Mike Barnicle

“Here’s the problem….The President of the United States has sleepless nights. You check out the Twitter feed: Check the time code on the Twitter feed. The ‘won’t be around much longer’ tweet: 11:08 p.m. Friday night, wakes up Saturday morning, 6:15, 6:16 a.m. attacking the NBA and the NFL. This is a president that clearly his staff, some wonderful people, General Kelly, General Mattis, General McMaster — they have no control over the President of the United States, what he does, what he says, what he tweets — goading another country into firing a missile at us,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the panel talks about President Donald Trump, his foreign policy team, and the escalating crisis with North Korea. Listen to the conversation here.

“I found this weekend — for many reasons — to be inordinately depressing…. (President Donald Trump) goes to bed one night provoking the leader of North Korea into a mistake. He wakes up the very next morning going after professional athletes…the majority of them – African American. This is the United States of America. He does not understand the United States of America,” says Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle as the panel talks about the latest news coming from North Korea and the fallout over Trump’s battle with pro athletes, particularly his suggestion at a rally in Alabama that NFL players should be punished for kneeling during the national anthem. Listen to more of the discussion here. Only on MSNBC.

“The saddest thing about this is: This is not about the flag. This is not about a song. This is about Colin Kaepernick’s right, your right, my right to be free — to do what you want to do in this country within reason. And that’s within reason,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the panel discusses President Donald Trump’s tweeting out against NFL players kneeling during the national anthem and suggesting players should be punished for such an act. Listen to more of the discussion about First Amendment rights and Sec. of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin’s defense of Trump here with hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

“The idea that you need secure communications instruments on your honeymoon. That’s a whole new deal,” says Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle during the panel conversation about Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin having requested the use of a government jet for his European honeymoon at $25,000 per hour to attain ‘secure communications’. Hear more of the conversation about the controversial spending by Mnuchin and MSNBC political analyst Elise Jordan’s opinion that the secure communications need is a “flat out lie.”

“Carol, you just pointed out that the obvious pattern here would be to try and flip General Flynn using the legal difficulty of his son as a means to help doing that, but in the course of your reporting, did you get any sense of the pace of the investigation in terms of just General Flynn and his activities?” asks Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle of NBC News national political reporter Carol Lee during a conversation about the Russian probe gaining steam as it relates to former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who, new reports show failed to disclose a trip and work he did related to a private proposal to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East. Listen to Lee’s response here. Only on MSNBC.

“This isn’t about DACA, it’s not about Steve King, it’s not about Laura Ingraham: It’s about Donald J. Trump. He wants a win. He’s watched the Cleveland Indians win 21 straight. He likes to be on that side of the aisle. He wants a win, and that’s what this is about. He wants a big W on the wall in the Oval Office. And he doesn’t care about Schumer, Pelosi, McConnell — nobody. He cares about himself. That’s who he is,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the panel talks about President Donald Trump agreeing with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to work on legislation that would protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation and massively increase border security, but exclude President Trump’s much-promised wall on the southern border. Listen to more of the discussion here. Only on MSNBC.

During the discussion with MSNBC Meteorologist Bill Karins, Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle asks: “Bill, in your experience, do you recall a storm with such a damaging shelf life extending through days and hours and still in a sense walloping Georgia and South Carolina?” Hear more about record-breaking Hurricane Irma and the destruction it caused as a Category 5 storm with 185 mph winds.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) talks with Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about the role of Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, in the Russia probe. “Has he recused himself, or not?” asks Barnicle of Schiff. Hear Schiff’s surprising answer and his concern about getting to “the truth” of the situation.

During a conversation with Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) about the possible ramifications of the contentious relationship between House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the House Freedom Caucus, Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle asks: “Congressman, what’s the story in the internal cat fight between the Freedom Caucus and the Speaker of the House? And what’s the threat level to the Speaker’s job?” Listen to Cole’s position here.

The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig joins the Morning Joe panel to talk about her reporting on Facebook’s admission that a Russian-based group bought $100,000 in political ads from the social media site.
“What was the basic message of these ads and is Facebook going to releases the ads so we can judge for ourselves what they were all about?” asks Morning Joe contributor Mike Barnicle. Hear Leonnig’s response here on MSNBC.

“Long-term to Donald Trump is lunch today. It’s about maybe noontime, and we make the mistake too often of viewing the Trump presidency and Trump himself from the inside, from the perspective of internal politics: The House and the Senate, its relationship with the President, the White House’s relationship with Capitol Hill. If you view Donald Trump from the outside, you get a much better picture of what happened yesterday. You have a selfish guy, who’s President of the United States, who’s in it for himself primarily, to get a victory for himself to be able to boast in North Dakota that he knows how to cut deals — that he just did cut a deal. That’s the view of Trump from the outside,” explains Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a conversation with the hosts Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist about President’s Trump motivation for the deal with Democratic Minority Leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi to pair hurricane relief with a three-month debt limit hike— a deal that left some Republican lawmakers quite upset.

“Why is anyone really and truly surprised about what has happened here? The President of the United States is a man of the moment — he lives for the headline, he lives for the cable hour, he lives for the win. The personal is political, the political is personal. He will do anything to achieve even a momentary win (and) this is much more than a momentary win. He just has an affinity for Chuck Schumer that he is never going to have for Mitch McConnell. Jim, you’ve covered the Hill for years. Am I off base in that estimation?” asks Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle of Axios co-founder/CEO Jim VandeHei as the panel talks about President Donald Trump’s deal with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to tie emergency funding for hurricane relief with measures that would raise the debt ceiling and keep the government open for three months, to the consternation of some Republicans. Listen in on the conversation here.

“Kasie, how long is it before the fact that the President of the United States once again does not fully grasp the details of something – an issue, in this case DACA — health care before this. How long is it before (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell and (House Speaker Paul) Ryan finally explode in public about the fact that the President knows very little about what he’s pushing?” asks Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle of NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Kasie Hunt during a conversation about President Donald Trump’s decision to reverse course and rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), known as the ‘Dreamers’ program. Listen to the conversation here with Barnicle, Hunt and Joe Scarborough.

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) joins Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle to talk about his experience working with President Barack Obama in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, as the panel discussed President Donald Trump’s visit to Texas following the devastation of this week’s Tropical Storm Harvey. “You’ve lived through it. You’ve presided over it….You’re still going through the recovery process in New Jersey and the enormous cost of it. But in the middle of it, the reaction to it, you have a president arriving in Texas. You had a president arriving in New Jersey and there’s an infamous picture that you paid a political price for, some would argue, of you and Barack Obama. Tell us about Barack Obama arriving in New Jersey and dealing with the people of New Jersey,” Barnicle asks. Hear Christie’s response about the complicated politics involved at the time. “I’d do it again,” he said of his dealings with President Obama. “It’s what you’re paid to do.”

As the Morning Joe panel discusses President Donald Trump’s visit to storm-ravaged Texas and his promises of federal aid for the destruction of Tropical Storm Harvey, senior contributor Mike Barnicle says of POTUS: “He showed up. And that’s in and of itself something for people to cling to in these desperate times in Texas. Events like this, this hurricane, national tragedies like this, there’s usually three stages: There’s the reaction to it, there’s the rescue phase — which we’re still in the middle of — and then, most importantly, the recovery stage. The recovery stage is going to be political, it’s going to be enormously costly, it’s going to have a reaction to things like the potential of a government shutdown….That’s going to be when we’re going to find out is the President capable of strong leadership because he going to have to make choices. Is he going to have to stick with the wall spending? Or is he going say, ‘let’s ignore the wall for right now — we have got to get Texas back up on its feet?’”

While the Morning Joe panel talks about Defense Secretary James Mattis freezing President Donald Trump’s transgender military ban, senior contributor Mike Barnicle asks of POTUS: “At one level, a study of the Trump presidency so far, you have to go back to the fallback position and ask yourself: Does he really care about this?” Listen to more of the discussion here about Mattis largely leaving in tact the Obama-era policy on transgender military service members until he can receive input from an expert panel about whether to move ahead with President Trump’s ban that would prevent transgender people from serving in the U.S. military.

“We should point out — to be fair about all of this — that everyone I have spoken to either down there in Texas or in Washington has remarked upon the remarkable job that FEMA is doing here in terms of leading this effort and the remarkable coordination between state and local officials in Texas — in dealing with this the relentless nature of what they’re dealing with — has been a job extraordinarily well done so far,” comments Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle as the panel discusses the government’s handling of the deadly crisis in Texas brought about by Tropical Storm Harvey. Listen to more of the discussion here with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Barnicle and Carol Lee, National Political Reporter for NBC News.

“The presidency certainly has a learning curve to it. It’s something that certainly Donald Trump is unused to knowing anything about — the Presidency. But human nature doesn’t need a learning curve, the idea of empathy doesn’t need a learning curve. You either have it internally, instinctively, or you don’t have it. And I don’t think there’s anyone in America or very few people in America watching these scenes who are not stunned by the scope and the relentless nature of this tragedy — and the staff work that was lacking. That’s what struck me yesterday about the President’s inability to mention death and the suffering that’s going on. The staff work concerning Sgt. Steve Perez, 61 years of age, two days after his 61st birthday, drowns. A police officer that the President wasn’t told about….The whole day was kind of stunning in his inability….” says Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle as the panel talks about President Donald Trump’s visit to Texas in the wake of Tropical Storm Harvey’s devastation. Listen to more of the discussion here.

Republican political strategist Mike Murphy joined Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle to talk about the problems facing the Republican Party under President Donald Trump. “When you talk to ordinary people, you get the sense that they feel there’s a character gap in the Republican party,” suggests Barnicle. Hear Murphy’s response and why he says the Republican Party should “wake up and deal with this or we’re going to lose the franchise.” Watch the conversation here.

“If you check the timing of all of these stories, the commingling of them and look at the calendar, clearly, it was a marketing exercise, a branding exercise. His candidacy at the beginning — they did not think that they were going to win the presidency because he was more interested in his business assets and promoting them in Russia….The principal focus of the Mueller special prosecutor’s team right now is indeed Russia and one of the keys is General Flynn and his role in pulling together the administration prior to the inauguration. And it has to do with the sanctions imposed on Russia, and if they can tilt Flynn, if they can flip him, the President indeed will be under oath and it will not be law school. It won’t be like a deposition. It will be professionals really grilling down,” explains Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle during a discussion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, following news that a top executive from Trump’s real estate company emailed Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman during the presidential campaign to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow. Listen to more of the conversation with Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough and MSNBC senior political analyst Mark Halperin.