Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation between Mike Barnicle and Economist editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes about how European governments are viewing the United States heading into the 2024 presidential election with the Republican Party divided about whether to support Ukraine amid its war with Russia and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) saying that the protection of Ukraine is not a “vital” United States interest. “Is there any trepidation in European capitals that the United States might be viewed as an unstable democracy, that they don’t know what, in effect, will happen in next year’s elections?” asks Barnicle. Watch Beddoes’ response here.
“There is a certain really, really, really dangerous way that Donald Trump has been gifted with the ability to tell a story—a story filled with lies, no truth in what he’s saying, filled with deception,” says Morning Joe’s Mike Barnicle during this conversation with Joe Scarborough and NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard about the former president’s campaign event in Davenport, Iowa. “This is a man who tried to overthrow the Constitution, to topple a government. And yet, he tells a story each and every time he’s at the podium, filled with sarcasm, meanness, humor; but, it’s there. It sets him apart and sets him up as the only individual that many of his followers would ever follow. How does that happen?”
“He was a very good baseball player at Yale, very good baseball player at Yale, and I’ve got to tell you something else watching him and listening to him over the past four or five days, clips from Iowa and everything like that: Donald Trump is going to crush this guy,” says Morning Joe’s veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump while watching this clip that shows DeSantis playing catch during a Fox News interview. Join the conversation here.
“The pitch clock is wonderful for Major League Baseball,” says Morning Joe’s Mike Barnicle about the new device implemented to speed up the game amid a ratings slump, after a spring training game between the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves ended with a batter violation of the pitch clock. “The only thing, I think, that we have to take a look at, that’s going to be really interesting, is who does it have more of an impact on: The pitcher or the batter? I think the batter at first. I think it will all get ironed out during the course of the year, but I think the batter. The first couple months of Major League Baseball, April and May, it’s going to be interesting to watch that dynamic. Hear more of the conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Jonathan Lemire.
“I think the debate over who is going to sign what and whether they mean their signature to be truth and accurate, I think it’s meaningless. I think the larger question is, each of these candidates, the Republican candidates, they should be asked the question, and it’s a neutral question: ‘Do you believe that Joseph R. Biden is the legitimately elected president of the United States?’ That gives you a foundation of what they believe in and the direction that they’re going to take because this election really is about something that the Republicans failed to do each and every time and that is—govern. They clearly don’t know how to govern,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle after RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said GOP primary candidates must agree to sign a pledge to support the GOP nominee in order to participate in the first primary debate.
“I think one of the things that’s still underrated in terms of the way this war is being waged was what occurred with the President of the United States. He’s 80 years old. He knows how old he is, and, yet, it’s written so often here in America in a negative sense. This man left the White House at four-o’clock in the morning, flew to Germany, then to Poland, then…took that ten-hour historic train trip, a train trip out of history, to Kyiv where he walked the streets of a city and a country still in a battle zone, each and every day, each hour of every day, and he did it bringing together NATO foreign ministers later in a meeting. He did it with his personality, his humility, his sense of who he is. He’s a welcoming individual, and that had an enormous impact over there, and it has an enormous impact on the future conduct of this war because he is the president of the United States, and he arrived with all the power and the prestige of the United States and brought it right down to sidewalk level in Kyiv,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski about President Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine’s capital this week.
““Ambassador Brink, one year in—that’s where we are with the war against Russia—can you indicate to us the feelings in the Ukraine, after such massive losses of life, damage to properties, families separated, volunteers—I don’t know how many volunteers you have left to fight this war against Russia. Can you give us a sense of the feel on the ground, the emotion on the ground, going forward into the second year of this dreadful war?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink during a Morning Joe conversation about the morale within Ukraine as the country has now spent one year fighting Russia’s invasion. Hear Brink talk of the terror and fear juxtaposed with the pride Ukrainians feel as they fight for their freedom.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and the Rev. Al Sharpton about how to improve policing in America, particularly in minority communities.
ICYMI: This Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Mike Barnicle and The Atlantic’s David Frum discusses the extremism within the Republican Party, following Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announcing plans to block state colleges in Florida from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory. “What’s going on in Florida now is maybe a peek into a horrifying future. (DeSantis) is now tampering with college education in various colleges, specifically starting with one in Florida. That’s Ron DeSantis. That’s the Republican future – more fear,” says Barnicle.
Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle as they discuss and poke fun at the Republican Party for being “disconnected from middle America” after the Republican National Committee urged GOP lawmakers to double down on anti-abortion stances and go on the offense in the 2024 election cycle. “When you talk to ordinary people who have just been laid off, as massive layoffs continue, corporate America tries to make money in a tough economy, you will find out that a huge issue among people who have been laid off or people waiting for their Social Security checks is the danger of voting by mail. They all talk about it. You know, how dangerous that is, and then when they get finished talking about that, they talk about Critical Race Theory or they talk about wokeism in colleges being taught, things like that. These are the real issues that Republicans have a lock on,” says Barnicle sarcastically about the GOP’s current platform.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Jonathan Lemire, Mike Barnicle and Richard Haass, author of the new book “The Bill of Obligations: The Habits of Good Citizens,” about how we might persuade US teachers to encourage students to utilize their critical thinking skills more than spend time and energy simply on memorizing facts.
ICYMI: Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle about Speaker Kevin McCarthy after he blocked two Democrats from seats on the House Intelligence Committee and assigned GOP lawmakers to the newly created select subcommittees charged with investigating the politicization of the government and the origins of the COVID pandemic. “The Republicans under Kevin McCarthy are putting together subcommittees about weaponizing, about weaponizing the government. They don’t want a government. They don’t like the government. So, this is going to be an interesting tale. I think it’s going to play out very quickly,” says Barnicle about McCarthy’s tenure as House Speaker. See the segment here.
Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle discuss House Speaker Kevin McCarthy saying he would not urge embattled Republican Rep. George Santos to resign from Congress, hours after local GOP officials tore into Santos, the New York legislator and pushed him to step down. “What would have been wrong with Kevin McCarthy just looking into the camera and saying, ‘listen, everyone here knows this guy is an embarrassment and we’re trying to figure out what to do about him, but he is an embarrassment to Congress, he certainly is an embarrassment to the constituency that under fraudulent purposes sent him to the United States Congress. We’ve got to deal it. We’re going to deal with it quickly.’ Why can’t anybody speak like a human being?” asks Barnicle.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Mike Barnicle and director Jeff Zimbalist about the new four-part documentary series “Super League: The War for Football,” which streamer Apple says “documents the high stakes battle that is set off when plans for a breakaway league emerge and the past, present, and future of European football collide, leaving the game’s most powerful leaders to defend, or upend, the traditions of the sport.” Hear more about it here.
“In politics we now live in the age of: Have you no shame and they have no shame—large parts of the Republican Party,” said Morning Joe contributor Mike Barnicle during this conversation with Willie Geist and Jonathan Lemire about how federal prosecutors in New York having opened an investigation into Republican Rep.-elect George Santos after he admitted to fabricating significant parts of his resume, including his work and education history, ahead of his successful bid for Congress. “Are we sure George Santos is his real name? We don’t know, really, and we’ll find out I guess, when investigations ensue, and we find out what happens with his seat in Congress,” adds Barnicle.
Morning Joe’s Willie Geist and Mike Barnicle discuss the latest in the Southwest Airlines debacle as the company is expected to resume normal operations after canceling thousands of flights and leaving passengers stranded across the United States. “I’m thinking about Southwest Airlines and the money they’re going to have to pay out. I don’t know where they’re going to get it. They’ve been paying so much in dividends to their shareholders that they scrimped on coming up with a computer system that would allow them to operate in a crisis like they went through, and the crisis management situation at Southwest Airlines is one that business schools are going to be studying for quite some time,” says Barnicle about Southwest Airlines. Listen to more on the situation here.
Watch this Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius after the January 6 committee released a new batch of transcripts, including key interviews from members of former President Donald Trump’s family and staff, such as White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was said to regularly burn documents during the transition period and occasionally tell staffers to keep some Oval Office meetings “close hold” and potentially omitted from official records. “All I could think of was someone like Jim Baker, former White House chief of staff or other White House chiefs of staff, who were responsible—responsible to the person they worked for, the president of the United States, and the country that they represented, our country, America,” says Barnicle.
“Joyce, I’m going to ask you to put on your old prosecutor’s hat, which I suspect is never far from you, and to recall that the Department of Justice has received the House January 6th committee’s recommendations. From your look, from your knowledge, which is superficial at one sense, in terms of it’s just what we’ve been able to read, what do you think is the most promising avenue for a potential indictment of the former president,” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Alabama, during a Morning Joe conversation about the potential prosecution of former President Donald Trump after the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol concluded that Trump is ultimately responsible for the insurrection, producing a written report for the Justice Department that contains a trove of evidence for why Trump should be prosecuted for multiple crimes. Listen to Vance’s response here.
Watch this Morning Joe segment with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Claire McCaskill, Mike Barnicle and Michael Beschloss as they discuss that the investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol has concluded that former President Donald Trump is ultimately responsible for the insurrection, with the House Select Committee producing a written report made public that includes a mountain of evidence for why Trump should be prosecuted for multiple crimes. “One scene just jumped out at me early on, and it is a scene that took place in mid-December after the Supreme Court had rejected the state of Texas’s appeal to overturn the election, and it’s Donald Trump in the Oval Office, talking to his then-chief of staff, and he says, ‘I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know we lost.’ The level of delusion married to the level of danger that we just confronted and was thwarted by the wall of democracy: Is there any match in history to this?” asks Barnicle of Beschloss. Find out here.
“We live in an age of accelerated pace of events. Something happens, and it’s forgotten two or three days from now. Something horrific could be forgotten in two or three days, and that takes our attention span as a people, as a culture, as a nation, way, way down. People don’t have the attention span that we used to have. So, the events that we have been talking about this morning, the text messages from sitting members of Congress urging sedition, right up until the point of almost noontime on January 20th when Joe Biden was sworn in as president, the January 6th insurrection, Capitol police officers fearing for their lives and being attacked by supposedly law and order people. We have all of that and yet if someone mentions Harry and Meghan, we go right there, and talk about that instead of focusing on the real dangers that still exist because they injected a poison into our system. The asylum wing of the Republican Party injected that poison into our system, and it still flows through our circulatory system as a nation,” says Morning Joe’s veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about the unfortunate lack of interest toward events surrounding the January 6 Capitol attack, following new reporting that then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows exchanged text messages with at least 34 Republican members of Congress as they plotted to overturn President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. Watch the segment 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.
