“Mark, this quote uttered months ago by Steve Bannon that the mission is to ‘deconstruct the administrative state.’ That’s the mission of the Trump administration. If you walk around and do your own grocery shopping and stuff like that, part of it seems to be taking hold. In terms of trying to delegitimatize things, they have basically gone after the Congress, the courts, the regulatory agencies, a large part of the federal bureaucracy, (and) the State Department — has no one working there practically. Is this a plan that is constantly being implemented within the White House? Is it something that they viscerally feel each and every day? ‘Yeah, let’s do this and let’s go after this aspect and we’ll further weaken things,’” asks Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of NBC News Senior Political Analyst Mark Halperin during a conversation about the White House’s immediate goals and how, according to Halperin, the pending health care legislation leaves the Administration’s fate hanging in the balance.
“The Speaker of the House — in some people’s views — is slowly becoming unclothed in public,” said Morning Joe’s veteran columnist Mike Barnicle in response to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, during which he said he had no knowledge of any proof to support President Donald Trump’s accusations that former President Barack Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump’s phones. “(Ryan is) supposed to be a very smart guy. He comes out with this health plan — can’t tell you how much it costs. He is asked about the wiretapping tweet issued by the President of the United States a week ago, and he says: ‘Well, we have an unconventional presidency.’ Yeah, I would say so. You’re accusing a former president of being a felon.” Watch highlights from Speaker Ryan’s interview here with John Dickerson.
“Robert Costa – is there any sense within the White House that we in the media are literally operating on a different calendar, a different clock than the average American. They have lives, they have kids getting ready to go to school, get breakfast, move through the work day and we articulate a daily crisis in the Trump presidency, which I think probably exists at some level. But (is the Administration) banking on the fact that most people out there assume that (Trump) just finished being inaugurated yesterday? It’s Day 48 of his presidency?” asks Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle of The Washington Post reporter Robert Costa during a conversation about President Trump’s “confrontational politics.” Hear Costa’s take here.
On Morning Joe, senior contributor Mike Barnicle talks with Congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA) about the House Republicans’ replacement for the Affordable Care Act. “Congressman…let’s stick with your district. Let’s talk about a single mom with two kid, Medicaid cuts in the offing, block grants going back to the states. What are you going to tell her when you go home? When she asks you: `What is going to happen to my health care and my children’s health care? What are you going to do about it’?” Listen to Dent’s response, his questions and concerns here.
On Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough puts into cultural context the problem with the House Republicans’ proposed health care bill by invoking a much-beloved episode of The Simpsons in which Bart Simpson prays for a snow day to get out of a test he has not studied for. “Prayer: the last refuge of the truly desperate.” Adds senior contributor Mike Barnicle: “If I were a member of Congress, I would be furious at the Republican leadership. ’How much is this going to be cost?’ They have no answer. If they oppose the leadership, if they oppose the bill, there is a high chance that a lot of them will get primaried, which is their worst fear. This is the position they’ve been put in.” Hear more of the conversation here among Scarborough, Barnicle and The New York Times’ Nick Confessore.
“Senator. Yesterday, the House, Speaker (Paul) Ryan, the healthcare bill: Does it trouble you at all that this is thrown out and it’s going to be marked up starting today without any estimate of cost? Does that bother you at all?” asks Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) during a conversation about the House Republicans’ proposed healthcare bill, which intends to replace the Affordable Care Act. Listen to the conversation and Cotton’s comment that he would like to see the process slowed down to “get it right, instead of get it fast.”
As the Morning Joe panel discusses how President Donald Trump’s degrading remarks toward the media have actually helped increase ratings and readership throughout the world of journalism, senior contributor Mike Barnicle explains: “The irony is what has happened — The Times and The Washington Post have returned print journalism to its glory days, glory days.” Hear more of the conversation here and host Joe Scarborough’s observation: “Everybody doesn’t hate the media. They love the fight.”
“If you were going to pick an enemy to pummel, if you were Donald Trump — the media would be your number one enemy out in the country. People love this. People love what he’s doing to the media,” says Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle during a panel conversation about POTUS supporters. Adds host Joe Scarborough: “They don’t care that he’s lying every day. They want to know: Are we going to get our Supreme Court Justice and especially with business people, they are all lined up behind him. They want the tax breaks, they want the regulatory reform. And here’s a note to Washington: They really don’t care right now about Obamacare.” Listen to more here.
As the Morning Joe conversation continues about President Donald Trump’s accusation that former President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of his phones in Trump Tower before the election, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle explains: “They are hoping to bury it with time. ‘We are going to have congressional investigations and we will get back to you in September’,” he explains of the Trump Administration’s hope that the issue will disappear. “You’re on to the solution here. There are three phone calls, all he has to make – or all the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees have to make. You call Mike Pompeo, out in Langley, head of the CIA; you call Mike Rogers, head of the NSA; you call Jim Comey, head of the FBI. You bring them in and ask them in public: ‘Did this happen?’ They say, no, no, and no.” Listen to the rest of the discussion and Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough’s suggestion to POTUS: “He shouldn’t lie every day.”
On International Women’s Day, Morning Joe opens with a conversation about the Fox News’ “Outnumbered” coverage of Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski being upset as she signed off a few days ago. Was she crying, emotional, pissed off, or #sadmad? Listen in on the discussion among Mika, Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle here.
“Jeremy…we have a President whose past record has been one to create his own separate universe around himself and the Trump organization, and his own sense of reality. So in this situation, given what has happened, who in his party comes to his defense? How do they defend him when he has really created his own separate universe that maybe even they don’t understand?” asks Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle of The New York Times’s Jeremy Peters during a conversation about the people surrounding Trump who seem comfortable perpetuating the “alternate facts” used to back up his continually unfounded claims.
“American leadership in the world really is wounded now,” said Washington Post columnist David Ignatius in response to a question by contributor Mike Barnicle on MSNBC’s Morning Joe about the impact the Trump Administration is having on U.S. status with our European allies. Hear more of the discussion here about what President Donald Trump should be doing to address “problems the world cares about.”
During a discussion among the Morning Joe panel, Eddie Glaude Jr., Department Chair of African American Studies at Princeton University, unpacked for viewers Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson’s inaccurate description of “slaves” as “immigrants” in his first speech at the department. Adds senior contributor Mike Barnicle: “One element…is so overlooked in this culture of ours — we do not teach the American story to ourselves. We do not know our own history, really know it.” Listen in on the conversation here.
“Katty Kay, if you look at the second executive order…you have to ask yourself, `Why do we need the ban at all given the stringent immigration screenings that go on right now and have been going on?’ What is really different about this other than the politics of it?” asks Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of BBC World News America’s Katty Kay during a conversation about President Donald Trump’s new travel ban. Listen to Kay’s response here on whether the ban is making country more or less safe.
“Rick Tyler, you have an Administration that yesterday issued a second and new executive order in immigration. You have an Administration where House Republicans introduced the repeal and replace plan they have been talking about for eight years. And yet, all of this is clouded by the self-tied, self-knotted anchor the President tied around this immediate party’s future. How do you deal with that?” Morning Joe’s Mike Barnicle asked of Republican political strategist and MSNBC political analyst Rick Tyler during a conversation about how the Republican Party should deal with President Donald Trump’s unconfirmed claims that former President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of his phones in Trump Tower before the election. Tyler: “People need to trust what the President says.” Hear the rest of his response here. Only on MSNBC.
“Will the same number of people being covered now by Obamacare.. be covered under…this proposed bill? And will the coverage be as fully available as it is now to customers?” asks Morning Joe senior contributor Mike Barnicle of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean during a conversation about House Republicans releasing the proposed plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Answers Dean: “It’s unbelievable.” Hear who will be hurt by the new legislation, who will benefit and why.
During a Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and The New York Times Michael Schmidt, Barnicle asks: “Michael, can the President of the United States order a wiretap on an American citizen?” Listen here for Schmidt’s answer about whether former President Barack Obama could have ordered a wiretap of POTUS Donald Trump’s phones in Trump Tower before the election, as Trump has repeatedly claimed.
“This is an extraordinary week. I was off for a few days last week on a reporting trip. From Tuesday night from the President’s speech, in which many people thought was the highlight of his early young presidency, this was the return to normalcy, to his normalcy on Saturday morning,” said Morning Joe’s Mike Barnicle about POTUS’s unconfirmed claims through Twitter that former President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of his phones in Trump Tower before the election. “(Trump) basically accused a former President of the United States of committing a felony, and that was followed by the Director of the FBI asking the Justice Department to tell the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, to stop lying. This is going to have to play out in the House or the Senate intelligence committees or a special prosecutor. This is a true crisis of confidence in this young presidency.” Listen to more on the topic with Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough here.
In case you missed Mike Barnicle last night on PBS’s Charlie Rose with guest host Jon Meacham, listen in on the conversation about the mood of the country in this turbulent time of the new Administration under President Donald Trump. “I think a lot of people are nearly exhausted by what has happened in the course of just a little over a month in this presidency,” explains Barnicle. “Obviously, people who voted for Donald Trump are probably somewhat pleased because they regard everything that has happened as something that he had promised would happen and he’s conducting his presidency in that manner. But the level of exhaustion in the country, it’s every day, full of a Niagara of surprises or statements that sometimes shock or sometimes offend, and you wonder – at least I wonder in talking with people – when that level of exhaustion will peak, and what happens to the body politic when it does peak.” Hear more from Meacham, Barnicle and NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell here.
After Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough salutes “the members of Congress who are going out and facing the heat” as the panel examines Republican Congress members being confronted at contentious rallies and town halls around the nation about President Donald Trump’s policies, senior contributor Mike Barnicle adds: “I’m saluting that – as well as the crowd. That’s a civics lesson, that is a civics lesson.” Listen to more of the discussion here about people around the country showing up at Congressional offices to weigh in on the legislative process.
