Mornings on the Mall 04.21.16

Amb. John Bolton, Frederick County Sheriff Charles Jenkins, Ken Cuccinelli and Jake Tapper joined WMAL on Thursday!

Mornings on the Mall

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 5am – A/B/C DRIVE AT FIVE INTERVIEW – BYRON YORK – Chief Political Correspondent for the Washington Examiner

TOPIC: York: What next for #NeverTrump?                   

5am – D         Currency Changes:

• Martin Luther King to go on $5 bill. Abraham Lincoln will not be the only person depicted on the $5 bill much longer. The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it will overhaul the design of the $5 note, a move overshadowed by its decision to revamp the back of the $10 bill to include women and to feature Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20. Civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., famed opera singer Marian Anderson and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt will be depicted on the back of the updated $5 bill. All three will be portrayed in historical moments in front of the Lincoln Memorial, which is currently pictured on the back of the bill. King will be shown delivering his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. Anderson will be shown performing in 1939, when concert halls were still segregated and she was banned from singing in Constitution Hall, supported by Roosevelt.
• Carson defends Andrew Jackson, calls for ‘another way’ to honor Tubman. Ben Carson criticized the decision to replace former President Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill on Wednesday, saying Jackson was a “tremendous president.” “I love Harriet Tubman. I love what she did. But we can find another way to honor her,” the former presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon said. “Maybe a $2 bill.”
• Tubman replacing Jackson on the $20, Hamilton spared. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew reverses a plan to bump Hamilton after receiving fierce blowback. Alexander Hamilton has been spared an ousting from the front of the $10 bill, and Andrew Jackson will instead be bumped from the $20 to make way for Harriet Tubman — a historic move that is helping quell a controversy over Hamilton’s legacy.

5am – E         Missing Fairfax Co. firefighter called in sick before disappearance. (WTOP)  – WASHINGTON — Fairfax County firefighter Nicole Clardy Mittendorff called in sick for her last shift before it was reported she was missing, fire officials said Wednesday. Fairfax County fire officials told reporters Mittendorff telephoned to say she was ill last Wednesday.  A text message with her father at 10:50 a.m. that day is the last known communication from the 31-year-old Woodbridge woman. Meanwhile, Mittendorff’s sister says authorities now have information from her sister’s cellphone account, which she hopes could lead to the Fairfax County firefighter. Jennifer Clardy Chalmers says Mittendorff downloaded several files to her cellphone shortly before she disappeared. Chalmers wonders whether the files could be maps, which could provide insight into where her sister was heading. Early Wednesday, Mittendorff’s wireless carrier, citing federal law, wouldn’t provide information on the data, even though Mittendorff’s father owns the account, according to Chalmers. She declined to name the wireless carrier. Nicole Mittendorff was reported missing Friday, when she failed to show up for work. Her car was found Saturday night in a remote parking lot in Shenandoah National Park.

6am – A/B/C Top Dem: Don’t name new FBI HQ after J. Edgar Hoover. The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn’t want the FBI’s new headquarters to be named after iconic and controversial former Director J. Edgar Hoover. While in office, Hoover “routinely violated the law and infringed on the constitutional rights of American citizens,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote to the head of the General Services Administration on Wednesday. “Director Hoover’s abuse of power and interference with the lawful activities of Americans betrayed the public trust in the FBI,” he added. “Given the systemic abuses carried out under Director Hoover’s leadership, it would be a mistake to associate his name with the new FBI headquarters.” The FBI is currently in the process of searching for a new headquarters to replace its current offices on Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington, across the street from the Justice Department. The current facility has been named after Hoover since it opened in 1975, but the former bureau director has grown increasingly controversial in the years since his death in 1972.

6am – D/E     ESPN fires Curt Schilling for posting anti-transgender meme. ESPN has fired baseball analyst Curt Schilling after he shared an offensive meme disparaging transgender people on his Facebook page. “ESPN is an inclusive company,” the network said in a statement Wednesday night.  “Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.” Schilling posted an unflattering photo of a man in woman’s clothing, along with a message implying that trans people who use bathrooms that align with their gender identity are predators.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — AMBASSADOR JOHN BOLTON – Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations

• White House: Obama ‘cleared the air’ with Saudi Arabia. (CNN) The White House moved to tamp down suggestions that ties with Saudi Arabia are fraying, with administration officials saying that President Barack Obama “really cleared the air” with King Salman at a meeting Wednesday. Obama landed in Riyadh earlier Wednesday for a summit with Gulf leaders and spent two-and-a-half hours meeting with the 80-year-old monarch on issues that have recently strained the alliance, including the conflict in Yemen, the role of Iran, Lebanon’s instability and the fight against ISIS, U.S. officials said.
• John Bolton: Passing ‘9/11 Bill’ Would Be ‘Folly’ for US. Passing the “9/11 bill,” which would remove nations’ immunity privileges if they participate in terrorism attacks on U.S. soil, would be “folly,” and could open the United States’ government and private citizens up “to frivolous lawsuits all over the world,” former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said Tuesday.
• Obama to Travel to the UK on Friday: Obama is scheduled to fly to the UK from Saudi Arabia. On Friday, April 22nd, the President will have a lunch with Queen Elizabeth. Following the lunch with the Queen, the President will have a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron. “We work very closely with the United Kingdom on a host of issues around the world to include the counter-ISIL campaign, counterterrorism efforts, our efforts together in Afghanistan

7am – B         2016 News:

• Walker says he would support Trump if he’s GOP nominee. It took a while for Gov. Scott Walker to commit, but he finally did on Wednesday.  Walker said he would support real estate mogul Donald Trump if he’s the GOP presidential nominee — though it’s clear the governor’s still hoping that doesn’t happen. Trump scored a sweeping victory in Tuesday’s New York primary.  “I will support the Republican running against (Democratic front-runner) Hillary Clinton in the fall — whoever that is,” Walker said at a news conference in Wauwatosa on Wednesday morning.  Even if Trump is the nominee? “Yeah,” Walker said, declining to say Trump’s name. “To me, I think it’s preferable to have a Republican nominee over Hillary Clinton. I think there’s a lot of distress not only amongst Republicans and independents, but I think part of Bernie Sanders’ support is because a lot of young voters, in particular, don’t trust her.”
• Hillary Clinton can lose every remaining primary and still win the nomination
• Hillary Clinton Aide Tells Journalist: F**k Bernie Sanders
• Kasich: “Cruz is now mathematically eliminated” — just like me
• Kasich: ‘My Republican Party doesn’t like ideas’ (Washington Post/By David Weigel) — Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) criticized his party for a lack of ideas Wednesday in a wide-ranging and occasionally combative interview with The Washington Post’s editorial board. Kasich, who sees the April 26 primary in Maryland as a way to increase his delegate total, argued that neither of his rivals could win the presidency because of their negativity. “If you don’t have ideas, you got nothing, and frankly my Republican Party doesn’t like ideas,” ­Kasich said. “They want to be negative against things. We had Reagan, okay? Saint Ron. We had Kemp, he was an idea guy. I’d say Paul Ryan is driven mostly by ideas. He likes ideas. But you talk about most of ’em, the party is knee-jerk ‘against.’ Maybe that’s how they were created.”
• Trump: I would look at Clinton indictment as president . Donald Trump on Wednesday said that as president he would examine indicting Hillary Clinton over her private email server. “Certainly that is something you would look at,” he told host Bill O’Reilly on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” “I would only do something 100 percent fair. You’d certainly have to look at it very fairly.” But Trump said that an indictment against Clinton for using a personal email server as secretary of State is ultimately unlikely. “I don’t think she will be indicted,” the GOP presidential front-runner said of his Democratic counterpart. “I think the Democratic Party will protect her. I think what she’s done is very, very serious. I think they’re a big part of her life story right now.”

7am – C         Scientists are studying what made Queen singer Freddie Mercury’s voice so amazing and unique. Scientists are studying what made Queen singer Freddie Mercury’s voice so amazing and unique. In a new scientific study, researchers conducted acoustical analysis of Queen singer Freddie Mercury’s singing voice. While he spoke in a baritone voice, Mercury had a tremendous singing range. But his real vocal superpowers were a rather unique vibrato combined with his ability to use subharmonics, like a Tuvan throat singer. The Austrian, Czech, and Swedish scientists report on their research in the journal Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology. “Perceptually, Freddie Mercury’s irregular (and typically faster) vibrato is clearly audible in the sustained notes of famous songs such as ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (A Night at the Opera) or ‘We Are the Champions’ (News of the World), and it appears to be one of the hallmarks of his vocal style,” they wrote. In other Mercury news, a notebook containing some of his last lyrics will be auctioned off at Bonham’s in June. It’s estimated to go for £50,000-£70,000.

7am – D         INTERVIEW — FREDERICK COUNTY SHERIFF CHARLES JENKINS  

• Immigrants Responsible for Gang Violence Spike in Frederick County, Sheriff Says on Capitol Hill. Gang members are recruiting in schools in Frederick County, Maryland, the sheriff said at a congressional hearing Tuesday. News4’s Chris Gordon reports.  People who immigrated to the United States illegally are responsible for an increase in gang violence in Frederick County, Maryland, the county’s sheriff said Tuesday at a congressional hearing on immigration reform. Sheriff Charles Jenkins said before the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security that immigrants in the U.S. illegally are committing crimes in the county and recruiting in local schools.

 7am – E        4/20 Day Recap:

• Snapchat under fire for Marley filter called blackface. LOS ANGELES — Visual messaging app Snapchat app came under fire Wednesday after it released a filter critics said amounted to a digital version of blackface. The filter attempts to honor late reggae icon Bob Marley by letting users take a selfie in Snapchat and then alters the image to make the user look like Marley, complete with dreadlocks, a colorful hat and brown skin. “I’m disgusted by what I’ve seen from @snapchat today, honestly can’t believe this,” wrote user @qmvia. “This Bob Marley snapchat thing is blackface in 2016 effectively. Digital disrespect,” wrote user @Elijah.
• Thousands puff for legal pot at 4/20 parties throughout US. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Thousands sent up a cheer and a collective plume of marijuana smoke at the stroke of 4:20 p.m. Wednesday in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. They gathered at the park’s “Hippie Hill” to toke up, eat and drink the afternoon away into the night. A plane dragging a banner encouraging attendees to “smoke weed” circled overhead, while unlicensed vendors set up tables and makeshift tents to sell all types and strains of bud, not to mention T-shirts, pipes and food. This year’s celebrations of all things marijuana throughout the U.S. come amid loosening restrictions and increasing tolerance for the plant’s use from Alaska to Massachusetts. Fans of the drug have long marked April 20 as a day to roll weed or munch on pot-laced brownies and call for increased legal access to it.
• ‘If you’re going to buy marijuana, please put on pants’, pleads Colorado anchor. A local TV reporter from Colorado went on a bit of a rant in a video about people buying legal marijuana without wearing ‘pants’. Jeremy Hubbard, a news anchor for KDVR-TV, said he witnessed a young lady walking into a cannabis dispensary in her underwear and said she was giving the state a bad reputation. “We gotta start putting on pants when we’re going to buy marijuana,” Hubbard said in the video. “Do your thing, knock yourself out. I see a woman hurriedly get out of her car and rush towards the door of the dispensary wearing nothing but underwear.”
• LA Times White House Correspondent Christi Parsons ‏@cparsons 15h15 hours ago: White House confirms Monday invite to DCMJ, marijuana legalization org. Not unusual for WH to meet w/both sides of this argument, aide says

8am – A            INTERVIEW — KEN CUCCINELLI –  former Virginia attorney general, Sen Ted Cuz adviser and delegate wrangler

• TOPICS: Delegate math, Trump’s whining about delegates and what’s happening at the RNC spring meeting in Florida
• Cruz is in Frederick, MD today for a rally.  Cuccinelli is currently in MD and heading back to FL for RNC meeting today
• Kasich: “Cruz is now mathematically eliminated” — just like me. Kasich’s campaign sent a tweet Wednesday afternoon highlighting an Associated Press report that found it’s now mathematically impossible for Cruz to win the nomination before the convention. “Now that Cruz is now mathematically eliminated, the only diff between him and Kasich is Kasich can defeat Clinton,” reads the tweet from the Ohio governor’s account.
• Cruz’s Delegate Czar: ‘I Call BS’ On Trump Camp’s ‘Gestapo’ Bribery Claims

8am –B          Entertainment News:

• Kelly Ripa’s sudden absence from ‘Live’ will last until at least Tuesday. Is Kelly Ripa protesting Disney’s treatment of her talk show? It sure looks that way. Ripa was absent from Wednesday’s “Live with Kelly and Michael,” and she won’t be back until next Tuesday at the earliest. ABC said in a statement that fill-ins will continue to co-host with Michael Strahan on Thursday, Friday and next Monday. The network said Ripa had a “previously-scheduled vacation” set for Friday and Monday. But it said nothing about why she will be absent on Thursday, fueling behind the scenes claims that she is furious with ABC management. The controversy started on Tuesday, when ABC announced that Strahan is leaving “Live” after four years to join “Good Morning America” full-time. Ripa and her longtime executive producer Michael Gelman found out just a few minutes before the move was announced by ABC, according to two sources who were involved. Neither of them were happy about it, according to numerous reports. TMZ described her as “caught off guard,” and “livid” at ABC’s owner, Disney, for disrespecting her long-running show. One of CNNMoney’s sources confirmed: “She is beyond angry. Beyond.”
• Paul Simon: Art Garfunkel reunion ‘out of the question.’ Paul Simon last performed with his longtime collaborator Art Garfunkel in 2010 — and, according to new comments by Simon, the iconic duo seems unlikely to reunite again. In a Rolling Stone interview, Simon said a reunion with Garfunkel was “out of the question” because the two “don’t even talk.” Garfunkel made incendiary comments about Simon to The Telegraph in May 2015, when he called Simon an “idiot” and a “jerk” and suggested the singer might have a Napoleonic complex.
• Selena Gomez’s Life Story Is Becoming a Lifetime Movie. Gomez is executive-producing alongside . . . Kevin Spacey? Who says 23-year-olds are too young to have their very own biopics? Not Selena Gomez, apparently.  Entertainment Weekly has confirmed that the actress/musician will be executive-producing her very own autobiographical drama for Lifetime—with fellow executive producers Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti (Fifty Shades of Grey, Captain Phillips, The Social Network), among others.  She won’t be the only major name to join up with the network, which also penned deals with Janet Jackson, Ronda Rousey, and Serena Williams.
• Wrestler, entertainer Chyna is dead at 46. (CNN) Joan Laurer, the ground breaking female wrestler known as Chyna, has died. Police in Redondo Beach, California confirm that Laurer, 46, was found dead in her apartment on Wednesday.  Police say they were notified by a friend who went to check on her and found Laurer unresponsive. The cause of death is under investigation, but police say there are no signs of foul play.

8am – C         Baltimore Sun Opinion Endorsed Two Candidates In the MD Senate Race: Chris Van Hollen and Chrys Kefalas.

• Kefalas for Senate: If Republicans want their best chance to win a Md. Senate seat, they should vote Kefalas. (Baltimore Sun) – The retirement of Sen. Barbara Mikulski at a time when Maryland voters are rallying around Republican Gov. Larry Hogan gives the state’s minority party the best chance it has had in a generation to capture one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats. When Republican primary voters go to the polls Tuesday, they should pick the candidate not only best positioned to take advantage of that opportunity but also to serve the state with distinction in Washington, and that is attorney Chrys Kefalas. Mr. Kefalas is just 36, but he has a tremendous resume of experience that prepares him to succeed in the Senate. He served as deputy legal counsel under Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., handling hundreds of executive clemency requests (as well as helping to defend the administration from a Democratic investigation of hiring and firing practices). He worked for the U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder to foster the growing bi-partisan consensus around criminal justice reform.
• Van Hollen for Senate: Which of the Democrats running for Senate is most effective? That’s an easy call. (Baltimore Sun) – U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski has long been a phenomenally popular political figure in this state. She may be short in stature, but she is fearless, feisty and as authentic as a box of Old Bay seasoning. Just ask the voters of Maryland. To them, she’s still the same neighborhood activist from Highlandtown who fought an ill-considered waterfront highway and was elected to the City Council in 1971 and the U.S. House of Representatives five years later. In the hard-fought Democratic primary, the choice is clear: Rep. Chris Van Hollen Jr. is by far the most qualified candidate to carry on the Mikulski tradition. The seven-term congressman from Montgomery County has demonstrated the same kind of leadership skills and devotion to progressive causes whether in the halls of the state Senate in Annapolis or in Congress. His rise from Rep. Connie Morella’s successor in 2003 to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assistant three years later marked his arrival as someone who could get things done within the chamber.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — JAKE TAPPER – Anchor of The Lead and State of the Union on CNN – discussed state of play of the election ahead of Tuesday’s primaries.

• Scott Walker says he would support Trump if he’s GOP nominee. “I will support the Republican running against (Democratic front-runner) Hillary Clinton in the fall — whoever that is,” Walker said at a news conference in Wauwatosa on Wednesday morning. Even if Trump is the nominee? “Yeah,” Walker said, declining to say Trump’s name.
• Internal campaign memo projects Trump will win 1,400 delegates at GOP convention. The next primary is April 26, when five states vote. Stay caught up with the race. (Washington Post) — Donald Trump’s campaign advisers believe the billionaire mogul is emerging as the “prohibitive favorite” in the Republican presidential race and project that he will accumulate more than 1,400 delegates to secure the nomination on the first round of balloting at the party’s Cleveland convention, according to an internal campaign memorandum. The projections come in a memo distributed to Trump surrogates late Tuesday night containing talking points for use in media interviews this week.“Our projections call for us to accumulate over 1400 delegates and thus a first ballot nomination win in Cleveland.” Candidates need at least 1,237 delegates to win the nomination. Trump has 845 delegates, with Cruz at 559 and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 147, according to calculations by the Associated Press. Trump hopes to pass the threshold by winning primaries between now and June and by courting the roughly 200 or so convention delegates who are unbound.
• Clinton on track to capture Democratic nomination. NEW YORK (AP) — Hillary Clinton can lose every remaining primary in the coming weeks and still clinch the nomination. With Clinton’s double-digit win in New York and more than two dozen new superdelegates joining her camp, rival Bernie Sanders now faces a far steeper path.

8am – E         Supreme Court skeptical of drunken-driving breath tests without warrants. WASHINGTON — A majority of Supreme Court justices cast doubt Wednesday on drunken-driving laws in 13 states that make it a crime for drivers to refuse breath or blood tests sought by police without a warrant. While many justices acknowledged the laws’ good intentions — to crack down on drunken driving, particularly in rural states such as Minnesota and North Dakota that are plagued with the problem — they wondered why police can’t get warrants first. “You’re asking for an extraordinary exception here,” Justice Anthony Kennedy told lawyers representing the two states and the federal government. “You’re asking for us to make it a crime to exercise what many people think of as a constitutional right.” Even so, several justices indicated they might be willing to allow the criminal sanction for refusing Breathalyzer tests without warrants, since the intrusion is minimal. Blood or urine tests, they said, would require a warrant under the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. “What is wrong with a Breathalyzer test when it can save lots of lives and is given to those people where there is probable cause … or at least reasonable suspicion to think they’re drunk?” asked Justice Stephen Breyer. The three cases under review were filed by drivers in Minnesota and North Dakota who were charged with a crime after they refused to take “deep-lung” breath tests. Eleven other states have similar laws: Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.