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Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday June 13, 2017

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

5am – A/B Do you think Trump has tapes of Comey? Trump taunt over Comey tape draws disbelief (CNN) “It’s all hot air,” one person inside the White House said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe internal water-cooler conversations. “Unless he had a recorder in his pocket, this didn’t happen.” The White House press secretary declined again Monday to answer. Yet the final word won’t come until Trump steps up and produces evidence or explains why none exists. Another Republican close to the White House said Trump’s tape comments appeared similar to the hard-nosed tactics he took when his company was facing litigation.”The tape thing is a total Trump real estate developer comment,” the Republican said. “You just make it up, and you say that as a way of intimidating the other side.”

5am – C James Comey set for $10 million payday as publishers scramble to sign book deal with fired FBI chief for inside story on Hillary, Trump – and his own brush with death by a serial rapist (Daily Mail) ‘Jim Comey’s story has everything, from White House intrigue to possible corruption and law breaking. His explosive story makes ‘West Wing’ and ‘House of Cards’ on a par with Mister Rogers,’ an acquisition editor for a major New York publishing house told DailyMail.com ‘When his proposal hits my desk, I’ve already been authorized to offer $10 million.’ Not only that, but the publisher of another key player in the book world revealed that major Hollywood producers are already lining up to make the torn-from-the-headlines blockbuster movie about Comey’s life and his attempt to unseat the president. A prominent movie-TV agent told DailyMail.com: ‘I know one top drawer producer who’s already talking to stars to cast the Comey role. He has to be tall, good-looking and a Jimmy Stewart-John Wayne-hero type. I was mesmerized when I spent the whole day watching Comey testify.

5am – D  Sandy Hook mother’s outrage at Megyn Kelly: Giving Alex Jones a platform ‘is especially cruel’ (Washington Post)  NBC’s Megyn Kelly is under fire for her one-on-one interview with Infowars’s Alex Jones. One of the immediate critics is a mother whose daughter was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, a massacre that Jones has dismissed as a government hoax. Nelba Márquez-Greene saw the interview, scheduled to air Sunday — Father’s Day — as an “egregious offense” to fathers whose children were murdered Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. “To give Alex Jones a platform on Father’s Day is especially cruel to me,” she told The Washington Post. Jones’s interview reignites a debate over whether interviewing polarizing figures on national television gives them a platform or places their controversial views under scrutiny.

5am– E   ‘Body slam’ congressman sentenced to 20 hours of anger counseling Greg Gianforte, 56, pleaded guilty to assaulting a journalist from the UK’s Guardian newspaper on the eve of his election last month. A judge initially sentenced the Republican to four days in jail before reducing the penalty. Gianforte is expected to be sworn in to office later this month. Gallatin County Justice Court Judge Rick West gave Gianforte a 180-day deferred jail sentence. He was ordered to pay $385 (£304), complete 40 hours of community service and 20 hours of anger management counselling.

6am – A/B/C What do you expect from Sessions’ testimony? Should he be testifying?  Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s appearance Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee will be a high-stakes test for a Trump official who has kept a low profile even as he has become a central figure in the scandal engulfing the White House over Russia and the firing of James B. Comey as FBI director. Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama, will face tough questions from his former colleagues on a number of fronts that he has never had to publicly address in detail. Democrats plan to ask about his contacts during the 2016 campaign with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, which the attorney general failed to disclose fully during his confirmation hearing. They also want him to explain his role in the firing of Comey, despite the attorney general’s recusal in March from the Russia investigation after revelations about his meetings with Kislyak.

6am – D INTERVIEW – DAN STEIN – President of Fair

Topic : Immigration procedures and DACA under Trump Administration 

• The Trump administration last week floated an amnesty idea for potentially 1 million illegal immigrants, looking to find permanent solutions for some of the most sympathetic cases in the long-running immigration debate.
• Under DACA, illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and who have kept a relatively clean record, were 30 or younger as of 2012 and who have worked toward a high school diploma are granted a renewable stay of deportation, along with a work permit entitling them to hold jobs, get a driver’s license and obtain some taxpayer benefits.

6am – E  NASA and IKEA are teaming up to build furniture for Mars Ikea is now “looking into how a Mars habitat can become more like home,” so that one day, if we do leave this planet, we’ll be able to set up cheap, mass-produced furniture on new horizons, too. In order to determine how best to create a Mars-ready home, an Ikea team is spending three days at MDRS Habitat in Utah, which the company describes as “a confined spacecraft-like environment that simulates the experience of outer space.” It’s no joke — NASA’s own astronauts spend up to three years in this habitat in order to ready themselves for space travel. “It’s a crazy, fun experience,” said Ikea Creative Leader, Michael Nikolic, of the experience.”We’re basically completely isolated for three days to get a taste of what astronauts go through for three years. It’s almost like that misery you feel when you’re out camping.”

6am – F  Foo Fighters to Headline Grand Opening at the Anthem, Newest Venue by 9:30 Club Owner (NBC Washington) The Anthem, a new music venue opening in D.C. this October, just announced their debut headlining band: The Foo Fighters, slated to take the stage for an Oct. 12 grand opening show. The Anthem is the newest project from I.M.P, a concert production company that owns and operates the 9:30 Club and several other music venues in the D.C. area. I.M.P. chairman Seth Hurwitz said the Foo Fighters were always the obvious choice. “There was never any question about who would open,” said Hurwitz in a press release. “It was always just the Foos. I texted Dave some photos of the venue after we started building it and asked him ‘Who else should open it?’ He said ‘Nobody.’ That was the end of it.” The relationship between the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and the 9:30 Club is longstanding. Grohl used to attend shows at the club and has played the venue as part of several different bands.

7am – A  INTERVIEW – ED GILLESPIE – Republican gubernatorial candidate

Topic : Virginia Primary Elections 

•  Virginia gubernatorial candidates make final pitches before Tuesday’s primary
• ‘Censored’ TV ad with image of Trump’s bloody head airs in Va. governor’s race
• Tyson Foods tries to scuttle TV ad playing up ties to GOP contender Gillespie

7am – B /C  Who are you voting for in the Virginia Primaries? How is the environment at the polls?

7am – D INTERVIEW – KEN BLACKWELL – Former Domestic Policy Advisor to the Trump transition team and former Ohio Secretary of State

Topic: Sessions to testify

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday about recent claims made by former FBI Director James Comey, he said Saturday.
• Judge Napolitano says “Sessions Will Be Testifying As A Witness” and “Sessions Is in a ‘Dangerous Position, Should Not Testify”

7am – E   Buyer pays $133K for two courtside tickets to Game 5 of NBA Finals (ESPN)  A person paid $133,000, including fees, for two floor seats to Game 5 of the NBA Finals at Oracle Arena to possibly see the Golden State Warriors win their second title in three years. As the NBA Finals shift back to California, the Warriors have a familiar 3-1 series lead against the Cavs. Can the Warriors end it on their home floor? We have the updated series outlook from our panel of experts.

A team source said that a Warriors season-ticket holder sold the seats on the team’s Ticketmaster resale site on Sunday night. With buyer fees at 15 percent, the buyer paid more than $17,000 in fees alone for the pair of tickets.

8am – A/B/C Are there any shows that you stopped watching because of its political views? ABC’s ‘Roseanne’ to Tackle Trump Era in Sitcom Revival Expect comedian Roseanne Barr to tackle Donald Trump and the current reality of ordinary Americans when a revival of her popular family sitcom debuts on ABC mid-season. ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey just isn’t certain Barr will personally identify the U.S. president. “I don’t know whether Roseanne (Barr) will speak about Trump by name. But she’s going to speak very honestly,” Dungey told the Banff World Media Festival on Monday during a keynote address. “We’re going to be tackling some of the topics that are in the conversation today. I’ll leave it that,” she added. Original castmembers Roseanne Barr, John Goodman, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf, Michael Fishman and Lecy Goranson will return 30 years after the original Roseanne comedy debuted, this time with new kids and grandchildren thrown into the mix for new story-telling.

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

Topic: Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows says “We Need Tax Reform By August or No Recess”

• Chairman Meadows toldattendees at a Heritage Foundation tax event, “We need to get tax reform done sooner (rather) than later and by that we should have a real proposal that we start debating before we leave at the end of July.”
• Meadows negotiated with former Tuesday co-chair Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) to craft the MacArthur amendment. The amendment galvanized enough support for the American Health Care Act (AHCA) to pass through the House. Now, Meadows wants to negotiate a tax reform deal, even if that means getting rid of Congress’s vacation in August.

8am – E  Rolling Stone Settles With University Of Virginia Fraternity Over Rape Hoax ArticlE (Daily Caller)  Rolling Stone has settled a lawsuit with the University of Virginia fraternity whose members were falsely accused of raping a female student in a Nov. 2014 article, The Daily Caller has learned. A source involved at the national level with the fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, tells TheDC that Rolling Stone will pay $1.65 million to settle the defamation suit. The magazine’s decision follows a settlement in April with Nicole Eramo, a University of Virginia associate dean who was also smeared in the article, which was written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. In the piece, “A Rape on Campus,” Erdely relayed the story of Jackie Coakley, a Virginia woman who claimed she was brutally raped by a group of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity members during a party in Sept. 2012. Erdely portrayed Eramo as dismissive of Coakley’s case. But it was later revealed that Coakley not only fabricated the attack by the fraternity members but that Eramo took her allegations seriously at the time she made them.