“The one thing about the President is he has been around this international track many, many, many times. And he is really aware of the fact that this war, is being played – this theater of war is being played – out on a stage that has been sadly too used to war. They’ve lived with war for over 100 years, since 1918. And now the President comes to this war knowing that the opponent Vladimir Putin, that he has troops who need two things: They need munitions, and they need the will to fight. They do not have the will to fight. But this president, President Biden, knows that while the Ukrainians need munitions they have the will to fight. Also – and this is another thing we talked about Congressman, earlier – people underestimate how tough Joe Biden is. They underestimate him, and that’s playing out now. Don’t you think?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-SC) during a Morning Joe conversation about President Joe Biden’s leadership, including throughout Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Watch the conversation here.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation between Massachusetts-native Mike Barnicle and Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States, about Prince William and Princess Catherine of Wales having attended and “enjoyed” an NBA basketball game between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics at TD Garden as the royal couple were expected to leave at halftime but remained for the full duration of the game because they “really enjoyed the Celtics game.” Find out more about the Royals’ Boston visit here.
“My question to you is: Within the House of Representatives, how do you go forward when the other side, clearly the majority side now, the Republicans, lead with rage and anger almost every day?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-SC), newly selected House assistant Democratic leader, during a Morning Joe panel conversation about the challenges of working alongside Republicans now that the GOP is set to control the House. Listen to Clyburn’s response here, following President Joe Biden’s first state dinner which both Clyburn and Barnicle attended, on how Clyburn hopes to find common ground, after two historic terms by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
“Kevin McCarthy thus far in order to become speaker of the House has clearly made more deals with more people on both sides of the ideological floor that it’s going to condemn his speakership if he does become speaker. It’s going to be like an anchor around his neck. He won’t be able to function. He won’t be able to legislate. The second thing it seems to a lot of people is more mysterious and hard to define and it lies in the fact that Donald Trump not for the first time at dinner at Mar-a-Lago but for the past few years has opened the door of the Republican Party to white nationalists and white nationalism. And it’s going to remain to be seen exactly what happens to the party going forward. Do they increase a new constituency—white nationalists? Do they try to reclaim another constituency—older Republicans who have voted for a Republican Party now totally disappeared. That’s going to be an interesting equation to watch,” says Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Willie Geist and Mika Brzezinski about House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy struggling to secure votes to become House speaker and the future of the Republican Party.
“Federica, the loneliness of the elderly, people 65, 70 years of age and older is sad, but it’s kind of understandable. Their partners die, their friends die, and so loneliness sets in for many of them. But what do we do about the loneliness of the young—teenagers, people in their 20s whose best friend is an iPhone?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Financial Times statistics journalist Federica Cocco who joins Morning Joe to discuss the “loneliness epidemic.” Watch the conversation here.
“The idea that Herschel Walker is actually a candidate for the United States Senate is beyond horrifying, it’s beyond horrifying, and he’s just the latest gift to the Republican Party presented by Donald Trump—a gift that keeps on giving. The idea that we have a former president of the United States who has no idea who he’s having a dinner with, that’s just incredible in and of itself, given he had dinner with a 24-year-old who hates Jews, Blacks, gays, women—more than half the human race. And now we have on the ballot in Georgia a former Heisman Trophy winner, and that’s basically his credential to run for the United States Senate, other than the endorsement of Donald Trump. Thank you, Donald Trump,” says Barnicle of GOP candidate Herschel Walker, the challenger to Georgia’s Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, following former President Donald Trump revealing that he did not know the identity of a recent dining companion at Mar-a-Lago—a known white nationalist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes.
“You have spent more time with Donald Trump than anybody, except perhaps Melania, and you’ve got him on tape. So, I’m wondering, what do you think about the theory that perhaps in an irony, complete political irony, his dominance in the media will end up defeating him because he appears now in front of the American public filled with bitterness and narcissism that anyone could recognize,” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Washington Post associate editor and author Bob Woodward during this Morning Joe discussion following the midterm elections. Watch the conversation here.
Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Willie Geist, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle as they discuss the art of graceful winning and losing in the aftermath of the midterm elections. “Never underestimate human nature, and one of the things about human nature—especially if you have a family and you have children, you teach your children, you try to teach your children from a very young age: Don’t be a sore loser. You know, just accept it and go on. Learn from it. Don’t be a sore loser. The clip that we played coming into this segment of the Republicans’ reaction to their winning is to denounce their opponent still,” says Barnicle about some GOP candidates who won the midterm elections. Join the conversation here.
“Never, ever underestimate the American people. By the millions, this pageant of democracy we have, this magical day where people of all castes, all incomes, all races, all genders come out and vote. They stand in line for hours sometimes to vote, and yesterday they voted. And they walked in, and a huge number of them looked at the ballot, forgot about the pollsters, forgot about what we talk about each and every morning, and they said, oh, ‘I could vote for crazy, or I could vote for normal,’ and they checked the normal box, and that’s why we are here today,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the Morning Joe panel weighs in on the midterm elections results as it appears the Democratic Party has staved off the Republican “red wave” that had been predicted by many pollsters and projections.
“You’ve been on the ballot many times in Ohio, all of it successful. So, this time around, as you go around the state of Ohio, can you compare the sense of community that existed when you first ran for Congress to the sense of community that’s out there today? And I’m talking specifically about towns and cities where you could belong to the other party and you could argue about politics, but you had a sense of the community that you belonged to. Is it still as strong? Is it weakened?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) during a Morning Joe conversation about whether the fraught political climate in America has impacted the cities and towns in Ohio. Listen to Ryan’s response here about the “exhaustion” that’s permeated Ohioan communities.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle as they discuss Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who appears to already be casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 midterm elections, saying he hopes he can accept the outcome of the elections but that he “can’t predict what the Democrats have planned.” Barnicle explains: “There’s a contagion, a virus, an infection in the political system that begins at the top. It will definitely circulate right down to the lives of ordinary people every day.” You can watch the segment here.
Morning Joe’s veteran columnist Mike Barnicle talks with Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt about a recent meeting Greenblatt and other civil rights leaders had with new Twitter owner Elon Musk amid concerns over the dissemination of anti-Semitism and other hate speech over Twitter. Hear what Greenblatt has to share about the meeting.
Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Willie Geist and Mike Barnicle discuss how voters are weighing the threat to American democracy amid the country’s high inflation rates, following President Joe Biden having delivered a stark warning to citizens that the future of the nation’s democracy could rest on next week’s midterm elections. Join the conversation here.
Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle and Al Schmidt, a member of the cross-partisan Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, about the voting process in the United States amid GOP attacks on elections as well as election workers in the run-up to the 2022 midterms. “There have been some states where as we all know, there have been people armed—armed and dangerous—waiting outside voting booths, waiting outside where people vote in order to intimidate them. What do we do about that?” asks Barnicle. Hear Schmidt’s response here.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Willie Geist, Eugene Robinson, David Jolly and Mike Barnicle as they discuss the current violent rhetoric in American politics with the 2022 midterm elections one week away, following the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband and a New York Times analysis having found a rise in threats against lawmakers in Congress. “I’m not surprised at any of this. It’s shocking, but not surprising, and the violence—the level of violence—is it an uptick in the level of violence? It’s an uptick in our knowledge of the level of violence….The violence of language, the violence of ignorance, and it’s gone back a long time in politics, specifically in the modern era of politics. I trace a large part of it to the late 1980s when Newt Gingrich decided that the way for Republicans to really gain control was not to just defeat their opponents but to demonize them, to destroy them, and that began it. That was the incubator for what’s happened now,” says Barnicle. Watch the conversation here.
“Governor, you were born and raised in a state where there were Republican candidates elected to office who bear no resemblance to existing national Republican candidates and many local Republican candidates. So, how hard is it for you, a Democrat now, Governor of New Jersey, to sound a hopeful note about the future of politics, especially bipartisan politics?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) during a Morning Joe conversation about whether it’s possible for the Republican Party to return to its traditional roots that preceded President Donald Trump. Listen to Murphy’s response here. On MSNBC.
“You’ve been out there on the trail in many, many states following many, many different candidates in the past several months. Is there a channel here where fear of disappointing the base and ambition to create victory for themselves by playing to that base—where fear and ambition collide? And this is the result—this intemperate language, this violent language?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Mark McKinnon, creator and co-host of THE CIRCUS on Showtime, during this Morning Joe discussion about the current violent rhetoric in American politics, following the Republican nominee for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, having mocked the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in her remarks made at a campaign event that was followed by laughter from the audience. Listen to McKinnon’s response here about Republicans having abandoned principle for power.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), the Democratic nominee for the Ohio Senate seat, about Americans who are experiencing employment issues, with the 2022 midterm elections less than two weeks away. “What do you…tell these people who are in that netherworld of having lost employment or reduced employment? What do you tell them?” asks Barnicle. Hear Ryan’s answer here.
“I think there’s a lot of anxiety in the country,” veteran journalist Mike Barnicle told Jonathan Lemire on Way Too Early. “I think people are living on pins and needles. They go from the grocery store to the gas station wondering what the immediate future is going to bring. I think they’re especially worried about their children; people who have children. One of the things that hasn’t been discussed at length at least to my ear in a lot of campaigns is what has happened to the education of younger children, grammar school and high school, who have missed so much school because of COVID and school lockdowns, and that hasn’t arisen as a big issue; but, I think it lurks in the backgrounds in terms of people thinking about their future. They no longer measure their future in four or five years of ‘when I retire’ or ‘when I begin to retire.’ They measure their future now by end of this week, which is a troubling situation I think that for a lot of families,” says Barnicle about the situation for many Americans.
“Why would you negotiate with Vladimir Putin? He is a war criminal. He has used the same strategy that the Russians used in World War II: Destroy and demonize your opponent, try to make your opponent so fearful by killing innocent civilians, by bombing schools, hospitals, sanctuaries, cathedrals. Kill the civilians; that’s how you win the war. That’s how the Russians think that they can defeat the Ukrainians. They can’t defeat the Ukrainians that way, and the United States has no one to negotiate with in Moscow because the leader of Russia is a war criminal,” says Morning Joe’s veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to a letter and then a retraction from progressive U.S. Democratic lawmakers to President Joe Biden having urged him to pursue direct diplomacy with Russia more than six months after Putin launched an invasion into neighboring Ukraine and while the two countries are still engaged in a struggle for control of areas throughout eastern and southern Ukraine. Join the conversation here.
Mike Barnicle is a veteran print and broadcast journalist recognized for his street-smart, straightforward style honed over nearly four decades in the field. The Massachusetts native has written 4,000-plus columns collectively for The Boston Globe, Boston Herald and the New York Daily News, and continues to champion the struggles and triumphs of the every man by giving voice to the essential stories of today on television, radio, and in print.
