Gordon Chang, Joe diGenova and Rep. Jim Jordan joined WMAL on Monday!

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, January 21, 2019

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C TRUMP’S OFFER:

• Trump Offers Temporary Protections for ‘Dreamers’ in Exchange for Wall Funding. WASHINGTON — President Trump, facing a growing public backlash over the partial government shutdown, shifted course on Saturday and offered Democrats a deal: temporary protections for roughly 700,000 young undocumented immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion in funding for a wall along the southern border.But the proposal, which Mr. Trump unveiled in a 13-minute address from the White House, appeared dead on arrival in the Capitol. Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected it even before Mr. Trump spoke, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, denounced the offer as “not a compromise but more hostage taking.”
• No Deal: Pelosi rejects Trump’s offer to legalize Dreamers for wall money. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday she will not take up President Trump’s offer to trade off $5.7 billion in wall funding for a three-year extension of a program providing legal status for “Dreamers,” who illegally went to the U.S. as children. Pelosi, D-Calif., issued a statement just before Trump’s announcement, calling the plan “a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total, do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people’s lives.” Pelosi said the proposal does not achieve what Democrats have long sought for the “Dreamers,” which is a pathway to citizenship or permanent legal status. “It is unlikely that any one of these provisions alone would pass the House, and taken together, they are a non-starter.“

5am – D          Mueller’s office disputes BuzzFeed story about Trump directing Cohen’s false testimony. WASHINGTON – In a rare public statement, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office on Friday disputed a blockbuster report from BuzzFeed News that alleged President Donald Trump directed his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie in his testimony before Congress.  Despite worldwide coverage and intense interest, Mueller’s office has stayed mostly quiet on reports regarding the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But on Friday, Mueller’s office took the rare step of calling BuzzFeed’s story “not accurate.”  “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” said Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller’s office.  The BuzzFeed report alleged that Trump instructed Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Organization’s pursuit of a deal to build a luxury residential high-rise in the center of Moscow, hoping to conceal these actions during his presidential bid.

5am – E         Singer Gladys Knight blasts Kaepernick ahead of singing anthem at Super Bowl

 

6am – A/B/C Women’s March Highlights

• Bamby Salcedo – TransLatin Coalition Founder – chanted about TRANS WOMAN ARE WOMAN!
• Cristina Jimenez – United We Dream -“When Trump says he wants a wall, he wants more sites of terror… #realtalk… we will not compromise with white supremacy. We must resist Trump. Join me in ensuring we stop this racist wall.”
• LINDA SARSOUR – Womens March Board Member on border wall: Absolutely not!
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “All of these women are coming together in solidarity with each other, to support each other and to make sure that every single voice is amplified, protected and advanced in the United States of America.”

6am – D         INTERVIEW – GORDON CHANG – Daily Beast columnist,  author of “The Coming Collapse of China” and “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World”

• NORTH KOREA: President Trump and Kim Jong Un Are Planning to Meet in Vietnam in February for Their Second Summit. The White House announced on Friday that Trump would meet Kim in late February, following a 90-minute meeting between the president and Kim Yong Chol, one of the North Korean leader’s top aides. The pair discussed denuclearization and a second summit, the White House said at the time. Kim Yong Chol also met Friday with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.
• Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump: 15 hours ago The Media is not giving us credit for the tremendous progress we have made with North Korea. Think of where we were at the end of the Obama Administration compared to now. Great meeting this week with top Reps. Looking forward to meeting with Chairman Kim at end of February!
• CHINA – TRADE WAR TRUCE? Bye Bye Trade War? China Plans $1 Trillion Buying Spree to Reduce US Trade Deficit.  Bloomberg reported Friday that China has offered to significantly boost its purchase of U.S. goods over a six-year period in an effort to re-balance trade between the two superpowers. By increasing its annual imports from the United States, Beijing would reduce its trade surplus to zero by 2024. That would require a spending boost of more than $1 trillion.

6am – E         MARCH FOR LIFE / BABY HITLER:

• Thousands march in Washington during “March for Life.” WASHINGTON – A day before the nationwide Women’s March, thousands of people with perhaps a different perspective also marched on Washington. These marchers gathered in Washington Friday for the annual March for Life, which has now been happening for 45 years. The March for Life recognizes and opposes the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in January 1973 that legalized abortion.
• Ben Shapiro Tells Pro-Life Rally He Wouldn’t Kill Baby Hitler. “Baby Hitler was a baby,” Shapiro correctly pointed out at the March for Life. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro wants you to know that he’s so pro-life, he wouldn’t even consider aborting baby Hitler. Speaking at Friday’s anti-abortion rally March for Life on Friday at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Shapiro took the time to answer a question about baby Adolf Hitler in a rambling, repetitive rant. The dictator, as Shapiro reminds his audience over and over again, was a baby at some point in his life.

6am – F         Vince and Mary Talk About Their White House Visit And Meeting With President Trump.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former US Attorney to the District of Columbia

• Mueller’s office disputes BuzzFeed story about Trump directing Cohen’s false testimony. WASHINGTON – In a rare public statement, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office on Friday disputed a blockbuster report from BuzzFeed News that alleged President Donald Trump directed his former attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie in his testimony before Congress. Despite worldwide coverage and intense interest, Mueller’s office has stayed mostly quiet on reports regarding the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But on Friday, Mueller’s office took the rare step of calling BuzzFeed’s story “not accurate.”
• FISA shocker: DOJ official warned Steele dossier was connected to Clinton, might be biased. (By John Solomon, opinion contributor — 01/16/19 07:20 PM EST) — When the annals of mistakes and abuses in the FBI’s Russia investigation are finally written, Bruce Ohr almost certainly will be the No. 1 witness, according to my sources. The then-senior Department of Justice (DOJ) official briefed both senior FBI and DOJ officials in summer 2016 about Christopher Steele’s Russia dossier, explicitly cautioning that the British intelligence operative’s work was opposition research connected to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and might be biased. Ohr’s briefings, in July and August 2016, included the deputy director of the FBI, a top lawyer for then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and a Justice official who later would become the top deputy to special counsel Robert Mueller. At the time, Ohr was the associate deputy attorney general. Yet his warnings about political bias were pointedly omitted weeks later from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant that the FBI obtained from a federal court, granting it permission to spy on whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to hijack the 2016 presidential election. Ohr’s activities, chronicled in handwritten notes and congressional testimony I gleaned from sources, provide the most damning evidence to date that FBI and DOJ officials may have misled federal judges in October 2016 in their zeal to obtain the warrant targeting Trump adviser Carter Page just weeks before Election Day.

7am – B/C     STUDENT IN VIRAL ‘CONFRONTATION’ CLAIMS ‘CHARACTER ASSASSINATION’: A Kentucky high school student accused of mocking a Native American protester in a viral video spoke out for the first time Sunday night and claimed the video does not show what really happened during the encounter … Nick Sandmann, a junior at Covington Catholic High School, said he was “mortified” to find that so many people believe he and his classmate were taunting African-Americans and Native American protesters with racist chants during an encounter between protest groups on Saturday. “I did not do that, do not have hateful feelings in my heart and did not witness any of my classmates doing that,” Sandmann said. The students initially were accused of mocking a Native American participant in the Indigenous Peoples March, which coincided with the March for Life. A snippet of video from the apparent confrontation quickly gained traction on social media, with many condemning the students — some of whom were wearing “Make America Great Again” apparel — and other critics calling for the students to be identified and harassed. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington and the high school issued a joint statement apologizing to the activist, identified Saturday as Nathan Phillips. However, the emergence of longer video that appears to show some students being harassed prompted some conservatives to take back their earlier criticisms of the students.

7am – D/E     TRUMP’S OFFER:

• Trump Offers Temporary Protections for ‘Dreamers’ in Exchange for Wall Funding. WASHINGTON — President Trump, facing a growing public backlash over the partial government shutdown, shifted course on Saturday and offered Democrats a deal: temporary protections for roughly 700,000 young undocumented immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion in funding for a wall along the southern border.But the proposal, which Mr. Trump unveiled in a 13-minute address from the White House, appeared dead on arrival in the Capitol. Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected it even before Mr. Trump spoke, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, denounced the offer as “not a compromise but more hostage taking.”
• No Deal: Pelosi rejects Trump’s offer to legalize Dreamers for wall money. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday she will not take up President Trump’s offer to trade off $5.7 billion in wall funding for a three-year extension of a program providing legal status for “Dreamers,” who illegally went to the U.S. as children. Pelosi, D-Calif., issued a statement just before Trump’s announcement, calling the plan “a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total, do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people’s lives.” Pelosi said the proposal does not achieve what Democrats have long sought for the “Dreamers,” which is a pathway to citizenship or permanent legal status. “It is unlikely that any one of these provisions alone would pass the House, and taken together, they are a non-starter.“     

 

8am – A         INTERVIEW – REP. JIM JORDAN –  (R-OH) — co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus  — discussed his thoughts on the Pelosi-Trump negotiations over the shutdown and Trump’s latest offer.

8am – B/C     Media Is Clueless About The Well-Known Facts About Rape On The Border:

• Trump made an alarming comment about mothers giving their daughters birth control before they migrate.  In a televised speech from the White House on Saturday, President Donald Trump made an alarming claim about the violence faced by women who travel to the US border seeking entry. In discussing the threats faced by women and children who journey to the US from Central America, Trump said mothers were giving their daughters birth control pills before they migrate to the southern border because of the high rates of sexual assault suffered by migrant women along their journeys. “Thousands of children are being exploited by ruthless coyotes and vicious cartels and gangs,” Trump said, using a term for a smuggler who brings others to the border. Trump made the remarks as he proposed a deal with Democrats to exchange border-wall funding for temporary protections for certain immigrants. “One in three women is sexually assaulted on the dangerous journey north,” Trump said. “In fact, many loving mothers give their young daughters birth control pills for the long journey up to the United States because they know they may be raped or sexually accosted or assaulted. “ 

8am – D         Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris jumps into 2020 White House race. Harris, 54, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, enters the race with the potential advantage of being the Democratic candidate who looks most like the party’s increasingly diverse base of young, female and minority voters. The announcement falls on the U.S. Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader, and the day was selected as a reminder of the aspirational fight for progress, an aide said.  First-term Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a rising party star and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, launched her 2020 campaign for the White House on Monday in an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Harris, 54, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, enters the race with the potential advantage of being the Democratic candidate who looks most like the party’s increasingly diverse base of young, female and minority voters. “Let’s do this, together. Let’s claim our future. For ourselves, for our children, and for our country,” Harris said in a campaign video that was released to coincide with her television appearance. The announcement falls on the U.S. Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader, and the day was selected as a reminder of the aspirational fight for progress, an aide said. Harris will likely have to jostle through a crowd of Democrats to challenge President Donald Trump. The former California attorney general started her first Senate term only in 2017, and quickly became an outspoken critic of the president.