Listen in on this Morning Joe conversation about Attorney General William Barr, who announced that the Justice Department might consider taking legal action against states with strict coronavirus rules, a statement that followed President Donald J. Trump’s tweets to “liberate” states where people protested social distancing measures enacted to slow the spread of the coronavirus. “There’ve been some bad attorney generals in this country’s history, but he’s right up there now at the top of the list,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about Attorney General Barr, who he referred to as a “fixer” for Trump.
“Trump’s problem is, basically if you want to boil it down to just one simple essence right now: The virus doesn’t vote. The virus doesn’t wear a MAGA hat. The virus is out there devouring whatever and whomever it can devour,” said veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a Morning Joe discussion about President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has included his endorsement of a malaria drug that a study now shows has no benefit and actually causes more death among those who are given the drug versus standard care. See more of the conversation now.
Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, commander of the United States Northern Command, joins Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle to discuss how the U.S. Department of Defense is using its resources and lessons learned from past military campaigns to balance its fight against the coronavirus with its defense of the homeland. “We have not missed a beat,” said O’Shaughnessy, an Air Force four-star general. “We’re making sure we have no vulnerabilities, and we are there to defend our nation.”
As the White House announces that Kayleigh McEnany will become the fourth press secretary in the Trump Administration, Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and Jonathan Karl, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, discuss the role of the White House press secretary under President Donald Trump.
“The bottom line here is that there has only been one real press secretary in the Trump White House and that is Donald Trump himself,” says Karl. Listen to more of Karl’s revelations about Trump’s public and private dealings with the White House press corp.
Listen in on this Morning Joe conversation between veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) about why there has been a shortage of available testing in the federal government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak crisis in America. “I think this will be a lesson that we cannot just hallow out government and think we’re not going to pay the consequences,” says Schumer. Hear more of the discussion now.
“Job number one for this president, two, three, four and five jobs, is to contain the virus. Instead he does that, stirs the pot. So, now we have this visibly damaged human being, Donald Trump, leading this country at this point in time, through this critical, critical stage of a crisis. That is historically tragic for America,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a Morning Joe conversation with Willie Geist about the current economic hardship in America as the coronavirus has left millions jobless across the country.
“Madam secretary, eventually this administration will come to its conclusion, hopefully sooner rather than later. When that occurs, what are the first few steps that the next president, the next secretary of state must take in order to heal the world around us?” asks veteran columnist Mike Barnicle of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during a Morning Joe conversation about how the U.S. can restore international relations going forward. Listen to Albright’s response here.
“Most days I get up quite early obviously because I’m used to getting up early, and I get in my car and I go through the city of Boston, drive around various neighborhoods, make several stops. I do it all safely. I have my gloves on, I have my mask on, and I talk to people who I know, some people who I don’t know….One of the things you find out: It’s like an assemblage of the wounded, the weary and the wary. And they all have a common concern, and it’s not politics, it’s not any of the candidates,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a Morning Joe conversation with Nicolle Wallace about his interactions with everyday Americans amid the coronavirus outbreak in America. Hear more of the conversation now.
“This president has proven himself to be particularly, specifically, unable to do the job that he was elected to do,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle about President Donald Trump. “And…he is oddly irrelevant to a lot of people’s lives. People get up every morning now in this country wondering about a few things specifically: You don’t want to die. You don’t want to catch this virus. You don’t want your family to be affected by this virus. You worry about paying the rent and the mortgage every day. And that gets down to now, I think, a key word in our culture, and the word is ‘solvency.’” Hear more of the conversation here between Barnicle and Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough about President Donald Trump’s reluctancy to act against the coronavirus before the outbreak in America despite being warned by federal agencies, as outlined in a New York Times article that indicates Trump was more focused on controlling the message, protecting the economy and battling warnings instead of taking early action against the coronavirus.
“If you go around, as I have done for the past week or so, early in the morning, driving around safely from a distance, seeing people who I know in neighborhoods that I know, you find out from them, from talking to them that Donald Trump in a sense has become irrelevant to their lives because of his lack of leadership. But what has not become irrelevant to these people, and I think they’re representative of a lot of people in this country, is his incompetence. That’s his brand now: Incompetence. And the level of leadership that is lacking, people talk about it all the time, but it’s really rooted in: He just simply hasn’t done the job and can’t do the job,” says veteran columnist Mike Barnicle on Morning Joe during a conversation with host Joe Scarborough about President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic having “proved to be deadly” for America, after the U.S. recorded the world’s highest number of COVID-19 deaths in a single day.
Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough and veteran columnist Mike Barnicle discuss the words and impact of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” with the reality having come to fruition after Republican lawmakers spending years “gutting” the parts of the American government that are now needed to help doctors, nurses and other medical professionals “save lives” amid the coronavirus pandemic. “This is the United States of America 2020—thanks to the efforts of people like Grover Norquist (and former House Speaker) Newt Gingrich who began this whole thing, in my estimation, in the mid-1980s. This is where we are today,” says Barnicle about Newt Gingrich. Watch the conversation here.
“Thank God for some of these governors. They know how government operates and they know how to get things done using the state governments….We have a 35-year history in this country, in the politics of this country, of trying to diminish the role of government at the federal level….I resent the attack on government because government comes down the street to provide testing if testing is available. It’s all one thing encompassed in the word ‘government’ and we don’t have enough of it at the federal level,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a discussion with Willie Geist about a group of governors from across the political spectrum that is publicly challenging the Trump Administration’s assertion that the United States is well-stocked and well-prepared to test people for the coronavirus and care for the sickest patients, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo who criticized the federal government for fueling an “eBay” style bidding war for much needed ventilators.
Listen in on this Morning Joe conversation between Willie Geist and Mike Barnicle about government leadership amid the coronavirus pandemic, after President Donald Trump warned Americans to brace for a “hell of a bad two weeks” ahead as the White House projected there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. from the pandemic even if current social distancing guidelines are upheld. “The definition of leadership, I think, has now changed in this country, especially when it comes to: Who is the government, who represents us, who leads us….The government is Dr. (Anthony) Fauci. The government are the ER nurses and the doctors and hospitals. The government are the EMTs who knowing the danger, the police officers, knowing the danger—the potentially lethal danger—go at the virus to help people, to help us American citizens.” Hear more of the discussion now.
“Every doctor tells you testing, testing, testing; that’s the most critical component. But when we’re testing NBA players before we’re testing nurses who are working every day, police officers working every day, public safety officials out there, EMTs working every day, there’s something wrong with our priorities,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a conversation with Joe Scarborough, Mike Brzezinski and Jonathan Lemire about President Donald Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis in the US and the lack of widespread testing available here.
“Walking Dead” actor Daniel Newman joined Morning Joe remotely this morning to talk with Mika Brzezinski and Mike Barnicle about his difficulty in obtaining a COVID-19 test after having mild symptoms and having been exposed to the life-threatening virus. Hear the conversation and read his New York Times op-ed: https://nyti.ms/2UAgwJg
Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle and Dr. Patrice Harris, president of the American Medical Association, discuss the widespread shortage of medical supplies in America amid the coronavirus pandemic. “How is it that given the warnings and the signs…from November and December: How is it that these hospitals, so many of them are without critical things like face masks?” asks Barnicle.
Listen in on this Morning Joe conversation between Joe Scarborough and Mike Barnicle about President Donald Trump not “aggressively” trying to stop the spread of COVID-19 in America, our need for “fact-based truth” from public officials and “total buy in from the American public.” Says Barnicle: “But it’s hard to get total buy in from the American public when the people, the person, asking for that total buy in is Donald Trump who has spent 40 months dividing the country….We’ve all gone back and looked at the talk of the past four, five weeks: ‘Hoaxes, it’s a myth, it’s going to go away, only 15 people have it,’ all of that. We have to fight ourselves and put that in the background because there’s a vehicle to take care of all the lies and all the incompetence that the American public has been dealt. And that vehicle is called an election, and it’s held in November.”
Listen in on this Morning Joe conversation with contributor Mike Barnicle and Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, about the measures and precautions that are being taken or need to be taken to handle the global pandemic coronavirus outbreak in the United States. Hear more of the conversation now about the reality of hospital bed availability and other current concerns.
“Joe is Joe. He does get up off the mat. He’s done it repeatedly throughout his life. And again, harkening back to South Carolina: I think one of the big things that people saw who were on the fence about Joe given his losses in Iowa and in New Hampshire was—the first thing they saw quite visibly, quite emotionally on television, which is like a national MRI—they saw humanity, and it’s been missing in the Oval Office since January 20th, 2017….Joe, you know this better than anybody—you’ve been on the ballot. Politics is a people business at its root. And I think you saw hundreds and thousands of people coming out coast to coast—Democrats—and one thing ruled above all: They are not willing to roll the dice on the future of this country by wasting a vote. They want to win. They want someone who can beat Donald Trump, and I think many of them feel strongly now that in Joe Biden they have that candidate,” says Morning Joe veteran columnist Mike Barnicle during a conversation with Joe Scarborough about the resiliency of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden after he was “knocked down” in the New Hampshire primary and is “pulling himself back up” with a huge victory on Super Tuesday.
Listen in on this Morning Joe conversation with Joe Scarborough, Willie Geist and Mike Barnicle about presidential candidate Joe Biden’s “shocking” victory on Super Tuesday as the former vice president racked up big wins in delegate-rich states like Texas, North Carolina and Virginia while establishing himself as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination despite his very slow start to the 2020 primary and caucus season. “It was incredible. I’ve never heard of anything like it. I don’t think any of us have ever heard of anything like it….(Voters) saw his humanity. They saw the fact that he’s a candidate with purpose and they came back to him,” says Barnicle about Biden’s huge triumph on Super Tuesday. Join the conversation here.
Mike Barnicle is a veteran print and broadcast journalist recognized for his street-smart, straightforward style honed over nearly four decades in the field. The Massachusetts native has written 4,000-plus columns collectively for The Boston Globe, Boston Herald and the New York Daily News, and continues to champion the struggles and triumphs of the every man by giving voice to the essential stories of today on television, radio, and in print.
