Cal Thomas, Sarah Westwood, and Howard Kurtz joined WMAL on Wednesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

5am – A/B/C State of the Union Discussion and Highlights from President Trump

5am – D         DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE to the State of the Union:

• Joseph Kennedy III Delivers Democratic Response to SOTU:
• Kennedy – Many have spent the last year anxious, angry, afraid.  We all feel the fractured fault lines
• Kennedy – We see an economy that makes money for RICH but doesnt give WORKERS fair share.  Govt struggels to stay open, Russia in our business, war on the environment,
• Kennedy – they are turning American life into zero sum game, for one to win another must lose
• Kennedy – Here is the Dem answer, we choose BOTH!
• Kennedy speaks spanish to the dreamers
• Kennedy calls Trump a bully

5am – E         Super Blue Blood Moon 2018: (Fox News) — On Jan. 31, a total lunar eclipse will occur with a blue moon, known as a Super Blue Blood Moon. (Fox News) — By no stretch of the definition is a full moon rare. It happens approximately once a month, or every 29.5 days. Occasionally, it happens twice in one month, approximately every three years or so. This event is known as a Blue Moon, according to Fox 5 DC. The last Blue Moon occurred in July 2015 and in 2018, we’ll experience two of them, a phenomena that won’t happen for another 19 years. The second Blue Moon is slated to occur in late March. The Blood Moon occurs because the Earth is passing between the Moon and the Sun, which gives the Moon a reddish tint to it. It’s caused by light bending around the Earth because of gravity passing around a portion of the atmosphere, more commonly known as a lunar eclipse. A Blue Moon combined with a Supermoon (when the Moon is at its closest point to Earth and appears to be 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than normal) the rare phenomena is called a Super Blue Blood Moon happens. Supermoons generally only occur once every 14 months and will not happen again until January 2019. The last time all of these events occurred simultaneously in the Western hemisphere was 1866. When can you see it: Depending upon where you live in the U.S., your viewing times and experiences may differ.

6am – A/B/C More Discussion about the State of the Union

6am – D         INTERVIEW – CAL THOMAS – Syndicated columnist – recap State of the Union – discussed President Trump’s Message and Democratic response

6am – E         HILLARY RESPONDS:  Hillary Clinton, moments before State of the Union, explains why she didn’t fire campaign adviser.  (Fox News) — Minutes before President Trump’s first State of the Union address, Hillary Clinton issued a detailed explanation on why she didn’t fire a senior adviser to her 2008 presidential campaign after he allegedly sexually harassed a female staffer. The post came amid bipartisan criticism of her initial response to the controversy late last week. In a lengthy Facebook post, Clinton said Tuesday she understands why she’s being asked why she let the staffer “keep his job despite his inappropriate workplace behavior.” “The short answer is this: If I had it to do again, I wouldn’t,” she said. But Clinton said she believes in “second chances” and didn’t want to completely terminate his employment. Instead, Clinton said she demoted him and “put in place technical barriers to his emailing” his accuser. “In this case, while there were no further complaints against him for the duration of the campaign, several years after working for me he was terminated from another job for inappropriate behavior,” Clinton said. “That reoccurrence troubles me greatly, and it alone makes clear that the lesson I hoped he had learned while working for me went unheeded. “Would he have done better – been better – if I had fired him? Would he have gotten that next job? There is no way I can go back 10 years and know the answers. But you can bet I’m asking myself these questions right now.”

6am – F         HYPED MELANIA CONTROVERSY:

• Melania breaks with history by taking her OWN motorcade to State of the Union but rides back to the White House in the Beast with Trump after Stormy Daniels’ sex claims roiled their marriage. (Daily Mail) – First lady Melania Trump took a separate motorcade from her husband to tonight’s State of the Union address. But she rode back with him in his official limousine, her official spokeswoman said. She hasn’t been seen side-by-side with the president since January 15, when the first couple returned to the White House from Mar-a-Lago. The first lady is reportedly ‘furious’ over revelations that President Trump’s lawyer paid a porn star hush money to keep quiet over an alleged affair. She already ditched a planned trip to Davos, Switzerland with her husband, spending time at the Holocaust Museum and Mar-a-Lago instead
• Melania Trump wears white to the State of the Union: (Hollywood Reporter) — Sending a message? In her first public appearance in an official capacity since the news of President Trump’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels broke earlier this month, first lady Melania Trump arrived at the U.S. Capitol building Tuesday night clad in a simple white Dior pantsuit with cropped cuffed trousers and a silk button-down shirt. (Immediately following the scandal, Melania made the decision not to accompany the president to Davos, and she arrived separately from him on Tuesday night.) The first lady has worn white pantsuits before, including the $4000 white Ralph Lauren jumpsuit she wore for Trump’s victory speech on election night. But tonight’s suit takes on a different meaning, either in defiance of the State of the Union wardrobe blackout staged by House Democrats perhaps, or potentially as a form of private protest against her husband. White is a hue traditionally associated with the women’s suffragette movement to win the right to vote, and was the symbolic wardrobe choice of Hillary Clinton when she accepted the nomination to become the Democratic party’s first female presidential candidate.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – SARAH WESTWOOD – White House reporter for Washington Examiner – discussed the president’s State of the Union.

7am – B/C     Media Reaction to State of the Union

•  ON CNN, Van Jones: Trump served the nation candy filled with poison tonight

• ON MSNBC, Nicolle Wallace: SOTU Revealed Trump’s ‘Deep and Almost Sort of Sad Obsession With Being Liked’

• ABC lost its mind following President Trump’s first such address, slinging mud at the President for delivering a “divisive,” “gloomy,” and “sad speech” that did nothing to “unify” the country and instead “stok[ed]…racial tensions.” Chief anchor and former Clinton administration official George Stephanopoulos started by telling chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl that Trump “did not unify that chamber” while Karl swooned that he’s “never seen anything like it” with “Democrats…basically run[ning] for the exits.”

7am – D         Washington Redskins’ Unofficial End to Kirk Cousins’ Tenure. (Washington Post) — The Washington Redskins in effect said goodbye to quarterback Kirk Cousins before he could bid farewell to them in free agency. The Redskins’ stunning trade with the Kansas City Chiefs for quarterback Alex Smith, the NFL’s top-rated passer this season, brought an unofficial end Tuesday to Cousins’s tenure in Washington. He presumably will be permitted to leave the Redskins via unrestricted free agency in March, unencumbered by a franchise- or transition-player tag, and shop his services to a group of quarterback-needy teams that could include the Jacksonville Jaguars, Denver Broncos, New York Jets, Cleveland Browns, Buffalo Bills and Arizona Cardinals. The tentative deal between the Redskins and Chiefs was confirmed by multiple people familiar with the situation after being first reported by the Kansas City Star. The Redskins agreed to a four-year contract extension with Smith reportedly worth about $94 million, with more than $70 million guaranteed. The Redskins will send a third-round draft choice and cornerback Kendall Fuller to the Chiefs. NFL trades cannot be made official until the start of the new league year March 14. That’s also when the free agent market opens. So the Redskins or Chiefs technically could back out of the deal, but that’s not expected. A public announcement of the not-yet-official trade could be made in the coming days, according to one person with knowledge of the discussions.

7am – E         Trump on hot mic says he will ‘100 percent’ release Devin Nunes memo. President Trump told a Republican lawmaker he will “100 percent” release a classified intelligence memo written by GOP members on the House Intelligence Committee, as he left his first State of the Union address. “[Inaudible] release the memo,” Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., can be heard saying on the C-SPAN hot mic. Trump responded: “Don’t worry, 100 percent.” Duncan’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

8am – A         HOWARD KURTZ – author of new book “MEDIA MADNESS” and hosts the weekend show Media Buzz on Fox News and writes a weekly column on FoxNews.com – discussed his new book and the media reaction to President Trump’s State of the Union.

8am – B/C/D/E         State of the Union Discussion and Highlights from President Trump