Joe diGenova, Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer and Lanny Davis joined WMAL on Monday!

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, April 16, 2018

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C Starbucks issues apology over arrest of two men. (Fox News) — Starbucks has issued an apology after a viral video showed two black men being arrested for refusing to leave when a store employee denied them access to the restroom. According to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, a Starbucks employee called 911 Thursday to report the two for “trespassing.” The employee told officers that the two men came in and asked to use the restroom but were not allowed to do so because they hadn’t purchased anything, which Ross said is company policy. After police arrived, Ross said they asked the men to leave three times but they refused. They were arrested but ultimately released after the company decided not to pursue charges. The video shows officers handcuffing the two while another man is overheard saying he was meeting the men, calling the arrest “ridiculous.” Facing major backlash, Starbucks issued an apology on Twitter Saturday morning. The incident prompted accusations of racism, but Ross quickly dismissed claims of wrongdoing by the officers.

5am – D         lG Report: Andrew McCabe Repeatedly Leaked And Lied About It. A newly released report from the Office of the Inspector General at the Justice Department states that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe repeatedly leaked information to the press and lied about it. McCabe, who was fired a day short of being eligible to receive his full pension, has loudly complained that his dismissal was unwarranted and politically motivated. But findings fleshed out in the OIG report fly in the face of McCabe’s narrative.

The report states that McCabe authorized another FBI agent to leak information about an ongoing investigation into Clinton Foundation to The Wall Street Journal, not in the interest of the public, but for his own personal gain.

5am – E         LATEST ON SYRIA:

• Pentagon: U.S. allied strike set back Syrian chemical weapons program ‘for years’. In a largely uncontested attack, U.S., British and French forces unleashed 105 missiles on three Syrian chemical weapons facilities early Saturday, leveling at least one building and setting back the country’s chemical weapons program “for years,” Pentagon officials said. The strikes targeted three areas of Syria: a scientific research center near Damascus, a chemical weapons storage facility west of Homs and a storage facility and command post near Homs. Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, told reporters Saturday that the weapons used in the operation were a mix of sea and air-launched missiles fired by U.S., British and French forces and “successfully hit every target.” The goal, he said, was to hit the “very heart” of Syria’s chemical weapons program by targeting its research, development and storage facilities. The strikes come one week after reports of a grisly chemical attack in the town of Douma that killed more than 40 people.

6am – A/B/C/D/E/F  AUDIO HIGHLIGHTS of James Comey’s ABC Interview.

7am – A/B/C INTERVIEW — JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia – shared his thoughts on the James Comey ABC Interview/book tour AND the pardoning of SCOOTER LIBBY.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – LT. COL. TONY SHAFFER – a CIA trained former senior intelligence officer and the New York Times best-selling author of ” Operation Dark Heart.” @T_S_P_O_O_K_Y ‏ — analyzed the missiles attacks in Syria.

7am – E         HOUSE SPEAKER RACE:

• House Speaker Paul Ryan endorses California Rep. Kevin McCarthy as his successor. (NBC News) – Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s endorsement Friday of Rep. Kevin McCarthy as his successor vastly increases chances that the Bakersfield congressman will lead House Republicans come November, but it may not seal the deal. “We all think that Kevin is the right person” to become speaker, Ryan (R-Wis.) told NBC’s “Meet the Press” anchor Chuck Todd in a segment that airs Sunday but was made public Friday. “I think Kevin’s the right guy to step up.” Ryan’s abrupt retirement announcement Wednesday threw the fractious House Republican conference into uncertainty, especially with news that he intends to hold on to the gavel until after the November election. Initially Ryan said he wouldn’t talk about endorsing someone until then. Anointing a successor now could be an attempt to tamp down calls from some House Republicans who say Ryan should give up the speakership in the coming weeks and let his replacement take the reins early, rather than muddle through a distracting seven-month race to replace him. Many Republicans see maintaining control of the House as their biggest concern, a goal that could be more difficult amid an intraparty fight. Some also questioned whether Ryan would be able to sustain his massive fundraising efforts as a lame duck speaker. Ryan forcefully rejected such concerns as coming from a “small group” and not the vast majority of the Republican caucus. As House majority leader, McCarthy is the second-ranking Republican official in the House, making him a logical replacement for Ryan. Still, Ryan’s endorsement doesn’t mean that the race to replace him is close to over. McCarthy and his chief rival for the speakership, Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), have been quietly shoring up support for months.
• House Freedom Caucus co-founder Jim Jordan “open to running” for speaker.  House Freedom Caucus co-founder Jim Jordan confirmed Friday he is considering  a run to replace Paul Ryan as House speaker. “Paul Ryan’s the speaker. There is no speaker’s race. If and when there is, I’m open to running,” Jordan, an Ohio Republican, told the Washington Examiner. Friday morning, HFC Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., acknowledged that Jordan is “being encouraged by some of his colleagues” to pursue Ryan’s top position in the House.

8am – A/B/C INTERVIEW – LANNY DAVIS – former Special Counsel to President Clinton, columnist for The Hill and “The Unmaking of the President 2016: How FBI Director James Comey Cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency” – reacted to James Comey’s ABC interview.

8am – D         CRAZY RESTAURANT NEWS:

• ‘Creepy’ Chick-fil-A slammed by ‘New Yorker’ writer from Brooklyn. (Fox News) — Look out, world. New Yorkers have discovered that their city has four Chick-fil-A restaurants – including the world’s largest. Word got out last week in a New Yorker magazine article titled “Chick-fil-A’s creepy infiltration of New York City.” The author is Dan Piepenbring, described as being from Brooklyn. “The air smelled fried,” he reports about his arrival at the chain’s Fulton Street location. He then recounts how one of the Manhattan locations boasts of selling one sandwich every six seconds, and reports that the company plans to open “as many as a dozen more storefronts” in the city. Then comes a discussion of what he describes as the company’s “pervasive Christian traditionalism.” Piepenbring mentions that Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy has been accused of anti-gay bigotry, and that the headquarters in Atlanta is “adorned with Bible verses and a statue of Jesus washing a disciple’s feet.”
• Starbucks issues apology over arrest of two men. (Fox News) — Starbucks has issued an apology after a viral video showed two black men being arrested for refusing to leave when a store employee denied them access to the restroom. According to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, a Starbucks employee called 911 Thursday to report the two for “trespassing.” The employee told officers that the two men came in and asked to use the restroom but were not allowed to do so because they hadn’t purchased anything, which Ross said is company policy. After police arrived, Ross said they asked the men to leave three times but they refused. They were arrested but ultimately released after the company decided not to pursue charges. The video shows officers handcuffing the two while another man is overheard saying he was meeting the men, calling the arrest “ridiculous.” Facing major backlash, Starbucks issued an apology on Twitter Saturday morning. The incident prompted accusations of racism, but Ross quickly dismissed claims of wrongdoing by the officers.

8am – E         RIP R. LEE ERMEY AND ART BELL:

• R. Lee Ermey, a former Marine who made a career in Hollywood playing hard-nosed military men like Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” has died. He was 74. (ABC News) — Ermey’s longtime manager Bill Rogin says he died Sunday morning from pneumonia-related complications. He was 74. The Kanas native was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his memorable performance in “Full Metal Jacket,” in which he immortalized lines such as: “What is your major malfunction?”
• Art Bell, mysterious narrator of the American nightscape, is dead at 72 (Washington Post) — Arthur Bell III grew up with a seven-transistor AM radio tucked under his pillow at night, and when he was supposed to be sleeping, he listened instead to the pioneers of talk radio as they batted around alternative ideas about who really killed John F. Kennedy or how the CIA controlled people’s minds. Mr. Bell, a Marine brat who said he attended more than 30 high schools as his family moved around, served as a medic for the Air Force in Vietnam, and began his broadcasting work on the military’s station in Okinawa, Japan, where he once stayed on the air as a DJ for 116 hours nonstop, earning an entry in Guinness World Records. (He also held the record for seesawing while broadcasting — 57 hours. Top 40 AM radio DJs did that sort of thing in the 1970s.) After studying engineering at the University of Maryland, Mr. Bell returned to radio, playing the hits on small stations in New England and California. The work left him feeling empty, and he moved to Las Vegas, where he was working as a cable guy when a radio station asked him to take on a part-time, overnight slot as a talk-show host. His nightly “Coast to Coast” show ran from 1989 to 2003, and he continued broadcasting on weekends until 2007. He briefly returned with a satellite radio show in 2013 and an online program, “Midnight in the Desert,” in 2015. That show ended after a few months, because, Mr. Bell said, someone had taken to firing a weapon at his Nevada property. Naturally, Mr. Bell died on Friday the 13th.