'Bannon has to go or I’m gone:’ MSNBC's Mika begs ‘great leaders' to protect 'this country from this president'

MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski is worried President Donald Trump will lead the United States down a very dark path unless someone in his administration is willing to speak up.

She led a panel Tuesday on "Morning Joe" on the president's latest version of his controversial travel ban, which was announced the day before by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

"Two of the three are clean and have great reputations and are great leaders and great men," Brzezinski said, apparently leaving off the attorney general, who recused himself last week from the Russia investigation after reports showed he'd met secretly with that nation's ambassador during the election campaign.

Brzezinski remains alarmed by Trump's weekend tweets accusing his predecessor, Barack Obama, of ordering an illegal wiretap ahead of the election -- although the president has offered no proof -- and then asking Congress to investigate those baseless claims.

"I just don't know why there's nobody at the White House who doesn't walk down the hall and say, 'Mr. President, you can't do this, this has to stop,'" she said. "Whoever this person is (should say), 'Steve Bannon has to go or I'm gone.' When does that happen? When does somebody do the right thing and protect their own reputation and this country from this president?"

MSNBC political analyst Mike Barnicle pointed out that Trump has always tried to manipulate facts to create his own reality to promote himself as a celebrity and to demonstrate the success of Trump Organization.

"So in this situation, given what has happened just over the past three days, who in his party comes to his defense?" Barnicle wondered. "How do they defend him when he is really creating his own separate universe that maybe they don't even understand?"

Jeremy Peters, the New York Times reporter, said Trump and his administration had conjured a universe of alternate facts, as White House adviser Kellyanne Conway infamously described their mistruths.

"This is one of the more troubling developments for the truth in American political discourse right now, is that even when the facts are not on Donald Trump's side, there are people around him -- in talk radio, in conservative media, on Capitol Hill, in his own West Wing offices -- who will create their own set of facts to back up whatever outrageous claim he has made," Peters said.

Brzezinski said Trump has already badly damaged the reputation of both the U.S. and the office he holds, and she's spoken with individuals in the diplomatic community who worry the president is gathering power in dangerous ways.

"They say we're worried because this is how it starts, and it's a very strong statement," Brzezinski said. "But how when you have the president tweeting what he tweeted on Saturday morning, how do you not look at everything as perhaps marching toward an area where we don't want to go? How do you not look at this travel ban as a part of venturing into territory that could be bleak and dangerous for our country?"