‘He’s hearing footsteps’: Morning Joe panel agrees Mueller probe is accelerating — and Trump feels the pressure

Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" agreed that the special counsel probe into Trump-Russia ties seems to have accelerated in recent days -- and that has sent the White House into a panic.

President Donald Trump fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe just hours before his retirement, and the outgoing law enforcement official claims the dismissal was over his role in the Justice Department probe.

The president and his lawyers attacked special counsel Robert Mueller and called for an end to the Russia investigation, which worried some White House officials, and Trump dove deeper into a legal battle with former adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

"Things really started to speed up over this weekend and you can feel it," said host Mika Brzezinski. "You feel the pressure here in Washington, and I think on the heels of it coming out Friday morning that the president or the president's people threatened the porn star to stay silent, which several sources over the weekend told me is true and they told me who did it, you see this sort of unhinging of his president, his cavalier tweets, the corruption that appears to be happening inside the White House just to cover up so many different things."

"You get a sense that things are coming, I think, to a tipping point for the president," she added.

MSNBC political correspondent Kasie Hunt agreed that the pace seemed to pick up since the end of last week.

"As crazy fast this year has been, it feels like somebody is pushing the accelerator," Hunt said.

David Ignatius, an MSNBC analyst and Washington Post associate editor, said the president's actions revealed how much the Mueller probe worries him.

"He is hearing footsteps, he is anxious -- every tweet conveys anxiety," Ignatious said.