On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle shares his view on one of the main challenges facing Vice President Joe Biden as he considers another presidential run: “The Vice President travels every moment of every day as a member of a club that nobody wants to join—a father who buried a child. And I don’t think he has the energy to conduct a presidential campaign, which, as we all know, is all-consuming in terms of the time and the drain it takes on the candidate and the family.” Listen in on the conversation about whether Joe Biden will make a run for the presidency, along with a look at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s latest poll numbers and a clip of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) discussing her recent conversation with Biden.
As Former Governor and current Presidential candidate Jeb Bush continues to fight back against fellow candidate Donald Trump, Morning Joe’s Mike Barnicle reacts to the absurdity of the jabs being traded. “This is such a gift to Hillary Clinton,” says Mike of Trump’s criticism of Bush for using his Spanish skills during interviews. “It gets to the embarrassing fact that the vast majority of Americans don’t speak a second language. Overseas people speak Spanish and English, French and English… Some of us can’t even speak English,” continues Mike. Watch the conversation on the Republican party and its struggle to engage Latino voters here. On MSNBC.
On Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect, Mike Barnicle and John Heilemann discuss the illegal drug problem across the country, as addressed by presidential candidates Governor Chris Christie and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “Heroin is a huge, huge issue in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and East Coast cities. It’s enormously cheap. It’s all over the place. Talk to EMTs and they will tell you the number of overdoses they handle are off the charts…,” says Mike of the increase in heroin use. Are any of the presidential candidates truly committed to helping drug addicts? Hear the conversation here.
“I don’t know what happened at lunch yesterday, and I don’t know if the Vice President has firmly or finally made a decision to run or not. But the White House has a candidate—and his name is Joe Biden,” says Mike Barnicle in reaction to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest’s enthusiastic approval of a potential Biden run for the presidency. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mike and the rest of the panel discuss increased speculation over Vice President Joe Biden’s possible campaign and its contrast with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Watch the conversation here.
Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey joins MSNBC’s Morning Joe and discusses with Mike Barnicle the email controversy that continues to dog Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “What is your personal feeling about [Clinton’s use of a private email server]?,” asks Mike. Listen to the former Attorney General’s response here and why he believes the deleted personal emails were far more compromising than mere talk of wedding plans and yoga classes.
Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) joins MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss her new book ‘Plenty Ladylike’ and talks with Mike Barnicle about Senator Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) comments that he never supported any exceptions to an abortion ban, including rape and incest. “Yesterday, your preferred candidate for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, spoke out about Marco Rubio’s comments on abortion during the Republican debate. What was your reaction?,” asks Mike of Senator McCaskill. Listen to Sen. McCaskill’s thoughts on Sen. Rubio’s “shocking” comments and the “Donald Trump factor” she believes is influencing Republican candidates to move further to the right.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle talks with The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig about her reporting on the FBI’s investigation into the security of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail setup and a thumb drive in possession of her lawyer that contains copies of work e-mails sent during her time as Secretary of State. “Was there any point of vulnerability about this [server] issue that was raised by any of your sources?,” asks Mike. Listen to Leonnig expand on her story and the authorities’ concerns over having delicate State Department material hosted on Clinton’s private servers.
“There is huge unrest and volatility out there in this country with regards to anyone who is a professional politician. Bernie Sanders is a professional politician who doesn’t come off as a professional politician,” says Mike Barnicle of Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders’ increasing popularity among New Hampshire primary voters. “[Sen. Sanders] comes off as a variant of Donald Trump. And, in Willie Geist’s memorable phrase last week, the country is interested in issuing a huge middle finger warning to anybody who is a professional politician,” continues Mike. Watch the conversation between Mike and former congressman Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN) on Sen. Sander’s narrowing in on frontrunner Hillary Clinton here. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski highlights Mike Barnicle’s latest column for the The Daily Beast, which takes a close look at Vice President Joe Biden’s character—one forged by tragedy, loss, family, and faith—and contrasts it with that of Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. “There is this one thing, this one nagging question that hovers above Hillary Clinton like a crop duster with a full tank of gas. It’s been there for nearly three decades. It’s always there, won’t go away and seems as if it’s never really fully answered and it is this: Who is she? Really, who is she? Nobody wonders who Joe Biden is,” writes Mike. Read Mike’s column at https://thebea.st/1VVSraH and watch the panel’s discussion surrounding Hillary Clinton.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle assesses the sentiment behind low favorability ratings toward traditional presidential candidates in the 2016 election. “The estrangement from the [political] process extends beyond party lines. I think Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is a casualty of this estrangement …and it’s partially responsible for Donald Trump’s rise in the polls. You ask people today if they are a Republican or Democrat and they say: ‘I’m neither, I’m pissed.’ Mike goes on to say the sentiment is not party specific but that Republicans and Democrats are tired of rising taxes and no bang for their buck, and the polarization of politics. Listen to the rest of Mike’s comments here, including his take on why Hillary Clinton’s campaign continues to struggle. “She simply does not wear well,” he adds.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, The New York Times Magazine’s Mark Leibovich talks with Mike Barnicle about his upcoming cover story on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the “protectiveness that has come to mark her public career.” Mike asks Leibovich: “Tell me about your access to Hillary Clinton. What was it like? Was she forthcoming?” Listen to the interview here and read Leibovich’s NYT story here: https://nyti.ms/1RzgjBe
Continuing the Morning Joe conversation on Sen. Sanders’ (D-VT) presidential campaign, Mike Barnicle adds: “Senator Bernie Sanders is indeed a socialist, but, if you’re in a crowd listening to him, he doesn’t sound like a socialist. He sounds like someone who is addressing the needs of ‘everyday Americans.’ You can see people’s heads nodding in agreement to everything he says and there is no way that the Hillary Clinton campaign can do an opposition dump on him.” Listen to more on the presidential hopefuls here. Only on MSNBC.
After making news with his verbal jabs against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney talks with Mike Barnicle about his advice to GOP candidates on fighting ISIS in the Middle East. Hear former Gov. Romney’s comments here. Only on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
Lincoln Chafee, presidential hopeful for the Democratic Party and former U.S. Senator and Governor of Rhode Island, joins Morning Joe to discuss why his peacemaking approach and early opposition to the Iraq War make him a viable candidate. “Given the fact that a vote IS a choice, what sets you apart from all of the other candidates? What would make you a better president than Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, or anyone else?,” asks Mike of Gov. Chafee. Listen to Chafee’s response here on MSNBC.
Mike Barnicle, the Morning Joe team, and Time magazine’s Mark Halperin discuss the 2016 presidential race. “Most Americans view electing a President as a vote for the future, so if you have Hillary Clinton vs. Jeb Bush what elements of past vs. past happen there? What does it do to the electorate?,” asks Mike. Listen to Mark Halperin’s analysis here. On MSNBC.
Pope Francis demoted the reactionary Burke, but that hasn’t stopped him popping off about how the Church panders to radical feminism.
Cardinal Raymond Burke is a 66-year-old guy who lives in Rome, dresses like Queen Elizabeth, and talks like someone who majored in misogyny at some bogus, backwoods, Bible-banging tent school. Until Pope Francis stripped him of the powerful Vatican post Pope Benedict had handed him, Burke behaved like the Catholic Church’s version of Ted Cruz, operating with an ego and an attitude that proclaimed him to always be right on matters of doctrine and dogma.
Burke’s new post makes him the equivalent of a head waiter at the annual Knights of Malta Communion breakfast, but the demotion has only emboldened him. A few days ago the former archbishop of St. Louis was interviewed by some pamphlet geared to restoring guy-talk in Catholicism, and Burke did not disappoint.
“Unfortunately, the radical feminist movement strongly influenced the Church, leading the Church to constantly address women’s issues at the expense of addressing critical issues important to men,” Burke told the correspondent from a pamphlet called (get this) The New Emangelization.
“Sadly,” he pointed out, “the Church has not effectively reacted to these destructive cultural forces; instead the Church has become too influenced by radical feminism and has largely ignored the serious needs of men.”
As I read Burke’s manifesto on his desire for more arm-wrestling, towel-snapping, locker-room guys to play larger roles in Catholicism, a couple of thoughts went round and round in the carousel within my noggin: those attending mass today in too many American parishes resemble people sitting around the day-room of an assisted living facility. God love them but they are old, committed, and slowly disappearing.
The church in the United States is not exactly a growth industry. Parishes are being closed or merged. There are too few priests and not exactly a lot of people lining up for a vocation that requires and insists on celibacy.
The second, almost immediate thought was of a woman I knew quite well whose husband died young, leaving her with a few children and an absence of both money and employment in a struggling New England factory town where the paper mills and textile plants were heading south at a pace that soon left Main Street looking like abandoned property.
She buried her husband on a bitter cold December morning two days before Christmas during John F. Kennedy’s first year in the White House. She could curse in Gaelic and pray in Latin.
She had no job, but quickly, within weeks of her husband’s death, she began working at the rectory of the large Irish parish where the church steeple was just about the highest point in town, built by other immigrants in the 19th century as a bold statement announcing their arrival. She did the priest’s laundry, washed and ironed altar linens and vestments, and prepared lunch and supper for four or five priests, two of them veterans of World War II.
She took home less than $60 a week. She went back to school, enrolling in one of what was then called a “teacher’s college” in the old Massachusetts community college system.
After she got her diploma she began teaching fourth and fifth grade at the parish parochial school, where she remained for three decades. She went to mass every day of the week and prayed nearly as much as she breathed. When her youngest boy was in Vietnam she became a daily communicant, a routine that continued after his war service ended.
Her faith was stronger than steel. Her belief that God was all-knowing and forgiving was unshakeable. She was in the forgiveness business and had a deep understanding of human frailty, an insight that never left her until she died at 93.
I called her “my mother the nun.”
So when I read Raymond Burke clowning it up with his bogus beliefs that the Catholic Church has lost a few steps because of the absence of “manly men,” I could hear Mom muttering, “pol’thoin” (asshole) to describe him. That description would have been applied for many reasons but the biggest would be the most obvious: Burke is a guy whose most firm belief is in himself and his own pronouncements.
The cost of his gilded, ornate vestments could feed a family of four across a decade. He has exhausted himself and more than a few who have had to listen to him trying to ban pro-choice politicians from receiving communion. He has attacked St. Louis University basketball coach Rick Majerus for attending a Hillary Clinton rally and tried to prevent Sheryl Crow from giving a concert to raise money for a Catholic hospital.
Last year, as Pope Francis began turning the lights back on within a church that has seen legions depart simply because so many in the clergy said so little about the criminality and obstruction of justice surrounding the reality of sexual abusers wearing roman collars, Burke said, “There is a strong sense that the Church is like a ship without a rudder.”
Raymond Burke: Member of the College of Cardinals and captain of a ship of fools.
Mike Barnicle joins the “Morning Joe” team on MSNBC to discuss the effect Hillary Clinton’s support will have on Barack Obama’s campaign.
Watch here: https://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&vid=85bba366-fc2a-4bea-944e-c31fde14b699&fg=rss
Hillary Clinton says Barack Obama has no experience, he says she has no judgment. What will voters say? Holly Bailey, Chris Cillizza, Jeffery Rank, Jeffery Rank, Nicole Rank, Jon Soltz, Pete Hegseth, Peter Baker and Chrystia Freeland join “Hardball” guest host Mike Barnicle.
Hardball’s Mike Barnicle asks Terry McAuliffe, chairman of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Also, he talks to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.