Marc Morano, DJ Jordan, ICE’s Matt Albence, VA GOP’s Jack Wilson and guest host Amber Athey joined WMAL on Friday!

Mornings on the Mall

Friday, February 8, 2019

Hosts: Vince Coglianese and Amber Athey

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C             BORDER SECURITY NEGOTIATIONS:

• With a February 15 deadline to avert another government shutdown fast approaching, a 17 member bipartisan committee from the House and Senate continues to work on negotiating a compromise on border security. The lawmakers are hoping to reach a deal by Monday. A key Republican senator involved in the talks says President Trump might be willing to sign a compromise. Late last month, Trump tweeted that Republicans are “wasting their time” trying to secure a deal.
• Congressional negotiators narrow differences to border barriers, detention beds. (Washington Post) — Lawmakers negotiating to end the border wall impasse and prevent another government shutdown narrowed their differences Thursday to two key sticking points — the wall itself and the number of beds the government would fund to detain unauthorized migrants. The two issues moved in tandem, with Democrats offering more money for border barriers in exchange for fewer detention beds. Democrats are trying to limit the Trump administration’s ability to detain border crossers, preferring alternatives such as ankle bracelets. Republican negotiators are in favor of both more barrier funding and expanded detention centers. It’s not yet clear what the deal will contain as far as physical barriers at the border, and Trump has been inconsistent in describing what type of structure would qualify as a wall. Negotiators hope to finalize a deal over the next several days, in time to unveil it officially by Monday and ensure House and Senate passage by the Feb. 15 deadline when government funding will run out. A lapse in funding would precipitate another shutdown, three weeks after the last one ended on its 35th day.
• ‘Savage gang’: MS-13 murders are down. (Washington Post) — Over the past two years, in tweets and speeches, on the campaign trail and in the Oval Office, President Trump has railed against the violent international street gang MS-13. The president called out the “savage gang” again Tuesday night, citing an MS-13 murder earlier this week in his hometown, the New York borough Queens,during his argument for $5.7 billion in border wall funding. The State of the Union speech marked the 161st occasion on which the president has publicly spoken about the gang since taking office, according to a tally by The Washington Post. But even as he warned again and again about the dangers posed by MS-13 members and the need for a wall to keep them out, killings connected to the gang were plummeting in many of the areas where MS-13 has been most active. In the Washington region, where a spate of grisly gang slayings drew the attention of the White House, MS-13 murders have fallen from at least 33 between 2016 and 2017 to seven last year, according to interviews with a dozen law enforcement agencies and prosecutors.

5am – D/E     Dads are happier than moms. Science wants to know why, and so do I. (Washington Post) — Last Thursday morning I worked from home as usual, but that day I also had the company of three kids who were home from school for the second day in a row, courtesy of polar vortex weather. As I tried to read about a new study finding that fathers are happier than mothers, the children came in and out of my office, arguing, yelling and even crying about pancakes for a full 15 minutes. Moms and dads both reported being happier when they were talking or interacting with their child (vs. other interactions or activities), but the effect was greater for fathers. The dad happiness advantage was most dramatic for child care. “Fathers reported greater happiness during child care than for anything else they did that day, whereas mothers reported lower happiness during child care than for other activities during the day,” Nelson-Coffey said.

What could explain the difference? Maybe, thought the team, the answer was play. In the study, dads were more likely to report playing with their children at the same time they were interacting with or taking care of them. Here’s where I pressed Nelson-Coffey. Isn’t it possible, I asked, that dads play more because they’re happier and, therefore, feeling more playful? Yes, she agreed. The study can tell us that dads are happier but not exactly why. “It’s certainly plausible that fathers who are feeling happy are more likely to initiate play with their children,” she said. “I would expect it would become a kind of feedback loop where fathers are feeling happy, so they might initiate more play, and that might make them feel happy, and it becomes kind of an upward spiral.” And couldn’t there be other reasons for the happiness difference, I continued, like the fact that moms do far more labor at home and in child care? (You could call this the grandparent effect: It’s more fun to be a grandparent than a parent. You enjoy the kids, and then they go away.) Once again, Nelson-Coffey agreed that time and labor could be factors, and that other research “tends to find that mothers are more responsible for child care in general, and they also have more emotional and invisible labor such as keeping the household running, managing schedules, worrying about their children’s emotions. All of these things are possibilities that could explain why mothers are less happy.” Absolutely, I think to myself, and do not mention the fact that U.S. public policy provides little maternity, postpartum and child-care support, a reality that disproportionately disadvantages mothers vs. fathers. We have no national consensus that motherhood is hard or deserves any sort of collective support. Of course, individual families can do little about these big questions, and there’s clearly more scientific research to be done to explain the happiness gulf. Meanwhile, can play help? Maybe. Nelson-Coffey said other studies have found that play “could offer opportunities for positive emotions, to build connections with the child and to generally feel good.” So, even if we don’t feel like playing, it’s possible that we moms can fake it till we make it — that trying to be playful might help us to feel happier. That doesn’t mean that “play with kids” needs to become yet another burden on moms, adding to the endless to-do list, she says. Instead, we can try to inject a little playfulness into what we’re already doing.

6am – A/B/C GREEN RAW DEAL? – In what may be the most far-reaching proposal to ever be considered in Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., unveiled her “Green New Deal” on Thursday — a government-led overhaul of virtually every aspect of American life that would guarantee a host of taxpayer-covered benefits for all and phase out fossil fuels … However the freshman lawmaker sparked confusion when she seemingly contradicted herself in a span of twelve hours on the nature of the government’s role in the massive plan. Ocasio-Cortez’s office says the plan would aim to make air travel obsolete, upgrade or replace every building in America to ensure energy efficiency and give economic security even to those “unwilling” to work. The proposal, which calls for a massive package of big-government proposals including health care for all, quickly picked up the backing of major 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls including Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. — who all co-sponsored the resolution.

• Pelosi throws shade: ‘Green dream or whatever they call it’
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez couldn’t afford her own rent 2 months ago and now the media touts her as someone who can reform the ENTIRE ECONOMY with the Green New Deal… just let that sink in.
• Ocasio-Cortez Defends Green New Deal: Critics Wrong to Call it a ‘Massive Government Takeover’
• Green New Deal isn’t a plan. It’s a socialist Christmas list
• ‘Socialist manifesto’ could increase electric bills by $3,800 per year
• Even CNN is having a hard time passing off the Green New Deal as anything short of radical. “The Green New Deal goes beyond climate change, way beyond … The resolution just 14 pages long, by some estimates could cost trillions, calls for a revolution in the way we live.”
• Ummmmmm the Green New Deal outline that AOC’s office released says her plan is to “upgrade or replace” EVERY BUILDING IN THE COUNTRY
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to pay for her Green New Deal by essentially printing more money
• PROPONENTS OF GREEN NEW DEAL STRUGGLE TO EXPLAIN PHASE-OUT OF COMBUSTION ENGINE
• OCASIO-CORTEZ BUNGLED GREEN NEW DEAL’S RELEASE. HER STAFF TOOK ITS WEBPAGE OFFLINE
• ALL The Democratic Senate Candidates Are On Board With The Green New Deal
• Below are the details of the proposal:
  • Rebuild every single building in the U.S. “Upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.”
  • Will end all traditional forms of energy in the next ten years. The Green New Deal is “a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”
  • Plans to ban nuclear energy within 10 years if possible. “It’s unclear if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant within 10 years, but the plan is to transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible.”
  • Build trains across oceans and end all air travel! “Build out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary”.
  • Don’t invest in new technology of Carbon Capture and Storage, just plant trees instead! “We believe the right way to capture carbon is to plant trees and restore our natural ecosystems. CCUS technology to date has not proven effective.”
  • Mandates all new jobs be unionized. “Ensure that all GND jobs are union jobs that pay prevailing wages and hire local.”
  • May include a carbon tax. “We’re not ruling a carbon tax out, but a carbon tax would be a tiny part of a Green New Deal.”
  • May include cap and trade. “…Cap and trade may be a tiny part of the larger Green New Deal plan.”
  • How much will it cost? No estimate of the total cost of implementing the Green New deal is offered by Ocasio-Cortez.
  • However, as Ocasio-Cortez admits, “even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.”
  • She does provide one estimate that the cost to “repair and upgrade infrastructure U.S. infrastructure” alone will cost “$4.6 trillion at minimum.”
  • How will it be paid for? Don’t worry about that. Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t provide any insight into how the trillions of dollars in spending will be paid for other than claiming, “The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit”.

6am – D/E     VA CHAOS:

• DEMS REPEAT CALL FOR VIRGINIA GOVERNOR TO RESIGN: Virginia’s nine congressional Democrats issued a joint statement late Thursday restating that Gov. Ralph Northam should resign over a blackface photograph in his medical school yearbook — but stopping short of calling for Lt. Gov Justin Fairfax to step down over an allegation of sexual assault from 2004 … The statement, from Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Reps. Donald McEachin, Bobby Scott, Gerry Connolly, Don Beyer, Elaine Luria, Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton, also did not demand the resignation of the state’s attorney general, Mark Herring, who admitted this week to wearing blackface at a college party in 1980. The lawmakers’ statement noted that Herring had reached out and expressed remorse. And in the controversy involving Fairfax, lawmakers said they found the allegations disturbing and respect the right of alleged sex assault victims to come forward. However, they wanted to wait to learn more about the claims made by Fairfax’s accuser, Scripps College Associate Professor Vanessa Tyson.
• Dems accused of MeToo hypocrisy in Virginia. (The Hill) — Democrats in Washington are fighting GOP allegations of hypocrisy over the political maelstrom roiling their party in Virginia. The accusations come just months after national Democrats, near the height of the “Me Too” movement, demanded Brett Kavanaugh abandon his Supreme Court nomination following allegations he had sexually assaulted a teenage girl when he was in high school. Republicans are now focusing on how Democrats have stopped short of calling for the resignation of Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D), who is facing similar allegations surrounding an incident also said to have occurred many years ago. Many Capitol Hill Democrats are holding their fire and urging Virginia state officials to conduct an investigation.
• The juxtaposed episodes — and the contrasting responses — are creating headaches for Democrats in Richmond and Washington; testing the party’s zero-tolerance policy when it comes to sexual harassment charges, regardless of how old; and prompting charges from across the aisle that Democrats are applying a double standard purely to protect one of their own.
• CNN: Dems’ ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy Coming Back to Bite Them in Virginia
• CNN’s New Day was surprisingly tough on the Dems this morning. Washington Post reporter Toluse Olorunnipa began by offering an unsparing assessment of the Dem predicament. Olorunnipa said that Democrats run “the risk of being seen as hypocrites” if they don’t apply to Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring the same “zero tolerance” standard they applied to others.
• Democratic senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris says the letter accusing Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault seems “credible”: “I think there should be an investigation to get to the bottom of it and determine the facts”
• DEM REP BOBBY SCOTT KNEW ABOUT ACCUSER: Virginia Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott was made aware of allegations of sexual assault against now-Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax over a year ago by the alleged victim herself
• Reporters ambush DEM REP. BOBBY SCOTT while he’s waiting for an elevator and he denies knowing anything /// Q: Do you still have faith in the Lt. Gov? SCOTT: “I don’t know what the facts are. I know what you know, I know-I know what you know.”
• PELOSI ON VA: Reporter: With everything that’s been going on in Virginia… does that filter down and damage the national Democratic brand in any way? Pelosi: No, it does not… Virginians will resolve their issues that they have there…but I’ll leave that up to them.

6am – F         Senate Intelligence chairman: No evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said Thursday that his committee’s Russia investigation has yet to find evidence of collusion between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Kremlin but will soon release a report on the Obama administration’s response to Russian interference in the last presidential election. In an interview with CBS published Thursday, Burr (R-N.C.) gave glimpses into the dynamics and scope of his committee’s probe, which was launched shortly before Trump’s 2017 inauguration and has now stretched into its third year. Burr told CBS that the committee staff has interviewed more than 200 witnesses from multiple countries and reviewed over 300,000 pages. “Based on the evidence to date,” Burr said, the committee could not definitively say there was collusion between Trump and the Russians. “If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia,” Burr told CBS.

7am – A/B     INTERVIEW – MARC MORANO — author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change” and runs the website ClimateDepot.com – analyzed AOC’s Green New Deal.

7am – C         BEZOS vs NATIONAL ENQUIRER

• ‘GOVERNMENT ENTITY’ INVOLVED IN ALLEGED BEZOS BLACKMAIL? –  Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wrote a scathing letter to American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer, on Thursday, accusing the tabloid of threatening to publish “intimate photos” of him, including a “below the belt selfie,” and potentially compromising photos of his reported girlfriend, former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, if he did not end an investigation into the company and its alleged political ties …  A security consultant for Bezos believes the photos may have been acquired by a “government entity,” a Washington Post reporter said. The National Enquirer published a story last month that included lurid texts between Bezos and Sanchez. Since then, private investigators for the billionaire have been looking into how the Enquirer got the texts. That set off, according to Bezos, a threat to back off or risk having the personal photos exposed.
• *Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos says the National Enquirer is threatening to publish revealing photographs of him unless his private investigators back off the tabloid.  He accuses the Enquirer of “extortion and blackmail.”  Bezos said in a blog post that the parent company of the publication tried to get him to agree to a deal for the tabloid not to publish explicit photos.
• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accuses National Enquirer of extortion over intimate photos
• THE BEZOS OPEN LETTER: No thank you, Mr. Pecker
• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accuses National Enquirer of “extortion and blackmail” over revealing personal photos.
• David Pecker, the chief executive of AMI, which publishes the National Enquirer, allegedly threatened to publish 10 embarrassing photos of Jeff Bezos if The Washington Post didn’t stop investigating Pecker’s company, according to the Amazon CEO.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – DJ JORDAN – running for the 31st District of the Virginia state House of Delegates – shared his thoughts on the chaos in Richmond.

7am – E         Delta nudged passengers to slip their number to their ‘plane crush’ on napkins. Now the airline is sorry. (Washington Post) — Falling in love on an airplane is the kind of story you only ever hear in a bar or see in a Lifetime movie. But for a brief time this winter, Delta Air Lines wanted to help passengers make it a reality — by gently nudging them to hit on other passengers. With cocktail napkins. “Be a little old school,” said the small print on the napkin, advertising Diet Coke. “Write down your number & give it to your plane crush. You never know …” There was a little space on the napkin where flirtatious passengers could write down their name and another space for their number. The larger print said, “because you’re on a plane full of interesting people and hey,” again, “… you never know.” While some found the napkins clever and charming, others thought they were creepy. In fact, evidently enough complained that Delta and Coca-Cola apologized for the marketing stunt Wednesday, saying the napkins have since been removed from flights.  “We rotate Coke products regularly as part of our brand partnership, but missed the mark with this one,” Delta said in a statement to The Washington Post and other news outlets. “We are sorry for that and began removing the napkins from our aircraft in January.” Coca-Cola also said in a statement to The Post, “We sincerely apologize to anyone we may have offended,” adding that the napkins are being replaced with other designs.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – MATT ALBENCE – ICE Deputy Director joined WMAL on Friday morning to discuss the ongoing debates about border security and immigration enforcement.

• BIO FOR MATT ALBENCE: Mr. Albence executes oversight of ICE’s day-to-day operations, leading approximately 20,000 employees including over 6,000 officers in Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and over 6,000 criminal investigators in the Office of Homeland Security Investigations. Mr. Albence manages operational and mission support personnel assigned to more than 400 domestic and international offices and oversees an annual budget of almost $6 billion. Since 2017, Mr. Albence led ERO as EAD in its mission to identify, arrest, and remove aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who enter the United States illegally or otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border control efforts. He was appointed EAD in February 2017. In this role, Mr. Albence led an organization of more than 7,600 employees assigned to 24 ERO field offices and 22 overseas locations.
• With a February 15 deadline to avert another government shutdown fast approaching, a 17 member bipartisan committee from the House and Senate continues to work on negotiating a compromise on border security. The lawmakers are hoping to reach a deal by Monday. A key Republican senator involved in the talks says President Trump might be willing to sign a compromise. Late last month, Trump tweeted that Republicans are “wasting their time” trying to secure a deal.
• Congressional negotiators narrow differences to border barriers, detention beds. (Washington Post) — Lawmakers negotiating to end the border wall impasse and prevent another government shutdown narrowed their differences Thursday to two key sticking points — the wall itself and the number of beds the government would fund to detain unauthorized migrants. The two issues moved in tandem, with Democrats offering more money for border barriers in exchange for fewer detention beds. Democrats are trying to limit the Trump administration’s ability to detain border crossers, preferring alternatives such as ankle bracelets. Republican negotiators are in favor of both more barrier funding and expanded detention centers. It’s not yet clear what the deal will contain as far as physical barriers at the border, and Trump has been inconsistent in describing what type of structure would qualify as a wall. Negotiators hope to finalize a deal over the next several days, in time to unveil it officially by Monday and ensure House and Senate passage by the Feb. 15 deadline when government funding will run out. A lapse in funding would precipitate another shutdown, three weeks after the last one ended on its 35th day.
• ‘Savage gang’: Despite Trump’s relentless rhetoric, MS-13 murders are down. (Washington Post) — Over the past two years, in tweets and speeches, on the campaign trail and in the Oval Office, President Trump has railed against the violent international street gang MS-13. The president called out the “savage gang” again Tuesday night, citing an MS-13 murder earlier this week in his hometown, the New York borough Queens,during his argument for $5.7 billion in border wall funding. The State of the Union speech marked the 161st occasion on which the president has publicly spoken about the gang since taking office, according to a tally by The Washington Post. But even as he warned again and again about the dangers posed by MS-13 members and the need for a wall to keep them out, killings connected to the gang were plummeting in many of the areas where MS-13 has been most active. In the Washington region, where a spate of grisly gang slayings drew the attention of the White House, MS-13 murders have fallen from at least 33 between 2016 and 2017 to seven last year, according to interviews with a dozen law enforcement agencies and prosecutors.
• AOC going after ICE: Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) calls for ICE to be completely defunded. Earlier this week, an illegal alien MS-13 gang member, who had 12 prior arrests, allegedly murdered someone on a subway in Ocasio-Cortez’s district.

8am – B/C     Kellyanne Conway describes alleged assault in a restaurant in October by a woman, who denies the charge. Washington (CNN) Kellyanne Conway says that she was grabbed and shaken by a woman while out with her teenage daughter in a Maryland restaurant late last year. In an interview with CNN, the White House counselor to President Donald Trump talked about the alleged assault for the first time publicly. She recounted how the woman, who was later identified by authorities as a 63-year-old Maryland resident, approached her “screaming her head off” at Uncle Julio’s, a Mexican restaurant in the DC suburb of Bethesda, as Conway’s middle school-aged daughter looked on. “Somebody was grabbing me from behind, grabbing my arms, and was shaking me to the point where I felt maybe somebody was hugging me,” Conway said in the interview for an upcoming story for CNN’s series, “Badass Women of Washington.” “She was out of control. I don’t even know how to explain her to you. She was just, her whole face was terror and anger. She was right here, and my daughter was right there. She ought to pay for that,” she said. Conway said she called 911, though the woman had left before local police arrived. After an investigation, Mary Elizabeth Inabinett was charged in November with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct. A trial is set for March in Maryland state court. Inabinett’s lawyer, William Alden McDaniel Jr., disputed Conway’s story and the assault allegations, and said his client would plead not guilty in court next month.

8am – D          INTERVIEW – Jack Wilson, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia – shared his thoughts on the chaos in Richmond.

8am – E         More on AOC’s Green New Deal