“Both the House and the Senate are back home in their districts and in their states, and they’re having these meetings and anecdotally, you hear the most frequent questions they’re getting asked are: `What are you people doing in Washington. You seem to be doing nothing, other than trying to take away my health care.’ That’s what they have to respond to,” says Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle as he and host Joe Scarborough discuss the struggles Republican lawmakers are having with their constituents and President Donald Trump’s low and discouraging poll numbers. Listen in on the conversation here.
“Visually and verbally it struck me as someone taking the podium, a young guy, who in his earlier life – I don’t how many times – he probably had his lunch stolen from him. `And give me the Twinkies too.’ And now this is his get-back moment,” comments veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the MSNBC Deadline: White House panel discusses White House advisor Stephen Miller’s heated exchange with with CNN reporter Jim Acosta at a press briefing over an immigration proposal backed by President Donald Trump. Hear the exchange and the ensuing conversation here.
Joining Nicolle Wallace’s MSNBC program Deadline: White House, veteran columnist and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle says of the Trump Administration: “The irony is that they came into office with Steve Bannon’s theory about redoing all elements of government: Downsizing the State Department, reordering gender equality in the military, destroying the existing health care bill and coming up with another health care piece of legislation. But, what’s happened is that every day, every single day, either by tweets, actual verbiage or actual action, Donald Trump has redefined and downsized the presidency both in Congress and, I think, among large elements of the American public. I don’t know that the definition of the presidency and the way people think of the presidency will remain the same.” Listen to more of the conversation here.
“It’s a pretty simple landscape that we’re looking at because in every instance that we’ve mentioned here today — whether it’s Russia, whether it’s the drafting of the statement on the plane, whatever it is, the source of conflict with the truth is the President of the United States. And that leads to an unbelievable burden on people like (Chief of Staff) John Kelly or John Dowd – one of his lawyers,” said Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during the ongoing discussion about the widening Investigation into the Russia controversy that surrounds President Donald Trump’s Administration and the recent disclosure that POTUS, while returning home from the G-20 summit, personally crafted his son Donald Trump Jr.’s misleading statement about his meeting with a Russian lawyer. Tune in to the conversation here.
“Many have asked and wondered how or why such an exceptional guy like General Kelly would take the task of trying to turn the absurdly incompetent, chaotic Trump presidency into a functioning vehicle. And the answer is simple and obvious: Because he loves this country and does not want to have it fail or falter at the gate of a future filled with both promise and peril. His only ambitions are for America,” writes veteran columnist Mike Barnicle for The Daily Beast. Read Barnicle’s column here and learn more about the new White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly — details of his Boston childhood and some of the factors that helped shape his fine character and values.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-boston-neighborhood-that-made-john-kelly
Listen in on the discussion between Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and The Daily Beast politics editor Sam Stein about the big job ahead for new Trump Administration Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly. From stopping the President’s often misguided tweets to changing the perception about a White House in chaos to staffing up the Administration, what will Gen. Kelly tackle first and can he be successful with all the obstacles he faces?
While the Morning Joe panel discusses the vast changes in President Donald Trump’s Administration and the appointment of Gen. John Kelly as the new White House Chief of Staff, veteran columnist Mike Barnicle explains: “General Kelly…has a sense of the chain of command, a loyalty to the chain of command, but a larger loyalty to his country. If there is, and they’ve been lucky so far, there’s been no international crisis yet really. We’re on the verge of one with North Korea, obviously. But General Kelly will be the guy you want there and if anybody does anything that he thinks harms the country, that’s where the rubber hits the road.” Listen to the conversation here, including comments about the role of the President’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, her “sense of entitlement” and “flawed sense of her own importance.”
