Michael Auslin, Dan Bongino, Elizabeth Schultz and Roy Spencer joined WMAL on Tuesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

5am – A/B/C TRUMP’S INNER CIRCLE DISPARAGING HIM: (Breitbart) — In the past several days, several members of President Donald J. Trump’s inner circle have publicly disparaged him – and the president has done nothing public to stop them.

FIREWORKS OVER TARIFFS: President Donald Trump tore into his own advisors and demanded the U.S. slap tariffs on trade rivals during an August Oval Office tirade. The lecture, which the White House didn’t deny, called out ‘globalists’ in his administration who had resisted instructions by the president to impose stronger measures on China – who Trump said was ‘laughing’ at the U.S

5am – D         HARVEY NEWS:

• HARVEY By The Numbers:

    8 deaths confirmed as of Monday afternoon

27 inches of rain in 48 hours in parts of Houston this weekend.

9 trillion gallons of rain has fallen in Texas.

2,000 water rescues in affected areas.

56,000 calls to 911 as of Monday morning.

30,000 people displaced and expected in shelters.

13 million people directly affected by the storm, and subject to flood warnings.

Close to 350,000 power outages over the weekend.

3,000 National Guard and Texas State Guard members serving affected areas.

500 vehicles and 14 aircraft mobilized for rescue efforts.

130,000 meals a day provided by the American Red Cross.

92 ambulances deployed to Houston.

130 mph sustained winds when Harvey made landfall on Friday as a Category 4 hurricane.

• Donald And Melania To Texas (Breitbart) — President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump plan to visit Texas on Tuesday in the wake of the Hurricane Harvey, according to the White House. Details of the trip are still being worked out, but Texas governor Greg Abbot confirmed that the president will not interrupt rescue efforts in Houston, Texas after the city was hit with heavy flooding. Houston is expecting more heavy rains on Monday. “The place he will be going to will not be Houston so will not be getting into harm’s way or interrupting the evacuations or emergency response in the Houston area,” Abbot said on CBS “This Morning.” Abbot signaled that Trump would be going to Texas areas that were first hit by the storm, where cleanup has already begun. He said that FEMA’s response under Trump’s leadership was “remarkable,” and that Texas officials were coordinating with federal officials a week in advance for the storm

5am – E         TRUMP/RUSSIA – IT’S BAAACK

• Trump signed ‘letter of intent’ for Russian tower during campaign, lawyer says. Four months into his campaign for President of the United States, Donald Trump signed a “letter of intent” to pursue a Trump Tower-style building development in Moscow, according to a statement from the then-Trump Organization chief counsel, Michael Cohen. The proposal would have involved construction of the world’s tallest building in Moscow, according to developers of the project. The involvement of then-candidate Trump in a proposed Russian skyscraper deal contradicts repeated statements Trump made during the campaign, including telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that his business had “no relationship to Russia whatsoever.” The disclosure from Cohen, who has described himself as President Trump’s personal lawyer, came as Cohen’s attorney gave congressional investigators scores of documents and emails from the campaign, including several pertaining to the Moscow development idea.
• Making sense of the Trump Tower Moscow stories: The Washington Post reported last night on the existence of an ultimately abandoned plan to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow during late 2015 and early 2016 — right before the start of the 2016 presidential primaries. And today, the NYT and WaPo dropped two new reports detailing emails about the project from Felix Sater, a Trump business associate, and Michael Cohen, a close friend of Trump’ s and an executive vice president at The Trump Organization.
• Sater’s emails were sent to Cohen and boasted of connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin that would allow the project to get completed and help “get Donald elected.”
• Cohen emailed Putin’s personal spokesman to ask for help in getting the stalled project started again.
• The kicker: ABC News continued the pile on this afternoon with a report that Trump knew about the Moscow project and had personally signed a letter of intent for it, contradicting his repeated assertions that he has had no business dealings in Russia.
• Why it matters: Emails show the Trump Organization was pursuing a major deal in Russia while Trump was running for president, and simultaneously claiming he had nothing to do with Russia.  The leaks put a new focus on Michael Cohen, a Trump lawyer who was very close to the boss when he was in Trump Tower.    Axios’ Jonathan Swan reports that sources close to the White House have been worried about Cohen as a figure in the investigation, because his financial dealings are inextricably bound up in Trump’s and lead, at best, to some “colorful” characters.
• Report: Mueller investigating Trump’s role in Don Jr.-Russia meeting response. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s federal investigators are zeroing in on the president’s role in responding to reports that his son, Donald Trump Jr., met with a Russian government lawyer in Trump Tower last year, “three sources familiar with the matter” told NBC News. They’re interested in learning what Trump knew about the meeting and whether he tried to hide its purpose. The initial response on July 8 was that Trump Jr. “was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person [he] would be meeting with beforehand.” Trump “weighed in” on that statement, according to the White House. It was revealed the next day that Trump Jr. had been told he’d be presented with “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton].”

6am – A/B/C Trump lifts ban on military gear to local police forces. (USA Today) – WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Monday lifted a controversial ban on the transfer of some surplus military equipment to police departments whose battlefield-style response to rioting in a St. Louis suburb three years ago prompted a halt to the program. The new plan takes effect immediately and fully rolls back an Obama administration executive order that blocked armored vehicles, large-caliber weapons, ammunition and other heavy equipment from being re-purposed from foreign battlefields to America’s streets. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who led the  campaign for the program’s reinstatement, outlined the President Trump’s new executive order Monday in an address to the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, suggesting that Obama’s directive was a concession to political pressure applied by civil rights advocates. “We will not put superficial concerns above public safety,” Sessions told the group gathered in Nashville, Tenn. “All you need to do is turn on a TV right now to see that for Houstonians this isn’t about appearances, it’s about getting the job done and getting everyone to safety.”

6am – D         ARPAIO-FLAKE NEWS:

• Defending Arpaio: Trump stood by his decision as “the right thing to do” and defended the pardon’s timing — a Friday evening as Harvey took aim at the Texas coast — by saying that he expected cable news ratings to be “far higher” given the storm.
• New Poll Says Flake Is In Deep Trouble In Arizona GOP Primary. The JMC Analytics poll said that if the GOP primary for the 2018 election was held over the weekend challenger Kelli Ward would be ahead with 47 percent, and Sen. Flake would be behind with 21 percent. Twenty-nine percent of Republican voters said they were undecided.
• Joe Arpaio may challenge Jeff Flake for Arizona Senate seat: After receiving President Trump’s first pardon, Joe Arpaio’s plans have gone from possible prison to book-writing, speeches and potentially another run for office in Arizona, with Sen. Jeff Flake’s seat one opportunity he is eyeing. The former Maricopa County sheriff told the Washington Examiner he’s upset at negative reaction to the Friday pardon, and that he feels Republican politicians are insufficiently supportive of the president, who he calls a great man.

6am – E         AMAZON LOWERING PRICES AT WHOLE FOODS: Amazon kicked off its first day as the owner of Whole Foods by slashing prices on milk, produce, meat and more.  NEW YORK (AP) — A half-gallon of milk was 50 cents cheaper at a Whole Foods in New York. Ground beef was down by $2 a pound. And an organic avocado cost a buck less. Amazon kicked off its first day as the owner of Whole Foods by slashing prices, adding its logo on signs and setting up a stand of “farm fresh” Amazon Echo voice-assistant devices by store entrances. It’s just the first taste of the moves the e-commerce giant will make at the organic grocer after it completed the $13.7 billion deal on Monday.

More changes are coming: The company aims to make Amazon Prime the rewards program at Whole Foods and some Whole Foods products will show up on Amazon’s site. The deal could also spur big changes in how people shop for groceries overall.

6am – F         Fairfax Co. election will fill at-large school board seat. WASHINGTON — Voters in Fairfax County, Virginia, go to the polls to select an at-large member for the county’s school board. The election is Tuesday, Aug. 29. Four candidates want to succeed Jeanette Hough, who resigned to join her husband on an overseas work assignment. The term lasts until Dec. 31, 2019.

7am – A         ANTIFA NEWS:

• ‘Antifa’ violence in Berkeley spurs soul-searching within leftist activist community. (LA Times) Of the dozens of organizations that turned out for Sunday’s mass protest against racism here, one group was impossible to miss. Its members dressed head to toe in black, with masked faces and some bearing pastel-painted riot shields that read “no hate.” These 100 or so militants billed themselves as a security force for progressive counter-protesters, vowing to protect them from far-right agitators. But as the protest got underway, some of those in masks would resort to mob violence, attacking a small showing of supporters of President Trump and others they accused, sometimes inaccurately, of being white supremacists or Nazis. The graphic videos of those attacks have spurred soul-searching within the leftist activist movement in the Bay Area and beyond. Emotions remain raw in the wake of this month’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., which left one woman dead and dozens injured.
• WaPo Gives Stunningly Accurate Account Of Antifa Attacks On ‘Peaceful Protestors.’  A pepper-spray-wielding Trump supporter was smacked to the ground with homemade shields. Another was attacked by five black-clad antifa members, each windmilling kicks and punches into a man desperately trying to protect himself. A conservative group leader retreated for safety behind a line of riot police as marchers chucked water bottles, shot off pepper spray and screamed, “Fascist go home!”
• Scarborough Rips Berkeley College For Failing To Defend Free Speech
• Boothe: Where Are The Democrats To Denounce This?
• Scarborough Rips Berkeley College For Failing To Defend Free Speech. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough ripped the University of California, Berkeley’s response to the violence that broke out Sunday, when members of Antifa attacked peaceful protesters who were marching against Marxism.
• Lisa Boothe: ‘I Haven’t Seen’ Dems Denouncing Antifa. Fox News’ Lisa Boothe called out Democrats on Monday for failing to denounce the violent rioting from left-wing Antifa groups. Boothe said that while Republicans have denounced the white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, VA, she has yet to hear of Democratic leaders doing the same for Antifa, who have attacked peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley, CA. “I think what we need to see is marginalizing these hate groups, like we saw when so many people came together to denounce what we saw in Charlottesville,” Boothe said. “Unfortunately, we’re not seeing that same rebuke of groups like Antifa.”

7am – B/C INTERVIEW – MICHAEL AUSLIN – Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia, Hoover Institution and author of “The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region”

• North Korea fires missile over Japan’s airspace: reports
• North Korea missile an unprecedented serious and grave threat to Japan- Japan Prime Minister Abe

7am – D INTERVIEW – DAN BONGINO – former Secret Service agent and author of the book “The Fight: A Secret Service Agent’s Inside Account of Security Failings and the Political Machine”

• Donald And Melania To Texas (Breitbart) — President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump plan to visit Texas on Tuesday in the wake of the Hurricane Harvey, according to the White House. Details of the trip are still being worked out, but Texas governor Greg Abbot confirmed that the president will not interrupt rescue efforts in Houston, Texas after the city was hit with heavy flooding.
• What kind of security considerations go into the Secret Service’s planning when visiting a disaster area?
• Ahead of flood tour, Trump vows Texas will get all the funds needed despite shutdown threat. WASHINGTON – President Trump promised Monday that Texas will get whatever funds it needs to rebuild from Hurricane Harvey, despite his threat to force a government shutdown next month if Congress refuses to pay for a wall along the Mexico border. “It has nothing to do with it,” he said, asked about the potential standoff by The Dallas Morning News at an East Room news conference. “You’re going to have what you need and it’s going to go fast.”
• Trump ends restrictions on giving surplus military gear to local police agencies (USA Today) — WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Monday lifted a controversial ban on the transfer of some surplus military equipment to police departments whose battlefield-style response to rioting in a St. Louis suburb three years ago prompted a halt to the program. The new plan takes effect immediately and fully rolls back an Obama administration executive order that blocked armored vehicles, large-caliber weapons, ammunition and other heavy equipment from being re-purposed from foreign battlefields to America’s streets. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who led the  campaign for the program’s reinstatement, outlined the President Trump’s new executive order Monday in an address to the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, suggesting that Obama’s directive was a concession to political pressure applied by civil rights advocates.

7am – E         HILLARY’S BOOK TOUR:

• A Year After The Election, Hillary Will Finally Visit Wisconsin. (Daily Caller) — Hillary Clinton will stop in Wisconsin for her book tour, a state she notoriously skipped during the presidential election. Clinton was the first major-party nominee since 1972 to skip Wisconsin during the general election, and she ended up losing the state and the election to President Donald Trump. Since her defeat, Clinton wrote “What Happened,” a memoir of her time on the campaign trail. The book comes out Sept. 12, and included on her initial list of stops is an event in Milwaukee on Nov. 9. Her book tour will also include three stops in Canada, and a stop in Michigan, another traditionally Democratic state went for Trump.
• Hillary – the live show: Clinton to tell audiences her ‘personal, raw, detailed and surprisingly funny story’ in unprecedented nationwide tour with tickets selling for up to $1,200. (Daily Mail) — Hillary Clinton will be back in the spotlight this fall for an unprecedented, big-ticket book tour for her new tome What Happened, with tickets priced as high as $1,200.  On Monday, the ex-Democratic nominee announced ‘Hillary Clinton Live,’ a 15-city tour, which includes stops in a handful of states she lost in the election last year.  Promotional materials for her first stop, at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., promises Clinton plans to ‘let loose’ and tell her audience a ‘personal, raw, detailed and surprisingly funny story’ of her election loss and recovery. The website promoting the tour, HillaryClintonBookTour.com, features a quote from Clinton too. Top-tier ticket packages in those cities cost $3,000 Canadian dollars for two seats, or, in American dollars, about $1,200 a pop. There are cheaper seats in the states with tickets costing between $50 and $350 to see Clinton in Broward, Florida – another state that she lost to now-President Trump.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — ELIZABETH SCHULTZ – Fairfax County School Board member

• Fairfax Co. election will fill at-large school board seat. WASHINGTON — Voters in Fairfax County, Virginia, go to the polls to select an at-large member for the county’s school board. The election is Tuesday, Aug. 29. Four candidates want to succeed Jeanette Hough, who resigned to join her husband on an overseas work assignment. The term lasts until Dec. 31, 2019.

8am – B/C     After Charlottesville, UMD’s marching band will stop playing the pro-Confederate state song. The University of Maryland’s marching band is no longer playing the pro-Confederate state song, “Maryland, My Maryland.” “As part of the university’s efforts to reaffirm our values as a campus community, we are assessing the songs that are played at Intercollegiate Athletic events. We are suspending the playing of ‘Maryland, My Maryland’ to evaluate if it is consistent with the values of our institution at this time,” university spokeswoman Katie Lawson said in a statement. The song is being cut from the marching band’s repertoire as a result of the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 12 — when white supremacist protests turned violent and a woman died after a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters — band director Eli Osterloh said in a Facebook message to band members.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — DR ROY SPENCER – Climatologist, former NASA scientist and author of “An Inconvenient Deception: How Al Gore Distorts Climate Science and Energy Policy”

• BIO: Roy W. Spencer is a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He was formerly a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA. He is co-developer of the original satellite method for precise monitoring of global temperatures from Earth-orbiting satellites. He has provided congressional testimony several times on the subject of global warming and authored the 2008 New York Times bestseller, Climate Confusion.
• TOPIC: Discuss the science behind Hurricane Harvey:
• CNN anchor tries to tie Hurricane Harvey to climate change — then scientist shuts him down

8am – E         Entertainment News:

• ‘It was the closest relationship she had’: Whitney Houston WAS in a lesbian relationship with her assistant and friends believe coming out of the closet could have SAVED her life
• Kid Rock Has Right Stuff for Senate … Says Smokey Robinson
• Caitlyn Jenner ambushed by trans woman over Trump support at an LGBT event in Los Angeles. (Daily Mail) – Caitlyn Jenner was ambushed by a trans woman over her support of Donald Trump. The reality star, 67 was attending the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles on Saturday night when she was confronted by Ashlee Marie Preston. The activist and journalist found it ‘ridiculous’ that Caitlyn – a trans woman herself – allegedly continues to support Trump after he authorized banning trans people from serving in the military on Friday. ‘You’re a f**king fraud and a fake,’ said Preston. In the video posted on Preston’s Facebook page, Jenner stood in the audience as Preston approached the celebrity formerly known as Bruce Jenner. As Jenner went in for a hug, Preston began to berate Jenner for what she believes is a wrongdoing to the trans community.