Mornings on the Mall

Friday, January 31, 2020

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

Alexandra Phillips, Joe Theismann, and Breit Baier joined WMAL on Friday! 

5am – A/B/C Do you care more about the SuperBowl or the 2020 election? A new poll published by Seton Hall University, comparing sports and politics shows that 28 percent of American men would rather see their favorite professional sports team win a Super Bowl or World Series than their choice of presidential candidate win the upcoming 2020 election. Sixty-four percent said they would rather see their favorite candidate win the presidency, while 8 percent said they didn’t know. The women surveyed answered differently with ony 11 percent in favor of their favorite team and 84 percent leaning towards wanting their choice of candidate to win the 2020 election. The remaining 5 percent said they didn’t know or had no opinion.

5am – D CORONA VIRUS:

• WHO declares public health emergency over coronavirus The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday declared a public health emergency of international concern over the outbreak of coronavirus. “The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China, but because of what is happening in other countries,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO. “Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems, and which are ill-prepared to deal with it,” he added. The cases have been centered in China, and the WHO said it has confidence in China’s response to the virus. The declaration, which the WHO previously declined to make, comes as the virus spreads to more countries. There are now 98 cases in 18 countries outside of China, the organization said, including cases of human-to-human transmission in four countries: Germany, Japan, Vietnam and the United States. The first person-to-person transmission in the United States was reported Thursday in a person in Chicago who contracted the virus from his spouse who had recently returned from China, but officials said the risk to the general American public remains low.
• American Airlines pilots union sues to stop flights to China amid coronavirus outbreak
• FROM CNN: Coronavirus task force another example of Trump administration’s lack of diversity (by Brandon Tensley) it’s a statement that’s as predictable as it is infuriating: President Donald Trump’s administration lacks diversity. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted photos of a briefing he’d received on the new coronavirus spreading out of China “We will continue to monitor the ongoing developments,” the President said in his post. “We have the best experts anywhere in the world, and they are on top of it 24/7!” Who are these experts? They’re largely the same sorts of white men (and a couple women on the sidelines) who’ve dominated the Trump administration from the very beginning. By contrast, former President Barack Obama’s circle of advisers in the face of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa was hardly so monochromatic. Neither was it so abysmal in terms of gender diversity. (Of course, to contextualize, Obama’s administration, on the whole, was far more diverse than Trump’s.) And yet, as unsurprising as the diversity issue in the Trump era has become, it’s still worth pointing out from time to time, especially as the country approaches the 2020 presidential election in earnest That’s partly because the recent photos of “the best experts” telegraph the kinds of people the administration deems worthy of holding power — and even being in close proximity to it. They communicate a “patronage network that everyone is operating under,” as Eric Yellin, an associate professor of history and American studies at the University of Richmond, told The Washington Post last year, about a different set of photos. “Having that network be interracial is really important.” But the visuals that have come to define the Trump administration say something else, too. They signal which people in a multi-racial, half-female country Trump values the opinions of: mostly white men who are mirror images of the President himself.

5am – E  A postal worker rented a storage unit to hide mail because he felt ‘pressured’ to deliver it (CNN) A United States postal worker was caught with a public storage unit full of mail he never delivered. Jason Delacruz pleaded guilty to charges of delay of mail by a postal employee in August 2019. He is set to be sentenced on February 12. Delacruz, who worked as a mail carrier in Chesapeake, Virginia, said he felt “pressured” and couldn’t “make time” to complete his mail route, according to court documents. He told authorities that he rented a public storage unit for $49 per month for “the sole purpose of storing mail he could not deliver.” The employee said he started hiding mail in November or December 2018 and he rented the storage unit in February 2019, according to court records. He said he put mail he was unable to deliver in the unit from that time up until he was discovered in May 2019.

6am – A/B/C/D IMPEACHMENT NEWS:

• Swing-vote GOP Sen. Alexander comes out against witnesses, paving way for imminent Trump acquittal
• Susan Collins says she’ll vote in favor of witnesses.
• Adam Schiff talked 454% more than lead Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow
• Rand Paul Reveals the Question Justice Roberts Refused to Read During Impeachment Trial
• Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., seemed to visibly irritate Chief Justice John Roberts when she formally asked a question about him during President Trump’s impeachment trial Thursday that questioned the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and Constitution in light of the fact there have been no witnesses yet called.

6am – E ‘We love Europe, we just hate the European Union’: Nigel Farage blasts EU during goodbye speech

6am – F Virginia Approves Gun Control Laws Despite Second Amendment Protests

7am – A INTERVIEW – ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS — a member of the European Parliament and a rising star of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. She is a former Nigel Farage’s chief of staff for more than a decade and is a former BBC journalist.

TOPIC: BREXIT DAY – Brexit: What happens after January 31 – Brexit day will transform the UK’s relationship with Europe, shift the country’s place in the world and herald a new era in international relations.

7am – B/C 2020 DEM NEWS:

• Bloomberg surges past Warren into third place in new national poll
• During a campaign event in Iowa Sunday, Elizabeth Warren said “a young trans person [had] asked about a welcoming community and I said, ‘It starts with the Secretary of Education, who has a lot to do with where we spend our money’ … and I said, ‘I’m going to have a Secretary of Education that this young trans person interviews on my behalf,’” She added that “only if this person believes that our Secretary of Education nominee is committed to creating a welcoming environment, a safe environment, and a full educational curriculum for everyone, will that person be advanced to actually be Secretary of Education.”
• BUZZFEED: The DNC Approved And Kept Private A Generous Exit Package For Tom Perez And Two Top Deputies
• A lawyer for Hillary Clinton has finally accepted legal documents in connection with a $50 million defamation lawsuit filed by 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman’s lawyer told Fox News on Thursday night.

7am – D  INTERVIEW – JOE THEISMANN – Legendary former Washington Redskins quarterback

TOPIC: Preview Super Bowl Sunday

7am – E FLASHBACK: This 1987 Joe Biden News Segment Caught The Presidential Hopeful Lying Over And Over And Over Again  A news clip from 1987 finds multiple examples of former Vice President Joe Biden appearing to lie about his background and plagiarizing other politicians during the 1988 presidential campaign. The video — which appears to be multiple segments compiled together — starts out with a news clip highlighting then-presidential hopeful and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden‘s comments during his appearance at the Iowa State Fair where he “used phrases identical” to that of British Labour Party Leader Neal Kinnock.

8am A/B/C – Should the SuperBowl move from Sunday to Saturday?

8am – D  INTERVIEW – BRET BAIER – Anchor of “Special Report” on Fox News Channel weekdays at 6 pm and author of the latest book “Three Days at the Brink: FDR’s Daring Gamble to Win World War II”

Topic:  the latest news on the impeachment trial and preview Iowa caucuses on Monday, State of the Union on Tuesday/ Trump in Iowa

8am – E His dog was saved from a deadly cancer. He bought a $6M Super Bowl ad to thank the vet.  (NBC NEWS) David MacNeil’s 7-year-old golden retriever, Scout, collapsed in summer 2019, and a veterinarian told him the dog had cancer and one month to live, according to NBC Madison, Wisconsin affiliate WMTV. He took Scout, who serves as his company’s unofficial mascot, to the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine. The dog had a one percent chance of survival, but doctors at the veterinary school treated Scout with aggressive chemotherapy and radiation that nearly eradicated his tumor. MacNeil was so grateful he took out the ad, a 30-second spot called “Lucky Dog” that opens with Scout running on the beach and tells the story of his survival. The spot encourages viewers to donate to the veterinary school’s research.