Mornings on the Mall

Friday, September 20, 2019

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

Cully Stimson, Douglas Murray, Marc Morano and Dr. Kelsey Johnson joined WMAL on Friday morning!

5am – A/B/C WHISTLEBLOWER / TRUMP PROMISE:

• Whistleblower complaint about President Trump involves Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter
• “Is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially ‘heavily populated’ call,” Trump tweeted.
• Adam Schiff Threatens To Sue Trump Administration Over Mystery Whistleblower Complaint

5am – D         TRUMP POLLING:

• President Trump’s Approval Rating Is Higher Than Obama’s At Same Time In Presidency. (Daily Caller) – President Donald Trump now has a higher approval rating than former president Barack Obama had during the same time in his presidency. “Trump’s approval rating on Wednesday was 44.3 percent, according to a Real Clear Politics average of more than a half-dozen major polls, as reported by Newsweek. That is higher than Obama’s average approval rating of 43.9 percent on September 18, 2011, by the same measure.” Trump’s approval rating has bounced around over his presidency, with some polls placing his lows in the high 30 percent range, and others placing his high marks as high as the  50 percent range. Since Trump took office, Obama has bucked the tradition of former presidents keeping quiet about the next administration. Indeed, Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama criticized Trump repeatedly throughout 2017 and 2018.
• NEW POLL SHOWS VOTERS HAVE NO DESIRE FOR IMPEACHMENT (Washington Times) – “Just 37% of voters say Congress should begin impeachment proceedings compared to the 50% who oppose it,” reports a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday. “This issue largely falls along party lines: seven in ten (70%) Democrats support beginning impeachment proceedings, while 87 percent of Republicans oppose it.”

5am – E         ISSA CONFIRMATION HELD UP OVER FAKE ID WHEN HE WAS 17: Former GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s confirmation hearing for a top trade position in the Trump administration was indefinitely delayed Thursday after Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Menendez insisted on the release of an FBI background file that sources say shows Issa used a fake ID when he was 17. 

6am – A         Federal judge blocks California law to force disclosure of Trump’s tax returns: A federal judge has handed President Trump a victory in his effort to keep his personal financial information a secret, siding with his campaign’s effort to block a California law aimed at forcing him to release his tax returns. The ruling comes as President Trump faces multiple Democratic-led efforts to force him to reveal his returns. Also on Thursday, the President sued to block New York prosecutors from their push to obtain the returns as part of a criminal investigation.

6am – B/C     WAPO: HUD Secretary Ben Carson makes dismissive comments about transgender people, angering agency staff: Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson expressed concern about “big, hairy men” trying to infiltrate women’s homeless shelters during an internal meeting, according to three people present who interpreted the remarks as an attack on transgender women. While visiting HUD’s San Francisco office this week, Carson also lamented that society no longer seemed to know the difference between men and women, two of the agency staffers said. Carson’s remarks visibly shocked and upset many of the roughly 50 HUD staffers who attended Tuesday’s meeting, and prompted at least one woman to walk out in protest, the staffers said.

6am – D         INTERVIEW- CULLY STIMSON- Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for detainee affairs

• DC Poised to Triple Down on Early Release of Violent Criminals. (Daily Signal) – One defendant killed an innocent 7-year-old child. Another shot a 24-year-old mother in the back. Others kidnapped a woman, held her in the back of a stolen van, and repeatedly gang-raped her.  These and about 583 other violent offenders—including murderers, rapists, and child molesters—could soon be let out of prison if Charles Allen, a D.C. Council member, has his way. Allen recently proposed the Second Look Amendment Act of 2019, which would allow violent felons to get out of prison early—even if they haven’t had a parole hearing—and would prevent the judge from considering the nature of the crime(s) they committed.  The Washington Post editorialized against it, saying that the “council is putting the public at increased risk.” And the District’s top prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, sent a letter to Allen explaining why the scheme is bad policy and dangerous. If enacted, Allen’s dangerous gambit would likely result in even more violent crime in the crime-ridden city. (Washington, D.C., was recently ranked as the 11th most dangerous city in the U.S.)

6am – E         Justin Trudeau says he does not know how many times he’s worn blackface in his life. (CNN) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized again on Thursday for wearing blackface in three separate incidents and said he did not know how many times he had put on racist makeup. “What I did hurt them, hurt people who shouldn’t have to face intolerance and discrimination because of their identity. This is something I deeply, deeply regret,” he said. Darkening your face, he added, “is always unacceptable because of the racist history of blackface. I should have understood that then, and I never should have done it.” Trudeau still insisted he was an ally in the fight for social justice and highlighted his administration’s actions to fight racism and intolerance. But he declined to say definitively whether there were more instances of him wearing dark makeup. He did not remember each instance, he said, because his privilege gave him a blind spot on the issue. “The fact is I didn’t understand how hurtful this is to people who live with discrimination every day,” he said. Trudeau first apologized on Wednesday after Time posted a photo of him wearing brownface when he was a school teacher in 2001.

6am – F         Furious South Carolina man stormed into a sandwich shop, demanding to know why ‘b***h’ was written on his wife’s lunch package – only to be told it was because she ordered a BLT… with cheese. Daily Mail – Robert Wilson Barnes, of Greenville, couldn’t believe his eyes when he spotted the five letters after leaving a drive-thru and thought it was an offensive insult. In a Facebook post he wrote ‘Are you freakin’ serious?’ and went onto explain the lead-up to his complaint over wife Colleen O’Reilly Barnes’ order. ‘My wife took her sandwich out of the bag and we see THIS! Seriously? Oh, not today, not today!’ he posted. Barnes stormed back into Jimmy John’s fast food restaurant to demand to speak to the manager and for an explanation from the ‘confused’ looking server. But little did he know, instead of spelling ‘b***h,’ as he previously thought, it was actually an abbreviation for the sandwich’s ingredients – bacon, lettuce and tomato with cheese. The man told him: ”Because you ordered a BLT with cheese?’ To which I replied, ‘…Oh.” 

7am – A         INTERVIEW – DOUGLAS MURRAY – Associate Editor of The Spectator and author of new book “The Madness of Crowds”

• In his new book The Madness of Crowds (September 17, Bloomsbury Continuum) Murray examines sexuality, gender, technology, and race. He reveals the astonishing new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, colleges, schools, and homes in the names of social justice, identity politics, and intersectionality.

7am – B/C     Matt Gaetz Reads Back Al Sharpton’s Racist Statements

7am – D         AOC NEWS:

• AOC really hates adding jobs in her district. AOC fighting to block massive ‘Walmart of Liquor’ from her Queens district. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is fighting to block a massive booze retail store that critics call the “Walmart of Liquor” from opening on her turf in College Point, Queens. The firebrand freshman congresswoman, whose opposition helped scare Amazon away from opening a new campus headquarters in Long Island City, urged state Liquor Authority Chairman Vincent Bradley to deny Total Wine & More a license to open because its rock-bottom prices would undercut smaller neighborhood liquor merchants. Michelle Trone, the applicant for the liquor box store at the site of the former Toys ‘R’ Us at 30-02 Whitestone Expressway, is the daughter of Maryland Rep. David Trone, who co-owns the Total Wine chain. She filed for the application for the Total Wine store in AOC’s district under the name MCT Fine Wine & Spirit.
• WAPO’s FENIT NIRAPPIL: .@AOC ties D.C. statehood to the legacy of slavery: “The people who fled here to the District of Columbia to flee slavery because of the enlightenment of this community are now disenfranchised because of that very act”
• AOC: DC was the 1st territory in the United States to free the enslaved. It’s where Black Americans fled the tyranny of slavery & towards greater freedom, to DC. Yet today it’s where 2nd class citizenship reigns, and the right to vote is denied. It’s time to recognize DC statehood.
• AOC on DC statehood: ‘Disenfranchisement’ of DC rooted in the ‘history of slavery’ WASHINGTON – Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. weighed in on D.C. statehood during a Thursday hearing on the issue and discussed the “disenfranchisement” of the District’s people as rooted in the “history of slavery.”  She opened her statement by talking about her family’s roots in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, and how her family had never lacked the right to vote in federal elections.  “I wish that upon no citizen of the United States of America,” she said.   “Where the disenfranchisement of Puerto Ricans was rooted in the colonialist and imperialistic history that we’ve had in policies of the United States, the issue of D.C. statehood is rooted in a different evil in our history, which is the history of slavery in the United States,” she added.  Ocasio-Cortez cited the disenfranchisement of the majority-minority city as “upholding the injustice of the practices enacted during slavery.”

7am – E         The CEO Of WeWork Reportedly Had A “Somber” All-Hands Meeting To Announce The Firing Of Hundreds Of Employees…Then Run-DMC Burst In To Perform As They Passed Out Tequila Shots. (BarStoolSports) – ‘This Is Not the Way Everybody Behaves.’  

8am – A         INTERVIEW – MARC MORANO – Executive Director of Climate Depot and author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change”

• CLIMATE STRIKE FRIDAY: Tens of thousands of high school students in cities nationwide plan to skip classes today to attend Global Climate Strike marches calling for immediate action to help end climate change by stopping the burning of fossil fuels, particularly coal and oil. The protests are timed to begin a week of activism at the United Nations, including a Youth Climate Summit on Saturday and a UN Climate Action Summit on Monday. The events come out of a groundswell of concern on the part of young people, touched off in August by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Adults are taking part as well. Multiple companies, including Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, Burton and SodaStream are shutting down for the day so employees can attend local marches.  
• Greta Thunberg is leading kids and adults from 150 countries in a massive Friday climate strike. Young people from around the world are leading a massive coordinated strike from school on Friday, September 20, to protest government and business inaction on climate change. It is likely to be one of the largest environmental protests in history.  
• Despite Elrich’s Request, MCPS Won’t Excuse Students To Attend Climate Protests. The Montgomery County school system will not excuse students to attend climate change protests this week, despite a request from the county executive. In a letter to the school board and Superintendent Jack Smith on Tuesday, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich urged an exception to MCPS policy — to let students get an excused absence to attend a climate rally on Friday in Washington, D.C. “I understand that you have many issues to consider when making this type of decision, but I do think it could be allowed within certain parameters such as requiring parental consent … requiring evidence of their attendance … and follow up summary of the event,” Elrich wrote. “However you decide to address it, I do believe there’s a way to allow it while addressing security and other concerns.” In a response on Thursday, MCPS and school board members said they support student advocacy and are “proud of students when they speak out for what they believe.” But, they wrote, students who want to “engage in the civic process during school hours” should do so while at school.

8am – B/C     New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio Says He Is Ending His Campaign for the Democratic Presidential Nomination

8am – D         INTERVIEW – DR. KELSEY JOHNSON – Associate Professor of The Department of Astronomy at the University of Virginia

• Are aliens even interested in us? Is it even worth it to “go see them aliens” and storm Area 51 tomorrow? Among the billions of planets, stars, solar systems and galaxies, is it possible Earth is not the only home for intelligent beings? Dr. Kelsey Johnson of the University of Virginia seems to think it’s not only possible that there’s more life out there, it’s probable. “As a scientist, I think about that statistically,” Johnson told InsideEdition.com. “And I think the chances of it in terms of pure likelihood are extraordinarily high.” The Fermi Paradox, coined by Italian scientist named Enrico Fermi in 1975, questions where exactly everyone is.
• Navy confirms videos did capture UFO sightings, but it calls them by another name. Three videos posted online that have been described as being related to UFO sightings do indeed include footage of “unidentified aerial phenomena,” a U.S. Navy spokesman confirmed. But as for specifics, spokesman Joseph Gradisher said the Navy doesn’t know exactly what the objects are. “The three videos (one from 2004 and two from 2015) show incursions into our military training ranges by unidentified aerial phenomena,” Gradisher told NBC News in an emailed statement. “The Navy has characterized the observed phenomena as unidentified,” he said.