Mornings on the Mall 07.27.16

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

5am – A/B/C

Uniformed Alexandria officer denied service at Noodles & Company

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – An Alexandria police officer was denied service after a chef refused to cook for an officer in uniform.

At around 6:30 p.m. Monday evening, a female officer in full uniform walked into the Noodles & Company on Duke St. in Alexandria when she was refused service while waiting in line, according to officials. The cook at the restaurant came out of the kitchen, walked to the cashier and said something in the lines of “you are going to have to take me off the line, because I am not serving that.” The cashier and the cook then exchanged a few words and started laughing at the officer. The officer decided to leave the restaurant when she realized what was happening, called her supervisor.

In an interview with Alexandria Police Chief Earl Cook, he said, “”Well your first response as a police officer is anger, these are very difficult times right now with our relations with everyone and to have one of my officers treated in that manner unnecessarily, your first response is anger then you calm down a bit as usual let’s find out what happened and as we have talked to our officer and talking to the store management it seems to have happened as my officer stated.”

The chief was upset enough to go over to the Noodles & Company where the incident occurred.

A statement from the company reads:

“Noodles & Company expects the highest ethical and personal behavior from its team members. We value each of our guests and are committed to treating every one with dignity and respect. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination.

We are working with the appropriate authorities and local police association representatives to get to the bottom of, and resolve this matter as quickly as possible. We have made efforts to reach out to the police officer involved, but have not yet spoken with her. We will continue to look into the situation and will take the appropriate actions at the conclusion of this review.” – Noodles & Company

FOX 5 also spoke with a union representative. “It appears that there is maybe just a couple of bad seeds and the Noodles and Company business will be handling that internally Noodles and company has agreed to post signs on their doors that they support blue lives they’ve been very cooperative with us in this matter and we hope they continue the cooperation we hope that the business is not judged by the actions of a couple of individuals,” said Pete Feltham, Alexandria Police Union.

At this point it is not clear what Noodles & Company has done, with either the cook and or the cashier.

5am – D

Lena Dunham, America Ferrera Take On Donald Trump

Actresses Lena Dunham and America Ferrera gave a joint speech at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, making the case for why GOP nominee Donald Trump’s vision is one most Americans “cannot afford.”

The TV stars, who have both stumped on the campaign trail for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, opened their speech with a back-and-forth bit highlighting Trump’s pervasive racism and sexism:

DUNHAM: I’m Lena Dunham, and according to Donald Trump, my body is probably, like, a two.

FERRERA: And I’m America Ferrera, and according to Donald Trump, I’m probably a rapist.

DUNHAM: But America, you’re not Mexican.

FERRERA: And President Obama isn’t Kenyan, Lena, but that doesn’t stop Donald.

DUNHAM: We know what you’re all thinking. Why should you care what some television celebrity has to say about politics?

FERRERA: And we feel the same way. But he is the Republican nominee, so we need to talk about it.

Watch a clip of their speech above.

They then elaborated on ways they’ve found Trump’s comments personally offensive. Ferrera, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Honduras, argued that Trump and others who share his xenophobic views don’t see immigrants as worthwhile investments.

“I am profoundly grateful for the access and opportunity that exists in this extraordinary nation,” Ferrera said. “I was educated in public schools, my talents were nurtured through public arts programs, and you know what, occasionally I needed a free meal to get through the school day. Not everybody looks at millions of young people like me … and sees an investment.”

Dunham, who has previously opened up about being raped in college and written on her struggle with endometriosis, cautioned that Trump’s positions on women’s health have serious consequences.

“I am a pro-choice, feminist sexual assault survivor with a chronic reproductive illness,” Dunham said. “Donald Trump and his party think I should be punished for exercising my constitutional rights. His rhetoric about about women takes us back to a time where we were meant to be beautiful and silent. Meanwhile, 22 years ago, Hillary Clinton declared that women’s rights are human rights.”

“Donald’s not making America great again,” said Ferrera. “He’s making America hate again. And the vast majority of us, we cannot afford to see his vision of America come to be.”

5am – E

Metro general manager proposes permanent end to late-night service

By Martine Powers, Faiz Siddiqui and Lori Aratani July 26 at 8:55 PM

Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld will propose a permanent end to late-night weekend subway service, alarming District officials and business leaders who say that a curtailed system would hurt economic and cultural life in the nation’s capital.

Wiedefeld wants to shutter Metro at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, instead of at 3 a.m., to give overnight work crews enough time to make repairs and maintain a safe system. He also wants to close the subway at 10 p.m. on Sundays.

The proposal to halt weekend trains at midnight is polarizing in a region torn between its frustrations over a perpetually struggling transit system and its explosive growth in restaurants and night life.

Metro is already operating under a curtailed schedule. Late-night service was temporarily halted as part of SafeTrack, the 10-month period of intense service disruptions that began in June and is designed to restore Metro to a safer overall condition.

But Wiedefeld’s push to permanently scale back operating hours could turn out to be his biggest test, so far, of whether he’ll be able to make decisions that are unpopular with riders as well as some members of the Metro board — especially from representatives from the District who could veto Wiedefeld’s plans.

Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld, shown in June, wants to expand the window for track-maintenance projects. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

Those members — D.C. Council member Jack Evans and Corbett A. Price — said Tuesday that they had significant concerns about scaling back Metro service and the impact it could have on riders and the city.

“It will impair the business community. It will also impair the night life,” Price said. “Service workers, the people working in restaurants . . . that’s a tremendous impact on the community.”

Evans acknowledged the need to prioritize maintenance but said he wasn’t convinced that the long-term schedule change is necessary.

“I know the issue is finding track time — I know that makes sense today,” he said. “But I don’t know if that makes sense a year from now, and forever.”

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) tacked on her own qualms. “This proposal is premature and would be detrimental to small businesses and working families,” she said in a statement.

6am – A/B/C

Bill Clinton embraces role of political spouse

By Maeve Reston and Sunlen Serfaty, CNN

Updated 1:57 AM ET, Wed July 27, 2016

Philadelphia (CNN)Bill Clinton isn’t used to being the second act, but he slipped comfortably into that role Tuesday night when making a forceful case that his wife is the proven change-maker who should become president of the United States in November.

After struggling to control his temper and his outbursts on the campaign trail in 2008, the former president has been a far more disciplined, supportive spouse on the campaign trail this time — traveling across the country to campaign for his wife and carefully avoiding GOP nominee Donald Trump’s provocations.

On Tuesday night, he delved deeply into her biography to cast her as change agent — hinting that while she might not be as natural a politician, she has spent her life fighting to improve people’s lives, particularly the lives of children and the disabled.

“She’s the best darn change-maker I’ve ever met in my entire life. This is a really important point,” Clinton said of his wife. “This woman has never been satisfied with the status quo … She always wants to move the ball forward. That is just who she is.”

At a time when many voters say they don’t trust Hillary Clinton, her husband sought to soften her harder edges. He recalled how relentlessly he had pursued her, proposing to her three times before she accepted.

Bill Clinton’s artful effort to humanize his wife, who sometimes comes off as robotic on the campaign trail and has struggled to win voters’ trust, was met with enthusiastic cheers in the room. Before the former President’s speech, several delegates said they were worried about the harsh negativity of the election and the seeming inability of Hillary Clinton to endear herself to voters.

The former President went to great lengths to do that for her.

“In the spring of 1971 I met a girl,” he mused at the beginning of the speech — as though Hillary Clinton was just any girl he might have courted in a long flowered skirt. He went on to note, in great detail, how she had repeatedly spurned his marriage proposals to focus on her work for poor children and education reform. He also described her as selfless, completely taken aback when he told her at one point that she would run for office. No one would ever vote for her, she told him laughing.

“I married my best friend. I was still in awe after more than four years of being around her at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was and really hoped that her choosing me and rejecting my advice to pursue her own career was a decision she would never regret,” Bill Clinton said.

And his message seemed to resonate.

“I was very impressed, I think he made people understand who Hillary was from the time that he met her — and how she fascinated him, and all the great things she has done for so many different groups. Most importantly how she put off making money to serve the people, the public,” said Bobbie Richardson, a state legislator and delegate from North Carolina.

Richardson said she felt that for most of the American public that is a story that they don’t know. “That’s the beauty of it,” she said. “As he said, people in Arkansas didn’t know that she was the reason that they were benefiting from so many of these different programs.”

Asked about the high level of distrust that many voters feel about Hillary Clinton, Richardson said testimonials like Bill’s are exactly what is needed to change those perceptions.

“I think the more they hear about her between now and November 8th, the more they will realize that she’s human. There were mistakes that she’s made, but she’s cleared of those mistakes,” Richardson said. “Tonight we got the truth.”

Richardson said she liked the wistful touch of romance that Bill Clinton added to his speech: “I think he was trying to show that he remembered what she looked like, and what she wore 40 years ago. I thought that was the beauty of how romance starts.”

Clinton holds a much higher favorability rating than his wife. Among Democratic voters, 79% view him favorably.

The former president has turned into a frequent target for Trump, who has railed about the former president’s personal life from the campaign trail.

“She’s married to a man who is the worst abuser of women in the history of politics. She’s married to a man who hurt many women,” Trump said at a rally in Spokane, Washington. “And Hillary was an enabler and she treated these women horribly. Just remember this. And some of those women were destroyed not by him, but by the way Hillary Clinton treated them after everything went down.”

Trump has also seized on Clinton-era policies, going after NAFTA, which Trump has vowed to renegotiate.

“She doesn’t understand trade,” Trump said. “Her husband signed perhaps in the history of the world the single worst trade deal ever done.”

Bill Clinton has also faced scrutiny over his legislative record directly from voters on the campaign trail. In April he was confronted at a campaign event for his wife in Philadelphia by Black Lives Matter activists over his administration’s 1994 crime bill.

“You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter,” Clinton pushed back from the podium.

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton has at times tried to distance herself from her husband, repeating regularly that she is running on her own record, not “running for her husband’s third term.”

But she has had to clean up after him at times — most recently in the aftermath of Bill Clinton’s private, impromptu meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the Phoenix airport in June. The meeting was widely criticized given that the attorney general was overseeing the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.

“I think, you know, hindsight is 20/20,” Hillary Clinton said of the meeting in an interview with NBC News. “Both the attorney general and my husband have said they wouldn’t do it again, even though it was from all accounts that I have heard and seen, an exchange of pleasantries. But obviously no one wants to see any untoward conclusions drawn, and they’ve said, you know, they would not do it again.”

Still, Hillary Clinton sees her husband as an asset.

She has pledged to give him a role in a potential second Clinton administration dealing with the economy, trying to capitalize on her husband’s economic record while he was in the White House.

6am – D

INTERVIEW — LT. GEN MICHAEL FLYNN

6am – E

Federal workers told to stay home if it’s too hot outside

The Obama administration’s Office of Personnel Management is encouraging federal workers to work from home if it’s too hot to go to the office.

OPM Acting Director Beth Cobert released a memo late last week warning that the severe heat and humidity seen so far this summer makes it “necessary for us all to take precautions and protect ourselves and our family’s health and well-being.”

OPM, which serves as the government’s HR department, said it was reminding agencies about “what they can do to protect all federal workers during potentially dangerous heat waves.” One of those actions is to let workers stay home.

“If your supervisor approves, telework-ready employees may telework from home on a day when air quality conditions are poor,” Cobert wrote.

“If your agency policies allow, an employee working a flexible work schedule may elect to adjust when they come to work and when they leave in order to avoid commuting during the hottest period of the day,” she added. “Employees can also ask for annual leave, earned compensatory time or credit hours on a day when severe heat and humidity are threatening their health and welfare.”

OPM also reminded federal workers to stay inside as much as they can, wear light-colored clothing and “drink more water than usual.”

“I know that all federal employees are dedicated and committed to doing all they can to serve the American people,” she wrote. “At the same time, we all must be mindful of protecting our health during severe weather events — whether cold and storm during winter or the kind of high temperatures and humidity we’ve been experiencing this summer.”

7am – A

INTERVIEW: FRANK OLIVIERI – OWNER OF PAT’S KING OF STEAKS

7am – B

INTERVIEW — ROBERT THOMSON aka DR. GRIDLOCK at The Washington Post

7am – C

Sanders supporters storm gates at DNC, unleashing chaos outside convention arena

America signs fill the crowd as Bill Clinton takes the stage during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, July 26, 2016.

In the end, Bernie Sanders’ peace and love movement went away angry on Tuesday night, very angry.

Minutes after his one-time political rival in the race for president clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination, supporters of Sanders stormed the gates at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, overpowering officers, scaling a security fence and at times lobbing plastic bottles at a phalanx of assembled lawmen. The activity was enough to draw a spraying of mace but little more.

Protests intensify at DNC, overrun police

What had started as a loose collection of Sanders supporters watching that afternoon’s roll call vote broadcast live from the convention floor on big screens erected in a nearby park, quickly became a massive and contentious march down a main thoroughfare in this sweltering and increasingly tense American city. This after Sanders lost the delegate count to Clinton — 1,865 to 2,842 — that afternoon.

After the vote, irate Sanders supporters marched from the viewing area in FDR Park to the conventional hall’s security perimeter nearby. There were vows to “lift the gate,” and at one point the demonstrators succeeded in forcing police back from a secure area that had been off limits all week.

After more than an hour spent there, banging on the gate and shouting at officers inside, the group eventually migrated north on Broad Street, where they met a separate Black Lives Matter march already in progress and already headed toward the convention hall.

The merger, born near the intersection of Broad Street and Packer, created the largest and most volatile demonstration seen in the city so far this week.

What followed was a chaotic 30 minutes, with police vastly outnumbered and increasingly the target of protester anger.

There were skirmishes between members of the crowd at times, and officers were repeatedly shouted down or forced to retreat on their motorcycles and in their vehicles as the hybrid march grew in size, dwarfing the casual law enforcement presence.

Throughout the night and week, officers chose a retreat-rather-than-engage approach, likely looking to avoid an ugly spectacle played out on the world’s stage.

Only a handful of arrests were reported or spotted Tuesday, almost all involving demonstrators who scaled the security fence outside the DNC in front of a waiting row of officers standing guard.

Once the march reached the convention hall gates, it quickly fizzled out and only scattered groups remained as of 11 p.m. A smaller and calmer candlelight vigil event — one marking the death of democracy — continued in FDR Park until nearly midnight.

But the frenzied activity that touched off hours earlier had revealed deep divisions among the protesters here, divisions that only worsened as the day and demonstrations wore on.

Some Sanders supporters were visibly angered over the aggressive tone of Tuesday’s demonstrations after days spent thanking police and extending the olive branch.

At one point, a female Sanders supporter was shoved after confronting a group of masked demonstrators who had burned an American flag in a small fire on the ground outside the Wells Fargo Center’s security fence, feet from on looking officers.

She accused the demonstrators of “hijacking the movement.”

Others called such shows of force necessary, revealing a tug-of-war now underway for the soul of the Sanders’ movement.

“People are restless. We don’t know where we are going and we know fraud has been committed in there [the DNC],” said a marcher from Tennessee who identified herself only as Rosa.

“And I don’t say that because I’m a Bernie supporter. I say that because the whole system is corrupt, and a lot of us are waking up.”

It was that sense of anger that even those protesters disputing each others’ tactics could agree on Tuesday.

It is also the same anger that is fueling the rise of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s support among a segment of Sanders’ base.

Many of those on hand Tuesday said they were looking to Stein as the torch-bearer of the Sanders movement. It is the same movement that Sanders created and one he now finds himself struggling to control.

Stein joined the hybrid march that rocked Broad Street and the gates of the DNC for a time Tuesday evening, saying “I heard the delegates had walked out [of the convention] and I wanted to support them in the vision of this Bernie or bust campaign that it leading the way forward.”

Stein had addressed a large crowd of supporters hours earlier in a rally outside City Hall.

She was welcomed into the fold Tuesday evening with cheers of “Jill, not Hill.”

Tuesday’s protests will certainly not be the last as the weeklong DNC event continues through Thursday. But whether they again reach this level of unrest remains to be seen.

“We tried to believe in it [the system],” the marcher calling herself Rosa said. “But it’s a bunch of bullsh–.”

7am – D

INTERVIEW – KT MCFARLAND – Fox News National Security Analyst

7am – E