Thank you to @ChrisStigall for co-hosting with @VinceCoglianese on @WMALDC this morning! pic.twitter.com/qc8VcPnNZN

— WMAL DC (@WMALDC) June 20, 2019

 Cal Thomas, Anne Arundel School Board member Josie Urrea, Steve Moore, Star Parker and guest host Chris Stigall joined WMAL on Thursday!

Mornings on the Mall

Thursday, June 20, 2019

Hosts: Vince Coglianese and guest host Chris Stigall

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C Iran shoots down US drone aircraft. Tehran, Iran (CNN) Iranian forces have shot down a United States military drone, a move that appears to have escalated the volatile situation playing out between Washington and Tehran in the Middle East. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it had shot down an “intruding American spy drone” after it entered into the country’s territory Thursday, according to state-run Press TV. A US official confirmed to CNN a drone had been shot down, but said the incident occurred in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most vital shipping routes. Press TV reported the downed drone was a US-made RQ-4 Global Hawk, while the US official said it was a MQ-4C Triton. Both are unmanned surveillance aircraft developed by weapons manufacturer Northrop Grumman. The head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, said the shooting down of the drone had sent a warning to the US.

5am – D/E     REPARATIONS HEARING: Actor Danny Glover was among those asking Congress for reparations to descendants of slaves. Glover told a House Judiciary subcommittee yesterday that his great-grandfather was enslaved and a national reparations policy is “moral, democratic and economic imperative.” The day before, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell argued against “reparations for something that happened 150 years ago.”

6am – A/B/C AA Co. Board of Education votes to eliminate top GPA as qualification for valedictorian. ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WMAR) — In a 5-4 vote, the Anne Arundel County Board of Education decided to abolish how the county’s school valedictorians and salutatorians are chosen. Previously those honors were awarded to those students with the highest grade point average. With Wednesday night’s vote, students who earn Summa Cum Laude honors, or a weighted GPA of 4.3 or above after seven high school semesters are eligible to apply for class valedictorian or salutatorian. Under the new policy, students will be evaluated on character, leadership, scholarship, and service. Winners will be selected through a school-based process to be determined by the Superintendent of Schools.

6am – D         INTERVIEW – CAL THOMAS – Syndicated columnist

• AP: Trump, in 2020 campaign mode, calls Democrats ‘radical.’ Addressing a crowd of thousands at Orlando’s Amway Center on Tuesday night, Trump complained he was “under assault from the very first day” of his presidency by a “fake news media” and an “illegal witch hunt” that had tried to keep him and his supporters down. He painted a disturbing picture of what life would look like if he loses in 2020, accusing his critics of “un-American conduct” and saying Democrats “want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it.” “A vote for any Democrat in 2020 is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the American dream,” he said. Trump made only passing mention of any of the Democrats running to replace him even as he tossed out “radical” and “unhinged” to describe the rival party.
• TRUMP VS BIDEN FUNDRAISING:
  • Trump raised $24.8M in the first 24 hours of his campaign.
  • Biden raised $6.3M in the first 24 hours of his campaign.
• Iran shoots down US drone aircraft. Tehran, Iran (CNN) Iranian forces have shot down a United States military drone, a move that appears to have escalated the volatile situation playing out between Washington and Tehran in the Middle East. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it had shot down an “intruding American spy drone” after it entered into the country’s territory Thursday, according to state-run Press TV. A US official confirmed to CNN a drone had been shot down, but said the incident occurred in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most vital shipping routes.
• Must we wage war with Iran? By Cal Thomas / “The Pentagon has released new color photos as proof that Iran was behind last week’s attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman,” ABC Newsreported. Hours before that attack, Iranians launchedsurface-to-air missile at a U.S. drone monitoring the tankers. The missile missed. In response, 1,000 American troops are being dispatched to the region for the declared purpose of defending American forces already there. Reacting to these charges and U.S. military moves and threats, Iran has said it will resume (did it ever stop?) the enrichment of uranium by next week, which it had pledged not to do for 10 years in an agreement forged during the Obama administration.

6am – E         Chuck Todd Says Migrant Detention Facilities Aren’t Nazi Concentration Camps, Gets Ratioed (HotAir) — Chuck Todd came out and said what far too few Democrats were willing to say yesterday. The detention centers on our southern border are not Nazi concentration camps. In saying this he sidestepped the dodge that AOC and other progressives were using yesterday, pretending that when she spoke of concentration camps she wasn’t referring to Nazi camps. That’s clearly not the case though it was a small minority of Democrats willing to admit as much. Todd started from the position that she meant Nazi camps (she used the phrase “never again” and called Trump a “fascist”) and then pointed out that you can disagree with the detention of migrants without breaking Godwin’s Law. “If you want to criticize the shameful treatment of people at our southern border, fine. You’ll have plenty of company. But be careful comparing them to Nazi concentration camps because they’re not at all comparable, in the slightest,” Todd said.

6am – F         Syrian refugee arrested for alleged ISIS terror plot to attack Christian church in Pittsburgh. Federal prosecutors say that a Syrian refugee was arrested for allegedly planning a terror attack on a Christian church in Pittsburgh. 21-year-old Mustafa Mousab Alowemer was accused of the plot “to support the cause of ISIS and to inspire other ISIS supporters in the United States.” The Department of Justice announced the arrest on Wednesday. Alowemer was born in Daraa, Syria, and came to the United States as a refugee in 2016, according to the criminal filing. “Alowemer also distributed propaganda materials, offered to provide potential targets in the Pittsburgh area, requested a weapon with a silencer, and recorded a video of himself pledging an oath of allegiance to the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” read a statement from the DOJ. The complaint alleges that he was targeting the Legacy International Worship Center in Pittsburgh for a bomb attack because they had Nigerian attendees and he wanted “revenge for [ISIS] brothers in Nigeria.”

7am – A/B/C – INTERVIEW — JOSIE URREA – Vice President of the Board and a student member of the Anne Arundel School Board

• AA Co. Board of Education votes to eliminate top GPA as qualification for valedictorian. ANNAPOLIS, Md. (WMAR) — In a 5-4 vote, the Anne Arundel County Board of Education decided to abolish how the county’s school valedictorians and salutatorians are chosen. Previously those honors were awarded to those students with the highest grade point average. With Wednesday night’s vote, students who earn Summa Cum Laude honors, or a weighted GPA of 4.3 or above after seven high school semesters are eligible to apply for class valedictorian or salutatorian. Under the new policy, students will be evaluated on character, leadership, scholarship, and service. Winners will be selected through a school-based process to be determined by the Superintendent of Schools.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – STEVE MOORE – former campaign economic advisor to President Trump, economist at The Heritage Foundation and author of book “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy”

• President Donald J. Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to economist Arthur Laffer at a ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday.
• Fed holds rates steady, but opens the door for a rate cut in the future. A divided Federal Reserve held the line on interest rates Wednesday and indicated formally that no cuts are coming in 2019. The decision came amid divisions over what is ahead and still leaves open the possibility that policy loosening could happen before the end of the year depending on how conditions unfold.

7am – E         Campus food service worker hit with bias complaint after saying ‘hello’ to student in Japanese. (College Fix) — U. of Minnesota student complained of ‘microaggressions’ and ‘implicit bias’ During the fall 2018 semester at the University of Minnesota, an Asian-American student stopped by one of the restaurants in the Coffman Memorial Union to pick up a snack. At the register, a food service worker said something the student didn’t understand. When the student said they didn’t get it, the woman at the register said she was saying “hello” in Japanese, and asked where the student was from. “Wisconsin,” the student replied. The cashier laughed and told the student to have a nice day, but the student did not find much humor in the experience. The student reported the cashier to the campus Bias Response and Referral Network, claiming “these type of microaggressions occur too often on campus” and “this implicit bias needs to be addressed.” The bias team then referred the incident to dining services and referred the complaining student to the campus “Ethical Advocate Program” in case they “want to talk further about the experience.”

8am – A/B/C/D/E     INTERVIEW – STAR PARKER – President of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (UrbanCURE), which she started after consulting on federal welfare reform in the 90s, and she is the author of the upcoming book: “Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why This Is Good for the Future of America”

• Heckling, drama mark House hearing on slavery reparations as top Dem asks, ‘Why not now?’
• House committee confronts the “inheritance of slavery” in panel on reparations
• House Majority leader says he expects reparations bill to get a floor vote. (The Hill) – House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday that he has every intention of bringing to the floor a proposal providing reparations for the descendants of slaves. “It will get a vote if it comes out of the committee; I expect it to come out of the committee,” Hoyer said during a press briefing in the Capitol. As Hoyer spoke, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee’s subpanel on the Constitution were holding a historic hearing on the legislation, with testimony from prominent black figures like the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, the actor Danny Glover and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a 2020 presidential hopeful.
• Star Parker: Why Pursuing ‘Slavery Reparations’ Will Lead to a LOSS of Freedom. The Black Caucus and other Leftists in the House will hold a hearing to begin a reparations commission. They have stacked the committees with leftist and communist experts to discuss “through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice.” There will be nothing open nor constructive about this. Cory Booker, who is running as a 2020 presidential candidate, introduced companion legislation in the Senate. And Democrats across the board, including every presidential candidate, have virtue signaled their approval to begin cash payments to descendants of slaves. What is our country coming to? It’s true that enslaved ancestors of blacks were robbed. They were robbed of their labor, their happiness, their lives, their property and their families. And this continued into the 20th century through racist laws that excluded blacks from opportunities available only to whites, such as the GI Bill. But our nation ended these racial hierarchies. We had a war and later a march, a brutal struggle for every American to live the American Dream with equal rights under the law — a very American idea. Since then, leftists determined they could hold power by stoking the cold embers of institutional racism. And for the first time, we are witnessing the emboldened Left push a dangerous idea that will fracture our freedom by organizing our society by the sins of our fathers. When the government determines whether you deserve your property and wealth, we lose our freedom. This is exactly what the Left plans and we need to stop them right now. We know what reparations look like by visiting any urban community in our country. Since the Great Society began in the sixties, we watched out-of-wedlock births for blacks increase from 23 percent to 76 percent today. We’ve watched leftists steal trillions of dollars from Americans’ pocketbooks to give away to voters with nothing to show for it. After all, the poverty rate remains the same today as when the Great Society began in 1964. You won’t hear this on CNN or MSNBC.