Tom Fitton, Vance Ginn, Hans Von Spakovsky and Eric Hargan joined WMAL on Wednesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C Almost Half of U.S. Births Happen Outside Marriage, Signaling Cultural Shift (Bloomberg) Why aren’t millennials getting married?  Forty percent of all births in the U.S. now occur outside of wedlock, up from 10 percent in 1970, according to an annual report released on Wednesday by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the largest international provider of sexual and reproductive health services. That number is even higher in the European Union.

5am – D IMMIGRATION NEWS:

• Record number of families crossing S. border as Trump threatens new crackdown
• Mexican government sends federal police to intercept caravan of U.S.-bound migrants
• Roughly 4,000 Honduran migrants are now in Guatemala, heading north

5am – E The Man Who Plays Big Bird And Oscar The Grouch On “Sesame Street” Is Retiring (Buzzfeed) Puppeteer Caroll Spinney, who has voiced Sesame Street characters Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for nearly 50 years, will retire this week. “Big Bird brought me so many places, opened my mind and nurtured my soul,” said Spinney in a press release from Sesame Workshop on Wednesday announcing his departure. Spinney met Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, at a puppetry festival in 1962 in Salt Lake City. Henson hired him in 1969 for the launch of Sesame Street, and he’s worked there ever since.

6am – A Dem Operative Arrested in Nevada After Assaulting Female GOP Staffer (Free Beacon) A tracker for a liberal super PAC was arrested on Tuesday night in Nevada for assaulting the female campaign manager for Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Laxalt. Kristin Davidson told police the man grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back, leaving visible bruising.

 6am – B State Department provided ‘clearly false’ statements to derail requests for Clinton docs, ‘shocked’ federal judge says (Fox News) In a combative exchange at a hearing Friday in Washington, D.C., a federal judge unabashedly accused career State Department officials of lying and signing “clearly false” affidavits to derail a series of lawsuits seeking information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said he was “shocked” and “dumbfounded” when he learned that FBI had granted immunity to former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Millsduring its investigation into the use of Clinton’s server, according to a court transcript of his remarks.

 6am – C IHOP opens first location with a full bar (Fox News) The national pancake chain announced a Phoenix, Ariz., location will be the first of its 1,600 stores to boast a full bar with craft beer, wine and specialty cocktails like the “Mulemosa,” a Moscow mule-mimosa hybrid that comes from the restaurant’s “Rise and Shine” bar menu designed around AM-friendly drinks. On the menu, customers can also expect a mixologist-approved Bloody Mary and Irish coffee variations.

6am – D/E/F INTERVIEW – Tom Fitton- President of Judicial Watch

Topic: State Department provided ‘clearly false’ statements to derail requests for Clinton docs, ‘shocked’ federal judge says

• • In a combative exchange at a hearing Friday in Washington, D.C., a federal judge unabashedly accused career State Department officials of lying and signing “clearly false” affidavits to derail a series of lawsuits seeking information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
  • S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said he was “shocked” and “dumbfounded” when he learned that FBI had granted immunity to former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Millsduring its investigation into the use of Clinton’s server, according to a court transcript of his remarks.

7am – A INTERVIEW – Vance Ginn- director of the Center for Economic Prosperity and a senior economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation

Topic- Economic News

• • • Social Security recipients will get 2.8 percent bigger checks in 2019. The program will also be adjusted in several other important ways next year that could affect the payments you receive or how much you pay into the system.
    • The U.S. is back on top as the most competitive country in the world, regaining the No. 1 spot for the first time since 2008 in an index produced by the World Economic Forum, which said the country could still do better on social issues.

7am – B Trump Opens New Front in His Battle With China: International Shipping (New York Times) President Trump plans to withdraw from a 144-year-old postal treaty that has allowed Chinese companies to ship small packages to the United States at a steeply discounted rate, undercutting American competitors and flooding the market with cheap consumer goods.  The price of shipping a 4.4 pound package, the largest parcel covered by the treaty, from China to the United States is about $5, according to United States estimates. American companies can pay two to four times that amount to ship a similar package from Los Angeles to New York, and much more for packages sent to China.

7am – C  New York Times erects security barrier around Manhattan office after opposing Trump’s border wall (Washington Examiner) The New York Times’ office on Wednesday was surrounded by large concrete blocks that say “NYPD” on them outside of its headquarters in Manhattan as a part of an enhanced security measure, a spokeswoman for the paper told the Washington Examiner. The barriers were placed there as “part of our continuing efforts to enhance security at our headquarters building,” said Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy in an email. She said they were placed there on Wednesday but that they aren’t in response to any new or specific threat.

7am-D INTERVIEW: Hans Von Spakovsky – Senior Legal Fellow The Heritage Foundation

Topic – Russia Investigation

• • • Treasury employee charged with leaking financial info on Trump team was arrested with flash drive in hand, prosecutors say
    • Special counsel investigation ‘appropriate and independent’: Rosenstein

 7am – E ESPN PRESIDENT MAKES SHOCKING ADMISSION ABOUT THE NETWORK’S DIVE INTO POLITICS (Daily Caller) ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro seems shockingly self-aware about the network’s problems with getting into politics.

“What I’ve heard consistently from day one of getting this job is the more we lean into politically charged commentary, the more we are alienating not just our core fan, but our casual fan,” Pitaro told John Ourand of Sports Business Journal Wednesday.

 8am – INTERVIEW – Eric Hargan – Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services

Topic- TV ads and also the deregulation efforts discussed at the Cabinet meeting Wed

• • • On Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar proposed a huge change in drug advertising, requiring that drugmakers disclose the list price of drugs in their TV spots. The proposed transparency is as welcome as it is overdue. Health care is the only consumer commodity where sellers get to hide the price.

 8am – B ELLISON SAYS IT WAS ‘HUMILIATING’ TO ADMIT HE IS ABUSE VICTIM, SAYS EX-WIFE SHOULDN’T BE BELIEVED (Daily Caller) Keith Ellison, the Democratic National Committee’s deputy chair, said in divorce papers that claims by his ex-wife should not be believed and said that he is a “domestic abuse victim.” The records were unsealed Wednesday despite efforts by Ellison’s ex-wife, Kim Ellison, to block their release.

“It was very humiliating to admit that I was a domestic abuse victim,” he wrote. “I need to talk about the Respondent’s credibility,” Ellison, a U.S. congressman for Minnesota, wrote. “The Respondent is not credible. She does not tell the truth. Throughout our marriage, she was physically abusive to me.”

 8am – C South Carolina officials warn about ‘flushable’ wipes after sending divers into ‘raw sewage’ (Fox News) Officials with the Charleston Water System in South Carolina were caught in a smelly situation last week. They had to send scuba divers roughly 80 to 90 feet down into “raw sewage” Thursday to clear heaping piles of wipes that clogged the system. The Charleston Water System shared pictures of blackened masses on Twitter, warning residents wipes don’t really disintegrate, though the packaging may claim they’re “flushable.”

8am – D/E YES, ELIZABETH WARREN IS FEATURED IN THE POCAHONTAS EXHIBIT AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN (Daily Caller) The Daily Caller traveled to the National Museum Of The American Indian in Washington D.C. to ask if people thought Warren deserved an exhibit in the museum. The answer was a resounding ‘no’ from all of the patrons we spoke with. Then we headed inside the sprawling four story building to see if there was any sign of Warren in the museum.

A detailed floor-by-floor, exhibit-by-exhibit search turned up no sign of Warren. However, then came one of our final stops, at the Pocahontas exhibit. To our surprise, there Warren was – tucked in a corner on the glowing digital screen along with President Trump. Warren is found on a digital screen that explains how Trump labeled the senator with the nickname “Pocahontas” — and why that’s not a bad thing.