Obama is continuing in a tradition first started by the President George Washington in 1796 and continued by many outgoing presidents since. Most recently, President George W. Bush gave a farewell speech eight years ago from the East Room of the White House. On Monday, the White House said Obama was still deeply involved in crafting and revising the speech, which White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest described on Friday as “forward-looking” and “heartfelt.”

5am – D         DC News:

• D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration releases annual accountability report: WASHINGTON (ABC7) — “We have a lot to be proud of in the two years that we’ve been working together,” Bowser said.bMayor Muriel Bowser’s administration released its 2nd annual accountability report Monday night which shows progress made on priorities identified early in her tenure as D.C.’s leader. The event kicked off with an upbeat assessment of the city’s economic health with wages and population growing and unemployment dropping. “Our district finances are in great shape,” said Jeffrey DeWitt, D.C.’s chief financial officer While the administration says crime is down and graduation rates are up, one focus will be a continued commitment to more affordable housing.
• Bowser Announces $500,000 In Grants To Provide Legal Help To D.C. Immigrants. Following in the footsteps of several big city mayors around the country, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the creation of a fund to serve immigrants in D.C. facing or fearing deportation. Her office is allocating $500,000 in new grants to groups that provide an array of immigration services. “In November, I reaffirmed Washington, D.C.’s status as a sanctuary city, and now we are doubling down. We must ensure that all District residents can take advantage of their federal and constitutional rights,” Bowser said in a statement. Both non-profits and private law firms are eligible to apply for funding from the new Immigrant Justice Legal Services Grant program. The grants will be distributed in amounts of up to $150,000 to fund programs that could include: conducting “know your rights” workshops, providing legal help for family reunification efforts, preparing asylum applications, and representing D.C. residents in deportation hearings. Funds could also be used to file lawsuits that “may become necessary” to challenge government programs that utilize DACA information to deport people. Mayors in Los Angeles and Chicago similarly announced $10 million and $1 million funds, respectively, to provide legal assistance for immigrants facing deportation.
• Chaffetz Plans to Block D.C. Law Allowing Assisted Suicide. Republican Congress imperils D.C.’s new assisted suicide law (The Washington Times)  – Congress will move to block the District of Columbia’s new assisted suicide law, the chairman of the House committee that oversees the city’s government said Monday. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who heads the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Capitol Hill takes the issue seriously and has a right to weigh in on the law, which would let patients with terminal illness diagnoses request fatal doses of drugs from their doctors.“The assisted suicide issue is not something we take lightly,” Mr. Chaffetz said in briefing reporters about his committee’s priorities for the congressional session.

5am – E         How protesters plan to wreck Donald Trump’s inauguration. (Washington Examiner) — Anarchists who believe “the peaceful transition of power is a threat to all of us” are planning to lead thousands of protesters to Washington next week to ruin Donald Trump’s inauguration. The group, called #DisruptJ20, is planning protests in cities nationwide on Jan. 20, but the protests in Washington would receive the most attention if the protesters’ plans succeed. Organizer Legba Carrefour told the Washington Examiner the protesters’ preparations began in June and are culminating in what they call “Operation Clusterf***.” The #DisruptJ20 group is providing housing for 1,000 participants thus far and is working with other groups for its protest. “We’re not making the argument that we’re going to stop the inauguration; that is a physical impossibility,” Carrefour said. “We are making the argument that we can ruin the notion that this is a peaceful transition of power.” The first part of the plan involves blocking “all of the major ingresses into the city especially from the south,” meaning that the protesters intend to make entering the District from Virginia an “absolute nightmare” by closing highways and stopping trains headed into the city.

6am – A         Sen. Jeff Sessions Confirmation Hearing Preview:

• Alabama Prosecutor: Jeff Sessions Helped Secure the Death Penalty for the KKK. Chris Galanos says the attorney general nominee is no racist. (Weekly Standard) — Senator Jeff Sessions begins confirmation hearings on Tuesday to become the next attorney general. Since President-elect Donald Trump nominated the Alabama Republican to the post in November, critics have resurrected old allegations that Sessions is racist. The allegations were first made in the 1980’s when Sessions was tapped for a federal judgeship in the Reagan administration, and they successfully scuttled his nomination then. Nearly all of the allegations that Sessions is a racist stem from one man, Thomas Figures, who worked under him when Sessions was a U.S. Attorney in Alabama. On Monday, the Daily Beast rather sensationally revives accusations from Figures that Sessions initially tried to impede the U.S. Attorney’s office from getting involved in the prosecution of Henry Hays, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who abducted and lynched a young black man, Michael Donald, in 1981. (Sessions has long disputed Figures’s claims about the case.) This Atlantic piece on the Sessions controversy is chock full good reporting about the Donald lynching and even includes multiple paragraphs from sources who were involved crediting Sessions for helping the Hays prosecution to varying degrees. Nonetheless, the overall story is clearly contextualized to be unflattering to Sessions.
• Jan. 10: Jeff Sessions and John Kelly: Two potential major players in the Trump cabinet will come under scrutiny: nominee for attorney general Jeff Sessions and prospective secretary of homeland security, John Kelly. Senator Sessions will start hearings with the Judiciary Committee at 9:30 a.m. while Marine Gen. Kelly will meet with the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at 3:30 p.m. Sessions’ hearing should be especially interesting. As a profile in the New York Times noted last week, he has a checkered past on issues of race and civil rights, which Democrats on the committee could hammer him on.

6am – B         Inauguration announcer upset over on being cut by Trump: Washington (CNN) President-elect Donald Trump is breaking from 11 presidents’ worth of tradition and benching Charles Brotman. The 89-year-old Brotman — once the voice of the Washington Senators baseball team — has announced every inauguration parade since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957. “I looked at at my email, then I got the shock of my life,” Brotman told CNN’s Carol Costello. “I felt like Muhammad Ali had hit me in the stomach.” Brotman, who has been the announcer at presidential inauguration for sixty years, said when he read the email from the Trump transition team he thought he “was going to commit suicide.” He told WJLA he was “heartbroken” and “destroyed” by the decision at first.  “I’ve been doing this for 60 years,” he told the Washington ABC affiliate. In his place, the Trump team has tapped Steve Ray, a 58-year-old Washington-based freelance announcer who has worked with the MLB’s Washington Nationals and for local radio stations.

6am – C         Vince and Brian Discuss The Pot Activists and Anarchy Activists During The Inauguration.

6am – D         Jared Kushner to be named senior adviser to the president. (CNN) Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will be senior adviser to the president, a senior transition official told CNN Monday. The 35-year-old businessman-turned-political strategist played a key part in his father-in-law’s presidential campaign and his new position is expected to test the limit of federal anti-nepotism rules. The move comes ahead of a Wednesday news conference in which Trump is expected to detail how he plans to manage his company’s potential conflicts-of-interest after he enters the White House. Kushner plans to resign from the management positions he holds at his companies, including as CEO of Kushner Companies, publisher of The Observer and positions with other organizations, and will divest from a “significant number” of his assets to comply with government ethics rules, Kushner’s attorney Jamie Gorelick told CNN on Monday. Kushner also will not take a salary as he steps into the West Wing job, an official who briefed on behalf of the transition told reporters later on Monday. Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee issued a statement within hours of Kushner’s appointment calling on the Justice Department and the Office of Government Ethics to review the appointment’s legality in light of the anti-nepotism statute. “There is a strong case to be made that the White House is an “agency” for purposes of the anti-nepotism statute and that it would apply to bar Mr. Kushner’s appointment as a White House staff member,” wrote Rep. John Conyers, the House Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, and other top Democrats on the committee, in a statement released Monday evening. Gorelick argued that the anti-nepotism statue which applies to presidential administrations excludes the White House office where Kushner would be based, though the statute is open to different interpretations. Kushner is related to the President-elect by marriage, but a 1967 law specifies “son-in-law” as a type of relative covered by the regulations.

6am – E         Booze News:

• Keurig wants you to brew your own Budweiser at home. (Fox News) — Do you long for freshly brewed lager but don’t have the chops—or patience—to use a complicated home beer making kit? On Friday, coffee machine maker Keurig Green Mountain and Brewer Anheuser Busch InBev (AB InBev) announced they’re teaming up to develop a new kitchen appliance that makes alcoholic drinks in seconds. According to Reuters, the project is being spearheaded by a joint research and development team and the yet-to-be-named machine will have the ability to brew beer, mix cocktails, plus whip up spirits and other mixers. This is the first formal colloboartion for the two beverage  powerhouses but the idea of a one touch home beer machine-meets-personal bartender has been brewing for some time. In 2013, a robotic bartending device called Monsieur raised over $140,000 on Kickstarter. Last summer, SodaStream released the Beer Bar in Germany and Switzerland—a home beer making system that utilized a beer-flavored concentrate to create a fresh, hoppy ale.
• Starbucks will end evening menu services. (WUSA) –  If you were looking forward to continuing drinking wine & eating cheese at everyone’s favorite coffee shop – sadly that time is over. Starbucks announced earlier this week that it will be ending it’s “Starbucks Evenings” program in over 400 stores in the U.S. One of those will be the Brookland-CUA Starbucks shop that recently opened, boasting it’s mixology center and evening wine list.  Along with the alcohol list, the services will also stop with the various cheese plates, bacon wrapped dates and other evening appetizers offered on the menu.
• Who Wants to Drink Wine at Starbucks? Apparently No One. On January 10, the “Starbucks Evenings” program, which sold beer, wine, and food in an effort to prolong the morning coffee rush, will shut its doors. The program started in 2010 near Seattle and spread to 439 stores before the corporate office decided it just wasn’t working.

6am – F         Parents, Save Up: Cost Of Raising A Child Is More Than $233K. Expecting a baby? Congratulations! Better put plenty of money in your savings account. The Department of Agriculture says the estimated cost of raising a child from birth through age 17 is $233,610, or as much as almost $14,000 annually. That’s the average for a middle-income couple with two children. It’s a bit more expensive in urban parts of the country, and less so in rural areas. The estimate released Monday is based on 2015 numbers, so a baby born this year is likely to cost even more. It’s a 3 percent increase from the prior year, a hike higher than inflation.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – Sarah Westwood is a White House Reporter for the Washington Examiner

• Sessions hearing preview:  Trump team prepares to defend nominees against onslaught. (Washington Examiner/Sarah Westwood) — President-elect Trump’s transition team is gearing up to shield some of his top Cabinet appointments from the onslaught of Democratic attacks that have already begun as the Senate gears up for confirmation hearings this week. With the support of outside conservative groups, such as Judicial Crisis Network and the Senate Leadership Fund, transition officials are working to defuse some of the liberal opposition to Trump’s nominees before it gains enough steam to affect the proceedings.

7am – B         AP Is Obsessed With Fact-Checking Trump On Silly Things:

• AP FACT CHECK: Red Gowns a-Plenty in Washington Dress Shops.  DES MOINES, Iowa — Ladies in Washington planning to celebrate Donald Trump’s inauguration as the next president won’t, it turns out, need a fairy godmother to find something to wear. The president-elect told The New York Times in an interview published Monday that enthusiasm was so high for the arrival of his administration that turnout for the Jan. 20 events will be “unbelievable, perhaps record-setting.” So much so, he said, that “all the dress shops are sold out in Washington. It’s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration.” Not true, according to many boutiques and stores in the business of selling formal wear to those who make their home in the nation’s capital. “He hasn’t moved to D.C. yet. He doesn’t know what’s available,” said Krista Johnson, owner of Ella-Rue in the city’s Georgetown neighborhood, where racks Monday held dresses from a range of designers, including Oscar de la Renta and J Mendel. “We’ve definitely had a lot of people come in in the last week for gowns, but we have plenty here.”
• This AP story shows the problem with ‘fact-checking’ (Business Insider) –On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump called Meryl Streep “over-rated.” Then the Associated Press ran a story under the headline “FACT CHECK: Streep overrated? Trump picks a decorated star.” Obviously, “over-rated” is a statement of opinion, not fact, which the AP notes, before marshaling a list of Streep’s many awards and accolades, apparently as evidence against Trump’s claim of her being overrated. Being highly rated is typically a key part of being overrated. Given the very long list of honors listed by the AP, you could argue that Streep is overrated even if she is also really, really great. But the key issue here isn’t Meryl Streep. It’s “fact-checking.” Checking facts is a key part of journalism. If politicians are making incorrect factual claims, journalists should correct them in the ordinary course of reporting stories.

7am – C         Clemson wins national championship, 35-31, in thriller over Alabama. Deshaun Watson rolled to his right and completed a two-yard pass to Hunter Renfrow as the receiver backpedaled across the goal line for a game-winning touchdown. Second-ranked Clemson needed every second in Monday’s College Football Playoff national title game against top-ranked Alabama at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa to win its first national championship since 1981. “This is bigger than just me,” Watson told reporters after the Tigers defeated the Crimson Tide, 35-31, by scoring 21 points in the fourth quarter. The Tigers trailed, 31-28, when they got the ball with 2:01 remaining in the game. Watson completed a 24-yard pass to Mike Williams and a 17-yard pass Jordan Leggett to put the Tigers in scoring position. Renfrow caught the touchdown pass with one second left in regulation. Clemson finished the season 14-1. Alabama, previously undefeated, fell to 14-1. Watson passed for 420 yards and three touchdowns.

7am – D         Maryland Man Opens Fire After Someone Takes a Bite of His Grilled Cheese Sandwich: Police. (People) — An “enraged” Maryland man allegedly opened fire inside his house and barricaded himself during an hours-long standoff with police Sunday after one of his family members took a bite out of his grilled cheese sandwich, authorities said. The man fired at least one shot about 5 p.m., prompting his wife and daughter to call police and flee the house, the Baltimore Sun reported.  No one was injured but the man remained inside for about four hours before peacefully surrendering to police, Baltimore County Police spokesman Shawn Vinson told local station WBALTV-11. “Apparently, the man had made a grilled cheese sandwich and either the wife or the daughter, we’re not exactly sure who, but somebody, one of the females in the house, took a bite of his sandwich, and apparently, that enraged him to the point that he fired shots in the house,” Vinson said.

7am – E         Entertainment News:

• Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt reach divorce pact. LOS ANGELES — Angelina Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt have reached an agreement to handle their divorce in a private forum and will work together to reunify their family, the actors announced in a joint statement Monday. Their statement released Monday night to the Associated Press said that they will keep future details of their divorce confidential by using a private judge. “The parties and their counsel have signed agreements to preserve the privacy rights of their children and family by keeping all court documents confidential and engaging a private judge to make any necessary legal decisions and to facilitate the expeditious resolution of any remaining issues,” their statement read. “The parents are committed to act as a united front to effectuate recovery and reunification.” The statement is the first joint comment from the actors on their divorce since Jolie Pitt filed to end their marriage in September. At the time, one of her attorneys stated the petition was filed “for the health of the family.”
• Jamie Foxx tells his daughters to not take the ‘back seat’ for any guy: ‘Get your career, do your thing’ (People) – “[I’m] papa bear,” Foxx, 49, said at the premiere of his film Sleepless in Los Angeles on Thursday when asked if he’s protective over his two daughters. “You got to do your thing.” He explains part of the reasoning behind his protective instincts. “I know there’s guys out there. I used to be on the other side,” he says. As for what he tells his kids about dating? “I’m not saying he got to be no softie, I don’t want that,” he says. “But [he can’t be] afraid of you going to get your career. Don’t take no back seat to nobody. If you walk in with somebody that you take a back seat to, I’m going to check you first and then it’s about him.” “She takes that with her so that when she does go out and she finds the guy that she’s with now, they understand that and uplift each other,” he explains of his elder daughter Corinne.
• 20 million watch NBC’s “Globes Globe Awards” telecast. That’s up 8% over last year. (LA Times) — NBC’s telecast of the “74th Annual Golden Globe Awards” scored 20 million viewers on Sunday, a positive sign for the awards show business that has seen ratings slip in recent years. The 8% increase in viewership for the ceremony emceed by “Tonight” host Jimmy Fallon came after a year when most of the major live awards shows saw declines as they competed with an increasing number of program choices and streaming services. In 2016, the CBS telecast of the Tony Awards — boosted by having featured the Broadway mega hit “Hamilton” — was the only trophy program to see a year-to-year ratings gains.
• Man arrested in the case of the ‘HOLLYWeeD’ sign: LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles police have made a “HOLLYWeeD” bust. Zachary Cole Fernandez, 30, was arrested Monday, just over a week after a prankster used white tarps to make the “HOLLYWOOD” sign read “HOLLYWeeD,” the LAPD said in a statement.bFernandez turned himself in with his attorney and was booked on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing, police said. The prankster was dressed in black and was recorded by security cameras in the area changing the sign early New Year’s Day. Fernandez, an artist, had already claimed credit for the stunt in a Vice magazine interview, but police had not previously confirmed his involvement.Fernandez told the Vice he had heard someone pulled the same prank in the 1970s, and he sought to repeat it to “bring positivity into the world.”

8am – A         Obama’s Farewell Speech Tonight:  What to Expect From President Obama’s Farewell Address. President Barack Obama will return to his adopted hometown of Chicago on Tuesday to deliver a farewell address to the American people. In an email announcing the speech to supporters last week, Obama said the speech would be “a chance to say thank you for this amazing journey … and to offer some thoughts on where we all go from here.” In giving a final speech, Obama is continuing in a tradition first started by the President George Washington in 1796 and continued by many outgoing presidents since. Most recently, President George W. Bush gave a farewell speech eight years ago from the East Room of the White House.

8am – B/C     INTERVIEW – DC MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER

• D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration releases annual accountability report:
• Bowser Announces $500,000 In Grants To Provide Legal Help To D.C. Immigrants
• Chaffetz Plans to Block D.C. Law Allowing Assisted Suicide
• Inauguration preview and how inauguration preparation in DC is going

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

• Jared Kushner to be named senior adviser to the president. (CNN) Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will be senior adviser to the president, a senior transition official told CNN Monday. The 35-year-old businessman-turned-political strategist played a key part in his father-in-law’s presidential campaign and his new position is expected to test the limit of federal anti-nepotism rules. The move comes ahead of a Wednesday news conference in which Trump is expected to detail how he plans to manage his company’s potential conflicts-of-interest after he enters the White House.
• Preview: Senate Confirmation hearings — Larry thinks they will all pass

8am – E         ObamaCare Dem Sleepover News:

• Senate Dems end ObamaCare repeal protest after 5 hours. (The Hill) — Senate Democrats ceded back the Senate floor early Tuesday morning, ending a more than 5-hour protest of GOP efforts to repeal ObamaCare. Democrats painted the late-night talkathon as the first test against a unified Republican-led government as the majority party works to nix the healthcare law without a replacement plan. “This is our first big fight against the Republican majority and the Trump majority,” Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), the Senate’s top Democrat, told supporters on a late Monday conference call with MoveOn and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC). “We’re having big success.” Senate Democrats took over the Senate floor around 6:45 p.m. with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) accusing Republicans of hating ObamaCare “almost as much as the devil hates holy water” as he kicked off the protest on the floor. By the end of the night 24 Democratic senators—including Sens. Chris Murphy (Conn.) and Patty Murray (Wash.)—had spoken from the Senate floor, approximately half the Democratic caucus.
• Chuck Schumer Accidentally Tweets ‘Don’t Make America Great Again’ (Mediaite) – In a Monday tweet, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer inadvertently urged his followers not to “Make America Great Again.” Democrats have recently adopted the hashtag #MakeAmericaSickAgain, a mockery of the popular Donald Trump hashtag #MakeAmericaGreatAgain and Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare. Schumer meant to tweet out the Democratic hashtag, and eventually did.

Starting tonight, @SenateDems are on Snapchat. Add to hear more on our fight to protect healthcare & tell GOP: Don’t #MakeAmericaSickAgain pic.twitter.com/S60iMxUVXA— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) January 9, 2017

But in a now-deleted tweet, the New York Senator screwed up and ended up tweeting “Don’t #MakeAmericaGreatAgain.”