Daily Caller’s Saagar Enjeti, Federalist’s Sean Davis, Washington Examiner’s Susan Ferrechio and Joe diGenova joined WMAL on Thursday!

Mornings on the Mall

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C Driver in Virginia receives $100 ticket for smoking in vehicle with child inside. (Fox 5 DC) — VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Virginia Beach Police have cited a person for smoking inside a car with a minor present. The ticket was apparently issued on Monday at around 8:30 a.m., according to a tweet from police. In 2016, Virginia passed a law that made it illegal for adults to smoke in vehicles when a child under 8 years old is inside, regardless of whether the vehicle is in motion or stopped.

5am – D         Meadows, Jordan, DeSantis Call On Trump To Release Justice Docs. (Daily Caller) — House Freedom Caucus leadership is calling on President Donald Trump to order the Department of Justice to release all relevant documents regarding potential Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses, the impetus for the investigation into the Trump campaign and documents that lay out the scope of the special counsel’s probe. GOP Reps. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Ron DeSantis of Florida sent a letter to the president Wednesday asking for him to use his authority to “instruct Attorney General Jeff Sessions to immediately produce all documents” related to House Republicans’ investigation into “prosecutorial and investigatorial decisions” made the DOJ and FBI made in 2016 and 2017. “As a separate and equal branch of government, we have a constitutional right to these documents,” the lawmakers wrote. “The Department of Justice has obstructed Congressional oversight by refusing to supply necessary and relevant documents.” The congressmen note that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told Congress in May 2017 that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation should not impede ongoing congressional investigations.

5am – E         NORTH KOREA NEWS:

• NORTH KOREA DRAMA: Trump: I’m Going To The Summit To Demand Denuclearization — If It Happens
• North Korea is dismantling its nuclear site, but is it abandoning its arsenal or hiding evidence?

6am – A/B     Thousands of pages of congressional testimony shed light on 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The Judiciary Committee transcripts reveal new details about how the Trump Tower meeting — central to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between Trump aides and the Kremlin — came to be arranged and efforts afterward to mitigate the political damage arising from its disclosure. The transcripts show the dissatisfaction of Trump Jr. and other campaign aides, including brother-in-law Jared Kushner, when the meeting failed to yield the harmful Clinton information they thought they’d get — as well as the increasing panic of one of the meeting participants who feared his reputation would be ruined by his role in having set it up.

6am – C         Disgraced Parkland school officer Scot Peterson collecting $100,000 annual pension. (USA Today) — The Florida deputy sheriff condemned by his boss and President Trump for failing to confront a gunman who killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland has begun collecting a lifetime pension of more than $100,000 a year. Scot Peterson, the resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High during the shootings on Valentine’s Day, began receiving his monthly check for $8,702.35 in April, the Florida Department of Management Services said in a statement.

Officials say a police officer working at Dixon High School shot and wounded a former student who fired a gun at him Wednesday. Dixon police Chief Steven Howell said the suspect, a 19-year-old former student, “fired several shots near the west gym.” The school resource officer confronted the suspect, who then fled from the school with the officer in pursuit, Howell said. During the pursuit, the suspect fired several shots at the officer but did not strike him.

6am – D/E/F  Trump Hosts Sanctuary State Roundtable At The White House:

• TRUMP-ENDORSED ‘REBELLION’: President Trump praised local California leaders for standing up to “deadly and unconstitutional sanctuary state laws” and hailed what he called a “rebellion” against the state’s immigration policies … “Each of you has bravely resisted California’s deadly and unconstitutional sanctuary state laws,” Trump said at the White House roundtable of local officials on the issue. “You’ve gone through a lot, too, although it’s become quite popular what you do.” The roundtable featured a number of California Republican lawmakers and law enforcement officials who have pushed back against the state’s sanctuary laws which limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown was unimpressed by the roundtable and accused Trump of lying about what is going on in California.
• ‘We need help, Mr. President’: Calif. mayor blasts sanctuary law
• Lawmaker: My constituents ‘don’t want to see another Kate Steinle’
• First official: It’s a “crisis” in California.
• Escandido mayor, legal immigrant: “Jerry Brown wants to take this American dream from us.”
• Trump asks Sessions to look into prosecuting Oakland mayor who warned about ICE raid.
• POTUS: “Mexico does nothing for us… Mexico talks, but they do nothing for us.”
• “I think you’re doing a good job, and it’s not an easy job,” President Trump tells DHS Sec. Nielsen during a White House immigration meeting. The president’s comments follow reports that he berated Nielsen during a previous closed-door meeting.
• San Jacinto Mayor Crystal Ruiz on sanctuary city laws: “Every day we’re getting more and more reports from the police department about how they can’t arrest these people. They can’t arrest them, everything’s a misdemeanor because it’s not near @JerryBrownGov’s house.”
• Jerry Brown  ‏@JerryBrownGov: @realDonaldTrump is lying on immigration, lying about crime and lying about the laws of CA. Flying in a dozen Republican politicians to flatter him and praise his reckless policies changes nothing. We, the citizens of the fifth largest economy in the world, are not impressed.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – SAAGAR ENJETI — White House Correspondent for The Daily Caller — discussed President Trump’s rountable on sanctuary cities, the reimbursement to Cohen for Stormy Daniels payment on financial disclosure form and the latest on North Korea talks.

7am – B         Mueller told Trump’s legal team he will not indict the president, Giuliani tells Fox News (Fox News) — President Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, told Fox News on Wednesday that special counsel Robert Mueller has told the president’s legal team he will follow Justice Department guidance and not seek an indictment against Trump. “This case is essentially over,” Giuliani said. “They’re just in denial.” Giuliani, himself a former federal prosecutor and mayor of New York City, also told Fox News that Mueller’s investigators have not responded to five information requests from the president’s team. That has forced Trump’s legal team to push off making a decision about whether the president will sit for an interview with the special counsel — a decision they had hoped to reach by Thursday. “We’ve had no response from them,” Giuliani told Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” about his interactions with Mueller’s team. “We’re asking … what do they really need to know, what kind of assurances do we have that they’ll get it over with quickly, just like they did for [Hillary] Clinton.” The precedent that federal prosecutors cannot indict a sitting president is laid out in a 1999 Justice Department memo. Giuliani told Fox News that Mueller has no choice but to follow its guidance.

7am – C         COMPLETE MELTDOWN — CNN Loses 30 Percent Of Viewers Since Last Year While Fox News Increased Viewers (Daily Caller) — CNN’s ratings are in complete free fall while Fox News’ increased since the same week last year, according to a new report. AdWeek reports that during the week of May 7-12, CNN lost almost 30 percent of its viewers compared to the same time last week.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – SEAN DAVIS – co-founder of The Federalist and former chief investigator for Sen. Tom Coburn

• WaPo: Thousands of pages of congressional testimony shed light on 2016 Trump Tower meeting
• NYT: Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation

7am – E         NBC NEWS:

• ‘Today’ editor fired over Lawrence O’Donnell meltdown leak
• Disgraced NBC star Matt Lauer’s $100 million divorce from former model Annette Roque imminent: report

 

8am – A         INTERVIEW – SUSAN FERRECHIO – the chief congressional correspondent for the Washington Examiner – discussed the latest congressional news including the immigration fight on the Hill and the pending Haspel confirmation.

8am – B         LAUREL OR YANNY:

• Laurel or Yanny? Laurel, the city in Maryland, weighs in on the debate (WJLA) — It’s not often the city of Laurel – with a population of about 25,000 – is trending on Twitter. “People are going, ‘Are you watching what’s going on? They’re talking about Laurel,” said Laurel Mayor Craig A. Moe. “I’m like, ‘Laurel, Maryland, right?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah!”
• Speaker Ryan declares “obvious” answer to “Laurel v. Yanny” viral debate. Speaker Ryan declares “It is Laurel NOT Yanny”.
• ‘Yanny vs. Laurel’ craze reportedly started with high school student studying for her literature class

8am – C         Report: Contract Spat Means Qatar Isn’t Going To Pay To Keep The Metro Open Late After The Caps Game After All (Deadspin) — A fun thing about Washington D.C. is that its metro transportation system closes at 11:30 p.m. on weeknights even if there are major sports events happening. Instead of simply extending metro hours so people can get home more easily, the Washington Metro Area Transit Association gets businesses or other third parties to pay $100,000 to keep the metro open an hour later on game nights so fans at the games don’t have to pay for cabs or wait for buses or otherwise figure out a way to make it back to their beds where they can cry themselves to sleep over their team’s inevitable playoff losses. Last night, after Game 3, Exelon and Pepco paid to keep the metro open (even though the game ended at about 10:50 p.m.). Tomorrow night, Qatar was reportedly going to pay to extend the metro’s hours, but that appears to have hit a snag. NBC Washington reporter Adam Tuss cited a metro source saying that actually no money has exchanged hands between the nation of Qatar and Washington D.C’s public transportation system. D.C. council member Jack Evans told Tuss that the deal “seems to have come undone.” Of course, the bigger question here is why a foreign country, or anyone non-city entity for that matter, is paying to keep the Washington D.C. metro open anyhow.

8am – D/E      INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former U.S Attorney to the District of Columbia

• MUELLER PROBE 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY:  Mueller Russia probe hits 1-year anniversary: Robert Mueller’s Russia collusion investigation hits the one-year mark Thursday; Republicans call for the probe to end, while Democrats argue the special counsel should be allowed to complete his work
• RUDY: Giuliani says Mueller ‘has nothing’ on Trump: In an exclusive interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, Rudy Giuliani says Mueller ‘has nothing’ on President Trump and that it’s time for him to ‘wrap up’ the investigation
• CROSSFIRE HURRICANE: NYT: Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation