“Congressman, other than a few lobbyists in Washington, nobody I know likes the insurance companies. But without this occurring to prop up the insurance companies in terms of helping people with lower incomes get health care, what happens to those people? You just referenced the hurt, the poor. What happens to them?” asks Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle of Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC) during a conversation about President Donald Trump’s executive order on health care, which will withhold the cost-sharing subsidies that the government currently pays insurance companies in order to reduce deductibles and co-pays for many low-income people. Listen to Walker’s response here.
“There are no words to convey what the President of the United States did yesterday by injecting John Kelly’s son into a political argument. You have to go to history to measure it. You have to go to June 9th, 1954, when…Joseph Welch looked at Joseph McCarthy with the TV cameras going and said: ‘Senator, up until now, I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Have you no sense of decency, sir?’ And Joe McCarthy had no sense of decency, and now that’s the question we’re saddled with, with regard to the sitting president of the United States,” said Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle during a panel discussion about President Donald Trump’s claim that President Barack Obama did not call the loved ones of fallen soldiers, suggesting to reporters to ask his chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, whether Obama called him after his son died in Afghanistan. Watch the conversation here.
“That’s all I said: They were a fun team to watch,” says Morning Joe senior contributor and devoted Boston Red Sox fan Mike Barnicle as the panel teases him for tweeting that “the (New York) Yankees are a fun team to watch.” Listen to more of the baseball banter here.
“We thought it was the best way to celebrate Mike Barnicle’s birthday,” said Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough during a lengthy segment of talk about baseball, one of Barnicle’s favorite topics.
Watch the conversation and join the Morning Joe panel is wishing the “legendary” Mike Barnicle a happy birthday here.
While the Morning Joe panel discusses the Trump Administration’s mixed messages to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, veteran columnist Mike Barnicle comments on the little press coverage Puerto Rico has received amid its recovery from Hurricane Maria. “I think we have to assume some part of the blame in the media. If this were Texas, or Florida, or some place in the continental United States, where 90 percent of the state was without electricity, where people were hungering for clean drinking water every single day, I think the coverage would be much more massive than it is now.” Listen to more of the discussion here with Barnicle, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Donny Deutsch.
“Therein lies the real problem,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle. “If you take Paris, if you take the Iran accord, if you take DACA, if you take TPP, if you take NAFTA to a certain extent, Donald Trump is trying to do the impossible. He’s trying to erase history. He’s trying to erase anything that mentions the name Barack Obama. He has an obsession with people like Barack Obama, who get more headlines, who get more appreciation in his mind than Donald Trump does.” Listen in as the Morning Joe panel discusses President Trump’s agenda.
While the Morning Joe panel talks about President Donald Trump signing an executive order on health care that lets insurance companies bypass guidelines in the Affordable Care Act, veteran columnist Mike Barnicle explains: “You also have to wonder about this and about a lot of other policies: How hard it is, how difficult it is, to measure what (Trump) does and what he says because it’s outside the norm. How much of this yesterday was aimed at (Republican Senator) Mitch McConnell? `You couldn’t get it done. Here I’m doing it.’ And then he can tell the public” `Mitch McConnell, loser. Me, winner.’” Listen to more of the discussion here.
While the Morning Joe panel talks about White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s surprise appearance at a White House press briefing, where he spoke to reporters, and the nature of his position within the Trump Administration, senior contributor Mike Barnicle explains: “I thought his appearance was pretty revealing. In one sense, it drew the curtain back a bit on the internals of the White House. You can see where he would be a calming, moderating influence — or at least attempting to be such — dealing with the President himself.” Listen to more of the discussion on Kelly and the role of the Chief of Staff here.
“This has been a great postseason. The Yankees, I have to tell you, they are fun to watch. They are an energetic team. Don’t underestimate the impact that a Todd Frazier – a veteran guy – has on the younger players on that team,” says Morning Joe veteran contributor Mike Barnicle about New York Yankees third baseman Todd Frazier, a leader on the team, as the panel talks about the MLB playoffs. Listen to more baseball talk here.
ICYMI: Listen in on the Morning Joe conversation between veteran contributor Mike Barnicle and NBC News’ national political reporter Carol Lee about an exclusive NBC News report that indicates President Donald Trump declared he wanted what amounts to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a meeting with the nation’s highest-ranking national security leaders and POTUS’s inner circle.
“That was a thoroughly humiliating performance by Secretary of State Tillerson,” said Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during the panel’s conversation about Tillerson’s public statement refuting an NBC News report that he had been on the verge of resigning from his Cabinet post over the summer. “If Rex Tillerson had the relationship with the President of the United States that you would hope that a secretary of state would have with the President of the United States, he wouldn’t be reading off a script to describe that relationship. He would know it, he would live it.” Listen in on the discussion here.
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough and veteran columnist Mike Barnicle discuss President Donald Trump’s visit to Las Vegas, where he met with victims of the weekend’s shooting massacre and offered words of encouragement and empathy. “It’s pretty bizarre that we are heaving a sigh of relief that the President acted normally yesterday in front of the wounded, and hurt, and grief stricken in a situation that none of us are used to — or used to it on a smaller scale. The scale of what happened in Las Vegas is still overwhelming, and we should take the time perhaps to point out that in Las Vegas we’ve seen a model of communication, in an age where we get very little clear communication from Washington. We’ve seen a model of communication in Las Vegas from Sheriff Lombardo every day, multiple times a day, which has been quite amazing and clarifying.” See highlights from POTUS’ visit here.
As the Morning Joe panel discusses the ongoing Russia probe and how Facebook ads were used to target specific states in the 2016 election, veteran columnist Mike Barnicle explains: “Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have been dragged kicking and screaming to the edge of transparency over about two or three months. At first they were living in denial and public denial that ‘we had nothing to do with this. We didn’t know this was going on. We’re not sure this was going on.’ But, now, the reality has dawned on them. And there’s another reality that occurred yesterday….You saw Dick Burr, a Republican, and you saw Mark Warner, a Democrat, standing shoulder to shoulder talking about an issue that effects the entire nation, our country. It was encouraging to finally see some sense of bipartisanship in this polarized town.” Listen to more of the conversation about Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and vice chair Mark Warner (D-VA) announcing that they still have a lot of work to do regarding the Russia probe, including learning more about the extent of Moscow’s impact on the 2016 election and whether any Trump campaign members colluded in the interference.
Veteran newsman and former “Face The Nation” moderator Bob Schieffer joins the Morning Joe panel to talk about his new book “Overload: Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News.” Listen in on Schieffer’s conversation with Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle and his worry about the fate of our democracy.
“The CEO aspect of Rex Tillerson is becoming increasingly obvious to a lot of people. I’ve been told repeatedly by several people that the real split…at the top of the Trump presidency are those who serve the country, dedicated to moving the country forward as opposed to people who are there serving Donald Trump and his ego and his lack of ideology. That’s the split at the top of the house,” says Morning Joe veteran contributor Mike Barnicle during a conversation with NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell as the panel discusses the ongoing tensions between President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Listen in here on MSNBC.
“Most Americans realize a sad, depressing truth: These killings will continue. They will not stop. Somewhere out there today, in this country, there is someone who wants to top the number 59, and they have the weaponry to do it. We are in the midst of madness and we are represented by a group of people in Congress, not all of them, but enough of them, who have over the years repeatedly made a conscious decision not to do anything to tighten existing gun laws to prevent guns meant for war and killing to be purchased by average Americans,” explains Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle as the panel discusses this week’s Las Vegas massacre, during which a gunman opened fire on attendees of the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, killing at least 59 people and injured hundreds more. Listen to more on the tragic situation here.
“Josh, other than hypocrisy with a capital H on the part of the President of the United States talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails, do we know whether or not there are any classified elements in the personal emails sent out by Jared Kushner?” asks Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Politico White House reporter Josh Dawsey during a conversation about White House aide Jared Kushner having used a private email account for some White House business. Listen to Dawsey’s response here.
Washington Post national political reporter Robert Costa joins the Morning Joe panel to talk about President Donald Trump’s weekend of taunting North Korea and the NFL via Twitter. Asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle: “What is the level of concern, if any, among the staff closest to the President that — as you indicated — the President is interested simply and most primarily in a win — that his ideology is pretty much nonexistent, that he knows very little about the details of the health care plan…various legislative proposals, tax bills and everything like that, and that he is prone to doing what he did in Alabama with no advanced warning to the staff — tweeting either very late at night or very early in the morning with no control from the staff over the tweets, obviously.” Hear Costa’s response here about the President’s late night and early morning Twitter habits.
“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.
