Mike Barnicle

“Donald Trump’s position on the National Guard, inserting them into Washington, D.C., allegedly trying to put them into places like Chicago and Baltimore, has shades of 1968 when the Republican Party first took over law and order as an issue and then remained strong with that issue since 1968. Richard Nixon campaigned for president talking about law and order throughout the country…But today… it’s a misuse of the National Guard. You insert them into a city where probably more likely than not many members of that unit don’t come from the District of Columbia. They don’t know the neighborhood, they don’t know the players in neighborhoods, from one neighborhood to another, and they’re wasting their time really,” says Morning Joe contributor Mike Barnicle about President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. as part of his crackdown on crime.

Watch this Morning Joe segment about the impact the federal government is having on the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois due to its withholding of funds that would benefit local school children and threats of deployment of the National Guard to deal with crime. “Chicago, it’s just like a lot of other American cities, big American cities, especially if you pull the string on crime…you’ll find that, that string will lead you to fractured family structures, it will lead you to juvenile crime—growing juvenile crime—and it will lead you eventually to not enough good teachers and not enough good elementary schools. So, my question to you is in terms of the money that you’re talking about, the federal government taken from you: How much is being deprived from getting to local public schools in Chicago?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D), a former public school teacher serving as the 57th mayor of the third-largest city in the United States by population.

“In a litany of tragedies, the hostages still remain number one, number one. And it’s been going on now for two years, held hostage. And now we’re down to, according to news reports, perhaps less than 20 have survived, less than 20….The reason the hostages are still hostages, the reason the war still continues is because Bibi Netanyahu knows the day the war ends his trial begins in Tel Aviv,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the hostages being held in the Gaza Strip since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas during this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Katty Kay, David Ignatius and Mika Brzezinski.

“In addition to the enormous human tragedy that we’re talking about right now and that occurred just a couple of days ago, this is a tragedy for Israel as a whole—a global tragedy for Israel,” says Morning Joe contributor Mike Barnicle during this morning’s conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Jonathan Lemire and Willie Geist as they remember the five journalists killed in Gaza after an Israeli strike on a hospital, which has received mounting international condemnation. “Israel needs friends. It has always needed friends; but under Bibi Netanyahu and the conduct of the IDF in waging this war against Hamas, Israel is winning no friends. It’s losing friends rapidly and the idea that the IDF is continuing to wage war against Hamas under the goal of, as Bibi Netanyahu has pointed out, eliminating Hamas. You’re never going to eliminate Hamas. It’s not going to happen, and the reason it’s not going to happen is because of the constant warfare against Hamas in Gaza. You’ve earned another generation’s contempt of Palestinians toward Israel.”

Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Jonathan Lemire, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle as they discuss President Donald Trump signaling that he might deploy the National Guard to U.S. cities including Chicago, even as his crackdown in the capital of Washington, D.C. has been met with anger from local residents. “It’s a sad case when you have National Guardsmen patrolling streets like in Georgetown or whatever, or central Washington, D.C. which is quite active, quite thriving, restaurants and everything…and now they’re strapped with pistols on leg holsters. These are largely weekend people who train maybe once a month….This is a disaster waiting to happen—and the idea of sending the National Guard to Baltimore or Chicago is beyond outrageous for similar reasons,” says Barnicle about President Trump’s strategy of deploying the National Guard into American cities to combat crime.

Tune in for this Morning Joe panel discussion with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) about the future of the Democratic Party ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and how the focus needs to shift back to an economic message. “What’s the Democrats’ plan in the House to deal with lack of primary care physicians?…It’s impossible to find a doctor now, rising electric costs because AI gobbles up everything and, your electric bill is like 50 percent higher now than it was earlier. And the cost of living, the cost of living continues each and every week to go up for a lot of people, especially in the one place that everybody goes to—the grocery store,” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle. Hear what Gottheimer has to say here about how Democrats “care about” and are “still fighting” for everyday citizen.

Tune in for this Morning Joe segment with Jonathan Lemire, Mike Barnicle and Helene Cooper, the New York Times’ Pentagon correspondent, as they discuss President Donald Trump deploying the D.C. National Guard in the nation’s capital and placing D.C.’s police department “under direct federal control,” citing a public safety emergency. “Part of it is performance art from the President of the United States. It fits his personality—that he can do this, that he can insert uniformed troops of the United States government on to city streets,” says Barnicle. But what are the ramifications? Is this federal overreach? Watch the conversation here.

Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and NBC News medical contributor Dr. Vin Gupta about the Environmental Protection Agency moving to revoke its long-standing finding that greenhouse gases harm human health and roll back vehicle emission standards, setting off what it describes as the biggest deregulatory action in American history. Learn how this will impact everyone, especially those with asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

“Well, it’s great theater that we just saw: Cory Booker, a good guy, standing up and yelling on the floor of the United States Senate. What I don’t understand is: He’s yelling at two other Democrats. The Democrats have enough problems. They have enough problems in this country defining themselves to people, making sure that people know they are alive. They are interested in your life. They are interested in you, solving your problems,” says Morning Joe contributor and veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this conversation with Joe Scarborough and Claire McCaskill as they react to the Senate floor having devolved into an intense clash between Democrats when Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey emphatically objected to unanimously passing a bipartisan package of police funding bills.

“Mr. Mayor, there are many elements of this tragedy yesterday that have a ripple effect that people are going to be feeling for a long, long time. For me, one of the most critical aspects of it is the fact that, Didarul Islam, the police officer killed yesterday left two little boys, and his wife is pregnant with their third child, and he’s an immigrant from Bangladesh. The New York City Police Department is filled with immigrant police officers. Can you tell us…what’s the composition of the police department? How many languages, different languages, are spoken by members of the New York Police Department for translation, things like that?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of New York City Mayor Eric Adams who joins Morning Joe to honor 36-year-old police officer Didarul Islam, the first Bangladeshi to die in the line of NYPD duty, after a gunman opened fire inside a high-rise corporate building in the heart of Manhattan, killing Islam and three other people. Watch their conversation here.

Watch this Morning Joe segment with Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle, Willie Geist and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder of Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, who joins to discuss an article he co-authored for the New Republic entitled, “The ‘Tiffany Network’ Shatters as Paramount-CBS Sells Its Soul Cheap. “What happens to the soul of a network when you strip it—the way they’re stripping it down apparently—in the news department?” asks Barnicle of Sonnenfeld following recent reports indicating that the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger between Skydance Media and Paramount Global, but with the condition that Paramount, which owns CBS, must appoint a “bias monitor.”

“A lot of media people are afraid of Donald Trump—afraid of his retaliatory powers, afraid of what he might say or do about their product, so he’s made a lot of money….The state of the media today is so much different than it was just a mere decade ago, and certainly vastly different than it was at its inception, its modern inception. We’re a long ways from John Chancellor and Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. We’re a long ways from networks that were the only three things that people saw on TV. It’s so spread out today. There’s so much, when you say the word media today, a lot of different people have a different version of what the media is to them. Some people think, a lot of people think, the media is their phone. You know, if you’ve been in the business a long time, it’s shocking what has happened to the concept of media in this country,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as he joins Way Too Early with Ali Vitali to discuss the latest Trump news.

“What we just saw a clip of is the sitting president of the United States of America talking about one of his predecessors, Barack Obama, and using the word treason. That is so far beyond the pale—that unfortunately in the shocking, tornado-like events that happen each and every day in the news business—people might be immune to it, it might over their heads. But a sitting president of the United States using the word treason—treason, look up the definition—about another president of the United States is beyond shocking,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Willie Geist and Jonathan Lemire about President Donald Trump today accusing former President Barack Obama of treason, claiming the former president plotted to sabotage Trump’s first presidency by linking him to alleged Russian election meddling.

Tim Barnicle, PhD, author of the Substack “American Times,” joins Morning Joe to discuss his latest article titled “Citizen Stern” which explores how shock jock Howard Stern’s run for governor of New York in 1994 served as a precursor for the new era of politics. “I understand that you grew up in a house where there were always printed newspapers around? Is that like, so old that I’m making myself even older than I am?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of his son, Tim. “What’s the story about the way to get to authenticity today for candidates?” Hear Tim’s answer and watch the conversation here. Only on MSNBC.

Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Jonathan Lemire, the Atlantic’s Peter Wehner and Mike Barnicle as they weigh in on President Donald Trump’s latest flip-flop on his approach to the war between Russia and Ukraine, after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth held up a shipment of U.S. weapons headed to help Ukraine over what U.S. officials said were concerns about its own low stockpiles.

“It’s interesting that the BRIC nations meeting in South America this week, apparently according to the Wall Street Journal and other news reports, are now talking amongst themselves, ‘Well, let’s just trade with each other and let the American situation settle down. We’ll see what President Trump does eventually with the tariffs, but let’s just keep business going and flowing with ourselves.’ Now, you wonder whether the contagion factor there transfers itself to European nations also being hit with high tariffs and that all of it is a mushroom cloud around the level of uncertainty that this has brought to the global economy,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Jonathan Lemire about the economic uncertainty caused by President Trump’s tariff policy amid the BRICS nations holding their annual summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Watch this Morning Joe discussion between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, about the hostages still being held in captivity almost two years after the Hamas-led attacks that resulted in roughly 1,200 people being killed in Israel and 251 others taken hostage. “We are incredibly just three months short of the second anniversary of October 7th. Three months from now, it’ll be two years. How is it that the hostages have still not been released?” asks Barnicle. Hear Haass’ answer here.

Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Willie Geist, Mike Barnicle and Stew Leonard’s Grocery Chain President and CEO Stew Leonard, Jr. about the cost of grocery items and shoppers’ habits this year ahead of the July 4 holiday.

Veteran columnist Mike Barnicle digs deeper into President Donald Trump’s tax and immigration bill with NBC News medical contributor Dr. Vin Gupta, who sets the record straight on pending hospital and clinic closures and the loss of many “good paying” jobs that will result if the bill is approved.

Watch this Morning Joe conversation between Wille Geist and Mike Barnicle as they discuss House Republicans being on the verge of passing President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration bill, which would increase the nation’s deficit and make cuts to Medicaid, ahead of a July 4 deadline imposed by Trump.

“Just reading the internals of this particular piece of legislation that’s about to pass, clearly, it’s obvious that many Republicans are total amnesiacs. They have no sense of history. Nearly 60 years ago, probably 62 years ago, this very summer Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty. And now the Republican Party over the past few months in concocting this bill and putting this legislation together and getting it approved…They have turned the war on poverty into a war on the impoverished, a war on the vulnerable, the most vulnerable among us,” says Barnicle about President Trump’s sweeping policy bill that will certainly also impact the nation’s biggest employer — the health care industry. “They clearly have not thought this out.”