In continuing the Morning Joe conversation analogy that the Trump White House is akin to a reality TV show, veteran columnist Mike Barnicle says: “This is the first sequel that we’ve seen in presidential politics in quite a while where the president, in the second-part series here, becomes irrelevant. The Senate is moving forward without the President—as if he doesn’t exist.” Hear more of the discussion about President Donald Trump’s threatening to shut the government down for a second time—this time over border security.
“Everyone, nearly everyone, around the President of the United States is in a state of panic about the spectacle, the specter, of him having to testify before Bob Mueller,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the Morning Joe panel discusses whether President Donald Trump will be interviewed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as part of the investigation into possible ties between Trump’s associates and Russia’s election interference, and whether he obstructed justice. Listen to more of the conversation here with Joe Scarborough. Only on MSNBC.
“Donald Trump expects personal loyalty from agencies of government that have been independent since the inception of the United States of America….The idea that a 20-year bureaucrat…of the FBI is attacked by the President of the United States in tweet, after tweet, after tweet — the morale of the bureau must be devastated,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle to the Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett during a conversation about President Donald Trump having asked then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe who he voted for in the 2016 election in an introductory Oval Office meeting. Listen to the discussion here.
Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett joins Morning Joe to talk about his report that former acting FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation director Andrew McCabe was targeted by President Donald J. Trump and asked who he voted for in the 2016 election in an introductory Oval Office meeting. Veteran columnist Mike Barnicle asks: “Devlin, his longstanding antipathy toward McCabe, what is the root of that? Did he know McCabe prior to running for president or becoming president?” Listen as Barrett connects the dots.
“A large portion of America thinks that what occurs in Washington is basically not a clown car, it’s a clown caravan, encompassed, populated, by people of both parties from the President on down,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as he Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist discuss the bipartisan effort that ended, at least temporarily, the government shutdown. Listen in here.
As the Morning Joe panel talks about Republicans and Democrats in Congress agreeing to end the government shutdown for at least three weeks, senior contributor Mike Barnicle explains: “They shut down the government on Friday. By Friday night they realized they made a horrific mistake, and they spent the weekend trying to figure out how to get out of it….They decide one thing they’re going to do is take the car keys from the President of the United States. They are United State Senators, and they’re going to deal with this apart from the craziness of the White House. Why did they do this? Because they finally recognized that they’re living in a city which just constantly spills out toxicity from every branch of government, and especially the White House, and that toxicity has now reached new levels of contempt for institutions of government, like the FBI. And that has bothered more than one United States senator. So, on the whole, I think it’s a positive what happened over the weekend.” Listen to more of the discussion here with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
“What we do know, David, is because he went to military school, Donald loves, loves, loves the military and loves, loves, loves our veterans. And, so therefore, he must have really plunged forward with greater vigor with veterans programs than Barack Obama ever did. No?” veteran columnist Mike Barnicle sarcastically asks of David Cay Johnston, author of the book “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America,” during a conversation about President Donald Trump and the distrust that surrounds him. Listen to Johnston’s response here.
As the Morning Joe panel discusses Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) challenge to President Donald Trump to “close the deal” on immigration, saying the White House should be leading in negotiations, not taking to Twitter to blast negotiators, veteran columnist Mike Barnicle says: “The White House is having trouble handling this because it involves the truth….Lindsey Graham is one of the few Republicans who recognizes that demography, political demography, is destiny, and you’ve got to be a more inclusive party. He’s trying to do that with his support for DACA and an immigration bill; but, he’s alone, practically.”
During the Morning Joe panel discussion about yesterday’s tearful deportation of Jorge Garcia, a 39-year-old Detroit resident who emigrated to the U.S. from Mexico at the age of 10, veteran columnist Mike Barnicle says:
“That is not the United States of America….You wonder how many of these United States Senators, especially people like Tom Cotton, how many United States members of the Congress, House of Representatives, how many of them have ever been to a citizenship ceremony, and watched people literally in tears of joy, of becoming United States citizens?” Hear more of the conversation here with Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough and John Heilemann.
“What we’ve been talking about today is something that’s both consistent, it’s historical, and it’s been out there for 30 or 40 years. All of you Republican senators, Republican members of the House, come to New York, talk to anybody in the business community, anybody in the financial services community, and they will tell you: You’re dealing with a person, a President of the United States, who is totally 100 percent unreliable in any deal you talk about,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the Morning Joe panel discusses President Donald Trump now much debated “sh**hole” comment about Haitian and African countries during a meeting last week about immigration policy with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House. Listen to more of the discussion here with Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist.
“You have a President of the United States who needs to be propped up and steered toward positions that he just has no idea about the elements of the position. In this case, it’s immigration. But, he’s got be propped up by fellow conservatives who then lie about it – what occurred – and take it to where they want him to go,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the Morning Joe panel talks about the two GOP senators – Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia – who denied hearing President Donald Trump refer to Haiti and African nations as “sh–hole countries” during a meeting about immigration policy with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House. Listen to more of the discussion here with hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
“We’ve been talking about race and Martin Luther King today. We’ve come so far in this country. It’s time to continue that journey. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to continue it, apparently, without the President of the United States leading the charge,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the Morning Joe panel shares its final thoughts.
“Anand, when I’m looking at you, I’m looking at the face of this nation — this huge, sprawling homogeneous nation. And we all know now, we’re all familiar, except for a few Cabinet secretaries and a couple of United States Senators, with the phrase that came out of the Oval Office last week. And yet there is an element here that would suggest that we should not be so much worried about the language the President uses as the reality of what he’s doing: ‘You’re from Haiti, get back there.’ ‘You’re from El Salvador, get out now.’ Things like that — the behavior of this administration,” comments Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle to NBC News political analyst Anand Giridharadas as they discuss President Donald Trump’s statements toward immigrants. Listen to the conversation and Giridharadas’ sharing of Martin Luther King’s sentiment that “good people are the wind beneath’s evil’s wings.”
The Economist’s Washington correspondent Jon Fasman joined the Morning Joe panel to talk about his cover story: “One year old: Is the Trump presidency really this bad?” Asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Fasman:
“Can we retrieve, can we repair the damage that’s been done thus far….?” Hear Fasman’s response and why The Economist has written repeated that President Donald Trump “doesn’t have the temperament or the judgment to lead a great country.”
“Elise, you have a piece in TIME magazine this week, ‘I’m a Republican,’ that’s the title of it. ‘I’m a Republican, What Is Wrong With My Party?’ What is wrong with your party?” asks Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of MSNBC political analyst and TIME contributor Elise Jordan during a conversation about President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, following President Trump having referred to Haiti and African nations as “sh–hole countries” during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House. Listen to Jordan’s response here about Trump and his supporting Republicans who are “chipping into the soul of American values that we hold dear.” Only on MSNBC.
During the ongoing Morning Joe discussion of the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s having referred to Haiti and African nations as “sh–hole countries” during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House, veteran columnist Mike Barnicle says: “The most concerning thing is in this big sprawling, hugely diverse country we have a president for the first time in our history who not only ignores talking about the scab of race and the history of race, he pokes, and prods, and rips the scab off. And when you rip a scab off, what do you do? You scratch a sore. People scratch a sore. And he has a specific percentage of the population that he is encouraging to scratch the sore of race: His base. He does it nearly every day.” Hear more of the conversation here.
“This is a president who plays to divisions in this country, rather than the country as a whole. And now the divisions are so wide that they extend well beyond the President of the United States. You’ve got a sitting senator, David Perdue, referring to Dick Durbin as an individual, not using his name as most senators do, not saying…’Dick Durbin either didn’t hear what he thought he heard,’ but he’s saying ‘that individual, that individual.’ Further polarization in our politics,” comments veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a Morning Joe conversation with Vanity Fair special correspondent Gabriel Sherman about President Donald Trump, following Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) having criticized Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) description of President Trump referring to Haiti and African nations as “sh–hole countries” during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House. Hear from Sherman about Trump’s “fixed and retrograde ideas about race in America.”
“Joe, this is a sobering and necessary discussion that we’re having right now. I would submit that we, as a country, collectively as Americans, have never been here before, where we are today. We’ve never been in this position. This is a country, this is a republic, created and born with the scab of racism on it due to slavery, due to people being brought to this country in chains as slaves. And every president that we have had, even many whom people disagreed with politically, including Richard Nixon, have always reverted to the principle focus of a presidency and that is to bring a country together in times of strife, in times of trouble or conflict, real or potential — with the exception of one president, this President, the incumbent president, who goes out of his way to provoke and tear at that scab of race, to tear at that scab that creates divisions in this country rather than bringing the country together….It is up to us, as individuals, as Americans, to stand for the character, the morality and the reputation of who we are as a country and who we are as individuals; but, we have never, ever, been here before,” explains veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the Morning Joe panel discusses the state of the country post President Donald Trump’s having referred to Haiti and African nations as “sh–hole countries” during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House. Listen to more of the conversation here. Only on MSNBC.
“Michael, we now have a…cult of personality more than it is a presidency. It’s rooted around celebrity rather than competence. How long will it take, if it does take, to repair the damage that’s being done by this sort of cult of personality presidency?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of TIME contributing editor Michael Duffy as the Morning Joe panel talks about President Donald Trump. Listen to Duffy’s response here.
“The continued disparagement of the FBI and thus the Justice System in this country is truly truly damaging. It’s incendiary,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a conversation about President Donald Trump slamming the Trump-Russia Dossier in a morning tweet. Listen in as Barnicle and the New York Times Washington correspondent Michael Schmidt discuss what this means for Trump’s relationship with his legal team.
