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Mornings on the Mall

Thursday July 10, 2017

Hosts: Mary Walter and Tony Shaffer

5am – A/B/C Pope Francis says America has ‘a distorted vision of the world’ (CNS News) Is he right? Pope Francis told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Thursday that the United States of America—and Russia, China, North Korea and Bashar al Assad’s Syria—have “a distorted vision of the world”–(“una visione distorta del mondo,” as reported in Italian by La Repubblica).

5am – D Donald Trump, Jr. gathered members of campaign for meeting with Russian lawyer before election (Circa) Shortly before his father was formally nominated for president last summer, Donald Trump Jr. was approached by a Russian lawyer who set up a meeting to discuss a Russian policy, according to interviews with Trump family lawyers. President Trump’s eldest son briefly gathered others for the meeting, including his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as then-presidential campaign manager Paul Manafort for the meeting at Trump Tower in New York City with the lawyer, identified by Trump family lawyers as Natalia Veselnitskaya.

5am- E American gored at Pamplona bull run promises to run again (ABC News) One of the two Americans gored Saturday during this year’s second running of the bulls in the Spanish city of Pamplona is swearing that he will run again before the festival is over. Bill Hillmann, a 35-year-old writer who also was gored three years ago at the San Fermin festival, was in stable condition. The bull that led the pack thrust its horn into Hillmann’s buttocks before flipping him onto the street. “I am probably going to run tomorrow or the next day, sure at this festival,” he said. “I am already walking. The first time, I wasn’t walking for a week.”

6am – A/B/C Jihad – is it hate speech?

6am – D INTERVIEW – NILE GARDINER – Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom and Bernard and Barbara Lomas Fellow at The Heritage Foundation

Topic: G-20

• Trump had a far better G-20 than many of the press will acknowledge; speech in Warsaw was best of his presidency to date
• Important to break energy dependence to Russians to undermine Russian dominance in the region; Trump right to raise this issue in Europe
• Trump had a great meeting with Theresa May, cited support of Brexit and U.S.-U.K. trade

6am – E Nevada running out of weed one week after legalization (The Daily Caller) Nevada dispensaries are selling marijuana at such a fast rate since opening their doors July 1, the state is reporting a weed shortage that could threaten jobs in the burgeoning industry. The Nevada Department of Taxation announced Friday that less than a week into the first legal sales in the state, they must take emergency measures to ensure the steady flow of marijuana to dispensaries. Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval endorsed a “statement of emergency” from the department to adopt measures that will help bolster the marijuana supply for dispensaries by reforming rules on distributor licensing, reports USA Today.

6am – F Drunk driver goes to police to bail out drunk driver (WWLTV) The Slidell, Louisiana, Police Department says they pulled over a car and arrested the driver on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. The car was left in a parking lot, and the other people who were in the car got a cab ride home. Police say a woman who had been in the car later went back up to pick it up. They say she took the car to the police station to try to bail her friend out! They say she was also drunk and they put her in jail, too.

7am – A INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – Legal Analyst & Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia

Topic: Donald Trump, Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyer

• Trump is not a government employee now, but a private citizen, and when this occurred he was on the transition team
• We are watching the demise of organized journalism
• Congress should be issuing subpoena to Fusion GPS

7am – B Iraqi Prime Minister arrives in Mosul to declare victory over ISIS (The New York Times) Dressed in a military uniform, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived here in Mosul on Sunday to congratulate Iraq’s armed forces for wresting the city from the Islamic State. The victory marked the formal end of a bloody campaign that lasted nearly nine months, left much of Iraq’s second-largest city in ruins, killed thousands of people and displaced nearly a million more. While Iraqi troops were still mopping up the last pockets of resistance and could be facing guerrilla attacks for weeks, the military began to savor its triumph in the shattered alleyways of the old city, where the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, put up a fierce last stand. Hanging over the declaration of victory is the reality of the hard road ahead. The security forces in Mosul still face dangers, including Islamic State sleeper cells and suicide bombers. And they must clear houses rigged with explosive booby traps so civilians can return and services can be restored. Mosul was the largest city in either Iraq or Syria held by the Islamic State, and its loss signifies the waning territorial claims of a terrorist group that had its beginnings in the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The group is also threatened with the loss of its de facto capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa, which is encircled by Arab and Kurdish fighters supported by the United States.

7am – C Officer wounded in deadly ambush sues Black Lives Matter (ABC News) A federal lawsuit accuses Black Lives Matter and several movement leaders of inciting violence that led to a gunman’s deadly ambush of law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge last summer. DeRay McKesson and four other Black Lives Matter leaders are named as defendants in the suit filed Friday on behalf of one of the officers wounded in the July 17 attack by a black military veteran, who killed three other officers before he was shot dead.

7am – D/E Lawmakers to introduce legislation to grant U.S. resident status to Charlie Gard (Breitbart) Two Republican members of Congress said they plan to introduce legislation next week that would grant lawful permanent resident status in the United States to critically ill baby Charlie Gard and his parents to allow the child to leave the U.K. and receive experimental treatment in America.

8am – A INTERVIEW – RUSS READ – Foreign Policy/Pentagon Reporter at The Daily Caller News Foundation

Topic: Ceasefire in Syria

• Step in the right direction, has not received the same amount of press coverage as similar actions under President Obama
• Applies to area in southwestern Syria, likely not permanent but has chance to last beyond 48 hours
• As long as Russia is involved, that is probably a good thing

8am – B INTERVIEW – TOM FITTON – President of Judicial Watch

Topic: Gov. Terry McAuliffe facing questions

• Green car company McAuliffe helped set up now in legal trouble
• Business was opened in Mississippi; now moving to Virginia
• Litigation may result in McAuliffe being drawn into case, as rumors swirl about his political future

8am – C Trump will get first appointment to powerful D.C. appeals court (The Daily Caller) Judge Janice Rogers Brown will step down from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the coming months, giving President Donald Trump his first appointment to a court widely considered the second most powerful in the land.

8am – D Mayor de Blasio skips slain NYPD cop’s vigil to praise police in Germany (New York Post) Mayor de Blasio flew all the way to Hamburg, Germany, to praise that city’s police in a speech — while cops back home continued to mourn, without him, the assassination of one of their own in The Bronx.

8am – E Schumer calls on FDA to regulate ‘snortable chocolate’ such as Coco Loko (NY Daily News) U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer is urging federal regulators to look into a “snortable chocolate” powder, saying he’s worried that it could prove harmful and is being marketed like a drug. In a letter Saturday, the New York Democrat asked the Food and Drug Administration to investigate the use of caffeine in inhalable food products such as so-called Coco Loko. It’s gotten buzz in recent weeks.