Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, Ric Edelman and Larry Kudlow joined WMAL on Tuesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Mary Walter

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C New Poll Finds Majority of Americans Have Smoked Marijuana, (NBC News) — Planning on celebrating 4/20 this Thursday? You aren’t alone. According to a new poll released Monday, 52 percent of Americans over 18 have tried marijuana at some point in their lives. The survey conducted by Yahoo News and Marist Poll found that not only have most adults in the U.S. smoked pot, 44 percent of those who tried it once still use it today. The poll, titled Weed and the American Family, looks at everything from family views on marijuana use to regulation, entertainment, social acceptability, and more. And of course it comes just in time for the unofficial holiday of cannabis culture that falls on April 20th each year. The poll also found that American parents aren’t that worried about their kids smoking weed. Out of all parents surveyed (not just those who had tried marijuana), the leading concern is a fear that their kids will smoke cigarettes. It was true in reverse, too: those surveyed said they thought their own parents would be more upset if they smoked tobacco rather than marijuana. While more than 8 in 10 Americans (83 percent) support legalizing medical marijuana, people are evenly split on recreational policy — 49 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana for recreational use while 47 percent oppose it, according to the poll.

5am – D         NORTH KOREA NEWS:

• US says era of ‘strategic patience’ with North Korea is over. The war of words between North Korea and the United States continues to ratchet up. After North Korea attempted a missile launch that reportedly failed on Sunday, US vice-president Mike Pence on Monday warned the Kim Jong-un regime not to test Washington’s resolve, and warned them that the era of “strategic patience” was over.  The “strategic patience” doctrine, which was used by the previous Barack Obama administration, hinged on the US focusing on isolating North Korea by putting pressure on them through sanctions.
• US Deploys Two More Aircraft Carriers Toward Korean Peninsula: Yonhap. According to a report by South Korea’s primary news outlet, Yonhap, the Pentagon has directed a total of three US aircraft carriers toward the Korean Peninsula, citing a South Korean government source. Yonhap reports that in addition to the CVN-70 Carl Vinson, which is expected to arrive off the South Korean coast on April 25, the CVN-76 Ronald Reagan – currently in home port in Yokosuka, Japan – and the CVN-68 Nimitz carrier group – currently undergoing final pre-deployment assessment, Composite Training Unit Exercise off Oregon – will enter the Sea of Japan next week.  According to the senior government official. the US and South Korea are discussing joint drills, which will include the three aircraft carriers and other ships. USS Carl Vinson, surrounded by a fleet of US warships, was sent by Washington toward the Korean Peninsula in the beginning of April.
• China and Russia shadow US ‘armada’ of aircraft carriers heading to North Korea. Japanese media says Beijing and Moscow are deploying spy vessels to monitor the USS Carl Vinson China and Russia have dispatched spy vessels to shadow a fleet of US aircraft carriers heading to North Korean waters.  Beijing has sought Moscow’s help in averting the mounting crisis over Pyongyang’s repeated nuclear tests.  US President Donald Trump has sent a navy group led by the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson into the region as a signal to the secretive dictatorship about its nuclear programme.

5am – E         ATVs, Dirt Bikes Spotted in Arlington Again (Patch) — It’s the third time in the last week that a group of people illegally riding ATVs and dirt bikes on Arlington roads has been reported. ARLINGTON, VA — It appears that the ATVs and dirt biker riders who caused a ruckus a week ago in Arlington aren’t going away, at least not yet. They were spotted again riding along Route 50 in the county Sunday evening, a week after they rolled through twice in less than 24 hours with police following behind. WJLA posted video of multiple ATVs and dirt bikes headed along Route 50. The group eventually got on southbound Route 1 and headed into Alexandria. The video is embedded at the bottom of this post. The first incident happened at around midnight on Saturday, April 8. A group of 15 to 20 ATV and dirt bike riders went the wrong way across the Key Bridge into Rosslyn in Arlington after “wreaking havoc” in the Georgetown area, with Arlington County Police following them, according to one user on Twitter. Not long after, they rode down S. Joyce Street in front of Pentagon Row with two police cars following them. Both cars had their lights flashing but no sirens, and made no attempt to stop the group. Ashley Savage, an Arlington County Police spokesperson, confirmed that police started following the group after being advised by the Metropolitan Police Department that they were entering Arlington. The police cars followed them until they  entered the District of Columbia at 12:12 a.m. Driving all-terrain vehicles on public highways or other private property is prohibited by Virginia law. No citations were issued to the group.

6am – A         IMMIGRATION NEWS:

• Nevada Sec. State: DMV Instructed Employees To Register Non-Citizens To Vote. (Daily Caller/Kerry Picket) — Nevada’s Secretary of State blamed the Department of Motor Vehicles voter registration process for adding people to the state voter rolls who were not U.S. Citizens. Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske told state DMV director, Terri Albertson in a letter Friday evening about her concerns regarding the registrations. “It has come to our attention that when offering voter registration opportunities to customers, DMV’s employees offer voter registration materials to DMV customers whom they know to be non-citizens based upon their presentation of a Green Card for identification purposes,” Cegavske wrote.
• City Council votes in favor of making Hyattsville a Sanctuary City. (WJLA) — HYATTSVILLE, Md. (ABC7) — The Hyattsville City Council in Prince George’s County voted 8-2 in favor of making the city a Sanctuary City Monday night. Monday night’s vote was the final adoption of the ordinance. On April 3, the Council voted on the ordinance for the first time, which also received an 8-2 vote. A “Sanctuary City” is one that does not intervene in federal immigration matters and is further explained in the following portion of the ordinance that was voted on by the city council.
• President Trump to sign executive order targeting foreign work visas. President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order titled “Buy American, Hire American” Tuesday morning in Kenosha, Wisconsin, calling on agencies to overhaul the H-1B visa program. The order calls on the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to “take prompt action to crack down on fraud and abuse” within the U.S. immigration system to “protect workers.” The order doesn’t seem to change the status of existing visa waiver rules in the United States and instead orders departments to review and identify potential “abuses” of the visa waiver system.

6am – B         Revelations About Hillary’s Election Night:

• Obama Had To Pressure Hillary Multiple Times To Concede On Election Night. (Daily Caller) — The presidential election of 2016 shocked the world, but no one was more shocked than Hillary Clinton. A new book on the Clinton campaign contains the revelation that Clinton had to be pressured into conceding her loss on election night by President Barack Obama. “POTUS doesn’t think it’s wise to drag this out,” White House political director David Simas is reported as saying to Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager. The campaign did not concede at that point. Later, President Obama himself called and told Clinton, “You need to concede.” The president then repeated the demand to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta shortly thereafter. While she didn’t publicly concede on election night — she waited until morning to address supporters —  The Washington Post reports the calls from Obama had the desired impact. “At last, Clinton said, ‘Give me the phone.’ And then the first woman who was going to be president got her opponent on the line and said two words she never expected to say: ‘Congratulations, Donald.’” The calls from President Obama started after Wisconsin was called for Donald Trump. The Post reports, “President Barack Obama thought it was over and did not want a messy recount.”
• New Book ‘Shattered’ Details Clinton Campaign Shortfalls. (Newsmax) – A new book details what went wrong with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign last year, and it ultimately places the blame on Clinton herself. The New York Times reviews “Shattered,” written by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. The authors interviewed more than 100 people for the book and compiled a post-mortem on the campaign that many thought would win the election but ended up at the short end of the electoral college stick. Clinton “bears the blame for her defeat,” the Times quotes the book as reading. The scandals around her family’s foundation and her email use while she was secretary of state, along with the speeches she gave to Wall Street banks, “hamstrung her own chances so badly that she couldn’t recover.” The authors wrote Clinton was unable to “cast herself as anything but a lifelong insider when so much of the country had lost faith in its institutions.”

6am – C         CAPS LOSE: Capitals fail to ‘Own the big moments,’ fall behind in first-round series vs. Toronto. (Washington Post) — TORONTO — There’s an emblem the Washington Capitals have stuck onto a door in their locker room. It’s a smiling skull with “Own the big moments” written around the edge of it. The phrase was taken from forward Justin Williams, who repeatedly said Washington didn’t do just that in its disappointing postseason run a year ago. They had it printed on the back of their team shirts before the season. The logo traveled with the Capitals to Air Canada Centre, staring back at them in the visiting locker room as a third straight game in this first-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs went to overtime. Less than two minutes into the extra period, it was Toronto who owned the moment after Tyler Bozak’s power-play goal lifted the Maple Leafs to a 4-3 win and a 2-1 series lead.

6am – D/E     CURSING IN PUBLIC: A 17 year old is arrested for allegedly shouting the “F” bomb and “disturbing the peace” of a 75 year old woman…

6am – F         White House defends keeping visitor logs secret. (The Hill) — The White House is defending its decision to not voluntarily disclose records of who is visiting the White House complex, a policy that breaks with the prior administration and has attracted criticism from government watchdog groups.  Press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that the White House will comply with federal records laws, while dismissing what he described as the Obama administration’s “faux attempt” at transparency. “It’s about following the law,” Spicer said. “We’re following the law as both the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act prescribe it. It’s the same policy that every administration had up until the Obama administration. The faux attempt that the Obama administration put out where they would scrub who they didn’t want put out didn’t serve anyone well.” “We maintain the same policy that every other administration did coming up here,” Spicer continued. “And the last one, frankly, was a faux level of doing that because when you go through and scrub everyone’s name out you don’t want everyone to know, that really is not an honest attempt at doing it. We’re going to follow the law the way that every administration has followed up until the last one.” Under the Trump administration’s policy, the records will be kept secret until five years after the president leaves office.The White House has argued that “the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually” provoked its stance on keeping the records secret for now.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — LT. COL. RALPH PETERS – Fox News Strategic Analyst –discussed the latest developments on North Korea and Trump’s foreign policy.

7am – B         Entertainment News:

• Elvis would have never been on Facebook, says Priscilla. (Page Six) – Priscilla Presley may have gotten divorced from her late husband nearly 44 years ago, but she still has fond memories of The King. “I miss his laughter,” said the 71-year-old to news.com.au. “His laughter was so contagious. He’d start and everyone would start — they didn’t know what they were laughing about, they just got so much enjoyment from being with him.” Even though the couple would divorce in 1973 after five years of marriage, Presley said they remained close and raised their daughter Lisa Marie together until his death in 1977 at age 42. And while she’s gotten more accustomed to living in a society ruled by social media, she believes her former husband, who was notoriously private, wouldn’t be doing the same if he were still alive. “I could not see him doing that at all!” said Presley when asked if he would be on Twitter and Instagram. “He just never got into the fame thing. He performed, but if you look back he hardly did any interviews. He did what he was supposed to do, but he wasn’t into it. He was a very private person. I definitely can’t see him on social media. We joked about this before with some of the inner-circle, saying that ‘Elvis would never be on Facebook!’” “He just wasn’t that guy,” she added. “He was so much more into his art and music than being Elvis Presley.”
• Melissa Etheridge reveals she smokes weed with her kids: (E Online) — In an effort to reduce the stigma around marijuana, Melissa Etheridge opened up about her experiences with the highly-debated drug on Yahoo!’s Weed & the American Family online platform. Most surprisingly, Melissa opened up about smoking marijuana with her two oldest children. “It was funny at first, and then they realized it is a very natural end of the day,” said the two-time Grammy winner. “It brings you closer.” Melissa shared how she much rather smoke with her grown kids Bailey, 20, and Beckett, 18, than have a drink with them.
• Homeland’ Actor Wonders If ‘White Men’ In Gov Are The Real ‘Bad Guys.’ Appearing as a guest on Friday’s Meet the Press Daily on MSNBC, liberal actor Mandy Patinkin of Showtime’s Homeland series bizarrely seemed to suggest that “white men” in both the government and the military are “the bad guys” in their dealings with Muslims.
• Original bottle from 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie will go to auction – and it could fetch ‘more than $100,000’  (Daily Mail) — The original genie bottle used in the iconic 1960s TV show I Dream of Jeannie has emerged for sale with an auctioneer estimating it could make more than $100,000. The distinctive prop was owned for more than three decades by the show’s first director, who found it in a store window and decided it would be perfect for the new program. I Dream of Jeannie, an NBC sitcom starring Barbara Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie and Larry Hagman as her master, astronaut Tony Nelson, was created by Sidney Sheldon in 1965, in response to the great success of rival network ABC’s Bewitched. Gene Nelson directed the pilot and the first 13 episodes, but left the show after repeated conflicts with Hagman. The 14ins-tall glass bottle was not created for the show, but was actually a special Christmas 1964 edition Jim Beam bourbon whiskey decanter.

7am – C         Gorsuch did not hold back in first day of arguments, with one big exception. (Washington Examiner) — Through his first two hours of oral arguments on Monday, Justice Neil Gorsuch questioned every attorney who came before him with one exception: Neal Katyal. Gorsuch’s silence during Katyal’s arguments is noteworthy, as the newest justice played the role of a happy antagonist throughout the rest of the day’s hearings. Unlike during the Senate hearings on his nomination, Gorsuch was not shy about injecting himself into the various cases and controversies before him. Katyal, who was arguing at the Supreme Court in Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates involving a zoning dispute, introduced Gorsuch at Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on his high court nomination. Katyal effusively praised Gorsuch last month as a judge who “displayed a resolute commitment to the rule of law and the judiciary’s independence.” On Monday, Gorsuch did not say a word when Katyal came before the Supreme Court. Gorsuch waited until after five of his fellow justices asked questions in Monday’s first case, Anthony Perry v. Merit Systems Protection Board, before piping up. But when Gorsuch spoke up in the case, which involves which lower court holds jurisdiction over a discrimination claim brought by a federal employee, Gorsuch did not hold back. Gorsuch repeatedly questioned Christopher Landau, the lawyer for the plaintiff, and Brian Fletcher, assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, to point him to the statute at issue to make their case. Gorsuch delivered his questions and remarks with a persistent smile and drew laughs at times through the courtroom.

7am – D/E     Hogan Plan to Relieve I-270 Delays “Not All That Innovative,” Says Montgomery Council President. ROCKVILLE – (WMAL) Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s recently released plan to relieve the prodigious delays on Interstate 270 through Montgomery County already has a critic in that county: the County Council President, Roger Berliner, who called the plan “not all that innovative” at a Monday press conference. “This is the much-ballyhooed $100 million ‘innovative approach’ that many of us thought was not going to address what needs to be addressed,” Berliner said. “This is trying to do something on the cheap.” Hogan’s plan calls for reconfiguring some entrance and exit ramps, adding lanes in some short distances, and explores adding ramp metering to stagger the timing of cars entering the highway. The plan also looks at variable speed limits depending on traffic conditions. “We have seen nothing with respect to travel time savings, so how are we to assess the merits of the proposal without understanding actually what it does?” Berliner said. Berliner again floated a solution county leaders have long sought – additional High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes. “We asked for HOV lanes heading south to be provided from Clarksburg on down,” Berliner said. “That easily could’ve been accommodated in this kind of proposal.”

8am – A/B/C INTERVIEW – RIC EDELMAN – one of the top finance experts in the world, host of the RIC EDELMAN SHOW on WMAL on Saturdays at 10 AM and author of NEW BOOK “THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR FUTURE” – discussed tax refunds and his new book.

8am – D         INTERVIEW —  LARRY KUDLOW – CNBC Senior Contributor and host of The Larry Kudlow Show on WMAL Saturdays at 7 pm and author of “JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity”

• Mnuchin: August deadline for tax reform ‘not realistic at this point.’ Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Monday the Trump administration’s target date to get tax reforms through Congress and on President Trump’s desk was “not realistic at this point.” Mnuchin said in an interview with the Financial Times that the August deadline is set to falter following setbacks with Congress over health care. “It is fair to say it is probably delayed a bit because of the healthcare,” Mnuchin told the paper.
• President Trump to sign executive order targeting foreign work visas. President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order titled “Buy American, Hire American” Tuesday morning in Kenosha, Wisconsin, calling on agencies to overhaul the H-1B visa program. The order calls on the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to “take prompt action to crack down on fraud and abuse” within the U.S. immigration system to “protect workers.” The order doesn’t seem to change the status of existing visa waiver rules in the United States and instead orders departments to review and identify potential “abuses” of the visa waiver system. The president will travel to Wisconsin today and is expected to tout his “Buy American, Hire American” agenda during a visit to Snap-on-Tools — a manufacturer of high-end tools and equipment that, according to their website, employs approximately 11,500 people worldwide. He will talk about his buy America, hire America agenda at Snap-on Tools in Wisconsin,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said. “For those who aren’t aware, Snap-on is a prime example of a company that builds American-made tools, with American workers for U.S. taxpayers.” This marks the president’s first visit to Speaker Paul Ryan’s home state and district since taking office.

8am – E         CRITTER NEWS:

• Fox suspected of spoiling Easter egg hunt in Vienna. WASHINGTON —A sneaky fox is suspected of ruining a family’s Easter egg hunt Sunday morning. Micha Joffee put out 36 eggs around his home in Vienna, Virginia, at around 11 p.m. Saturday in preparation for his children’s Easter Egg Hunt in the morning. To Joffee’s surprise, his 8-year-old and 3-year-old only found six eggs. Joffee said he believed teenagers might have stolen the eggs and decided to review surveillance tapes from outside his home. The tapes show a fox snooping around the bushes in the front yard of Joffee’s home at 3:23 a.m.
• FIRED BECAUSE OF A TURKEY: The 88-year-old Walmart greeter who was working the doors the day a wild turkey wound up inside the store says he was shocked to learn a few days later that he’d been fired because of the incident.
• 88-year-old Walmart greeter fired after wild turkey wanders into store. WAUKESHA, Wis. — The 88-year-old Walmart greeter who was working the doors the day a wild turkey wound up inside the store says he was shocked to learn a few days later that he’d been fired because of the incident.  Bob Tallinger said he was told that he should have alerted a manager when he first encountered the bird. His wife, Janet Tallinger, said her husband’s termination is unfair. “He was hired to be a greeter and that’s what he did. He never saw a book of rules that said if a wild turkey comes in here you better run and get management,” she said. “Granted he’s gotten older and granted he’s lost a little memory but nevertheless that hasn’t prevented him from being an excellent greeter.”