Cal Thomas, Mark Krikorian and Josh Kraushaar joined WMAL on Wednesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

5am – A/B   Treasury secretary’s wife apologizes for Instagram post, reply.  (CNN)Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s wife Louise Linton apologized Tuesday after sustained backlash for a now-deleted Instagram post touting her wealth and her subsequent reply belittling a commenter. “I apologize for my post on social media yesterday as well as my response. It was inappropriate and highly insensitive,” Linton said in a statement from her publicist. Monday’s post began with a glamorous photo of Linton stepping off an official government plane on a trip to Kentucky with her husband, who was there to discuss tax reform with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and visit Fort Knox. Dressed in all white and carrying a handbag and silk scarf, the Scottish-born actress and producer tagged a series of luxury designers, including Hermes, Roland Mouret, Tom Ford and Valentino. Great #daytrip to #Kentucky! #nicest #people #beautiful #countryside #usa,” she wrote. Instagram user Jenni Miller, a mother of three from Oregon, took issue with the post, commenting, “Glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable” Linton fired back in a sarcastic tone. “@jennimiller29 cute! Aw!!! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable! Do you think the US govt paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol,” she wrote in a response peppered with kiss emojis. Her reply escalated further as she touted her family’s wealth and personal “sacrifice.”

5am – C         Mark Wahlberg has outmuscled Dwayne Johnson to become Hollywood’s highest-paid actor with an income of $68 million.  “Transformers: The Last Knight” star Mark Wahlberg has outmuscled Dwayne Johnson to become Hollywood’s highest-paid actor in the past year with a transforming income of $68 million, according to Forbes magazine. The former rapper known as Marky Mark beat out “Baywatch” star Johnson, with $65 million, and Johnson’s “The Fate of the Furious” co-star Vin Diesel, worth $54.5 million. The rest of the top five, released Tuesday, includes Adam Sandler, flush with a Netflix deal, at No. 4 with $50.5 million and Jackie Chan with $49 million.

5am – D/E     12 Browns players kneel in prayer over racial, social injustice. (ESPN) —

CLEVELAND — A dozen Browns players took a knee in prayer during the national anthem before Monday night’s preseason game against the New York Giants. While the group knelt behind the bench, several other players placed a hand on a kneeling teammate’s shoulder in support. “There’s a lot of racial and social injustices in the world that are going on right now,” rookie safety Jabrill Peppers said after the Browns’ second win in two preseason games. “We just decided to take a knee and pray for the people who have been affected and just pray for the world in general.” Players said linebacker Christian Kirksey led the prayer. “We did it out of respect,” Kirksey said. “No disrespect for anyone, we just felt like it was the right time and the need to do it.” Tight end Seth DeValve, who became the first known white NFL player to take a knee during the national anthem, said recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, had a lot to do with the decision. But DeValve said it was also more involved. His wife, Erica, is African-American.

6am – A/B/C TRUMP RALLY HIGHLIGHTS

6am – D         INTERVIEW – CAL THOMAS – syndicated columnist

• Thoughts on President Trump’s Phoenix rally last night
• CAL THOMAS COLUMN: “Historical hysteria: Cultural collisions only distract from the nation’s real problems”   

6am – E         POWERBALL TONIGHT! The estimated jackpot for Wednesday night’s Powerball lottery game has climbed to $700 million, making it the second-largest in U.S. history.  Average American spends $200/year on lottery tix

6am – F         New cellphone app for parents freezes kid’s phone until they answer. A dad in the United Kingdom who was tired of his teenage son ignoring his father’s phone calls and text messages has designed a new app so that other parents don’t have to deal with the same frustration. Entrepreneur Nick Herbert, 45, recently launched “ReplyASAP,” a new app available on Android devices that freezes the screen and sounds an alarm until the user answers or acknowledges a call or message from the parent number. Herbert said he gave his son, Ben, a cellphone after he started high school, under the assumption that the new purchase would make it easier for him to get ahold of his son. In addition to freezing all other programs and sounding an alarm until the message is acknowledged, ReplyASAP also sends the parent phone a notification when the message has been read.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — MARK KRIKORIAN – Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)

• President Trump addresses immigration reform in Arizona

7am – B/C     INTERVIEW — JOSH KRAUSHAAR – is the political editor for National Journal – shared his thoughts on Trump’s rally, Clinton audio and the divide in the Democratic party.

• Clinton Calls Trump a ‘Creep’ for Debate Behavior in Election Memoir. Hillary Clinton refers to Donald Trump as a “creep” and says her “skin crawled” during one of their debates in an except from her upcoming 2016 election memoir What Happened.

7am – D         TRUMP VS MCCONNELL:

• Trump and McConnell stopped talking after profanity-laced phone call: report . Trump and McConnell have feuded openly in recent weeks after the Kentucky Republican said during a speech in his home state that the president may have “excessive expectations” about pushing his agenda through Congress. Those remarks came after Senate Republicans failed to pass legislation repealing and replacing ObamaCare. In response, Trump publicly questioned McConnell’s leadership, suggesting to reporters earlier this month that McConnell might want to consider stepping down if he’s unable to pass the president’s legislative agenda. The feud, according to Tuesday’s report, also heated up outside the public eye. The president berated McConnell in an Aug. 9 phone call over the Senate’s narrow rejection of an ObamaCare repeal bill, according to the Times. The report says the call descended into shouting and profanity.
• McConnell unsure Trump presidency can survive scandals: report.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is expressing doubts that President Trump can succeed in office after a summer of controversies and crises, according to a bombshell report from The New York Times. The Times reported Tuesday that McConnell has privately questioned Trump’s willingness to learn how to govern and the president’s ability to lead the GOP into the 2018 midterm elections, according to people who have spoken to him. The report that McConnell has expressed reservations about Trump’s ability to salvage his presidency follows a week in which the president was put on the defensive after blaming both sides for the violence in Charlottesville, Va., after a white supremacist rally.

7am – E         D.C. residents post a sign clarifying that their tiki torches are just a way of preventing mosquitos.  (DCist) — After white supremacists lit the streets of Charlottesville, Va. earlier this month with tiki torches while shouting Nazi slogans, some other customers of the backyard lighting option feel the need to clarify their choice. “Don’t mind our Tiki torches, the only things we hate are mosquitos!” says one sign on the corner of 13th and V streets NW, as first noted by Popville. Below, it includes a number of hashtags: #F*ckTrump, #Resist, #LGBTQ, #FightSupremacy, #Sheetcake, #FightMosquitos, #NoHate. The sign was one of two that Annie Dragolich and Jessica Kenley hung outside the home on Saturday. A couple in their early thirties who moved into the Cardozo home a month ago, Dragolich and Kenley ordered the torches “because we have legit mosquito problems and nothing seems to help, and then we realized it was an inopportune time to have them,” says Kenley, who works for a local boutique investment bank.

8am – A/B/C ESPN remove Asian-American presenter Robert Lee from Charlottesville game as name is same as Confederate general. American sports television network ESPN have been criticised after they elected to remove Asian-American presenter Robert Lee from a University of Virginia football match because his name if the same as the Confederate general Robert E Lee. The recent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one person dead, surrounds the removal of Confederate statues across the southern United States and protests by white nationalists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a car was driven into a group of people protesting against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, and the statue of General Robert E Lee will be covered in black fabric to mourn her death. However, the decision by ESPN to remove Lee, who was slated to cover UVA’s home match against William and Mary on 2 September in Charlottesville, will not cover Youngstown State at Pittsburgh.

8am – D/E     TRUMP RALLY HIGHLIGHTS