Mike Barnicle

“The coverage of the end of the Biden presidency, is really interesting to me. It’s like going to a baseball game and you watch the game, you drive home, and you say, ‘well that was a good game.’ You get home and you realize, ‘boy that was a great game.’ And what’s happened here in the coverage of the end of the Biden presidency is it’s dominated by his age. Every story that’s written describes his age, his shuffle, his stutters, he didn’t say anything. And age takes precedence over the accomplishments of the Biden administration. They certainly are historic, and they certainly are a huge positive for American paychecks,” says Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Willie Geist, Mika Brzezinski, Jonathan Lemire and Al Sharpton as they discuss the Democratic Party’s road forward after losing in the 2024 election and the final stage of President Joe Biden’s term in the White House.

Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Jonathan Lemire, Mike Barnicle and NBC News Senior Capitol Hill correspondent Garrett Haake about the influence of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, on President-elect Donald Trump and his team as Musk has demanded that Republicans back away from a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. “What impact do you think that’s having on that inner circle?” asks Barnicle. Find out here.

Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) about how House Democrats will approach the incoming Trump Administration as the Republican Party will enter the 119th Congress with a razor-thin majority in the House. “It sounds as if every vote is going to be like a buzzer-beater at the end of a basketball game….What’s the reality on the Democratic side of the aisle? What are your issues that you worry about?” Hear Jeffries’ response here on MSNBC.

“I went to grammar school with kids—who came to the same grammar school classroom I sat in—who were wearing braces and sticks to carry them through the day, to walk. They had polio. The idea that we’re going to eliminate the Salk vaccine—and take a look at vaccines that all infants and children get to prevent measles and other really radical diseases that could cause harm to them—the idea that we’re talking about eliminating them based upon the quackery of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—and it is quackery. And he is a very smart guy and he ought to know better, but he clearly doesn’t know better. But the idea that we’re still seriously talking about eliminating vaccines from any children is almost beyond belief,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Jonathan Lemire following a New York Times report that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawyer Aaron Siri has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.

“Competence is the issue. Look at the Middle East…Is Syria on the verge of becoming a failed state or is it a failed state already? The German government is in a state of near collapse. The French legislature has been disbanded and they are going to have another election probably this spring. Ukraine – what’s going to happen with Ukraine? All of this depends on partially, at least two of the nominees, Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, doing their jobs competently. They can’t do their jobs competently because they are not fully qualified for those jobs, and yet, they are nominated for those jobs. So, it’s going to be up to the Senate – the United States Senate – to stand up, advise, consent and then vote. And we are going to out which senators have the courage to do absolutely the right thing in defense of the United States of America,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about the Senate amid Trump’s cabinet nominations during this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Katty Kay as they discuss President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial cabinet nominees, including Tulsi Gabbard as intelligence chief and Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary, who are currently in Washington D.C. meeting with senators amid their confirmation push.

With the holidays upon us, watch this Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about consumer protections for delayed and canceled flights. “Commercial air travel in America for the average flying customer—people like me—is a nightmare,” says Barnicle. “What can we do about the fact that when an airline is delaying a flight incomprehensibly long—it’s going to be delayed for three hours or whatever—what can we do about getting a cash payment back for the ticket?” Hear Buttigieg’s answer here on MSNBC.

Watch this Morning Joe conversation between Willie Geist, Mike Barnicle and author Richard Esposito about Esposito’s new biography “Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth,” which provides an inside look into one of America’s greatest newspaper columnists. “He was always a guy who recognized the vulnerable because he was so vulnerable at a certain level,” said Barnicle. Listen to the conversation here.

Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle as they weigh in on President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, following the most recent announcements of Linda McMahon to lead the Education Department after a career as a former professional wrestling executive who ran the Small Business Administration for much of Trump’s first term, and Todd Blanche, Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney, to serve as deputy attorney general. “Todd Blanche is a legitimate legal giant in his own right, and running the Justice Department will probably be his chore, given whoever is going to be attorney general. The most important thing to a lot of people isn’t Justice, though…It’s the Department of Education. Your children’s high school and grammar school education being run by someone who is more familiar with wrestling—with professional wrestling—than it is with actually what goes on in the classroom,” says Barnicle about President-elect Trump’s incoming cabinet. Watch the segment here.

Admiral James Stavridis, a retired four-star U.S. naval officer, joined the Morning Joe panel, where the conversation centered on what President Joe Biden might do to help Ukraine during his last two months in office and President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial move to nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary, selecting someone largely inexperienced and unproven on the global stage to take over the world’s largest and most powerful military. Asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Stavridis: “What’s your view of the furor that has erupted over the potential successor as secretary of defense?”

“Susie Wiles is a tremendously respected woman…across the board—doesn’t matter what party you belong to. There’s a lot of respect for her and what she’s done, especially in terms of reining in Donald Trump. She’s going to be the chief of staff to the next president of the United States in exactly two months from today. Where is Susie Wiles’ role now in terms of all these appointments being made?” veteran columnist Mike Barnicle asks of New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker during this Morning Joe conversation about the potential impact or influence Wiles might have on President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations amid controversy surrounding some of the choices.

Watch this Morning Joe segment with Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle and the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson as they discuss President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial cabinet nominees, which includes Fox News host Pete Hegseth as defense secretary and Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general. “These are really shocking appointments at their root,” says Barnicle. The rest of the conversation is here.

“I think all of the things that impacted the election, inflation still remains and was the critical factor because what the Biden Administration was doing nearly every day, God bless them, coming on television and telling people, voters, that we had the strongest economy in the world. That is actually the truth. We have the strongest economy in the world; but it’s not the economy, the average lived economy that people endure each and every day in this country. People pulling into gas stations in brand new Ford F-150 trucks or expensive cars or old cars and getting half a tank of gas because they were running out of money looking at the numbers scrolling….That’s what did it, not ideology – money,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation about the 2024 presidential election.

Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Julian Castro and Mike Barnicle as they weigh in on the results of the presidential election with former President Donald Trump winning and Vice President Kamala Harris underperforming across the country, falling behind in several swing states that Joe Biden had won. “If the Democrats would get their act together, led by some common sense people who stop hectoring their constituents over things that really don’t matter in the long run, don’t matter to their children’s education, to their health care for their families, to the cost of groceries—things that don’t matter, putting them up on the priority scale, the Democrats would be a lot better off,” says Barnicle about the Democratic Party and their lack of attention to the “lived economy.”

“Doris, we’ve spoken about the two closing arguments. One on the downside; one of the upside; one sort of the cloudy, rainy day, and the other a sunshiny day. How long do you think it takes for a president, any president, but an incoming president of the United States, to restore a sense of optimism about the future of America? Because it’s been run down continually by one of the candidates. How long does it take, and what does a president have to do taking office to restore confidence in the future of this country?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who joins Morning Joe on Election Day in the United States as millions of Americans head to the polls to cast ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly referred to America as a “third-world country” this election cycle. Listen to Goodwin’s response here. Only on MSNBC.

Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle as they weigh in on Election Day in the United States as millions of Americans head to the polls to cast ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump. “I feel rather optimistic about this. I think momentum is with her, and I think a large component of the momentum that is with her is based strictly on Donald Trump’s rhetoric, his behavior, his physical appearances over the last then days,” says Barnicle about the Harris campaign. Join the conversation here.

“How is it that we are confronted with a choice between a woman, Kamala Harris, who is speaking common sense to the American public right now—talking about bringing people together, talking about bringing this country together, that seems to be so divided—running against someone whose language and behavior would be abhorrent to any parent if they thought about his impact on their children. Maybe we’re not thinking enough about the country and about the children of this country, our children, our grandchildren, in terms of who leads us. Who do we want leading us? Do we want a good example leading us, not just here in the country but to the world? Or do we want the language and the behavior that we’ve seen evidenced by Donald J. Trump for decades now and entrust him again with the presidency of the United States? Eddie, I don’t know, I don’t know the answer to why more people don’t think about these things when they look and hear him,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle to Princeton University Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. during this Morning Joe panel discussion about the 2024 presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump just days away.

Listen in on this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle as they discuss amid the fall out of a comedian opening a rally for the former President Donald Trump having called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” yet another comment that has drawn widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum. “It’s just another indictment of the way the campaign is being run, not by the people who run the campaign, but the people who symbolize the campaign: Donald Trump and JD Vance,” says Barnicle.

ICYMI: “An amazing display of total economic ignorance yesterday in Chicago,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about former President Donald Trump’s interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait before the Economic Club of Chicago, where the 2024 Republican nominee defended his protectionist trade policies and other fiscal proposals. “If you ran the interview that Kamala Harris did yesterday and then run the interview that Donald Trump just did yesterday with John Micklethwait at the Chicago Board of Economics, you’d be stunned at the difference between the two in terms of competence, in terms of leadership, in terms of what you know about today’s economy.”

“I’m not a native New Yorker. You know, I’m here three or four days a week each week. I am stunned at the electricity on the sidewalks and in the stores about the Mets, and about baseball in general, but specifically about the Mets. Last night, we were on a text chain, four or five other people during the game texting back and forth. The bases are loaded, and one of the text members, just a one-line text: ‘I feel a grand slam from Lindor.’ And boom. I mean, that’s the Mets’ season, and Francisco Lindor is symbolic of the Mets, I think. He’s a calming presence when you hear him interviewed, he’s a calming presence at the plate, and you just have a confidence and a joy in what he brings to the game each and every day,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Willie Geist and Jonathan Lemire about the New York Mets having reached the National League Championship Series with a 4-1 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies due to Francisco Lindor hitting a grand slam in the sixth inning during the 2024 Major League Baseball playoffs.

“I hesitate to do this, but the reportorial coverage of this campaign in a daily basis is abusive to the public mind, to the voters’ minds,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as they discuss the state of the 2024 presidential race following the vice presidential debate between Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance. “We’ve lost our way in covering this campaign. And I think when you lose your way in covering the campaign, the voters’ priorities are skewed a bit by reading, especially in the print coverage of the campaign, and it’s more than troubling, it’s damaging.” Watch the conversation here.