Mornings on the Mall

Monday, June 6, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C Trump defends criticism of judge with Mexican heritage. Washington (CNN)Donald Trump on Friday vociferously — and repeatedly — defended his claims that a judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University is biased because of his Mexican heritage, pushing back against criticism that his objections are racist. Trump, pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper more than 20 times on whether he was invoking racism in his attacks on the judge, continued to point to his plans to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and renegotiate trade agreements between the two countries as justification and validation of his critiques. The presumptive GOP nominee said U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a federal district judge in the Southern District of California, has made “rulings that people can’t even believe.” “He’s proud of his his heritage. I respect him for that,” Trump said, dismissing charges that his allegation was racist. “He’s a Mexican. We’re building a wall between here and Mexico.”

5am – D         Hillary Clinton Won’t Say if Right to Bear Arms Is Constitutional Right.

‘If it is a constitutional right, then it … is subject to reasonable regulations’ (Washington Free Beacon) — Hillary Clinton couldn’t definitively say Sunday that the Second Amendment of the Constitution guaranteed the right to bear arms during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. Republican rival Donald Trump has charged that Clinton wants to abolish the amendment. While Stephanopoulos said he knew that wasn’t true, he pressed her on her gun views that have increasingly gone to the left.  Clinton then went into her gun control platform, but Stephanopoulos hit her for dodging his question, noting the D.C. vs. Heller decision that protected an individual’s right to have a firearm for lawful purposes. “And the Heller decision also does say there can be some restrictions, but that’s not what I asked,” he said. “I said, do you believe that their conclusion that an individual’s right to bear arms is a constitutional right?” “If it is a constitutional right, then it, like every other constitutional right, is subject to reasonable regulations, and what people have done with that decision is to take it as far as they possibly can and reject what has been our history from the very beginning of the republic, where some of the earliest laws that were passed were about firearms,” Clinton said.

6am – A/B/C Why 70 percent of kids quit sports by age 13. (Washington Post/By Julianna W. Miner) – According to a poll from the National Alliance for Youth Sports, around 70 percent of kids in the United States stop playing organized sports by the age of 13 because “it’s just not fun anymore.”  I have three kids, all of whom play sports, and my oldest is about to turn 13. I may not have understood why this was happening a few years ago, but sadly, knowing what I know now, the mass exodus of 13-year-olds from organized sports makes perfect sense to me. “It’s not fun anymore” isn’t the problem; it’s a consequence of a number of cultural, economic and systemic issues that result in our kids turning away from organized sports at a time when they could benefit from them the most. Playing sports offers everything from physical activity, experiencing success and bouncing back from failure to taking calculated risks and dealing with the consequences to working as a team and getting away from the ubiquitous presence of screens. Our middle-schoolers need sports now more than ever.

6am – D         Muhammad Ali Remembered: Obama, Celebrities, Athletes Pay Tribute to an Icon. (ABC News) — Following the death of three-time heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali at age 74 Friday, President Barack Obama, other politicians, celebrities, and media personalities paid tribute to the iconic boxer. Obama described Ali as “a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t.” But, Obama, said, “For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes.” Former president Bill Clinton released a lengthy statement about three hours after the passing of Ali was announced, on behalf of himself and his Democratic presidential hopeful wife Hillary Clinton. “Hillary and I are saddened by the passing of Muhammad Ali,” the statement read. “From the day he claimed the Olympic gold medal in 1960, boxing fans across the world knew they were seeing a blend of beauty and grace, speed and strength that may never be matched again.” The Bernie Sanders campaign followed, saying, “Muhammad Ali was the greatest, not only an extraordinary athlete but a man of great courage and humanity.” Donald Trump was the first presidential hopeful to react, though, tweeting “Muhammad Ali is dead at 74! A truly great champion and a wonderful guy. He will be missed by all!”

6am – E         INTERVIEW – STEVE BURNS – WMAL’s Reporter on-the-ground at a metro in Virginia

• MONDAY COMMUTE: How Metro’s SafeTrack plan will affect your trip. Whether you ride a train to work or not, you should be prepared for delays as a result of the first phase of Metro’s SafeTrack. WASHINGTON – Monday’s morning rush hour marks the first commute since Metro began it’s year-long SafeTrack maintenance project, and it’s expected to be a tough ride– whether you’re taking the train or not. The first phase of construction lasts until June 16, and it means trains are single-tracking at the Ballston and East Falls Church stations in Arlington. Workers were down on the tracks making repairs at Ballston Sunday evening. Orange and Silver Line riders will be most impacted by the first surge, with trains running more infrequently– but the work is expected to have a ripple effect on other commuters as well.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia

• Ohio prosecutor to announce decision Monday on whether family in zoo case will face charges. (ABC News) —  An Ohio prosecutor plans to release his decision Monday on whether he will pursue charges against the family of a 3-year-old boy who got into the Cincinnati Zoo’s gorilla exhibit, leading to the fatal shooting of an endangered gorilla to protect the child. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters has scheduled an afternoon news conference, in which he’s expected to discuss his conclusions after a review into the family’s actions.
• Clinton IT Aide Ordered To Produce Immunity Agreement. (The Hill) — A federal judge has ordered a former State Department IT expert to hand over the immunity agreement he has reportedly reached with the Justice Department as part of the investigation connected to Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The order late on Friday afternoon postpones Bryan Pagliano’s deposition with conservative watchdog organization Judicial Watch until further notice. But on Friday, Judge Emmet Sullivan declared that Pagliano’s lawyers need to file a legal memorandum outlining the legal authority for him to claim plead the Fifth, “including requisite details pertaining to the scope of Mr. Pagliano’s reported immunity agreement with the government.”  The order will likely shed some light on the terms of Pagliano’s agreement with the Justice Department, which was seen as a potential vulnerability for Clinton in the FBI’s probe. Law enforcement officials are exploring whether Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information through the use of her private server.
• Madeleine Albright: “Nobody Is Going To Die” As A Result Of Hillary Clinton’s Emails (RCP) — MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE told CNN: Well, first of all, the e-mail issue, she has said she made a mistake, and nobody is going to die as a result of anything that happened on e-mails. I am concerned about some of the statements that Donald Trump has made that are dangerous.
• Trump defends criticism of judge with Mexican heritage. Washington (CNN)Donald Trump on Friday vociferously — and repeatedly — defended his claims that a judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University is biased because of his Mexican heritage, pushing back against criticism that his objections are racist. Trump, pressed by CNN’s Jake Tapper more than 20 times on whether he was invoking racism in his attacks on the judge, continued to point to his plans to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and renegotiate trade agreements between the two countries as justification and validation of his critiques. The presumptive GOP nominee said U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a federal district judge in the Southern District of California, has made “rulings that people can’t even believe.” “He’s proud of his his heritage. I respect him for that,” Trump said, dismissing charges that his allegation was racist. “He’s a Mexican. We’re building a wall between here and Mexico.”

7am – B         Miss D.C., a 26-year-old Army officer and IT analyst, wins the Miss USA pageant. For the first time in 14 years (and only third time in history), Miss District of Columbia took home the crown at the Miss USA pageant on Sunday night. Deshauna Barber, a 26-year-old Army officer and IT analyst for the U.S. Department of Commerce, won first place over Miss Georgia Emanii Davis and Miss Hawaii Chelsea Hardin, the runner-up. Barber, who graduated from Virginia State University in 2011, joined the military at age 17. According to her Miss USA bio, Barber is currently a logistics commander for the 988th Quartermaster Detachment Unit in Fort Meade, Md. During the pageant, announcers called her “the most disciplined contestant this year.” Her background added context to her much-applauded answer during the Q&A portion of the evening, as her question covered women in combat. “The Pentagon recently made the decision to open up all combat jobs to women,” judge and stylist Joe Zee said. “Now, some have questioned whether this has put political correctness over our military’s ability to perform at the highest level. What are your thoughts?” Barber didn’t hesitate. “As a woman in the United States Army, I think it was an amazing job by our government to allow women to integrate to every branch of the military. We are just as tough as men,” she said to lots of cheers from the crowd. “As a commander of my unit, I am powerful. I am dedicated. And it is important that we recognize that gender does not limit us in the United States Army.”

7am – C         Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war, again. Guess who’s winning? (Washington Post) — When the traffic on Timothy Connor’s quiet Maryland street suddenly jumped by several hundred cars an hour, he knew who was partly to blame: the disembodied female voice he could hear through the occasional open window saying, “Continue on Elm Avenue . . . .” The marked detour around a months-long road repair was several blocks away. But plenty of drivers were finding a shortcut past Connor’s Takoma Park house, slaloming around dog walkers and curbside basketball hoops, thanks to Waze and other navigation apps. “I could see them looking down at their phones,” said Connor, a water engineer at a federal agency. “We had traffic jams, people were honking. It was pretty harrowing.” And so Connor borrowed a tactic he read about from the car wars of Southern California and other traffic-weary regions: He became a Waze impostor. Every rush hour, he went on the Google-owned social-media app and posted false reports of a wreck, speed trap or other blockage on his street, hoping to deflect some of the flow. He continued his guerrilla counterattack for two weeks before the app booted him off, apparently detecting a saboteur in its ranks.

7am – D         INTERVIEW — AL WEAVER — Campaign Reporter with the Washington Examiner

• TOPIC: Latest campaign news:
• Primary day preview: How California and the other primary states are shaping up for Clinton and Sanders… Clinton close to clinching: Jun 7 Primary: North Dakota · 18 delegates…. California · 475 delegates…. Montana · 21 delegates…New Jersey · 126 delegates…. New Mexico · 34 delegates …. South Dakota · 20 delegates
• Clinton tells ABC This Week that she will have “significant majority of pledged delegates” after Tuesday’s primaries.
• Priebus calls on Trump to ‘evolve’ on Hispanic outreach
• Sanders finally hits Clinton Foundation over foreign donations. Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders criticized the Clinton Foundation for accepting donations from foreign governments in an interview aired Sunday, calling it a conflict of interest.  “Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many, many dollars from foreign governments — governments which are dictatorships? “Yeah, I do have a problem with that. Yeah, I do,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”  When host Jake Tapper asked if he thought it was a conflict of interest, Sanders said, “I do.”

7am – E         Entertainment News:

• Dixie Chicks mock Trump as they perform on stage and feature defaced photo of him with devil horns and facial hair as backdrop. (Daily Mail) – The Dixie Chicks kicked off the American leg of their DCX MMXVI world tour in Ohio with not-so-subtle imagery that appeared to show their feelings about the upcoming presidential election. While performing Goodbye Earl from their 1999 album, Fly, during a Wednesday show in Cincinnati, a video montage was screened featuring a photo of Trump with devil horns, a mustache and goatee.
• Broadway smash ‘Hamilton’ hits the road with national tour. (USA today) — The hottest ticket on Broadway is fast becoming the most-coveted ticket across the USA. The commercial blockbuster Hamilton will hit the road next year, and fans are chomping at the bit. They include Allison Alonso, who has seen the musical on Broadway but plans to catch it again in Boston — one of 12 cities the tour will visit in roughly the next two years. A separate production begins an open-ended run in Chicago on Sept. 27. The national tour (featuring its own cast, like the Chicago production) will begin next year, with stops in San Francisco (21 weeks, beginning in March) and Los Angeles (Aug. 11-Dec. 30). But in the other cities, including Boston, Hamilton will not arrive until the 2017-18 season, and except for Washington, where it will launch a 14-week engagement at the Kennedy Center in mid-June 2018, timing has not yet been determined.
• ‘Hamilton’ tickets as high as $10,000 on report Lin-Manuel Miranda is leaving. (CNN) – NEW YORK  — And you thought it was hard to get “Hamilton” tickets before. The cost of tickets have more than doubled to a starting price of $1,592 Friday on the ticket selling site StubHub. Prices zoomed a day after The Hollywood Reporter said that star and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda was leaving the production on July 9. The highest asking price that CNNMoney could find on the site for the July 9 night show is $9,975 for a second row seat in the orchestra. The retail price for tickets range from $85 to $300, but were selling on StubHub Thursday morning for $772.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — SALLY JENKINS —  a sports columnist for The Washington Post –reflected on the life and legacy of Muhammad Ali.

8am – B         INTERVIEW – STEVE BURNS – WMAL’s Reporter on-the-ground at a metro in Virginia

• MONDAY COMMUTE: How Metro’s SafeTrack plan will affect your trip. Whether you ride a train to work or not, you should be prepared for delays as a result of the first phase of Metro’s SafeTrack. WASHINGTON – Monday’s morning rush hour marks the first commute since Metro began it’s year-long SafeTrack maintenance project, and it’s expected to be a tough ride– whether you’re taking the train or not. The first phase of construction lasts until June 16, and it means trains are single-tracking at the Ballston and East Falls Church stations in Arlington. Workers were down on the tracks making repairs at Ballston Sunday evening. Orange and Silver Line riders will be most impacted by the first surge, with trains running more infrequently– but the work is expected to have a ripple effect on other commuters as well.

8am – C         Secret Service officer’s book details Clintons’ ‘crisis of character.’ (Fox News) A forthcoming book from a former Secret Service officer assigned to the White House during Bill Clinton’s presidency alleges that presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “lacks the integrity and temperament to serve in the office.” The book, “Crisis of Character,” is due to be released June 28 – a month before Hillary Clinton is likely to take the stage to accept the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia.  Written by ex-Secret Service Officer Gary J. Byrne, who was “posted directly outside President Clinton’s Oval Office,” the 285-page book describes Hillary Clinton’s “appalling leadership style” as being “volcanic, impulsive, enabled by sycophants, and disdainful of the rules set for everyone else.” While most of the book’s contents have remained under wraps so far, the Amazon.com preview features large sections from the introduction, first two chapters and afterward. It also shows the title page, featuring a Chapter 11 titled “Wild Bill.” In the introduction, Byrne said he “personally observed” President Clinton’s infidelities and was complicit in covering them up. Byrne recalled an alleged fight between the first couple during the summer of 1995 in Chapter 1, “The Vase.” Byrne said a vase was smashed during the loud argument and the next morning President Clinton sported “a shiner, a real, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.”  Clinton’s personal scheduler Nancy Hernreich allegedly told Byrne the eye condition was a result of Clinton’s allergy to coffee.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — DOUG SCHOEN — former political adviser and pollster for President Bill Clinton, 1994-2000.

• Primary day preview: How California and the other primary states are shaping up for Clinton and Sanders… Clinton close to clinching – Jun 7 Primary: North Dakota · 18 delegates…. California · 475 delegates…. Montana · 21 delegates… New Jersey · 126 delegates…. New Mexico · 34 delegates … South Dakota · 20 delegates
• Clinton tells ABC This Week that she will have “significant majority of pledged delegates” after Tuesday’s primaries.
• SCHOEN op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: Clinton Might Not Be the Nominee

8am – E         The Zombie Voter Apocalypse: California Refuses to Admit Its Voter Fraud Problem. (Daily Wire / Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky) — CBS reports that California is the only state that does not comply with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, something the Obama administration has basically ignored.  Hollywood has always loved making films about the walking dead, but in Southern California it appears they have a real life problem with “zombie” voters. An investigation by CBSLA2 and KCAL9 found that hundreds of deceased persons are still on voter registration rolls in the area, and that many of these names have been voting for years in Los Angeles. For example, John Cenkner died in 2003, according to Social Security Administration records, yet he voted in the 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2010 elections. His daughter told the station that she was “astounded” and couldn’t “understand how anybody” could get away with this. Another voter, Julita Abutin, died in 2006 but voted in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014. According to CBS, the county confirmed they have “signed vote-by-mail envelopes” from Abutin since she passed away. So either someone has been forging her signature or her ghost has quite an earthly presence. The investigation revealed that 265 deceased persons voted in Southern California, 215 of them in Los Angeles County.  Thirty-two were repeat voters, with eight posthumously-cast ballots each. One woman who died in 1988 has been voting for 26 years, including in the 2014 election.