National Review’s Alexandra DeSanctis, Daily Caller’s Saagar Enjeti, Hate Crime Hoax author Wilfred Reilly, “From Fire, By Water” author Sohrab Ahmari and Mark Krikorian joined WMAL on Tuesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C             GREEN NEW DEAL:

• GREEN NEW DEAL COULD COST A LOT OF GREEN: Green New Deal would cost up to $93 trillion, or $600G per household, study says. (Fox News) — The sweeping “Green New Deal” proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., could cost as much as $93 trillion, or approximately $600,000 per household, according to a new study co-authored by the former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office … The sobering and staggering cost estimate came as Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris pointedly declined in an interview broadcast Sunday to put a price tag on the Green New Deal and “Medicare-for-all,” saying “it’s not about a cost,” but rather return on investment. The Green New Deal’s botched rollout included the release of an official document by Ocasio-Cortez’s office that promised economic security even for those “unwilling to work,” and called for the elimination of “farting cows” and air travel.
• The Washington Post editorial board blasts socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) Green New Deal: “We Can’t Afford Bad Ideas.” The Washington Post editorial board came out against the Green New Deal resolution championed by Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her allies. “Good intentions aren’t enough. We can’t afford bad ideas,” the editorial board wrote in its Green New Deal takedown posted Sunday. While the editorial board agreed with the broad energy goals of the Green New Deal, the Post leveled criticism against the resolution’s 10-year timeline and inclusion of totally unrelated welfare demands. “They should not muddle this aspiration with other social policy, such as creating a federal jobs guarantee, no matter how desirable that policy might be,” the editorial board wrote. The Post also called the Green New Deal’s goal of reaching “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions within 10 years “impossible” and criticized the resolution’s “promise to invest in known fiascos such as high-speed rail.” These expensive aspirations, no matter how laudable, would do nothing to arrest greenhouse-gas emissions,” the editorial board wrote. “As ostensible parts of a Green New Deal, they divert money and attention from the primary mission: rapidly eliminating emissions between now and midcentury.”
• SUNRISE MOVEMENT MEMBERS STORM SENATE OFFICE BLDG: A group of protesters from the far-left Sunrise Movement stormed the Russell Senate Office Building Monday, resulting in at least 40 arrests as they attempted to demand action from lawmakers on the Green New Deal.
• Capitol Police arrested 42 protesters advocating for Green New Deal outside of Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s office Monday. 
• AOC Declares Herself ‘The Boss’ Thanks To Climate Change.

5am – D         BIG DOLLAR DINNER DONORS PLEDGE:

• Warren shuts down donor dinners, insider access. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) announced Monday her campaign will shun fundraising through some of the old-fashioned means: dinners, donor calls and cocktail parties. In an email to supporters Monday, Warren also said she won’t sell access to big-name donors as candidates often do to raise money for a presidential bid.
• Kirsten Gillibrand refuses to join Elizabeth Warren’s pledge to not hold big-money fundraisers

5am – E         Former campaign staffer claims Trump forcibly kissed her. A former Trump campaign staffer claims in a new lawsuit that the then-presidential candidate forcibly kissed her in 2016. Alva Johnson says the Republican candidate grabbed her hand and tried to kiss her on the lips during a rally in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 24, 2016, according to the suit, which was filed Monday and first reported by the Washington Post. But Johnson turned her head and Trump wound up kissing the side of her mouth, she said.

6am – A/B     HATE CRIME HOAXES:

• Chicago PD Superintendent Eddie Johnson: Evidence Doesn’t Support Jussie Smollett. ABC: Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson speaks out live on ‘Good Morning America’ after accusing actor Jussie Smollett of filing a false police report about an alleged hate crime in Chicago. “There is a lot more evidence that hasn’t been presented yet that does not support the version that he gave,” Johnson said Monday. “There is still a lot of physical evidence, video evidence, and testimony that just simply doesn’t support his version of what happened.” “I refused to let CPD characterize him as a suspect unless we had concrete evidence,” Johnson said. “The entire time that we investigated the incident he was treated like a victim,” he added.
• Transgender Activist Charged With Arson for Burning Her Own Home, Killing 5 Pets. (PJ Media) — A transgender activist in Jackson, Mich., has been charged with setting the blaze that destroyed her own home, killing her pets: two dogs and three cats. After she reported the fire, the FBI investigated it as a hate crime, but police smelled a rat and the state prosecutor charged the woman with first-degree arson. In the wake of the hate hoax perpetrated by Empire star Jussie Smollett, the Michigan arson case has gained renewed attention. Elmer Hitt, director of police and fire services for Jackson, told PJ Media the trial is pending. Nikki Joly, 54, was born a woman but identifies as a man. She pressured the city council to pass a non-discrimination ordinance in February 2017 and led the Jackson Pride Parade and Festival. She was arrested in September 2018 and charged with one felony count of first-degree arson. Police arrested her more than one year after the fire on August 10, 2017. The fire burned down her house, killing her two German shepherds and three cats. This transgender activist may face jail time for burning down her own home and killing her 5 pets in an apparent hate hoax that made her “Citizen of the Year” and raised $58,000.

6am – C         Don Jr.: Transgender sprinters winning high school girls track race in Connecticut a ‘grave misjustice.’ Donald Trump Jr. said a “grave misjustice” had been committed after two transgender sprinters took first and second place in the girls 55-meter dash of Connecticut’s indoor high school indoor track championships. “I feel so sorry for the young ladies who trained their whole lives to be the best in their state and to hopefully attain scholarships etc etc… this is a grave injustice,” President Trump’s eldest son tweeted.  Terry Miller, the winner, and Andraya Yearwood, the runner-up, both run for Cromwell High School in Cromwell, Conn. Both were born biologically male, according to the Associated Press. The two students have consistently won or finished high in competitions going back to last year, including an outdoor 100-meter dash and an indoors 300-meter run. Yearwood said she embraces the negativity, and if other athletes see an unfair advantage they should push themselves that much harder to overcome it. “I use the negativity to fuel myself to run faster,” Yearwood said. “One high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better. One sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster.” Connecticut is one of 17 states, according to Transathlete.com, that allows high school transgender athletes to compete with no restrictions. However, their cisgendered competitors feel differently. Selina Soule finished eighth in the 55-meter run and missed out on qualifying for the New England regionals.

6am – D         INTERVIEW – ALEXANDRA DESANCTIS – Staff writer at National Review

• DESANCTIS: Senate Fails to Pass Born-Alive Bill

• DEMS BLOCK ‘BORN ALIVE’ BILL: Senate Democrats on Monday blocked a Republican bill that would have threatened prison time for doctors who don’t try saving the life of infants born alive during failed abortions, leading conservatives to wonder openly whether Democrats were embracing “infanticide” to appeal to left-wing voters … All prominent Democratic 2020 presidential hopefuls in the Senate voted down the measure, including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The final vote was 53-44 to end Democratic delaying tactics — seven votes short of the 60 needed.
• For the second time this year, Senate Democrats kill “Born Alive” legislation guaranteeing medical care for newborns.
• A new Marist poll found Americans are now as likely to identify as pro-life as they are pro-choice. Last month, a similar Marist survey found that Americans were more likely to identify as pro-choice than pro-life 55% to 38%, a 17-point gap.

6am – E         Michael Cohen will give public testimony before Congress. (NY Post) – Michael Cohen will be in Washington this week, appearing before three congressional committees to spill on his former client, President Trump. Cohen’s public testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee won’t touch on certain subjects that remain under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. Democrats plan to publicly question Cohen about Trump’s business interests, compliance with tax laws and a pair of hush-money payments to women during the 2016 campaign. Lawmakers also plan to question Cohen about “the accuracy of the President’s public statements” and “public efforts by the President and his attorney to intimidate Mr. Cohen or others not to testify,” The Washington Post reported. Cohen will also make appearances before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday and the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

6am – F         INTERESTING…. Rosenstein: If The DOJ Isn’t Prepared To Prosecute Someone, It Should Keep Its Mouth Shut (Hot Air) — Is this a smoke signal to Robert Mueller, or a smoke signal from the special counsel? Departing deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that history would prove that Donald Trump “will deserve credit” for the people he appointed to the run the Department of Justice, which certainly caught the ear of the Washington Post’s Matt Zapotsky. What came next set off sirens over the eventual report coming from the Russia-collusion probe:

• Matt Zapotosky @mattzap 7h:   Rod Rosenstein, at @CSIS, says when we look back at this era in the Justice Dept, we’ll be “proud,” & “the president will deserve credit for the folks he appointed to run the department.” Doesn’t sound to me like a man who knows Mueller’s about to release a report blasting Trump.
• Matt Zapotosky @mattzap: If you are expecting Mueller/DOJ to willingly release a report that blasts Trump or other, un-indicted people in his orbit, please read these remarks today from Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller and supervised most of his investigation. The bold emphasis is mine. pic.twitter.com/cvd5yLQ1Qc
• Rosenstein: Just because government collects information doesn’t mean that information is accurate, and it can be really misleading if you’re overly transparent about information that the government collects, so I think we do need to be really cautious about that. And that’s again not to comment on any particular case. There may be legitimate reasons for making exceptions but as a general principle, my view is the Department of Justice is best served when people are confident that we’re going to operate — when we’re investigating American citizens in particular — we’re going to do it with appropriate sensitivity to the rights of uncharged people. … The guidance I always gave my prosecutors and the agents that I worked with during my tenure on the front lines of law enforcement were if we aren’t prepared to move our case beyond a reasonable doubt in court, then we have no business making allegations against American citizens.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – SAAGAR ENJETI – White House correspondent, The Daily Caller

• STAGE SET IN VIETNAM FOR SECOND TRUMP-KIM SUMMIT: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived by armored train at Vietnam’s Dong Dang railway station on the China-Vietnam border on Tuesday for his second nuclear summit with President Trump … The president was flying to Hanoi from Washington and was scheduled to. Press reports speculate that Kim will be driven to Hanoi ahead of his Wednesday meeting with Trump. Security is tight in Vietnam as officials scramble to finish preparations for a rushed two-day summit that’s meant to deal with one of Asia’s biggest security challenges: North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear program that stands on the verge of viably threatening any target on the planet. Officials shared no details about the specifics of a summit. Pundits are skeptical that Kim will give up any nukes, but there was a palpable, carnival-like excitement among many in Hanoi as the final preparations were made.
• Pres. Trump announces American Danny Burch has been freed after 18 months of captivity in Yemen.
• Vice President Mike Pence met with Venezuela’s self-declared leader Juan Guaido and said “it’s time” for action against embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, reports from Bogotá, Colombia.

7am – B         Green New Deal would cost up to $93 trillion, or $600G per household, study says.

7am – C         DEBLASIO LIVING GROUNDHOG DAY, SNOWED IN IN IOWA:

• Bill de Blasio stranded in Iowa motel after blizzard hits. (NY Post) — DES MOINES — Mayor de Blasio tried to display some presidential fortitude by traveling through near-blizzard conditions in Iowa — and wound up sleeping in a roadside motel after chowing down on a gas-station burrito for dinner. Reporters from New York City wisely decided to wait out a snowstorm in Sioux City following an event at which de Blasio touted his progressive agenda to about two dozen residents on Saturday night. But the mayor ignored the dangerous weather and insisted on heading south to Des Moines with his security detail. De Blasio is finishing up a two-day visit to Iowa, where caucus-goers cast the first votes for the nation’s presidential wannabes.

• Washington Free Beacon’s Alex Griswold ‏@HashtagGriswold: What if Bill de Blasio is living this day over and over again until he can learn to shed his big city narcissism and achieve virtue

7am – D/E     INTERVIEW – PROFESSOR WILFRED REILLY —  Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University and author of new book “Hate Crime Hoax” — discussed his new book “Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War.”

• Poli-sci professor Wilfred Reilly has found more than 400 instances of hate crime hoaxes in America in his research. The epidemic we are experiencing isn’t in hate crimes but rather hate hoaxes.
• Is President Trump Responsible for Racial Division in America? The answer is No. Although the media continually reports that President Trump has ushered in a new era of racial hatred in our country, the majority of hate crimes occurring in the United States since 2016 have been hoaxes.
• Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War, written by African American Professor Wilfred Reilly, is a detailed, profoundly pro-Black and pro-American work of social science exposing the shocking statistics on hate crime hoaxes in the United states.
• ABOUT BOOK: If you believe the news, today’s America is plagued by an epidemic of violent hate crimes. But is that really true? In Hate Crime Hoax, Professor Wilfred Reilly examines over one hundred widely publicized incidents of so-called hate crimes that never actually happened. With a critical eye and attention to detail, Reilly debunks these fabricated incidents—many of them alleged to have happened on college campuses—and explores why so many Americans are driven to fake hate crimes. We’re not experiencing an epidemic of hate crimes, Reilly concludes—but we might be experiencing an unprecented epidemic of hate crime hoaxes.
• BIO: Wilfred Reilly is a tenure-track Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University. His interests include International Relations, contemporary American race relations, and the use of modern quantitative/empirical methods to test “sacred cow” theories. He is the author of The $50,000,000 Question: An Engagingly Empirical Examination of the Relationship between “Privilege” and Pride.

8am – A         PRIVATE JET FOR BERNIE SANDERS:

• Bernie Sanders demanded the use of a private plane at the cost of $100k when he campaigned for Hillary. Bernie Sanders demanded a private jet for his 2016 campaign travel for Hillary Clinton, her bitter former staffers revealed in the wake of the Vermont senator’s presidential announcement.
• Ex-Clinton staffers slam Sanders over private jet flights. (Politico) – In his campaign launch video last week, Bernie Sanders singled out the fossil fuel industry for criticism, listing it among the special interests he planned to take on. But in the final months of the 2016 campaign, Sanders repeatedly requested and received the use of a carbon-spewing private jet for himself and his traveling staff when he served as a surrogate campaigner for Hillary Clinton. In the two years following the presidential election, Sanders continued his frequent private jet travel, spending at least $342,000 on the flights. Increased scrutiny of his travel practices, which are at odds with his positions on wealth inequality and climate change, are among the challenges Sanders will face as he makes his second White House run. But he also faces another hurdle: hard feelings that remain to this day after the contentious 2016 Democratic primary. Many in the party continue to believe the Vermont senator played a role in contributing to Clinton’s defeat in November because of his criticisms of her prior to the general election, and his refusal to concede earlier when it appeared he had little mathematical chance of securing the party nomination. And they are eager to point out Sanders’ flaws and examples of what they perceive to be examples of hypocrisy now that the one-time underdog rates as one of the front-runners in the crowded Democratic field.
• Former Sanders Spox Fires Back At Clinton Team: ‘Some Of The Biggest Assholes In American Politics. “You can see why she’s one of the most disliked politicians in America, she’s not nice. Her people are not nice,” Michael Briggs told Politico. “[Sanders] busted his tail to fly all over the country to talk about why it made sense to elect Hillary Clinton and the thanks that [we] get is this kind of petty stupid sniping a couple years after the fact.” … “It doesn’t make me feel good to feel this way but they’re some of the biggest assholes in American politics,” he added.

8am – B/C     INTERVIEW – SOHRAB AHMARI – the op-ed editor of the New York Post and author of new book “From Fire, By Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith”

• Sohrab Ahmari Offers A Compelling Tale Of An Unlikely Christian Convert.
• ABOUT BOOK: Sohrab Ahmari was a teenager living under the Iranian ayatollahs when he decided that there is no God. Nearly two decades later, he would be received into the Roman Catholic Church. In From Fire, by Water, he recounts this unlikely passage, from the strident Marxism and atheism of a youth misspent on both sides of the Atlantic to a moral and spiritual awakening prompted by the Mass. At once a young intellectual’s finely crafted self-portrait and a life story at the intersection of the great ideas and events of our time, the book marks the debut of a compelling new Catholic voice.
• BIO: Sohrab Ahmari is the op-ed editor of the New York Post and a contributing editor of the Catholic Herald. Previously, he served as a columnist and editor with the Wall Street Journal opinion pages in New York and London, and as senior writer at Commentary magazine. His work has also been published in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Weekly Standard, First Things, Dissent and America, among many other publications. Ahmari is also the author of The New Philistines: How Identity Politics Disfigure the Arts.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — MARK KRIKORIAN – nationally recognized expert on immigration issues, and is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)

• House Dems work to block Trump’s emergency declaration
• The House to vote today on a resolution blocking President Trump’s national emergency declaration. WASHINGTON — The House is prepared to vote Tuesday on a resolution to block President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency, which Democrats hope will send a message to the White House that lawmakers won’t stand idly by while he diverts billions of dollars to a planned border wall. Supporters of the resolution are confident it will pass the House and are growing more hopeful the Republican-controlled Senate will also approve it, with the help of GOP lawmakers. Trump on Monday sent a warning to Republicans on Twitter, quoting a Fox News host questioning why any of them would go against his efforts to get money for a wall. But Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said over the weekend that she will likely vote with Democrats to approve the resolution.

8am – E         ‘They treat you like a customer, not a patient and some have happy hours’: Texas man, 64, reveals his thrifty plan to spend his ‘Golden Years’ living in a $58 per night. Holiday Inn instead of a retirement home where the average cost is $188 per day. Terry Robison, 64, who lives in Spring, Texas, made his plans universally known in a public Facebook post. ‘No nursing home for us. We’ll be checking into a Holiday Inn!’ he wrote. Robison has done the math and says staying in a Holiday Inn would save a senior over $100 a day compared to the average cost of a nursing home. His post lists all the benefits of living in a Holiday Inn including free breakfasts, toiletries and leisure facilities. (Daily Mail) — A Texas man says he has no intention of checking into a nursing home during his golden years and is planning on moving into a Holiday Inn instead. Terry Robison, 64, who is listed as a producer/director at Scarlet Tye Films, shared his novel thought about retirement in a now viral Facebook post. ‘No nursing home for us. We’ll be checking into a Holiday Inn!’ he begins, a referring to himself and wife Renee Wilson Robison, both of Spring, Texas. Robison has done the math and says staying in a Holiday Inn is much cheaper than checking into a nursing home.