Allegany Commissioner William Valentine, Steve Moore, Catherine Herridge, Rep. Trey Gowdy and Jake Tapper joined WMAL on Thursday!

Mornings on the Mall

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C  Senators to airlines: Drop bag fees to shorten airport lines. DALLAS (AP) — Two U.S. senators say one way to reduce long airport security lines this summer is for airlines to drop their fees on checking luggage. It’s the latest suggestion for dealing with what could be a hellish summer at the nation’s airports. Airlines are already warning passengers to arrive at least two hours early to get through security and catch their flights. Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal said Tuesday they asked executives at 12 airlines to drop checked-bag fees this summer. The senators say suspending the fees won’t eliminate lines but it’s a start. A spokeswoman for the nation’s largest airlines called the senators’ proposal a misguided attempt to re-regulate airlines and warned it could make airline travel more expensive — fares would rise to offset the loss of income from fees.

5am – D         Area 51 News:

• Obama not planning to release Area 51 files. UFO enthusiasts will have to wait for a Hillary Clinton presidency to get more information from the government about the possible existence of aliens from outer space. The Democratic presidential front-runner has promised to release information about Area 51 — a Nevada Air Force base where many believe the U.S. keeps top secret information about extraterrestrial beings — if she is elected president.  But President Obama has no plans to open up government files on the matter, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.  “I have to admit that I don’t have a tab in my briefing book for Area 51,” Earnest said after he was asked whether the president wants to beat Clinton to the punch before he leaves office.  “Because it has been taken out?” one reporter asked.  “Maybe it has,” Earnest joked. “Part of a grand conspiracy.” The spokesman smiled and said he is “not aware of any plans the president has to make public any information about this,” adding that he’s not sure whether Obama has reviewed any government files on extraterrestrial life forms. Contrary to Clinton, Obama has frequently joked about UFOs. Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel asked Obama last year if he had ever tried to get to the bottom of conspiracy theories surrounding Area 51.  “The aliens won’t let it happen,” Obama joked. “You’d reveal all their secrets. They exercise strict control over us.”
• Hillary Clinton pledges to release government info on Area 51. WASHINGTON, May 11 (UPI) — Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is giving hope to a small but committed group of extraterrestrial believers they will finally find out if the truth really is out there. Clinton has promised to do what presidents for the last 60 years have so far refused: release government documents related to Area 51, the remote section of Edwards Air Force Base in the Nevada desert that many alien enthusiasts believe is the site of alien encounters.

5am – E         Hillary News:

• Comey rebuffs Clinton claim FBI only conducting ‘security inquiry’ on emails
• New Benghazi Witness Says U.S. Military Could Have Saved Lives That Day. A member of the U.S. Air Force, who was stationed in Italy during the 2012 Benghazi attacks, insisted Wednesday that the U.S. could have done more to help the four Americans who died that night. “I definitely believe that our aircraft could have taken off and got there in a timely manner, maybe three hours at the most, in order to…at least stop that second mortar attack and have those guys running for the hills, and basically save lives that day,” the man, who chose not to reveal his identity, said on Fox News’ “Special Report.”

6am – A/B/C Chevy Chase chickens get to stay — for now.  (Washington Post) – Two D.C. lawyers who sued the city after it threatened to confiscate their chickens have won an initial battle. Allison Sheedy and Daniel McInnis of the 3900 block of Jenifer Street NW filed suit last month after the Health Department said the four birds the couple and their four children keep in the back yard of a 10,000-square-foot Chevy Chase double lot had to be removed. “Plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm if Animal Control (or indeed the police, as the Department of Health suggested may be the case), seized their chickens and impounded them at a yet undisclosed location outside of the care of Plaintiffs for an indefinite amount of time,” the couple wrote in a request for a restraining order to prevent the chickens from being seized. “Plaintiffs’ children would be devastated.” A hearing on the restraining order was scheduled for Wednesday, but Sheedy said the city “backed off” and asked the couple to withdraw its request for the order, agreeing not to immediately take their birds. “We are pleased that the Department of Health will let us keep our children’s chickens for now,” Sheedy wrote in an email to The Washington Post. The city confirmed the chicken cease-fire.

6am – D         Meghan McCain: ‘Millennial Women Are Gonna Flock’ to Donald Trump. On Fox’s Outnumbered Wednesday, co-host Meghan McCain argued that “millennial women are gonna flock” to Donald Trump. McCain added that young women were likely to support Trump “especially after all the things about Bill Clinton and his past are coming out.” Bernie Sanders‘ persistence in the primary was also a factor, she said, since it indicated that Hillary Clinton was a weak candidate for being unable to clinch the primary “this late in the game.” Sanders’ “supporters are angry, they’re vitriolic, they want — they feel the election has been stolen from them. And I seriously see a lot of people online, a lot of young women especially, saying, ‘I’m gonna go to Trump, #NeverHillary,’” she said.

6am – E         Entertainment News:

• Mick Jagger and Keith Richards can’t stand each other. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards can’t stand each other and keep playing together only because the Rolling Stones bring in the kind of money neither could earn alone, a shocking new Stones memoir reveals. The Glimmer Twins turned gloomy toward each other in the 1980s, writes rock journalist Rich Cohen in “The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones,” his freewheeling memoir of life on the road with the band. But what really incensed Jagger was Richards’ now-legendary autobiography, “Life,” published in October 2010. Jagger, Cohen reveals, first found out about the incendiary material in the book when he drove up to Richards’ Connecticut home to read a galley of it before publication.
• Captain America reportedly has a girlfriend. Captain America has a new damsel to protect. Chris Evans is reportedly dating actress Jenny Slate following the end of her three-year marriage to Dean Fleischer-Camp. Evans and Slate, both 34, reportedly went on a double date with Evans’ brother, Scott Evans, at a Hollywood restaurant in March, an insider told Us Weekly. The pair, who star in the upcoming drama “Gifted,” set for release later this year, gave a joint interview on “Unqualified,” Anna Faris’ podcast, last month and only had sweet things to say about each other.
• Apparently, We’ve All Been Mishearing the First Line of Jennifer Lopez and Ja Rule’s ‘I’m Real.’ This is what J. Lo’s really saying. A recent discovery by Jezebel has us wondering if we ever really knew early ’00s J. Lo at all. If you’ve ever heard her Ja Rule collaboration “I’m Real (Remix),” you know that it begins with the rapper scream-asking J. Lo, “What’s my motherf*king name?” To which we thought J. Lo replied, “Are you Ellie?” A weird lyric to sing back to Ja Rule, but honestly at this point, we were probably too busy dancing to care. Some people have also posited that it’s “Are you ready?” which makes more sense, but apparently that isn’t what she’s saying either. We’ve all been wrong this whole time — because according to Jezebel, she’s actually saying “R-U-L-E,” which makes sense because, you know, it’s Ja Rule’s name.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — Allegany County Commissioner WILLIAM “BILL” VALENTINE

• Maryland county sued over court’s Ten Commandments monument. CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) — A county official in Maryland says he will defend the presence of a Ten Commandments monument in front of the local courthouse as a historic artifact originating from a 1950s campaign to promote the famous Charlton Heston film about Moses. The Cumberland Times-News reports that Jeffrey Davis recently filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the monument’s placement in the court’s front lawn violates the U.S. Constitution. Allegany County Commissioner William R. Valentine says the monument doesn’t favor one religion over another. He says he considers the monument to be a historic monument, rather than a religious one, because it was intended to promote the 1956 film “The Ten Commandments.”

7am – B         2016 News:

• Trump, Ryan to meet amid growing Republican calls to unify. (Fox News) — Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump took a conciliatory tone toward House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., late Wednesday ahead of a planned sitdown on Capitol Hill.  When asked by Fox News’ Greta van Susteren, “Who is the leader of the Republican Party today?”, the real estate mogul responded, “Well, I would say Paul Ryan … for the time being and maybe for a long time.” Trump is scheduled to meet twice with Ryan Thursday, once alongside Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Reince Priebus and again with Ryan’s House leadership team. Trump is also expected to meet with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other top Senate Republicans.
• Trump: Banning Muslim immigration is ‘just a suggestion’ Trump told Brian Kilmeade: “It’s a temporary ban. It hasn’t been called for yet. Nobody’s done it. This is just a suggestion until we find out what’s going on.” And later on FOX News, Trump said: “That’s why it was temporary. Sure, I’d back off on it. I’d like to back off on it as soon as possible because, frankly, I’d like to see something happen.”
• Mitt Romney: Trump’s Decision To Not Release Tax Returns Is ‘Disqualifying.’ Mitt Romney, former 2012 Republican presidential nominee, says Donald Trump must make his tax returns public. A day after de facto Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said “there’s nothing to learn” from making his tax returns public before this November’s elections, the billionaire is taking heat from the party’s 2012 nominee over that stance. “It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters,” said Mitt Romney in a post on Facebook. Trump insists he won’t release his returns until the Internal Revenue Service has finished auditing them.

7am – C         Tylenol may decrease empathy, study shows. (USA Today) — Popping a Tylenol might get rid of your headache, but it also could numb your feelings. A new study published by The Ohio State University in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience shows when people took acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol, they were less likely to empathize with individuals experiencing pain or misfortune. “Pain might actually decrease empathy as well. So, there are other factors that need to be taken into account,” said Dominik Mischkowski, co-author of the study and current post doctorate fellow at the National Institutes of Health. He added the sample size is small and researchers are continuing to study the effect.

7am – D         INTERVIEW — STEVE MOORE — Economist and a Trump economic adviser

• Trump launches tax plan rewrite. The GOP front-runner asks influential conservatives to help cut the price of his proposal.

7am – E         Max Scherzer ties MLB record with 20 strikeouts. (USA Today) —

Washington Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer tied the MLB record of 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game Wednesday night. Scherzer tied the record in a six-hit 3-2 complete-game victory against the Detroit Tigers. Scherzer, whose career high was 17 strikeouts, tied the previous nine-inning mark of 20 shared by Roger Clemens, Kerry Wood and Randy Johnson. “I think it was about the eighth inning when I punched out somebody and they said that was 18, that was the first time I heard the number, so I knew I had a shot at going out for the ninth and 20,” said Scherzer.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — CATHERINE HERRIDGE – Chief Intelligence correspondent for the Fox News Channel.

• Comey rebuffs Clinton claim FBI only conducting ‘security inquiry’ on emails

8am – B/C     INTERVIEW — Select Committee on Benghazi CHAIRMAN TREY GOWDY (R-SC)

• New Benghazi Witness Says U.S. Military Could Have Saved Lives That Day. A member of the U.S. Air Force, who was stationed in Italy during the 2012 Benghazi attacks, insisted Wednesday that the U.S. could have done more to help the four Americans who died that night. “I definitely believe that our aircraft could have taken off and got there in a timely manner, maybe three hours at the most, in order to…at least stop that second mortar attack and have those guys running for the hills, and basically save lives that day,” the man, who chose not to reveal his identity, said on Fox News’ “Special Report.” The man also shot down the military’s claim that a refueling tanker was not available at the time, claiming the excuse was invalid because U.S. jets frequently refuel using a “hot pit maneuver,” allowing jets to touch down to get fuel without turning their engines off.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — JAKE TAPPER — Anchor of The Lead and State of the Union on CNN

• Trump, Ryan to meet amid growing Republican calls to unify. (Fox News) — Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump took a conciliatory tone toward House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., late Wednesday ahead of a planned sitdown on Capitol Hill.  When asked by Fox News’ Greta van Susteren, “Who is the leader of the Republican Party today?”, the real estate mogul responded, “Well, I would say Paul Ryan … for the time being and maybe for a long time.” Trump is scheduled to meet twice with Ryan Thursday, once alongside Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Reince Priebus and again with Ryan’s House leadership team. Trump is also expected to meet with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other top Senate Republicans.

8am – E         Rain Record: Record rain streak hits 15 days in D.C. and threatens to stretch into next week. (Washington Post) — Washington’s record-breaking streak of rainy days is a survivor, and there may be no stopping it. The same pattern responsible for this barrage of rain may recharge next week. The streak almost ended Tuesday. Almost. At 11 p.m. Tuesday, the Washington area had just recorded a trace of rain for the day. Yet in its final hour, 0.01 inches of rain fell, and the record-breaking streak with measurable rain lived on, growing to 14 days. More rain has fallen today, extending the number of consecutive days with measurable rainfall to 15! That’s five more than the previous record of rainy streaks (10 days), from 1938 and 1873. We are in uncharted territory.