Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Mika Brzezinski, Mike Barnicle and Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) about the “Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum Act” (SHIP Act), legislation that Moskowitz and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) have introduced in Congress to impose new sanctions targeting those who assist the Iranian regime in ducking U.S. sanctions over oil. “On the shipping aspect of this bill, is there anything to the fact that it seems that it’s difficult to track ships these days? There are ghost ships….Is that part of the dilemma here with regard to shipping Iranian oil—finding the ships who are being used to ship the oil?” asks Barnicle.
Morning Joe’s Willie Geist and Mike Barnicle discuss PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan defending the process behind the PGA Tour’s controversial merger with Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf. “This is a really bad look for Jay Monahan….I don’t think this is good for golf other than the money play. The money play obviously is extremely attractive to both the PGA members and the LIV guys; they’ve already gotten their money. But it’s not a good look,” says Barnicle about the PGA merger with LIV Golf. Watch the segment here.
Watch this Morning Joe segment with Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle as they talk with Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg about reports that indicate federal prosecutors have informed the legal team for former President Donald J. Trump that he is a target of their investigation into his handling of classified documents after he left office, as special counsel Jack Smith is presenting evidence currently before a Florida grand jury in addition to a panel in Washington, D.C. What might happen next?
Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle about new reports that reveal Special counsel Jack Smith has obtained a 2021 recording in which Donald Trump appears to brag about having a classified document related to Iran, suggesting the former president understood both the legal and security concerns around his possession of such restricted information. “It’s going to shape up, I would think, from people who we’ve spoken to, as a defining moment, not only for the Republican Party but for the country because if the words espionage or treason are even hinted at in the filing documents when, and if, an indictment is brought against the former president, people are going to have to finally make up their minds. There’s got to be enough of this talking about, ‘oh, he’s a tough guy. I like how he talks, he’s a tough talker. And the stuff about the women, that it’s all made up. You know, they’re after him because he’s Donald Trump’—all that stuff. That’s going to go out the window,” says Barnicle. See the discussion here.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Jonathan Lemire, Mike Barnicle and GLAAD President/CEO Sarah Kate Ellis about the current anti-LGBTQ political sentiment that has led to a record 540-plus anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures and more than 220 bills that specifically target transgender and non-binary people. “These are obviously terribly turbulent cultural times, but was there a spark…a moment in the last ten years or so when there was such a violent and hysterical overreaction to drag shows, LGBTQ clothing?” asks Barnice. Hear Ellis’ response, as she explains “Whenever there’s progress, there is a snap back reaction to it.” Watch the segment here.
“(Donald) Trump runs this country down almost daily with one comment or another, one text or another. He runs the military down constantly and continually,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough about the “stupid” statements made about the military by the GOP, as “they go along with this slander. It’s political slander.”
ICYMI: Watch this Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) about the strong bipartisanship that emerged during the Senate panel hearing on the potential risks of artificial intelligence that Blumenthal kicked off with a cloned recording of his own voice. “If you closed your eyes, you probably couldn’t have told whether it was a Republican or Democrat asking the question or making making comments,” said Blumenthal. “And if you closed your eyes at the beginning of the hearing, you couldn’t have told that we were playing a voice clone of myself in introducing the hearing. It was eerie, even creepy….I think that it is one of the more scary moments in the United States Senate hearing history.”
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle as they discuss former President Donald Trump and his allies targeting and misrepresenting the function of the FBI, after special counsel John Durham, appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr, concluded at the end of a multi-year investigation that the FBI should not have launched a full investigation into connections between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. “America is looking forward, going ahead. This is all rear-view mirror stuff. I don’t know how they (Republicans) thrive on this politically. I really don’t,” says Barnicle about the Durham report. Watch the conversation here.
Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle and retired Adm. James Stavridis about how the United States should approach its complicated relationship with China as the superpower rivalry between the two nations continues.
“The interesting thing is, we are doing now something that nobody else in America is doing: talking about Nikki Haley. I mean, she’s irrelevant to the conversation really, and she’s proven her irrelevance each and every day, each and every time she opens her mouth,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as Mika Brzezinski and the Morning Joe panel discusses Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley—struggling to gain traction among GOP voters ahead of the primary elections—having suggested that President Joe Biden, 80, is likely to die in office if he is re-elected.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle as they analyze and discuss the possible rematch in the 2024 presidential election between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. “Joe Biden is going to beat Donald Trump. He’s going to beat him like a drum….I don’t know how a guy goes to the country running for president of the United States who almost certainly will be carrying federal obstruction of justice charges against him, plus a couple other charges probably….How do you go to the country and win the presidency? I don’t see it,” says Barnicle about Trump, who was recently indicted in New York on more than 30 counts related to business fraud.
“He has the humility of an ordinary person….and he is very confident in his role as president. He knows what he’s doing. If people don’t think he knows what he’s doing, I refer you to what’s going on in Ukraine today. Ukraine has more allies today than would have been unthought of two years ago. Joseph R. Biden pulled that alliance together,” said veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski following President Biden’s official announcement that he will seek reelection. Watch the segment for more on Biden and his possible opponent in the in the 2024 presidential race.
Veteran columnist Mike Barnicle on President Joe Biden’s announcement of his 2024 bid for reelection: “His calmness, his deliberateness, his avoidance of calamity, his desire to calm this country down, and he’s going to walk us through it. He’s not going to run through it, and he’s going to be Joe Biden….He’s going to stand out in an age when people are yelling and screaming on both sides of the political aisle. And yet, here he is, ‘just the facts, ma’am’, calmly, deliberately, and pump the brakes on the riotous atmosphere that we cling to each and every day in the news,” says Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Claire McCaskill.
Join this Morning Joe panel discussion about the impacts of the decision by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, to order a hold on federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone in a decision that overruled decades of scientific approval. “At ground level, what this means is: You’re taking something away from people—specifically women. You’re taking a right away that they have had for decades,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle.
“Seemingly we cover these things at least once or twice a week in America. You heard the heart ache from survivors of people who were shot and killed in Louisville. We see it all the time. Because of the nature of the news business, it’s so quick and swift, and things happen so rapidly, we move on from one incident to another, from one news story to another. But the ache, the heartache and the loss that was expressed in the clip that we just showed, that lasts forever, it affects a community forever. And it’s inexplicable why, as you point out, largely the Republican Party is responsible for standing in the way of any substantive progress, even the smallest elements of progress, in terms of getting control of this virus that is crippling America, the gun virus. It is truly inexplicable. There’s no way you can talk about it…There’s no way you can understand what their motives are. Are they that afraid of one outfit, the National Rifle Association? I mean, it’s inexplicable,” says Barnicle about the Republican Party’s unwillingness to pass gun safety legislation in the wake of yet another mass shooting this week at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, where a gunman opened fire and killed five people while injuring eight others, leaving multiple families devastated.
Watch this Morning Joe discussion about former President Donald Trump having praised authoritarian figures: President Xi Jinping of China, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, suggesting the three are “top of the line” leaders. Says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle: “He’s basically saying to people, ‘you’d be better off if you were living in Beijing, or Moscow, or somewhere in North Korea than you would be living in Chicago or Gardner, Massachusetts, or Lafayette, Louisiana. You would be better off anywhere, but living where you are now, because we don’t have top of the line people.’ And I’m wondering how long it takes, maybe forever, before other Republicans who are leaders in the Republican Party or ordinary Republican members of the House and the Senate to realize that this guy’s focus is not only on himself, but it’s also conjoined with running down the country that we live in and love.”
ICYMI: This Morning Joe conversation with MSNBC legal analyst Charles Coleman, veteran columnist Mike Barnicle, and the Rev. Al Sharpton the morning after the historic indictment against former President Donald Trump, accused not only of falsifying business records but of doing so with the explicit intent of covering up other crimes. “Not a great day for you, Donald,” said Sharpton. Watch the conversation here.
“If you want to witness one of the cruelest changes in our country over the last, I don’t care, 50 or 100 years, take a morning off, Joe, get in your car and follow a school bus, an elementary school bus, and look at the parents as they watch their kids board the bus because you know some of them, maybe most of them are thinking, ‘oh, God, please let my child return home safely from elementary school,’ from elementary school,” says veteran columnist and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle about the parents of young children in America during this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) announced he plans to propose boosting school security in the wake of the Nashville school shooting that left six dead.
“It is hard to measure the danger and the damage that Donald Trump presents on a daily basis,” says veteran columnist and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski following Trump’s latest interview with Fox News during which he says Russian President Vladimir Putin will “ultimately” take over all of Ukraine. “If you’re sitting in Paris, or Berlin, or London or any other capital in the world around the globe where you measure democracy with a large ‘D’ not a small ‘d,’ you’re worried because you don’t know what’s on the horizon. You don’t know what America is going to do in 2024. You don’t know what part this man might play in the future of our democracy. And so if you’re thinking about planning ahead, you can’t plan ahead because of the danger and the damage that he represents every time he opens his mouth, every single time,” says about former President Trump.
MLB Open Day 2023 has arrived! ICYMI: Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Willie Geist, Theo Epstein and Mike Barnicle as they preview another season of Major League Baseball and the new rules changes. “It’s the start of the year. We have New Year’s Day, but Opening Day is the real start of the year….It’s wonderful being at the park, and I’ve looked forward to it for far too long—every year, and every year, every year, I say, this is the year,” says Barnicle as he roots for his beloved Boston Red Sox once again.
