Trevor Matich, Adam Kissel, Joe Concha and Ken Cuccinelli joined WMAL on Friday morning!

Mornings on the Mall

Friday, August 9, 2019

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A         Ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe sues DOJ over dismissal. (Fox News) — Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe sued the Justice Department and the FBI Thursday over his dismissal from the bureau last year, arguing that the agencies bowed to political pressure from President Trump. The lawsuit accuses President Trump of scheming to “discredit and remove DOJ and FBI employees who were deemed to be his partisan opponents because they were not politically loyal to him” and claims former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and current FBI Director Christopher Wray created a pretext to force him out in accordance with the president’s wishes. “Trump demanded Plaintiff’s [McCabe’s] personal allegiance, he sought retaliation when Plaintiff refused to give it, and Sessions, Wray, and others served as Trump’s personal enforcers rather than the nation’s highest law enforcement officials, catering to Trump’s unlawful whims instead of honoring their oaths to uphold the Constitution,” the lawsuit says. Sessions fired McCabe on March 16, 2018, after a Justice Department inspector general report found he had repeatedly misstated his involvement in a leak to The Wall Street Journal regarding an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The watchdog office referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, which has been investigating.

5am – B/C     Trump announces new intel chief pick; No. 2 intelligence official is leaving administration.  (CNN) President Donald Trump announced Thursday night that Joseph Maguire, the leader of the National Counterterrorism Center, is his new pick to be the acting director of national intelligence. “I am pleased to inform you that the Honorable Joseph Maguire, current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will be named Acting Director of National Intelligence, effective August 15th,” Trump tweeted. The announcement came not long after Trump tweeted that Sue Gordon, the country’s number two intelligence official and an intelligence veteran of more than 30 years, would resign. White House officials had been signaling such a move for days, saying Trump would prefer to have a political loyalist in the role. Under normal protocol, Gordon would have become acting director after outgoing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats resigned. But administration officials told CNN that the White House was reviewing whether it could legally choose an acting director outside the line of succession.  Under normal protocol, Gordon would have become acting director after outgoing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats resigned. But administration officials told CNN that the White House was reviewing whether it could legally choose an acting director outside the line of succession. And two sources told CNN that Gordon was not viewed by some in the administration as the type of political loyalist Trump wanted in the role. Maguire will take over for Coats, whose last day with the administration is on August 15. In a statement Thursday, Coats praised both Gordon and Maguire.

5am – D         Armed off-duty firefighter halts armed suspect at Walmart store in Missouri, police say. (Fox News) – An armed man reportedly wearing body armor and pushing a shopping cart at a Walmart store in Missouri on Thursday led a store manager to pull the fire alarm and sent customers fleeing — but an armed off-duty firefighter was able to detain the man until police officers arrived, Springfield police said. The 20-year-old suspect was carrying loaded tactical weapons, according to reports. He was arrested at the scene and taken into custody, however, police didn’t immediately say what charges he was arrested on. “His intent obviously was to cause chaos here, and he did that,” Springfield police Lt. Mike Lucas told The Springfield News-Leader. It wasn’t immediately clear if the man who was detained told cops why he was at the store, however, the incident comes five days after a mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, that resulted in 22 deaths.

5am – E         Nadler: Committee has launched ‘formal impeachment proceedings’ against Trump. (Fox News) – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., confirmed on Thursday evening that his committee has officially launched “formal impeachment proceedings” into the alleged misconduct of President Trump. Appearing on CNN, Nadler said people shouldn’t be “hung up on the semantics” since his committee is “investigating” the facts and evidence. He said that he “wasn’t waiting” for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has been publicly reluctant to support impeachment, but added that she’s been “very cooperative” with his investigation. But after being pressed as to whether his investigation was considered “formal impeachment proceedings,” Nadler insisted that’s what it is.

6am – A/B/C BIDEN’S GAFFE-TASTIC THURSDAY IN IOWA:

• Biden says ‘poor kids’ just as bright as ‘white kids’ in latest gaffe. Biden slipped and said: “poor kids are just as smart as white kids.” He quickly corrected himself and added “wealthy kids, black kids”
• TRUTH OVER FACTS: Biden did give his thoughts about facts today in Iowa, saying: “we choose truth over facts”
• FLASHBACK: AOC: A lot of people are too concerned about being FACTUALLY CORRECT rather than MORALLY RIGHT
• BIDEN CONFRONTED OVER CHARLOTTESVILLE: Breitbart News Confronts Joe Biden About Misquoting Trump on Charlottesville.

• Breitbart News: Mr. Vice President, are you aware that you’re misquoting Donald Trump in Charlottesville, he never called neo-Nazis “very fine people”?
• Joe Biden: No, he called all those folks who walked out of that — they were neo-Nazis. Shouting hate, their veins bulging.
• Breitbart News: But he said specifically that he was condemning them.
• Joe Biden: Not specifically.
• Breitbart News: He said —
• Joe Biden: No, he did not. He said, he walked out, and he said — let’s get this straight. He said there were “very fine people” in both groups. They’re chanting antisemitic slogans, carrying flags.

• FLASHBACK: BIDEN’s ANNOUNCEMENT VIDEO scoffs at Trump’s VERY FINE PEOPLE COMMENT
• FLASHBACK: ACOSTA AND TRUMP FIGHT over NEO NAZIS and WHITE SUPREMACISTS / TRUMP says you had very fine people on both sides
• FLASHBACK: Trump CONDEMNS: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally”
• FLASHBACK: EVEN CNN’s JAKE TAPPER ADMITTED TRUMP DIDNT SAY NEO-NAZIS ARE VERY FINE PEOPLE
• This Week: Joe Biden claims is the first time he has ever heard Trump condemn white supremacy
• From March 2016 onward, Trump denounced hate groups (montage)Asked what the Obama-Biden Administration did in 8 years to stand up to China, first thing Biden cites is getting China to join the Paris Climate Accord. A reminder, the Accord was non-binding agreement with no enforcement mechanisms.

6am – D         MEDIA MADNESS:

• NY Times Finds That All of Its Trump-Bashing Isn’t Working as Planned. Faithful readers of The New York Times were probably surprised on Wednesday when reading its political column “The Upshot” as it examined both President Trump’s favorability and job approval ratings. The column is titled “Don’t Assume Trump’s Approval Rating Can’t Climb Higher. It Already Has,” and it provides some sobering analysis for the increasingly hostile Trump haters:
• Washington Post ’embarrassed’ over gaffe-filled story needing 15 corrections. Fox News / The Washington Post admitted leadership is embarrassed after the paper was forced to issue a whopping 15 corrections to one story about black families struggling to keep their southern farmland. “We are embarrassed by the widespread errors in this freelance article. We have published a detailed correction of each error and updated the story based on re-reporting by Post staff,” executive editor Marty Baron told Fox News. The story by Korsha Wilson originally ran on July 23 and has been updated after a laundry list of gaffes and inaccuracies. “A previous version of this article contained many errors and omitted context and allegations important to understanding two families’ stories. This version has been updated,” the digital version now says before it details all 15 corrections.

6am – E/F      COLLEGE NEWS:

• American University official says it plans to mandate use of preferred pronouns
• HALF OF YOUNG AMERICANS THINK COLLEGE ISN’T NECESSARY. (MarketWatch) – At 19 years old, Vivek belongs to Generation Z. And while her experience isn’t yet common, Gen Z is becoming more open to doing college differently or not going at all, according to a new study by TD Ameritrade TD, +1.43%
• 75% OF YOUNG AMERICANS TRUST COLLEGE PROFESSORS OVER POLICE/MORE LIKELY TO SAY PEOPLE CAN’T BE TRUSTED. A new survey from the Pew Research Center reports that younger Americans trust their college professors more than they trust the military, police, and church leaders. Older Americans, however, have more trust in public servants than they do in college educators.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – TREVOR MATICH – WMAL’s Redskins Analyst – recapped the first Redskins preseason & reflected on Sonny Jurgensen’s career.

• Plays that changed the Browns’ win over the Redskins 
• Sonny Jurgensen announces retirement from radio: ‘Hail to the Redskins!’

7am – B/C     MISSISSIPPI ICE RAIDS:

• 107 Mexican citizens were detained in the raids, official says. (CNN) – US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained 107 Mexican citizens in the raids, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told reporters today. What we know about the raids: The arrests took place at seven sites in six different cities in Mississippi on Wednesday, according to Mike Hurst, US attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi. The raids, he said, are “believed to be the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in our nation’s history.” Officials declined to provide details about what sites had been targeted, citing what they said was an ongoing criminal investigation. CNN affiliates reported the raids at food-processing plants throughout the state.
• Inside the decision on timing of ICE raids in Mississippi. (CNN) – Responding to criticism that the arrests of hundreds of undocumented immigrants fell on the first day of school and just after a deadly mass shooting targeting Hispanics, a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement official with direct knowledge of the raids defended the timing as “coincidental.” “This was planned for months. Well before El Paso, well before the shootings happened,” the official said. “The dates just happened to be after El Paso. On our end, this was months and months of planning by intel agents, locals. We did this under past presidents. This is business as usual for us.”
• More than 300 migrants have been released after the raids. (CNN) – From CNN’s Geneva Sands. More than 300 migrants detained after a raid Wednesday in Mississippi have been released, according to Bryan D. Cox, spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. About 270 migrants were released after being detained at a hangar and were placed into proceedings before the federal immigration courts, Cox said. Another 30 migrants were immediately released after being detained at the plants themselves, which includes nursing pregnant mothers who were not even transported to a detention facility, Cox said.
• A child’s plea to ICE: “I need my dad … He’s not a criminal.” US immigration authorities detained some 680 undocumented immigrants Wednesday in what a federal prosecutor described as a record-setting operation. The raids meant many of their children were left alone. The godmother of one girl in Morton, Mississippi, picked her up from school because her parents could not, CNN’s Dianne Gallagher reported. The girl cried as she asked ICE to let her parents go. “Government, please put your heart — let my parents be free,” she said. “I need my dad … He’s not a criminal.”

7am – D         INTERVIEW – ADAM KISSEL  – former visiting scholar at AU and former Deputy Assistant Secretary in the US Dept of Education

• American University official says it plans to mandate use of preferred pronouns. American University’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion would like to require faculty to address students by their “chosen name and pronouns,” so as to make transgender, genderqueer and gender non-conforming students feel welcome. A visiting scholar who just left AU’s Department of Management is so concerned about the proposal that he’s trying to nix it from the top. Adam Kissel, who formerly served in the Trump administration’s Department of Education, learned about the proposal after asking the center about a “pronoun guide” on the private university’s website. In a Wednesday letter to President Sylvia Burwell that he shared with The College Fix, Kissel expressed concerns about mandatory compliance with the pronoun guide. “Not only would such a policy be exclusive with respect to people who have moral views that differ from those of the official morality of AU and its Center for Diversity & Inclusion, and not only would such a policy enforce a set of alleged facts that are deeply contested in American society and among scholars,” he wrote, but this policy would also “violate AU’s promises of academic freedom and free speech.”

7am – E         SOULCYCLE AND THE MEDIA:

• The Daily Beast reports that Billionaire Stephen Ross, who owns popular fitness clubs like Equinox and SoulCycle, is hosting a fundraiser for longtime friend Donald Trump in Southampton this weekend, Out Magazine reports. The event is selling tickets as pricey as $100,000 for a photo-op with the president and $250,000 for a roundtable discussion, with the proceeds going to Trump’s re-election effort.
• Left-Wing Gasbag Michael Moore Claims He Cancelled SoulCycle Membership, But The Exercise Company Doesn’t Offer Them.  Far-left hypocrite and millionaire Michael Moore, who promises to eat the rich as soon as he finishes his next propaganda documentary, claimed on Twitter today that he is canceling his SoulCycle membership in light of the fact that the owner of the stationary exercise bike company is hosting a fundraiser for President Donald J. Trump in the Hamptons. But if Moore ever bothered to attend a SoulCyle class, or exercise at all, he would know that is not possible because the company does not offer memberships. Each participant pays per class. “That’s it! Just cancelled my @SoulCycle membership!” Moore declared on Twitter.
• MSNBC guest says he wants ‘pitchforks and torches’ outside pro-Trump Equinox chairman’s house. A guest on MSNBC called for “pitchforks and torches” outside the Hamptons residence of Equinox and SoulCycle chairman Stephen Ross after it became known that he was hosting a fundraiser for President Trump.Above The Law executive editor Elie Mystal said he had “no problem” with putting a spotlight on billionaire donors like Ross “who fund this kind of racialized hate” since people of color are “already targets” under the Trump administration. He told the panel that he was willing to “go further.” “I want pitchforks and torches outside this man’s house in the Hamptons,” Mystal said. MSNBC host Chris Hayes attempted to lower the temperature, pointing to the “peaceful protests” outside of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s house that took place earlier this week.
• SoulCycle-Obsessed Kamala Harris Silent on Boycott. Notably silent amid the liberal outrage over SoulCycle owner Stephen Ross hosting a fundraiser for Republican President Donald Trump has been Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.), who attends classes at the posh fitness studio multiple times a week. Harris, once heralded as the 2020 “candidate for the SoulCycle moment,” said last year that SoulCycle was part of her typical morning routine. “Usually it’s half an hour on the elliptical or SoulCycle, and on the weekends Soul Survivor [a longer and more intense SoulCycle class],” she told the Cut. She also told the San Francisco Chronicle she “love[s] SoulCycle” because “it’s like going to the club.”
• MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski said she “will never go there again,” and left-wing film producer Michael Moore said he canceled his membership. Mika Brzezinski @morningmika: No more soul cycle. Will never go there again.  Will never go to Hudson Yards or Equinox. Ever.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – JOE CONCHA – Media reporter, The Hill – shared his week-in-review of media madness from coverage on Trump’s comments on Baltimore, the mass shootings, conspiracy theories: 8/8 Heil Hitler! Nicole Wallace: Trump Exterminating Illegal and the strange Trump donor/Soulcycle boycotts.

8am – B/C     BIDEN’S GAFFE-TASTIC THURSDAY IN IOWA

8am – D        INTERVIEW – KEN CUCCINELLI – acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – discussed the latest DHS Border numbers and immigration raids.

• • DHS Sees More Than 20 Percent Decline In Apprehensions At U.S.-Mexico Border For Second Month In A Row. (Newsweek) – The Department of Homeland Security has seen a more than 20 percent decrease in U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border the second the month in a row since May’s record-breaking levels. DHS Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan announced the drop in a press release on Thursday, asserting that while the situation at the border “is improving by every available metric” the U.S. is still seeing irregular crossings at “beyond crisis levels.” “Just two months ago, CBP apprehended or encountered 144,000 individuals crossing our border illegally or presenting without documents at Southwest border ports of entry—the highest monthly total in 13 years,” McAleenan said. In July, that number was 82,000, a 43 percent decrease from May and a 21 percent decrease from the June numbers.” Still, the DHS chief maintained: “I want to be very clear that we remain at and beyond crisis levels in illegal crossings, even as our initiatives to address irregular flows and mitigate humanitarian conditions are making an impact.
  • 107 Mexican citizens were detained in the raids, official says. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained 107 Mexican citizens in the raids, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told reporters today. What we know about the raids: The arrests took place at seven sites in six different cities in Mississippi on Wednesday, according to Mike Hurst, US attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi. The raids, he said, are “believed to be the largest single-state immigration enforcement operation in our nation’s history.” Officials declined to provide details about what sites had been targeted, citing what they said was an ongoing criminal investigation. CNN affiliates reported the raids at food-processing plants throughout the state.