Rudy, Giuliani, Cal Thomas, White House’s Adam Kennedy, Byron York and Dan Bongino joined WMAL on Wednesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C PREVIEW MUELLER HEARINGS:

• Former Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller testifies before Congress today. The former special counsel is scheduled to testify for a total of five hours before two Democratic-led U.S. House panels — the Judiciary Committee from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Washington time and after a brief break, the House Intelligence Committee will convene for additional public testimony beginning at 12:00 pm (ET). All members of both committees will have an opportunity to question Mueller publicly.
• Barr says Mueller asked DOJ to send letter limiting testimony to ‘boundaries’ of report. (Fox News) – Attorney General Bill Barr told Fox News on Tuesday that it was former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team who asked the Justice Department to send Mueller a letter telling him to keep his upcoming testimony to House lawmakers “within the boundaries” of the public version of his Russia probe report. The letter provoked criticism from Democrats ahead of Wednesday’s highly anticipated hearing, with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler calling it “incredibly arrogant.” Asked by Fox News why the Monday letter was sent, Barr said Mueller’s staff asked the department for guidance ahead of the hearing.
• President Trump complained Tuesday night about a request granted by the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees to allow Robert Mueller’s top aide in the Russia investigation, Aaron Zebley, to sit at the table with him during today’s testimony. The President called Zebley a “Never Trumper”, tweeting “What a disgrace to our system. Never heard of this before. VERY UNFAIR, SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED.”
• Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump So Robert Mueller has now asked for his long time Never Trumper lawyer to sit beside him and help with answers. What’s this all about? His lawyer represented the “basement server guy” who got off free in the Crooked Hillary case. This should NOT be allowed. Rigged Witch Hunt!
• Washington Examiner: Former special counsel Robert Mueller will be joined in his testimony in front of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees tomorrow by Aaron Zebley, his chief of staff during his nearly two-year investigation. Zebley is also the former lawyer for the controversial IT aide to Hillary Clinton who set up her private email server and smashed some of her mobile devices with a hammer. “Aaron Zebley was the Deputy Special Counsel and had day-to-day oversight of the investigations conducted by the Office,” a spokesman for the special counsel’s office said Tuesday afternoon. “He will accompany Special Counsel Mueller to the Wednesday hearings, as was discussed with the committees more than a week ago.”  Prior to joining Mueller’s investigation, Zebley worked with Mueller at the WilmerHale law firm following a career at the FBI which included two stints at the bureau, first as a Special Agent of the FBI in the Counterterrorism Division for seven years and next as Mueller’s chief of staff when he served as FBI Director. Zebley was also an assistant U.S. Attorney in Virginia. But it was his time in private practice which originally drew the ire of Republicans when he joined Mueller’s special counsel investigation in 2017, because Zebley spent 2015 and 2016 representing Justin Cooper, a former Clinton Foundation adviser and IT aide who set up and maintained Clinton’s improper private email system for years while Clinton served as Secretary of State. FBI records even show that Cooper was involved in the destruction of some of Clinton’s personal devices.

5am – D         BIDEN 2020 UPDATE:

• Biden concedes that under Obama ‘a lot of people were left behind’ (Washington Examiner) — Joe Biden said the White House under President Barack Obama, when Biden was vice president, did not do enough to address the concerns of white working-class voters in the Rust Belt. “A lot of people were left behind,” the 2020 Democratic candidate told the New York Times when discussing the post-recession economic recovery. “In areas where people were hard hit, I don’t think we paid enough attention to their plight.” Biden, 76, tried chalking up the disillusionment of white former Democratic voters to a messaging problem, saying Obama told him he didn’t want to take “a victory lap [because] we have so much more to do,” despite pleas the White House “explain to people how we got to where we were now and why it happened.” In August 2016, Biden told The Atlantic one of the chief appeals of Trump was his ability to speak with the average American and the economically disadvantaged.
• Biden, Scrutinized for Crime Bill, Unveils Plan to Reduce Mass Incarceration (New York Times) — On Tuesday, Mr. Biden, the former vice president, introduced a wide-ranging criminal justice reform proposal that his campaign said sought to reduce incarceration, and the toll it takes on poor communities and communities of color, at every stage, from addressing “underlying factors” that start as early as childhood to calling for the elimination of the death penalty. The proposal comes before Mr. Biden is set to address two events this week focused on racial justice: a gathering of the N.A.A.C.P. in Detroit on Wednesday, and a conference of the National Urban League in Indianapolis on Thursday. On Tuesday, he will also tour a community-based center for underserved youth in New Orleans with his national campaign co-chair, Representative Cedric Richmond, the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
• Booker: Biden was ‘architect’ of criminal justice system, ‘not the right person to fix it’ (Politico) — Sen. Cory Booker on Tuesday blamed Joe Biden for what he called a “failed” criminal justice system, dismissing the former vice president’s new plan to combat mass incarceration and escalating a weeks-long dispute between the pair. “Joe Biden had more than 40 years to get this right,” he wrote. “The proud architect of a failed system is not the right person to fix it.” Booker had tweeted earlier Tuesday to criticize Biden’s proposal without directly naming the Democratic 2020 rival: “You created this system. We’ll dismantle it.” Biden’s plan includes reforming the juvenile justice system, eliminating discrepancies in sentencing between convictions related to powder and crack cocaine, scrapping mandatory minimum sentences and ending the death penalty. Parts of the plan shift away from his previous stances as a tough-on-crime Democrat in the 1990s, a record that has drawn attacks from fellow candidates and progressives. Booker has been a critic of Biden’s record. In the statement, he said that the 1994 crime bill Biden championed increased mass incarceration and “inflicted immeasurable harm” on black, brown and low-income communities.

5am – E         JUDICIAL WATCH FILES ETHICS COMPLAINT AGAINST OMAR OVER ALLEGED ILLEGAL MARRIAGE: Ilhan Omar hit with ethics complaint over report questioning whether she committed tax fraud and married her brother to skirt immigration law (Daily Mail) — Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group, filed an ethics complaint against Representative Ilhan Omar for accusations that she married her brother to commit immigration fraud, among other crimes. A new report, following a three year investigation, alleged that Omar married her biological brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, in 2009 to benefit in some fraudulent way from the marriage. Omar is a Somali-Ameriacan immigrant who fled Africa for the U.S. with her family when she was a young girl. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen when she was 17. The report alleges that her second husband, Elmi – who she supposedly married when she was still married to her first husband – is actually her brother.

6am – A         Bernie Sanders Campaign Hit With Unfair Labor Practice Complaint (Daily Wire) — Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign has been hit with an unfair labor practice complaint, the National Labor Relations Board made public late Monday night. The complaint was filed on July 19 by an individual in Indiana who claims that the Sanders campaign took part in illegal employee interrogation and retaliation against staffers. According to Bloomberg Law, “A copy of the charge has not yet been made public, but the agency’s July 22 docket lists five potential violations of the National Labor Relations Act.”

6am – B/C     The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge A Harvard Law professor who teaches a class on judgment wouldn’t seem like an obvious mark, would he? (The Cut) — It was just supposed to have been a quick Saturday-morning errand to buy picture hooks. On March 7, 2015, Harvard Law professor Bruce Hay, then 52, was in Tags Hardware in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near his home, when a young woman with long reddish-brown hair approached him to ask where she could find batteries. It was still very much winter, and, once the woman got his attention, he saw that underneath her dark woolen coat and perfectly tied scarf she was wearing a dress and a chic pair of boots — hardly typical weekend-errand attire in the New England college town. When he directed her to another part of the store, she changed the subject. “By the way, you’re very attractive,” he remembers her saying. “Sorry, I’m married,” he responded impulsively. It wasn’t exactly true — Hay has been legally divorced since 1999, but he lives with his ex-wife, Jennifer Zacks, an assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston, and their two young children. The woman quickly apologized, Hay recalls. “I didn’t mean to bother you,” she said. “I’m just here on business for a few days. I don’t really know anybody.” Hay, a Francophile, noticed the woman had a French-sounding accent, and he asked if she spoke the language. She told him her name was Maria-Pia Shuman, that she was born in France but her father was the American songwriter Mort Shuman, and that she was in town from Paris, en route to New York.

6am – D         INTERVIEW – CAL THOMAS – Syndicated columnist – discussed the upcoming Mueller testimony, the national debt and immigration.

• The Mueller testimony: Former Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller testifies before Congress today. The former special counsel is scheduled to testify for a total of five hours before two Democratic-led U.S. House panels — the Judiciary Committee from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Washington time and after a brief break, the House Intelligence Committee will convene for additional public testimony beginning at 12:00 pm (ET). All members of both committees will have an opportunity to question Mueller publicly.
• President Trump complained Tuesday night about a request granted by the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees to allow Robert Mueller’s top aide in the Russia investigation, Aaron Zebley, to sit at the table with him during today’s testimony. The President called Zebley a “Never Trumper”, tweeting “What a disgrace to our system. Never heard of this before. VERY UNFAIR, SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED.”
• End immigration to mend it (Washington Times/Cal Thomas) — For safety reasons, fire marshals control the number of people who can occupy a building at any one time. We’ve seen what happens when crowds get too large and a fire breaks out, causing panic and often death. So why not control the crowd illegally entering America? We control water so that it won’t overflow a bathtub or sink, causing damage requiring expensive repairs, so why not shut off the flow of those illegally entering at the border? Pick your own analogy, but the U.S. immigration system is worse than broken. It can be fixed, but politicians from both parties refuse to do it. The immediate and long-term damage inflicted on our country as a result of this neglect will be severe. President Trump has the power to shut off the flow of immigration until those who have entered the country illegally can be accounted for, those without proper documentation can be deported and the ones here legally become U.S. citizens.
• Cal Thomas: Republicans forever lose national debt as an issue afterer Trump agrees to new record spending to keep government open until July 2021. Got a column coming on that Thursday with lots of quotes from Founding Fathers warning of debt.

6am – E         MSNBC Guests Keep Repeating False Claim That Fox News Isn’t Covering the Mueller Hearings (Mediaite) — Former Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards, appearing on MSNBC Tuesday morning, repeated the false claim that Fox News will not be airing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s hearing before Congress this week. Funny enough, Edwards was talking about a Trump supporter being misinformed by conservative outlets when she made the claim that has been circulating social media — and apparently MSNBC’s headquarters. “Fox News, for example, is not airing the Mueller testimony live,” Edwards said. To her credit, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle interjected: “Actually, I don’t believe that’s true, I think they are going to air it.” Fox News has made it clear they will be airing special live coverage of the hearing beginning at 8 a.m. Wednesday, anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. The source of the notion that Fox News would be snubbing the hearing was MSNBC contributor Joy Vance, initially who blasted out a viral tweet stating so on Sunday.

6am – F         The Nationals’ Gerardo Parra has “Baby Shark” as his walkup song before his at-bats (WUSA 9 D.C.) — Chances are you’ve heard the Nationals’ Gerardo Parra’s walkup song before. If you have small children, you’ve definitely heard it probably hundreds of times. Nationals’ outfielder Gerardo Parra has “Baby Shark” as his walkup song before his at-bats. On Tuesday, before he pinch hit for Wander Suero, almost everybody in the entire stadium was doing the “Baby Shark.”

7am – A         INTERVIEW – ADAM KENNEDY – Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Communications at The White House – discussed the upcoming Mueller hearings.

7am – B/C     These 2020 Democrats Have Their Preferred Gender Pronouns In Their Twitter Bios (Daily Caller) — Three prominent Democratic presidential candidates have their preferred gender pronouns in their Twitter bios as of Monday, and a fourth added his pronouns after an inquiry from the Daily Caller News Foundation on Tuesday. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro’s bio declares “He/Him/Él,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s bio says “He/him” and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s bio says “She/her.” Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s bio says “He/Him/His” as of Tuesday. “We got your inquiry. Check the Governor’s Twitter bio — you’ll find it’s been updated with his preferred pronouns,” Hickenlooper spokesman Mark Ranneberger told the DCNF in an email Tuesday. Hickenlooper’s bio did not have the information on Monday.

7am – D  INTERVIEW – BYRON YORK – chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner – previewed the Mueller hearings.

• Byron York: Democrats think they’ve got a slam dunk obstruction case against Trump. They don’t (Washington Examiner) — On Wednesday, House Democrats will have a chance to breathe life into the Mueller report. Relatively few Americans have read the 448-page document in which special counsel Robert Mueller concluded the evidence did not establish that the Trump campaign and Russia engaged in a conspiracy or coordination to fix the 2016 election, and also declined to conclude whether or not President Trump obstructed justice. Democrats know the report has failed to capture the public imagination, and they hope bringing Mueller to Capitol Hill for questioning will catch the nation’s attention.

7am – E         2020 NEWS:

• Booker: ‘My Testosterone Sometimes Makes Me Want To Feel Like Punching’ Trump (Washington Free Beacon) — Democratic presidential candidate and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) on Tuesday said his testosterone sometimes makes him want to “feel like punching” President Donald Trump. Booker appeared on the Late Show with Seth Meyers, where he was asked about some of the tenets that he discusses on the campaign trail. Meyers specifically brought up “civic grace” and “courageous empathy” and asked Booker how he would be practicing these knowing that Trump would not be abiding by these tactics during the campaign. Booker began by reflecting on a campaign event in Iowa, where he said a guy put his arm around him and told Booker to punch Trump in the face, prompting Booker to inform him that this would be a felony. “Donald Trump is a guy who you understand he hurts you and my testosterone sometimes makes me want to feel like punching him, which would be bad for this elderly, out-of-shape man that he is if I did that,” Booker said. “This physically weak specimen—but you see what I’m talking about here?”
• Gabbard: ‘Kamala Harris is Not Qualified to Serve as Commander in Chief.’ ‘She’s got no background or experience in foreign policy’ (Washington Free Beacon) — Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii) argued Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) is not qualified to serve as commander in chief during an appearance on Outkick the Coverage with Clay Travis on Tuesday. “I think one of the things I’m most concerned with is Kamala Harris is not qualified to serve as commander in chief, and I can say this from a personal perspective as a soldier. She’s got no background or experience in foreign policy and she lacks the temperament that is necessary for a commander in chief,” Gabbard said. “I’ve seen the cost of war firsthand. I’ve experienced the consequences of what happens when we have presidents, as we have from both political parties in the White House, who lack experience, who lack that foreign policy understanding, who therefore fall under the influence of the foreign policy establishment, the military-industrial complex,” Gabbard continued. “This is what’s so dangerous. This is what we’ve seen occurring over time.”
• Marianne Williamson: ‘I am not a cult leader’ (New York Post) — Spiritual guru and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson clarified on Twitter Tuesday that she is not “a cult leader” and claimed she does not question vaccine science. The 66-year-old self-help book author made the statement about a month after she first had to clarify her stance on vaccinations in the US. “I am not a cult leader. I am not anti-science (that one is almost funny, given how much I quote Einstein). And I am not an anti-vaxxer” Williamson wrote in her tweet Tuesday. “Hoping that if I repeat it 3 to 4 times a day I might penetrate the field of lies created to keep some people out of the conversation,” she added.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – DAN BONGINO – author of the upcoming book “Exonerated: The Failed Takedown of President Donald Trump by the Swamp” – previewed the Mueller hearings.

8am – B/C     GEORGIA LAWMAKER ERICA THOMAS’ STORY COLLAPSES:

• Police report disputes Georgia lawmaker’s account of Publix incident. Witness: State Rep. Erica Thomas told Eric Sparkes, ‘Go back where you came from’ (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) — A witness to a heated grocery store encounter between state Rep. Erica Thomas and a man she accused of uttering racist comments told authorities she didn’t hear him make those remarks, according to a Cobb County police report. A Publix employee told a Cobb County officer that she witnessed part of the conversation and heard Thomas “continuously tell Eric Sparkes to ‘Go back where you came from!’” but did not hear Sparkes utter those words to Thomas. In a tearful video, Thomas accused Sparkes of using that phrase, which echoes a tweet by President Donald Trump that sparked a national uproar. Her account quickly went viral and triggered a wave of support and backlash. Sparkes admitted to calling the Democrat an expletive during the run-in, saying he was upset she was at an express aisle in the grocery store with too many items, but he said he didn’t tell her to “go back” to where she came from.

8am – D         INTERVIEW – RUDY GIULIANI – President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer – discussed the upcoming Mueller hearings today.