Chris Christie, Joe diGenova, Mark Krikorian, Saagar Enjeti and guest co-host Emily Jashinsky joined WMAL on Monday!

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, February 11, 2019

Hosts: Vince Coglianese and Emily Jashinsky, Culture Editor for The Federalist

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

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

• Bipartisan negotiations to reach a border security deal have stalled, lawmakers and aides said, days before the Friday deadline. A key negotiator, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, said yesterday the two sides have yet to reach agreement on how much money should be spent on border barriers. A new issue has also proven to be a stumbling block: a dispute over the number of beds at immigrant detention centers.
• On several Sunday talk shows, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney warned that another partial government shutdown is possible if congressional negotiators fail to reach a border security deal this week that President Trump finds acceptable. Mulvaney also blamed divisions among Democrats for the lack of progress. President Trump weighed in on Twitter yesterday, “The Border Committee Democrats are behaving, all of a sudden, irrationally.”
• LISTEN: ICE DEPUTY DIRECTOR MATT ALBENCE On WMAL On Friday: Decreasing The Number Of Beds Is A Backdoor Way To Try To Get To The ‘Abolish ICE’ Goal
• Fewer detention beds means more aliens are released into the interior of the country. Democrats know this, which is why they support it. 

5am – D         ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL WHITAKER Clashed With Dems On Friday:

• Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general told the House Judiciary Committee on Friday that he had never used his position to provide inside information about the Russia investigation to President Trump or his proxies.
• During a somewhat contentious oversight hearing, he also said he had “not interfered in any way with the special counsel’s investigation.” But he refused to discuss his conversations with Mr. Trump or why he recently said the special counsel’s inquiry would soon wrap up.
• Hearing erupts as Acting AG Whitaker calls time on Dem chairman: ‘Your 5 minutes is up.’ Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker stunned onlookers and lawmakers during an already-contentious House hearing Friday, when he tried to call time on the Democratic chairman after yet another line of questioning regarding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. The retort came after Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., first said he wanted Whitaker to appear for a private deposition after the hearing and went on to ask Whitaker whether he had been “asked to approve any requests or action” for the special counsel. “Mr. Chairman, I see that your five minutes is up, so…” Whitaker replied as the hearing room broke out in gasps. “I am here voluntarily. We have agreed to five-minute rounds.”
• REP. JIM JORDAN TO WHITAKER: “Did Rod Rosenstein direct Robert Mueller to target specific Americans?” he wondered. “We investigate CRIMES in the United States of America, not PEOPLE.”
• ‘Ask Questions Instead of Running for President’: Top GOP Rep Blasts Swalwell for Grilling of AG Whitaker
• ‘Your Humor Is Not Acceptable’: Dem Rep. Jackson Lee Snaps at Whitaker During Hearing
• Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) clash over donations connected to Whitaker and decisions made at the Department of Justice.

5am – E         INTERVIEW – Weather Channel meteorologist RAY STAGICH – discussed the snowy, slushy and icy commute this morning.

6am – A/B/C NORTHAM WON’T RESIGN:

• FAIRFAX FACING INCREASING PRESSURE, NORTHAM VOWS TO STAY: Facing two allegations of sexual assault, Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is facing increasing pressure to resign as Democratic legislators on Sunday circulated a draft resolution to start impeachment proceedings against him … Meanwhile, in an interview with CBS News, embattled Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam vowed to remain in office because “there’s no better person” to help the state “heal” from the multitude of scandals rocking its leadership than a doctor like himself. In the same interview, Northam, whose medical school yearbook page featured one person in blackface and another in a KKK robe, suggested that Fairfax should resign if the two sexual-assault allegations leveled against him are proven true. He also suggested that the state’s Democratic attorney general, Mark Herring, should consider stepping aside because he admitted to dressing in blackface in college.
• Gov. Ralph Northam tells CBS THIS MORNING’S Gayle King: “Virginia needs someone that can heal. There’s no better person to do that than a doctor. Virginia also needs someone who is strong, who has empathy, who has courage and who has a moral compass. And that’s why I’m not going anywhere”
• INDENTURED SERVANTS: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam: “We are now at the 400-year anniversary — just 90 miles from here in 1619. The first indentured servants from Africa landed on our shores in Old Point Comfort, what we call now Fort Monroe, and while—” Gayle King: “Also known as slavery”
• NORTHAM READING UP: (Huffington Post) — Northam said he has begun reading up on racial issues, starting with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ powerful Atlantic magazine piece “The Case for Reparations” and Roots by Alex Haley.
• ‘SENSITIVITY TRAINING’ FOR OTHER PEOPLE: (Washington Post) — “First of all what I plan to do . . . is to make sure that we have sensitivity training — in our Cabinet, in our agencies. I also plan to reach out to our colleges and universities and talk about sensitivity training. Even into the K through 12 age range, that’s very important.”
• WaPo poll: majority of black Virginians don’t want Northam to resign; population as a whole is split 47/47: Virginians are deadlocked over whether Gov. Ralph Northam (D) should step down after the emergence of a photo on his 1984 medical school yearbook page depicting people in blackface and Ku Klux Klan garb, with African Americans saying by a wide margin that he should remain in office despite the offensive image, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.

6am – D         INTERVIEW — MARK KRIKORIAN – nationally recognized expert on immigration issues, and is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)

• Shutdown looms as border talks break down over immigration enforcement
• LISTEN: ICE DEPUTY DIRECTOR MATT ALBENCE: Decreasing The Number Of Beds Is A Backdoor Way To Try To Get To The ‘Abolish ICE’ Goal.
• Fewer detention beds means more aliens are released into the interior of the country. Democrats know this, which is why they support it.

6am – E         AOC COVERAGE…

• HASSON: NEW w/ @emilyelarsen: The Ocasio-Cortez adviser whose appearance on Tucker’s show last night went viral now admits he got it wrong
• TUCKER presses AOC’s adviser:
  • Robert Hockett, a Cornell law professor who is advising Ocasio-Cortez on her Green New Deal, claimed on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that her proposal did not include economic protections for those “unwilling to work” and claimed that the phrase came from a “doctored document.” “Why would we ever pay people who are quote, ‘unwilling to work?’” asked Carlson, a co-founder of The Daily Caller News Foundation.  “I, we, we never would, right? And AOC has never said anything like that, right? I think you’re referring to some sort of document that some, I think some doctored document that somebody other than us has been circulating,” Hockett answered, inaccurately.  “Oh, I thought that came right from her, that was in the backgrounder from her office, is my understanding,” Carlson replied. “No, no. She’s actually tweeted it out to laugh at it. If you look at her latest tweets, it seems that apparently, some Republicans have put it out there,” Hockett insisted.  Ocasio-Cortez’s office did, however, publish a “Green New Deal FAQ” that said it guarantees “economic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work,” contrary to Hockett’s claims. Her office later deleted the FAQ.
• AOC Chief of Staff: “a FAQ that was clearly unfinished and that doesn’t represent the [Green New Deal] resolution got published to the website by mistake”
• EXAMINER: The mysterious case of AOC’s scrubbed ‘Green New Deal’ details
• DAVID RUTZ: This is a really embarrassing headline @businessinsider (SCREENSHOT)
• SHAPIRO: Basic law of the media: the worse the screw-up by Democrats, the more the Republicans are guilty of pouncing. See, e.g., the media’s coverage of Team AOC’s abject lies about her insane Green New Deal backgrounder.
• THE HILL: Ocasio-Cortez forced to clarify Green New Deal details after rollout
• REAL CNN TWEET: On the campaign trail, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turned herself into a phenomenon. So far it’s been the same in Congress, where she’s using her star power to turn ordinarily dry hearings into viral, must-see TV

6am – F         EWW, HEGSETH DOESN’T WASH HANDS:

• On Sunday morning, Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth says he hasn’t washed his hands in 10 years because germs aren’t real, much to the amusement and disgust of his co-presenters.
• Pete Hegseth ‏@PeteHegseth #DontWash 8:47 AM – 10 Feb 2019

7am – A         INTERVIEW — JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia

• VA CONTROVERSY: Joe shares histhoughts on the VA governor and Lt. Gov controversy:
  • FAIRFAX FACING INCREASING PRESSURE, NORTHAM VOWS TO STAY: Facing two allegations of sexual assault, Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is facing increasing pressure to resign as Democratic legislators on Sunday circulated a draft resolution to start impeachment proceedings against him … Meanwhile, in an interview with CBS News, embattled Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam vowed to remain in office because “there’s no better person” to help the state “heal” from the multitude of scandals rocking its leadership than a doctor like himself.
  • Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Justin E. Fairfax has refused to resign in the face of sexual assault allegations, giving Democrats an excruciating choice: whether to impeach a black leader at a moment when the state’s two other top leaders, both white, are also resisting calls to quit after admitting to racist behavior. A second woman said on Friday that Mr. Fairfax had sexually assaulted her, echoing an accusation made earlier in the week.
• WHITAKER: Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general told the House Judiciary Committee on Friday that he had never used his position to provide inside information about the Russia investigation to President Trump or his proxies. During a somewhat contentious oversight hearing, he also said he had “not interfered in any way with the special counsel’s investigation.” But he refused to discuss his conversations with Mr. Trump or why he recently said the special counsel’s inquiry would soon wrap up.
• SANDMAN SUIT: Sandmann Lawyer L. Lin Wood: ‘Nathan Phillips Will Be Sued’: Atlanta libel lawyer L. Lin Wood, who represents smeared Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann, made it clear that Native activist Nathan Phillips “will be sued for his defamatory lies.” Wood told LifeSite News that Phillips is on his list of lawsuit targets, which includes major media figures and mainstream news organizations.

7am – B/C     2020 NEWS: FIELD OF DEMOCRATIC 2020 CHALLENGERS GROWS – AND TRUMP HAS FUN: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., became the latest Democrat to throw her hat in the ring for the 2020 presidential race – announcing on Sunday her candidacy during a speech in Minneapolis’ frigid and snowy Boom Island Park … Klobuchar, a moderate, Midwestern Democrat who has served in the Senate since 2007, highlighted in speech her ability to work across the aisle with Republicans and her “grit” as Democrats try to win back voters in a region that supported then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 race. Trump had some fun with Klobuchar’s announcement, finding humor in her vow to tackle climate change in a snowy, freezing park.

• 2020 KLOBUCHAR: Sign of Things to Come? Klobuchar Announces Presidential Candidacy During Grueling Snowstorm
• TRUMP MOCKS KLOBUCHAR ON TWITTER: Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump: Well, it happened again. Amy Klobuchar announced that she is running for President, talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Bad timing. By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)! 2:04 PM – 10 Feb 2019
• Amy Klobuchar fires back at Trump: “I wonder how your hair would fare in a blizzard?”  Amy Klobuchar @amyklobuchar: Science is on my side, @realDonaldTrump. Looking forward to debating you about climate change (and many other issues). And I wonder how your hair would fare in a blizzard?
• Everyone else can join my team and contribute at http://amyklobuchar.com
• Amy Klobuchar addresses reports of mistreating staff after launching 2020 campaign
• ANN COULTER: An angry snowman was yelling at me on TV today.  I think it wants to be president.
• Senator Klobuchar’s Staff Mistreatment Reportedly Goes Back a Decade, Includes Throwing Binders
• BUZZFEED: Staffers, Documents Show Amy Klobuchar’s Wrath Toward Her Aides
• 2020 WARREN: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren announces 2020 presidential campaign. “I stand here today to declare that I am a candidate for President of the United States of America.”
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren: “By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be President. In fact, he may not even be a free person.
• TRUMP MOCKS ELIZABETH WARREN: Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump:  Feb 9: Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!
• Rob Lowe deletes tweet mocking Warren over Native American ancestry claims (The Hill) — Actor Rob Lowe deleted a tweet mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) over her past claims of Native American ancestry. “I deleted my Elizabeth Warren tweet,” Lowe tweeted late Saturday night. “It was a joke and some peeps got upset, and that’s never my intention.” “On the GOOD side: I just got to use the Oxford comma!” he addedEarlier Saturday, the “West Wing” actor wrote in the now-deleted tweet that Warren running for president “would bring a whole new meaning to Commander in ‘Chief.’”

7am – D         INTERVIEW – CHRIS CHRISTIE — Former governor of New Jersey and author of BOOK: “LET ME FINISH: TRUMP, THE KUSHNERS, BANNON, NEW JERSEY, AND THE POWER OF IN-YOUR-FACE POLITICS”

• ABOUT THE BOOK: From the outspoken former governor, a no-holds-barred account of Chris Christie’s rise to power through the bare-knuckle politics of New Jersey and his frank, startling insights about Donald Trump from inside the president’s inner circle. After dropping out of the 2016 presidential race, Chris Christie stunned the political world by becoming the first major official to endorse Donald Trump. A friend of Trump’s for fifteen years, the two-term New Jersey governor understood the future president as well as anyone in the political arena–and Christie quickly became one of Trump’s most trusted advisers. Tapped with running Trump’s transition team, Christie was nearly named his running mate. But within days of Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, Christie was in for his own surprise: he was being booted out. In Let Me Finish, Christie sets the record straight about his tenure as a corruption-fighting prosecutor and a Republican running a Democratic state, as well as what really happened on the 2016 campaign trail and inside Trump Tower. Christie takes readers inside the ego-driven battles for Trump’s attention among figures like Steve Bannon, Corey Lewandowksi, Reince Priebus, Kellyanne Conway, Jeff Sessions, and Paul Manafort. He shows how the literal trashing of Christie’s transition plan put the new administration in the hands of self-serving amateurs, all but guaranteeing the Trump presidency’s shaky start. Christie also addresses hot-button issues from his own years in power, including what really went down during Bridgegate. And, for the first time, Christie tells the full story of the Kushner saga: how, as a federal prosecutor, Christie put Jared Kushner’s powerful father behind bars–a fact Trump’s son-in-law makes Christie pay for later. Packed with news-making revelations and told with the kind of bluntness few politicians can match, Christie’s memoir is an essential guide to understanding the Trump presidency.
• Let Me Finish will reveal:
  • Candid and surprising insights into the public and private Donald Trump, drawn from 15 years of close friendship—Trump as an “utterly fearless” man with “unparalleled self-confidence” who nonetheless has “deficits, significant gaps in his experience,” such as his reliance on his own impulses and failure to grasp “the inner-workings of government, which are different than the business world.”
  • Why Christie chose to endorse Trump, shocking the political world, in the hopes of “making him a better candidate.”
  • The day that Bannon fired Christie as transition chair and tried to keep him away from Donald Trump—and how Christie successfully outfoxed him.
  • How the literal trashing of Christie’s Trump-transition plan put the new administration in the hands of “deeply flawed individuals—amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons,” causing “infighting and chaos in the White House,” for which Trump “has been paying the price for ever since.”
  • Frank appraisals of the Trump “riff raff,” past and present, such as Steve Bannon (“the only person I have ever met who can look pretentious and like unmade bed at the same time”), “Russian lackey” Michael Flynn, anxious-to-please Reince Priebus (who was convinced Trump would lose the election), “not ready for primetime” Jeff – Sessions, “loser” Omarosa, “shady” Paul Manafort (who literally falls asleep in a meeting with Christie), as well as figures Christie admires such as down-to-earth – Jersey girl Kellyanne Conway, “incredibly loyal” Corey Lewandowski, the ever-watchful Trump children, and “the smart, worldly, very intuitive, and immensely likeable” Melania Trump.
  • His fraught relationship with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose father Christie once sent to federal prison (for a sordid, incredible, only-in-New-Jersey set of crimes involving hiring a prostitute to blackmail his own brother-in-law, over a family business feud), and who would become “obsessed with destroying” Christie. – – The tension between Christie and Jared comes to a head in a Trump Tower confrontation between Christie and Jared in which a dozen years of family bitterness finally came gushing out—with Trump forced to referee. Eventually Jared “would exacting a plot of revenge against [Christie], a hit job that made no sense at all” in terms of helping Trump.
  • Never-told stories from Christie’s years as a corruption-fighting U.S. attorney, New Jersey’s bare-knuckles politics, Superstorm Sandy, the Barack Obama “hug,” being vetted for vice president (twice), and the full, untold story of Bridgegate—including what it felt like to be “betrayed” with a “ridiculous stunt” that threatened Christie’s political career “with extinction.”

7am – E         INTERVIEW – Weather Channel meteorologist RAY STAGICH – discussed the snowy, slushy and icy commute this morning.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – SAAGAR ENJETI – White House correspondent, The Daily Caller – discussed what’s on the president’s agenda, the rally in El Paso tonight, border negotiations and more.

• TRUMP RALLY TONIGHT: President Trump plans to hold his first campaign rally since November’s midterm elections in El Paso, Texas tonight. It begins a defining weak for President Trump’s push to build a southern border wall. The dispute over funding is threatening to spark another government shutdown. In El Paso, a protest march is scheduled at the same time as Trump’s rally.  Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, an El Paso native who lost a 2018 bid to unseat Cruz, is participating in a rally scheduled to take place across the street from the Trump event, called “March for Truth: Stop the Wall, Stop the Lies.” Mr. Trump’s rally starts at 7:00 local time.
• BORDER NEGOTIATIONS: Bipartisan negotiations to reach a border security deal have stalled, lawmakers and aides said, days before the Friday deadline. A key negotiator, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, said yesterday the two sides have yet to reach agreement on how much money should be spent on border barriers. A new issue has also proven to be a stumbling block: a dispute over the number of beds at immigrant detention centers.

8am – B/C     NORTHAM WON’T RESIGN:

• FAIRFAX FACING INCREASING PRESSURE, NORTHAM VOWS TO STAY: Facing two allegations of sexual assault, Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is facing increasing pressure to resign as Democratic legislators on Sunday circulated a draft resolution to start impeachment proceedings against him … Meanwhile, in an interview with CBS News, embattled Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam vowed to remain in office because “there’s no better person” to help the state “heal” from the multitude of scandals rocking its leadership than a doctor like himself. In the same interview, Northam, whose medical school yearbook page featured one person in blackface and another in a KKK robe, suggested that Fairfax should resign if the two sexual-assault allegations leveled against him are proven true. He also suggested that the state’s Democratic attorney general, Mark Herring, should consider stepping aside because he admitted to dressing in blackface in college.
• Gov. Ralph Northam tells CBS THIS MORNING’S Gayle King: “Virginia needs someone that can heal. There’s no better person to do that than a doctor. Virginia also needs someone who is strong, who has empathy, who has courage and who has a moral compass. And that’s why I’m not going anywhere”

8am – D         GRAMMYS HIGHLIGHTS:

Grammys kicked off with a performance from CAMILA CABELLO

• Camila Cabello Open Show With Theatrical ‘Havana’ Performance. Ricky Martin, Young Thug, Arturo Sandoval and J Balvin joined Cabello for elaborate take on her smash hit. Camila Cabello opened the Grammy Awards from the inside of a brownstone reimagined as a colorful dollhouse. She shifted through the rooms before taking to the “street,” where she ran into J Balvin reading a paper with the headline “Build Bridges Not Walls.” Young Thug joined to perform a verse as Cabello nimbly danced throughout the street. Soon, the opening act turned into a medley of Latin pop superstars: Ricky Martin joined to belt alongside Cabello as Arturo Sandoval played on his trumpet before J Balvin did a bit of his smash hit “Mi Gente.”
• GRAMMYS HOST ALICIA KEYS played two pianos at the same time
• Michelle Obama steals the spotlight at 2019 Grammys.
• Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry and more stars salute Dolly Parton ahead of Grammys
• Pro-Trump Singer Joy Villa Shows Up to Grammys in Barbed Wire ‘Build The Wall’ Dress
• Nancy Pelosi gets rock star treatment at Clive Davis gala

8am – E         Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Justin E. Fairfax has refused to resign in the face of sexual assault allegations, giving Democrats an excruciating choice: whether to impeach a black leader at a moment when the state’s two other top leaders, both white, are also resisting calls to quit after admitting to racist behavior. A second woman said on Friday that Mr. Fairfax had sexually assaulted her, echoing an accusation made earlier in the week. Both accusations came within a few days of Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark R. Herring acknowledging that they wore blackface as young men.

• Patrick Hope is backing off plans to immediately file articles of Impeachment against Justin Fairfax. / VA Del. Patrick Hope ‏@HopeforVirginia: Yesterday I sent draft language to my colleagues on the first step of an impeachment action regarding the Lt. Governor. There has been an enormous amount of sincere and thoughtful feedback which has led to additional conversations that need to take place before anything is filed.
•  Va. Democrats weigh initiation of impeachment proceedings against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax.  *A draft resolution calling for the impeachment of Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, a Democrat, has been circulating among Virginia Democrats over allegations of sexual assault, and might be introduced as soon as today. Fairfax denies the allegations brought by two women. Virginia’s embattled governor, Ralph Northam, insists that he will not resign over a racist yearbook photo from the 1980s that was only recently made public.