Monday 2/12/18: Joe diGenova, Matt Schlapp, Steve Kastenbaum, and Joe Concha joined WMAL on Monday!

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, February 12, 2018

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

5am – A/B/C ROB PORTER AND JOHN KELLY CONTROVERSY:

• TRUMP WHITE HOUSE LOOKS TO PUT ROB PORTER BEHIND THEM: White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that the administration doesn’t tolerate domestic violence “at all,” amid ongoing questions about whether former Staff Secretary Rob Porter was allowed to keep his job amid allegations and dismissed rumors that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly could be fired over his handling of the scandal … “Absolutely not,” Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think all of these stories about replacing General Kelly are mostly being fed by people who are unhappy that they’ve lost access to the president under General Kelly’s leadership.” Kelly reportedly offered his resignation over the matter, amid charges he knew about Porter’s allegations but allowed him to keep his White House post — without full FBI security clearance. Porter was fired after news reports last week in which his two ex-wives made domestic violence allegations against him. One story included a picture of one of the wives with a black eye.
• TRUMP TWEET:  Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump: Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused – life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process? 7:33 AM – 10 Feb 2018
• NY Times: ‘Abuse Case Exposes Fissures in a White House in Turmoil’
• Kellyanne Conway: Kelly’s Job Not in Jeopardy, Trump Has ‘Full Faith’ in Him.   “I spoke to the president last night,” Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to Mr. Trump, told Jake Tapper on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I told him I would be with you today. And he said, ‘Please tell Jake that I have full faith in Chief of Staff John Kelly and that I’m not actively searching for replacements.’ He said: ‘I saw that all over the news today. I have faith in him.’”
• White House officials: Talk of Trump replacing Kelly ‘much ado about nothing’
• ‘At what price power?’ People are very confused by Anthony Scaramucci’s cryptic tweet     MOOCH: At what price power? How far will someone move and shake their principles to keep it? What kind of lies told and fear will be struck in the heart of colleagues? What is the level of dishonesty? Stay tuned
• White House Speechwriter Resigns Amid Abuse Accusations.  In an interview in The Washington Post, Mr. Sorensen’s former wife, Jessica Corbett, detailed a volatile two-and-a-half-year marriage in which Mr. Sorensen ran over her foot while driving a car and put out a lit cigarette on her hand. Their divorce became final last fall. Ms. Corbett said she described those episodes to the F.B.I. last fall as it was conducting a background check of Mr. Sorensen, according to The Post. Mr. Sorensen denied Ms. Corbett’s account, and insisted that she was the abuser. Responding to a Facebook message on Friday evening, Mr. Sorensen called his former wife “creative” and later emailed a lengthy statement disputing her account. In the statement, he called her claims “malicious” and without “authentic evidence.” He also included photographs that he said were evidence of injuries she left him with during confrontations.  He added, “Although I had hoped to never have to think about or discuss the woman who spent years physically attacking, threatening and lying about me — and relentlessly and cruelly bombarding me with unimaginable fits of rage — this incident is an opportunity to highlight the grossly underreported and unacknowledged issue of female-on-male domestic violence.”  Asked why he did not fight to keep his job, Mr. Sorensen said in a Facebook message: “I didn’t want the White House to have to deal with this distraction. It should be able to focus on continuing President Trump’s historic accomplishments for the American People.”
• Andrew Restuccia ‏@AndrewRestuccia 14h14 hours ago: In any other universe, Monday would be a big day in Washington, with a budget proposal and an infrastructure plan being rolled out. But the firestorm over John Kelly is overshadowing everything.
• Jake Tapper ‏@jaketapper Feb 10: Jake Tapper Retweeted Donald J. Trump In point of fact, 2 ex-wives talking on the record to journalists and to the FBI and one ex-girlfriend on background, with a photo of a black eye and a police report, is not “a mere allegation.”

5am – D         Democratic Memo News:

• Trump declines to approve release of Dem countermemo. (The Hill) — President Trump is not ready to approve the release of a Democratic memo meant to rebut a document he declassified last week that was authored by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, the White House announced. White House counsel Don McGahn wrote a letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) explaining that “although the president is inclined to declassify” the Democratic memo, the administration believes it would create “especially significant concerns” for “national security and law enforcement interests.” Trump’s legal team insists that it came to that conclusion at the behest of senior officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
• Top Intel Dem: Trump blocked release of Dem memo because it “undermines” his claims of vindication (The Hill) — Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sunday said President Trump doesn’t want the public to see the “underlying facts” in the Democratic countermemo because they would undercut his “claim of vindication” in the Russia probe. “The president doesn’t want you to see these facts from the FISA application because it completely undermines his claim of vindication,” Schiff told CBS’s “Face the Nation,” referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court application used to obtain a warrant to spy on a former Trump campaign aide.
• Nunes: We actually want the “ridiculous” Dem memo released (The Hill) — House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) on Sunday said he actually wants the Democratic rebuttal to a now-infamous GOP-crafted surveillance memo to be released. “We actually want the Democratic memo out. We think it’s ridiculous on the face of it,” Nunes said during an interview on Fox News. “We think it’s very political about how they attack myself, they attack Chairman Gowdy, they turn Carter Page into some super-secret Russian spy, they talk about how Christopher Steele is a really, really good source when we know that he lied to the FBI.” Nunes said he doesn’t know why Democrats on the committee aren’t spending the weekend “redacting it so that we can get it back to the White House so the president can declassify it.” Nunes’s comments come after the White House announced last week President Trump was not ready to approve the release of the Democratic memo.
• Rep. Gaetz on Dem memo: “I think we need a second special counsel because Justice Dept and the FBI can’t possibly investigate themselves and it’s their very actions which we are now questioning.”  
• House Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat Adam Schiff says he’ll meet with the FBI to discuss Democratic memo redaction. Washington (CNN)House Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat Adam Schiff says he plans to meet with the FBI to hear concerns about a Democratic rebuttal to a Republican intelligence memo alleging FBI abuses of its surveillance authority. “We’re going to sit down with the FBI and go through any concerns that they have, and any legitimate concerns over sources and methods, we will redact,” Schiff told CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday morning. The memo from the committee’s Democrats rebuts allegations in the memo from the panel’s Republicans that accuses the FBI of suppressing Democratic ties to an opposition research dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia used in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Schiff’s comments come after the White House’s decision last week not to publish the Democratic rebuttal document. The White House said in a letter to the committee that it would not publicize the contents of the Democratic memo “because the Memorandum contains numerous properly classified and especially sensitive passages.”
• Trump: Democrats’ memo was ‘very political,’ must ‘redo’
• SCHIFF: After ignoring urging of FBI & DOJ not to release misleading Nunes memo because it omits material facts, @POTUS now expresses concerns over sharing precisely those facts with public and seeks to send it back to the same Majority that produced the flawed Nunes memo to begin with
• BYRON YORK: Meanwhile, Schiff does exactly as expected, suggests WH wants to conceal facts from American people.
• JONATHAN WINER: Devin Nunes is investigating me. Here’s the truth. (I’m great friends with Sid Blumenthal!)

 5am – E        House prohibits sexual relationships between lawmakers and their staffers (Washington Post) — The House voted Tuesday to prohibit sexual relationships between lawmakers and their employees, a remarkable rule change that brings the institution in line with the military and the private sector after a rash of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations roiled Capitol Hill. The prohibition, pushed by Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), took immediate effect as Congress moved toward changing the system for reporting and adjudicating employees’ claims of sexual harassment. The House approved language Tuesday establishing an office to advocate for employees during that process and a separate bill requiring lawmakers to reimburse taxpayers when they are involved in workplace settlements. “Thanks to the #MeToo movement, the American public has made it clear that they have had enough,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.). “They expect Congress to lead, and for once we are.”

6am – A         Infrastructure / Budget News:

• White House: Trump’s infrastructure plan coming Monday (Axios) — President Trump is gearing up to release his infrastructure plan — $1.5 trillion on projects over 10 years — on Monday, CNBC reports, citing a White House official.

• Trump’s budget proposal on Monday to ask for $3 billion downpayment on the wall WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s budget proposal to be unveiled on Monday will include a request for $3 billion as a down payment on building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, a senior administration official said on Thursday.The official, who briefed a small group of reporters on condition of anonymity, said the money would go toward purchasing private land in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas and advance purchases of steel. The administration hopes to build 60 miles (96 km) of new steel bollard fencing along the border with 2018 funding and an additional 64 miles (103 km) with 2019 funding.The $3 billion will be on top of this year’s $14 billion request for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.The border wall was a signature issue for Trump in his 2016 presidential election campaign. He pledged that Mexico would pay for the wall, which the Mexican government has insisted it will not do.Democrats sharply oppose the wall, which Trump has said is aimed at keeping out illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.The new fencing would be constructed in areas known to be used by migrants crossing into the United States, the official said. Wall funding has been caught up in a debate over how to protect young “Dreamers,” people who were brought to the country illegally as children. Trump has offered to give the Dreamers protection from deportation and a pathway to citizenship over 10 to 12 years, in exchange for $25 billion in wall funding and tightened restrictions on legal immigration, but Democrats have balked at the terms.

6am – B         Flu News:

• Orange juice sales spike for first time in years because of flu season (Fox News) — The current flu season has been bad news for basically everybody, but it appears to have been a stroke of good luck for the country’s orange juice purveyors, who have seen sales spike for the first time in years, thanks in large part to the flu. According to The Washington Post, orange juice sales have been on the decline for years. Orange juice used to be considered a particularly healthful beverage, and many Americans grew up seeing it as part of “a balanced breakfast.” But in recent years customers have been turning away from juice in general because of its relatively high amount of sugar and calories. The American Academy of Pediatrics even advised against giving juice to children and wrote that juice “has no essential role in healthy balanced diets of children.” According to Business Insider, the orange juice market in the U.S. is down 50 percent since 2001. And until now, orange juice sales had not seen an increase since 2013. This year, however, retailers saw orange juice sales jump 0.9 percent in the four weeks that ended on January 20. That’s a noticeable spike, considering it’s the first time the sales data has shown a year-over-year increase in nearly five years, and it happens to coincide with a particularly brutal flu season. People may be chugging orange juice in an attempt to fight off the flu, but it’s questionable if orange juice will have any effect at all. Getting the flu shot is a much more reliable method of reducing the likelihood and severity of getting the flu.

• Flu virus has killed THOUSANDS in just ONE week with the death toll set to rise and Tamiflu shortages being reported across the country (Daily Mail) — Startling CDC statistics show 4,064 Americans died from the flu or pneumonia during the third week of the new year, while the illnesses were responsible for 1 in 10 fatalities in the first week of February. The flu scare has also left pharmacies running low on the preventative influenza drug, Tamiflu. Several states have seen a drastic increase in prescription volume. ‘In Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, and Arkansas, prescriptions are up over 20-fold from last year, and other parts of the south and midwest are likewise seeing an exceptionally high prescription volume,’ GoodRx reports. ‘On a national basis, prescriptions for Tamiflu are up more than 6 times last year’s rate. The high volume of Tamiflu prescriptions at this point in the season has resulted in a shortage of the medication.’ CDC acting director Anne Schuchat predicts the death toll will continue to rise over the next few weeks. ‘Unfortunately, more deaths are likely to happen… we do expect and it would make sense to see more pneumonia and influenza-related deaths,’ said Schuchat, according to Bloomberg.

• Experimental Drug Promises To Kill The Flu Virus In A Single Day (Daily Wire) — 2018 has been a devastating year for the flu. So far, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recorded 63 pediatric deaths. And it’s not even the middle of February yet. But now a Japanese drugmaker claims that it has developed a pill that can kill the virus within a day, The Wall Street Journal reports. A late-stage trial on Japanese and American flu patients found that for the people who took the Shionogi & Co. compound, the median time taken to wipe out the virus was 24 hours. That is much quicker than any other flu drug on the market, including Roche AG’s Tamiflu, which the trial showed took three times longer to achieve the same result. Quickly killing the virus could reduce its contagious effects, Shionogi said. Also, Shionogi’s experimental drug requires only a single dose, while patients need to take two doses of Tamiflu a day, for five days.

6am – C         School district removes two literary classics after students say the books make them ‘uncomfortable’ (The Blaze) — American literary classics “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” are read by most high school students nationwide. But students in Duluth, Minnesota, will no longer be required to read the novels.

6am – D         MEDIA COVERAGE OF OLYMPICS:

• MEDIA LOVEFEST WITH KIM JUNG UN’S SISTER:
• CHEERLEADING NEWS NETWORK: “This is disgusting.[CNN is] sucking up to the sister of this brutal dictator.” – Ed Henry, on “MediaBuzz,” blasting CNN’s article that claimed “Kim Jong Un’s Sister Is Stealing the Show at the Winter Olympics.”
• CNN: Kim Jong Un’s sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics
• Mass murdering dictator’s sister is “stealing the show”?
• WEEKLY STANDARD: Kim Yo-jong’s Guest Book Signature Was Not a ‘Warm Message’ — It was a threat.
• CNN Slammed For Glowing Article on Kim Jong Un’s Sister: ’She’s Starving Her Country to Death’ (Mediaite) — After CNN tweeted an article that many took as promoting Kim Jong Un’s sister in a positive light, the internet savaged the network from all sides. The article, headline “Kim Jong Un’s sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics,” began with the following graf that painted the brutal dictator’s sibling in a glowing light: “If ‘diplomatic dance’ were an event at the Winter Olympics, Kim Jong Un’s younger sister would be favored to win gold. With a smile, a handshake and a warm message in South Korea’s presidential guest book, Kim Yo Jong has struck a chord with the public just one day into the PyeongChang Games.”
• Jesse Lehrich @JesseLehrich: she’s literally the deputy director of the “Propaganda and Agitation Department” for one of the world’s most repressive regimes. … 3:36 PM – Feb 10, 2018
• NY TIMES TWEET GARDNER RESPONDED TO:  The New York Times‏ @nytimes Without a word, only flashing smiles, Kim Jong-un’s sister outflanked Vice President Mike Pence in diplomacy
• NBC fires Olympic analyst after comments infuriate South Korea. The Peacock Network was left red-faced by weird comments of corporate bigwig Joshua Cooper Ramo, whom 30 Rock worked as a commentator for coverage of opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Pyeongchang on Friday. Japan ruled Korea with an iron fist from 1910 to 1945 in a bloody occupation that still strikes a raw nerve.    “Every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural, technological and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation,” said Ramo.

6am – E         When Poppy Harlow of CNN questioned Ruth Bader Ginsburg over when there will be enough female justices on the Supreme Court. “When there are nine of course,” she said with a twinkle.

6am – F         Going green for little kids means dressing in the dark, turning off the iPad (Washington Post) — Each morning, 10-year-old Tuyet Le gets ready for her day with the lights off. By choice. “Many people can turn on the lights and then they’re not helping the Earth,” said Tuyet, a student at William Tyler Page Elementary School in Silver Spring. “So it’s better to turn off more.” Tuyet has been passionate about helping the Earth since — she pauses, mulling — she was 7 or 8 and joined her school’s green team as an environmental ambassador in classrooms and at home. Learning about the environment at school sparked her passion. “I use less water when I’m brushing my teeth and then my lights are off when I’m changing, so I can save electricity,” she said. “At the end of the day, I always turn off my iPad before I go to bed,” and she’s sparing with shower water. The state’s push for green schools was highlighted in a recent Chesapeake Bay Program report, which said that in 2015, more than 80 percent of the certified sustainable schools in the improving watershed were in Maryland. School programs in the watershed that adopt sustainable practices and teach students to be environmentally literate are helping save the bay and ensuring it remains well, said Tom Ackerman, vice president of education with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Education, he said, is the “best really long-term solution for protecting the health of our environment.”

7am – A          INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst – discussed the Democrat memo.

7am – B/C     INTERVIEW – MATT SCHLAPP – Chairman of American Conservative Union / CPAC – discussed Rob Porter/ Kelly, infrastructure and budget, and CPAC 2018.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – STEVE KASTENBAUM – Correspondent in Pyeongchang, South Korea – recapped the Olympics

• The United States has come away with a bronze medal in team figure skating during Day 3 of the Winter Games.
• Mirai Nagasu has become the first American woman and third overall to land a triple axel in the Olympics, accomplishing the rare feat in the women’s free skate at the team competition.
• American Jamie Anderson won the second gold medal for the U.S. at the Games, taking the women’s slopestyle snowboarding amid blustery conditions.
• For the second day in a row, strong wind gusts forced the postponement of a premier event at the Olympics in Pyeongchang. Frigid temperatures were compounded by up to 40 MPH gusts, leading to the women’s giant slalom competition being rescheduled for Thursday. The men’s downhill was also postponed until Thursday. Conditions were too dangerous at the top of the alpine centers but they’re expected to improve later in the week.

7am – E         Trump administration plans to privatize International Space Station (Fox News) — The White House will announce plans to stop funding the International Space Station after 2024 when it unveils its proposed budget Monday, Fox News has confirmed. A senior NASA official told Fox News that the agency is working on a transition plan that would allow the station, known as the ISS, to be operated by a commercial concern. The administration’s plan for the ISS was first reported by The Washington Post. The Post reported that the White House will request $150 million from Congress for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 in order to “to enable the development and maturation of commercial entities and capabilities which will ensure that commercial successors to the ISS —potentially including elements of the ISS — are operational when they are needed.” The plan does not elaborate on which companies might be interested in the station or how the station might be used in the future. All or part of the ISS has been in low Earth orbit since 1998 and the station has been continuously inhabited since 2000. There are six astronauts currently aboard the ISS — two Russians, three Americans and one from Japan. The ISS, which functions as a kind of floating laboratory, is operated currently by Boeing on behalf of NASA at a cost of between $3 billion and $4 billion.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – JOE CONCHA – Media Reporter, The Hill – discussed media lovefest with North Korea, Kim Jong Un’s sister.

8am – B         Entertainment News:

• Actor Bill Murray Explains The Failure Of Democrats – “Pick Out Little Pieces Of The Population” (American Lookout) — Actor and comedian Bill Murray recently gave an interview to CNBC in which he described identity politics as the downfall of Democrats. He also seemed very concerned about how political correctness is dangerous to comedy. Here are a few of the key quotes from the segment: BILL MURRAY: People are trying to win their point of view as opposed to saying: What if I spoke to everyone? My friend who’s a great comedy writer Jim Downey, he’s accused of being a right wing writer, a comedy writer if there is such a thing. He says: No, I just think the way Democrats handle things is poor, the way they try to pick out little pieces of the population, we represent the Hispanics, we represent the LGBT or something and they’re not speaking to everyone at once. That is a description of left wing identity politics in a nutshell. People on the left are probably going to be very unhappy with Murray for making these accurate statements because it exposes exactly what Democrats do.
• Kim Cattrall slams Sarah Jessica Parker’s condolences: ‘I don’t need your love or support’ (NY Post) — Kim Cattrall fueled her contentious feud with former “Sex and the City” co-star Saturday after posting a scathing response to Sarah Jessica Parker’s condolences regarding the recent passing of her brother Christopher. Cattrall posted a statement on her Instagram Saturday that read: “I don’t need your love or support at this tragic time @SarahJessicaParker.”

8am – C         Too Much Netflix, Not Enough Chill: Why Young Americans Are Having Less Sex (Politico) — Happy Valentine’s Day! Fifty years after the sexual revolution, sex in America is in decline. Americans are having less sex, the share of Americans who say they never once had sex in the past year is rising, and—perhaps most surprising—this revolution in sexual behavior is being led by the young. Although this sexual counter-revolution began before the #MeToo movement arose in response to the sexual abuse, misconduct and insensitivity of men ranging from Harvey Weinstein to Bill O’Reilly, the cultural outrage over men’s bad behavior is likely to accelerate this trend. American adults, on average, are having sex about nine fewer times per year in the 2010s compared to adults in the late 1990s, according to a team of scholars led by the psychologist Jean Twenge. That’s a 14 percent decline in sexual frequency. Likewise, the share of adults who reported having sex “not at all” in the past year rose from 18 percent in the late 1990s to 22 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to our analysis of the General Social Survey. (The GSS, which is fielded every two years and is directed by the University of Chicago, is a large, nationally representative and federally funded survey of American adults covering a range of attitudes and behaviors.) Similar trends are apparent among younger men and women. In the early 2000s, about 73 percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 30 had sex at least twice a month. That fell to 66 percent in the period from 2014 to 2016, according to our analysis of the GSS. Other 18- to 30-year-olds aren’t doing it at all. From 2002 to 2004, 12 percent of them reported having no sex in the preceding year. A decade later, during the two years from 2014 to 2016, that number rose to 18 percent. Sex is also down among teenagers. Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a decline in the share of high school students who said they ever had sex: from 47 percent in 2005 to 41 percent in 2015. Sexual activity among teenagers fell the most between 2013 and 2015, about the same time that sex took a real dip among 18- to 30-year-old adults.

8am – D/E     ROB PORTER AND JOHN KELLY CONTROVERSY