Hans Von Spakovosky, Eli Lake, Robert Costa and Larry Kudlow joined WMAL on Tuesday!
Mornings on the Mall
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor
Executive Producer: Heather Hunter
5am – A/B/C Obama to College Students: ‘Luck’ is the Key to Success, Not Hard Work. Obama: “And that means we have to not only question the world as it is, and stand up for those African Americans who haven’t been so lucky — because, yes, you’ve worked hard, but you’ve also been lucky. That’s a pet peeve of mine: People who have been successful and don’t realize they’ve been lucky.”
5am – D 2016 News:
• Clinton braces for possible W.Va. loss in primary battle she’s moved beyond. Hillary Clinton may be headed for another loss in a Democratic primary battle she thinks she’s already won. Following his win in Indiana a week ago, Tuesday’s contest in West Virginia is part of a pocket of states voting this month, such as Oregon, where Bernie Sanders is expected to do well — even after Clinton carried a number of Eastern states in April that put her on a path to clinch the nomination.
• Wall Street to Trump: We’re with her. Hillary Clinton has received more campaign contributions from Wall Street executives than all other candidates combined, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Clinton received $344,000 from the financial services sector in March alone, according to the WSJ’s analysis of fundraising data from the Center for Responsive Politics. In total, the Democratic presidential candidate has raised $4.2 million from Wall Street. More than half of her donations in March were from Wall Street, which was up from 32 percent last year and 33 percent in January through February. Clinton’s campaign has said it raised a total of $213 million through April.
• Marco Rubio Doesn’t Want to Be Considered for Donald Trump’s Running Mate. Former GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio publicly and unequivocally said today that he does not want to be considered as Donald Trump’s running mate, writing in a post on Facebook that he still has reservations about Trump’s campaign and policies. Trump will be “best served” by someone who fully embraces his campaign and his policies, he said in a post on Facebook. “I have never sought, will not seek and do not want to be considered for Vice President,” he said in the Facebook post. Rubio wrote that he will now turn his efforts to helping conservatives get elected down the ballot in Florida and across the country.
• Ryan: I’ll step down as convention chairman if Trump asks
• Ben Carson, a Trump emissary, requests a pre-meeting with Speaker Ryan
• McConnell to meet with Trump Thursday
5am – E US sues North Carolina over transgender bathroom law. RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A potentially epic clash over transgender rights took shape Monday when the U.S. Justice Department sued North Carolina over the state’s bathroom law after the governor refused to back down. In unusually forceful language, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said North Carolina’s law requiring transgender people to use public restrooms and showers corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate amounts to “state-sponsored discrimination” and is aimed at “a problem that doesn’t exist.”
6am – A/B/C Nationals’ Bryce Harper yells ‘choice words’ at ump during win celebration. WASHINGTON — Bryce Harper was ejected from the dugout in the ninth inning of the Nationals’ 5-4 comeback win over the Detroit Tigers on Monday and then yelled at plate umpire Brian Knight as the Nationals celebrated the victory. The ejection, Harper’s first of the season and seventh of his career, occurred after Nationals shortstop Danny Espinosa was called out on strikes by Knight to start the bottom of the ninth. The next batter, pinch-hitter Clint Robinson, sent a home run just over the right-field fence to give Washington the win.
6am – D Did Facebook suppress conservative news? (CNN) — An anonymous former Facebook contractor says he witnessed colleagues suppress news about “popular conservative topics” from the website’s “trending” section. This allegation, published on Gizmodo Monday morning, ignited a debate over whether Facebook and other social media companies are prioritizing liberal viewpoints in their trending topics. Facebook says it takes “allegations of bias very seriously.” What the former worker is describing, if it happened, would have violated the company’s “trending” guidelines.
6am – E Military News:
• Army has fewest active-duty soldiers since 1940, report says. (Fox News) — The number of U.S. Army soldiers on active duty has been reduced to its lowest since 1940, according to a published report. The Army Times reported this weekend that the Army’s endstrength for March was 479,172. That’s 154 fewer soldiers than the service’s previous post-World War II low, which was reached during the Army’s post-Cold War drawdown in 1999. The current number is still well above the 269,023 soldiers on duty in 1940, the year before America entered World War II. However, the report says the active force has been reduced by more than 16,500 troops over the past year — the equivalent of about three brigades.
• Black West Point cadets under scrutiny for raised fists in photo. (CNN) It’s a time-honored tradition at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York — graduating seniors in small groups don their ceremonial high-collared uniforms and pose for a photo in front of historic Nininger Hall. Their poses are typically stern and stoic, mimicking sepia-toned editions that date back to the 1800s. They do not typically raise a clenched fist in the air. So when a photo of 16 female, African-American cadets making the gesture was posted online last month, it raised eyebrows at the elite training academy, which produces many of the nation’s future military leaders. The photo circulated among students over social media, said a school representative. Soon, it grew into an on-campus controversy — a potential break in the taboo against advocacy by military personnel. The photo gained national attention last week when a blogger popular among some in the military wrote about it after multiple cadets sent in the photo, according to the blog’s author. In posts on his blog and on his Facebook account, John Burk called the image a “completely unprofessional” reference to the Black Lives Matter movement. The Facebook post drew hundreds of comments and was shared more than 1,400 times.
7am – A INTERVIEW – HANS VON SPAKOVSKY – a former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice Department, former commissioner for the Federal Election Commission from 2006 to 2007 and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation
• US sues North Carolina over transgender bathroom law. (AP) — RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A potentially epic clash over transgender rights took shape Monday when the U.S. Justice Department sued North Carolina over the state’s bathroom law after the governor refused to back down. In unusually forceful language, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said North Carolina’s law requiring transgender people to use public restrooms and showers corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate amounts to “state-sponsored discrimination” and is aimed at “a problem that doesn’t exist.”
7am – B 2016 News:
• Clinton braces for possible W.Va. loss in primary battle she’s moved beyond.
• Wall Street to Trump: We’re with her.
• Marco Rubio Doesn’t Want to Be Considered for Donald Trump’s Running Mate.
• Ryan: I’ll step down as convention chairman if Trump asks
• Ben Carson, a Trump emissary, requests a pre-meeting with Speaker Ryan
• McConnell to meet with Trump Thursday
• Megyn Kelly previews her interview with Donald Trump. Donald Trump used two new words to describe his opinion towards Megyn Kelly: “great respect.” In an interview set to air on Fox News on May 17, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said he admired Kelly for reaching out to him on his home turf at Trump Tower for a one-on-one meeting. “I have great respect for you that you were able to call me and say, ‘Let’s get together, let’s talk,’” Trump said, admitting he probably wouldn’t have made the move himself. “To me, I would not have done that,” he said.
7am – C Washington’s streak of consecutive rainy days is longest on record. (Washington Post) — It has rained a lot lately. That’s clear to anyone living in this soggy, sun-deprived region. But you might be surprised to learn that the Washington area has never had more consecutive days with rain in its recorded history. Longest streaks with measurable rain through Sunday, May 8, 2016 when D.C. had recorded its 12th straight day with measurable rain. (NOAA Regional Climate Centers) Measurable rain (meaning at least 0.01 inches) has fallen in D.C. on a record 13 straight days, spanning April 27 and, today, May 9. This nearly two-week stretch breaks the previous record for the longest rain streak of 10 days from both July 1938 and August 1873. Records date to 1871.
7am – D INTERVIEW – ELI LAKE – Bloomberg View Columnist
• The White House is trying to put out an enormous fire surrounding one of its top aides. Obama’s ‘foreign-policy guru’ gave a shockingly blunt interview to The New York Times. The White House is scrambling to clean up the political mess created by a New York Times Magazine profile of President Barack Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, Ben Rhodes, who offered surprisingly blunt comments about the Iran nuclear deal and other contentious topics. In the interview, Rhodes was candid about how the administration has sought to shape its foreign policy, and went into some detail about how “Beltway insider” experts and reporters helped the White House sell the Iran nuclear deal to the general public. The profile has sparked backlash among those who feel that Rhodes admitted to being part of a campaign to “spin” the narrative and deceive Americans into approving the landmark nuclear deal. Rhodes’ comments also angered Washington reporters, whom he characterized as “27-year-olds” who “literally know nothing” or as “handpicked Beltway insiders” who report on the White House uncritically. And he was critical of the Washington foreign-policy establishment, which he apparently refers to as “the Blob.”
7am – E Vanity Fair writer laments the ‘heterosexual virility’ of Captain America and Bucky Barnes. An excerpt: “So while Marvel was likely never going to make the homoerotic subtext of Cap and Bucky into text, would it really have hurt to keep their relationship more ambiguous? As if to put the nail in the coffin of speculation, Bucky and Cap paused for a moment in the middle of snowy Siberia to reminisce about their days chasing skirts in pre-War Brooklyn. It’s a sweet, human bonding moment but one that also bristles with heterosexual virility. If Disney isn’t inclined to give audiences a gay superhero, couldn’t they have at least left us the dream of Bucky and Cap?”
8am – A INTERVIEW — ROBERT COSTA – National Political Reporter, The Washington Post
• COSTA: Ben Carson, a Trump emissary, requests a pre-meeting with Speaker Ryan
• COSTA: Trump aides plot general-election plan in day of meetings at RNC
• Ryan says he would step down as convention chair if Trump asks
• PREVIEW: Primaries in West Virginia and Nebraska TODAY
8am – B SPORTS NEWS:
• Clint Robinson hits walk-off home run to give Nationals wild win over Tigers. While attention was drawn to the Washington Nationals’ dugout, Clint Robinson suddenly swatted a pinch-hit, walk-off home run to right field. In a quick turn of events, Robinson was racing around the bases, unaware that he had sent the Nationals to a 5-4 win over the Detroit Tigers that ended a four-game losing streak until he rounded third base and saw his teammates waiting at home plate.
• Sources: Nationals sign Strasburg to 7-year, $175M extension. WASHINGTON — This will not be Stephen Strasburg’s last season in D.C. According to multiple reports, he and the Washington Nationals have agreed on a 7-year contract extension worth $175 million. Strasburg was eligible to become a free agent at the end of the year. He was the top overall pick in the 2009 draft and made his Major League debut the following year.
• Nationals’ Bryce Harper yells ‘choice words’ at ump during win celebration. WASHINGTON — Bryce Harper was ejected from the dugout in the ninth inning of the Nationals’ 5-4 comeback win over the Detroit Tigers on Monday and then yelled at plate umpire Brian Knight as the Nationals celebrated the victory. The ejection, Harper’s first of the season and seventh of his career, occurred after Nationals shortstop Danny Espinosa was called out on strikes by Knight to start the bottom of the ninth. The next batter, pinch-hitter Clint Robinson, sent a home run just over the right-field fence to give Washington the win.
• ESPN To Hire Randy Moss, Boot Ray Lewis And Cris Carter. Randy Moss will join ESPN, according to The Big Lead. The former NFL wide receiver was a pregame analyst for Fox Sports last season. The Worldwide Leader will reportedly shuffle off bapping analyst Cris Carter and NFL crime expert Ray Lewis.
8am – C Emails From Hillary Clinton’s IT Director at State Department Appear to Be Missing. (ABC News) — The State Department said today it can’t find Bryan Pagliano’s emails from the time he served as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s senior information technology staffer during her tenure there. Pagliano would have been required to turn over any official communications from his work account before he left the government. State Department officials say he had an official email account, but that they can’t find any of those records he would have turned over and continue to search for them. “The Department has searched for Mr. Pagliano’s email pst file and has not located one that covers the time period of Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” State Department spokesman Elizabeth Trudeau said today, referencing a file format that holds email.
8am – D INTERVIEW — LARRY KUDLOW – CNBC Senior Contributor and host of The Larry Kudlow Show on WMAL Saturdays at 7 pm
8am – E The Rock’s alarm clock app every day for a week: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson released a new app last week called the Rock Clock. Fans of “The Rock” can download the app for free on iTunes for iOS and Android. After download, the Rock Clock app first prompts users to set a goal to “chase their greatness,” and then create an alarm to “get up and get after it.” Users of “The Rock’s” new Rock Clock app say it’s annoying with no snooze button, but definitely does the job of getting them up early and motivated on “The Rock’s” time. According to “The Rock” on an Instagram post two days ago, his goal was to make an app that was “motivating, uncomplicated, funny, and free.” The Journal on Saturday listed the Rock Clock as one of their five chosen apps worth downloading for the week, saying celebrity apps “vary wildly in quality” (usually not positively), but the Rock Clock swayed them over with a daily message delivered directly from “The Rock” himself. Even though the Rock Clock app contains mild profanity and crude humor and is rated as not for children under the age of nine by iTunes, “The Rock” boasted that his new motivational alarm clock app had over one million downloads in its first week, a number that shows just how desperate people are to find a way to get up on time in the morning.