ICYMI: This Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Mike Barnicle and The Atlantic’s David Frum discusses the extremism within the Republican Party, following Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announcing plans to block state colleges in Florida from having programs on diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory. “What’s going on in Florida now is maybe a peek into a horrifying future. (DeSantis) is now tampering with college education in various colleges, specifically starting with one in Florida. That’s Ron DeSantis. That’s the Republican future – more fear,” says Barnicle.
Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle as they discuss and poke fun at the Republican Party for being “disconnected from middle America” after the Republican National Committee urged GOP lawmakers to double down on anti-abortion stances and go on the offense in the 2024 election cycle. “When you talk to ordinary people who have just been laid off, as massive layoffs continue, corporate America tries to make money in a tough economy, you will find out that a huge issue among people who have been laid off or people waiting for their Social Security checks is the danger of voting by mail. They all talk about it. You know, how dangerous that is, and then when they get finished talking about that, they talk about Critical Race Theory or they talk about wokeism in colleges being taught, things like that. These are the real issues that Republicans have a lock on,” says Barnicle sarcastically about the GOP’s current platform.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Jonathan Lemire, Mike Barnicle and Richard Haass, author of the new book “The Bill of Obligations: The Habits of Good Citizens,” about how we might persuade US teachers to encourage students to utilize their critical thinking skills more than spend time and energy simply on memorizing facts.
ICYMI: Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle about Speaker Kevin McCarthy after he blocked two Democrats from seats on the House Intelligence Committee and assigned GOP lawmakers to the newly created select subcommittees charged with investigating the politicization of the government and the origins of the COVID pandemic. “The Republicans under Kevin McCarthy are putting together subcommittees about weaponizing, about weaponizing the government. They don’t want a government. They don’t like the government. So, this is going to be an interesting tale. I think it’s going to play out very quickly,” says Barnicle about McCarthy’s tenure as House Speaker. See the segment here.
Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle discuss House Speaker Kevin McCarthy saying he would not urge embattled Republican Rep. George Santos to resign from Congress, hours after local GOP officials tore into Santos, the New York legislator and pushed him to step down. “What would have been wrong with Kevin McCarthy just looking into the camera and saying, ‘listen, everyone here knows this guy is an embarrassment and we’re trying to figure out what to do about him, but he is an embarrassment to Congress, he certainly is an embarrassment to the constituency that under fraudulent purposes sent him to the United States Congress. We’ve got to deal it. We’re going to deal with it quickly.’ Why can’t anybody speak like a human being?” asks Barnicle.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Mike Barnicle and director Jeff Zimbalist about the new four-part documentary series “Super League: The War for Football,” which streamer Apple says “documents the high stakes battle that is set off when plans for a breakaway league emerge and the past, present, and future of European football collide, leaving the game’s most powerful leaders to defend, or upend, the traditions of the sport.” Hear more about it here.
“In politics we now live in the age of: Have you no shame and they have no shame—large parts of the Republican Party,” said Morning Joe contributor Mike Barnicle during this conversation with Willie Geist and Jonathan Lemire about how federal prosecutors in New York having opened an investigation into Republican Rep.-elect George Santos after he admitted to fabricating significant parts of his resume, including his work and education history, ahead of his successful bid for Congress. “Are we sure George Santos is his real name? We don’t know, really, and we’ll find out I guess, when investigations ensue, and we find out what happens with his seat in Congress,” adds Barnicle.
Morning Joe’s Willie Geist and Mike Barnicle discuss the latest in the Southwest Airlines debacle as the company is expected to resume normal operations after canceling thousands of flights and leaving passengers stranded across the United States. “I’m thinking about Southwest Airlines and the money they’re going to have to pay out. I don’t know where they’re going to get it. They’ve been paying so much in dividends to their shareholders that they scrimped on coming up with a computer system that would allow them to operate in a crisis like they went through, and the crisis management situation at Southwest Airlines is one that business schools are going to be studying for quite some time,” says Barnicle about Southwest Airlines. Listen to more on the situation here.
Watch this Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius after the January 6 committee released a new batch of transcripts, including key interviews from members of former President Donald Trump’s family and staff, such as White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was said to regularly burn documents during the transition period and occasionally tell staffers to keep some Oval Office meetings “close hold” and potentially omitted from official records. “All I could think of was someone like Jim Baker, former White House chief of staff or other White House chiefs of staff, who were responsible—responsible to the person they worked for, the president of the United States, and the country that they represented, our country, America,” says Barnicle.
“Joyce, I’m going to ask you to put on your old prosecutor’s hat, which I suspect is never far from you, and to recall that the Department of Justice has received the House January 6th committee’s recommendations. From your look, from your knowledge, which is superficial at one sense, in terms of it’s just what we’ve been able to read, what do you think is the most promising avenue for a potential indictment of the former president,” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Alabama, during a Morning Joe conversation about the potential prosecution of former President Donald Trump after the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol concluded that Trump is ultimately responsible for the insurrection, producing a written report for the Justice Department that contains a trove of evidence for why Trump should be prosecuted for multiple crimes. Listen to Vance’s response here.
Watch this Morning Joe segment with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Claire McCaskill, Mike Barnicle and Michael Beschloss as they discuss that the investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol has concluded that former President Donald Trump is ultimately responsible for the insurrection, with the House Select Committee producing a written report made public that includes a mountain of evidence for why Trump should be prosecuted for multiple crimes. “One scene just jumped out at me early on, and it is a scene that took place in mid-December after the Supreme Court had rejected the state of Texas’s appeal to overturn the election, and it’s Donald Trump in the Oval Office, talking to his then-chief of staff, and he says, ‘I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know we lost.’ The level of delusion married to the level of danger that we just confronted and was thwarted by the wall of democracy: Is there any match in history to this?” asks Barnicle of Beschloss. Find out here.
“We live in an age of accelerated pace of events. Something happens, and it’s forgotten two or three days from now. Something horrific could be forgotten in two or three days, and that takes our attention span as a people, as a culture, as a nation, way, way down. People don’t have the attention span that we used to have. So, the events that we have been talking about this morning, the text messages from sitting members of Congress urging sedition, right up until the point of almost noontime on January 20th when Joe Biden was sworn in as president, the January 6th insurrection, Capitol police officers fearing for their lives and being attacked by supposedly law and order people. We have all of that and yet if someone mentions Harry and Meghan, we go right there, and talk about that instead of focusing on the real dangers that still exist because they injected a poison into our system. The asylum wing of the Republican Party injected that poison into our system, and it still flows through our circulatory system as a nation,” says Morning Joe’s veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about the unfortunate lack of interest toward events surrounding the January 6 Capitol attack, following new reporting that then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows exchanged text messages with at least 34 Republican members of Congress as they plotted to overturn President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. Watch the segment here.
Watch this Morning Joe conversation with Willie Geist, Mike Barnicle and Talking Points Memo investigative reporter Hunter Walker about new reporting that shows that then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows exchanged text messages with at least 34 Republican members of Congress as they plotted to overturn President Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. “Hunter, as you went through these text messages, from the asylum wing of the Republican Party, it struck me in looking through the first batch that you’ve put out there, as you just alluded to, many of the people involved are still members of Congress, sitting in the House of Representatives. In the rear-view mirror, as you look at what they did: They tiptoed up to sedition. They were right there at the gate of sedition. What do they do now? What do they have to say now?” asks Barnicle. Hear Walker’s response here.
“All he does each and every day is take the field to hurt the United States of America, to damage the United States of America,” says Morning Joe contributor Mike Barnicle during this conversation about the freedom being sought for US Marine Paul Whelan, who has been imprisoned in Russia for nearly four years. “Why? Because this is all about him. It’s not about the country. It’s not about Paul Whelan. It’s not about anything other than him and his own twisted ambitions.” Watch the segment here and hear what Whelan’s brother has to say about former President Donald Trump after Trump criticized the Biden Administration for the deal it struck to free WNBA star Brittney Griner.
Watch this Morning Joe conversation with NASA Administrator and former Florida Senator Bill Nelson following NASA having completed its first Artemis moon mission. “There’s no question that there are enormous benefits, as well as enormous mysteries being solved by the space program and by these incredible steps that we’re taking as a nation in outer space. But on the other hand, there are people in this country, I think, many people in this country, who wonder about the cost of these programs and the cost benefit to them when America can’t pass a child care tax credit. We’re spending literally billions in outer space. What do you say to those people who say ‘why are we doing this? It’s so expensive,’” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Nelson. Hear Nelson’s response and learn of the direct benefits of NASA exploration in our pockets as well as our health care solutions.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle as they discuss the state of the Republican Party, particularly GOP lawmakers in the House of Representatives, who seem out of touch with what Americans really care about. “The lesson that has been unlearned by the Republican Party and it continues right through up until this very moment, is: You can’t win anything, really, if everything you do is based on two issues: Resentment and revenge. And that’s what they seem to be into at every level of the Republican Party,” says Barnicle.
“Take a look at the cover of the New York Post this morning, ‘Eyes on the Spies,” and it’s the Republican’s intention—Kevin McCarthy’s intention—to subpoena 51 former members of the American intelligence community to pursue the Hunter Biden story. So, if you’re out there sitting at home worried about your home heating oil bill, your grocery bill, the status of your kids in school—forget about that because we’ve got to get to the bottom of the Hunter Biden story. We got to get Clapper and Brennan in and find out why they lied,” says Morning Joe’s Mike Barnicle as he holds up the front-page of the New York Post newspaper that suggests Republican lawmakers are more interested in tackling President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, than tackling issues facing everyday Americans. Watch the conversation with Joe Scarborough, Brendan Buck and Barnicle as they question the agenda of House Republicans as Rep. Kevin McCarthy is the presumptive choice to become Speaker of the House when the GOP takes control of the House next month.
“The one thing about the President is he has been around this international track many, many, many times. And he is really aware of the fact that this war, is being played – this theater of war is being played – out on a stage that has been sadly too used to war. They’ve lived with war for over 100 years, since 1918. And now the President comes to this war knowing that the opponent Vladimir Putin, that he has troops who need two things: They need munitions, and they need the will to fight. They do not have the will to fight. But this president, President Biden, knows that while the Ukrainians need munitions they have the will to fight. Also – and this is another thing we talked about Congressman, earlier – people underestimate how tough Joe Biden is. They underestimate him, and that’s playing out now. Don’t you think?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-SC) during a Morning Joe conversation about President Joe Biden’s leadership, including throughout Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Watch the conversation here.
Tune in for this Morning Joe conversation between Massachusetts-native Mike Barnicle and Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States, about Prince William and Princess Catherine of Wales having attended and “enjoyed” an NBA basketball game between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics at TD Garden as the royal couple were expected to leave at halftime but remained for the full duration of the game because they “really enjoyed the Celtics game.” Find out more about the Royals’ Boston visit here.
“My question to you is: Within the House of Representatives, how do you go forward when the other side, clearly the majority side now, the Republicans, lead with rage and anger almost every day?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-SC), newly selected House assistant Democratic leader, during a Morning Joe panel conversation about the challenges of working alongside Republicans now that the GOP is set to control the House. Listen to Clyburn’s response here, following President Joe Biden’s first state dinner which both Clyburn and Barnicle attended, on how Clyburn hopes to find common ground, after two historic terms by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
