MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt deplores Trump’s Twitter war with porn actress: ‘Barbara Bush is drinking bourbon in heaven’

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" hosts spent Wednesday honoring the life of Barbara Bush -- until the 45th president got into a Twitter dispute with a former porn star who says he once sent a hired goon to threaten her.

Hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski had the morning off, and co-host Willie Geist filled in with MSNBC congressional reporter Kasie Hunt, and they led a discussion of Trump's most direct response yet to Stormy Daniels' claims.

"Whatever you think about Michael Avenatti, he has been a beast," said MSNBC contributor Eddie Glaude Jr. "Every trap that he's set Trump's lawyers have stepped into, but every trap has been designed to get Trump to step into it -- so the gaggle on Air Force One and now this tweet."

Glaude, who's chair of the Center for African-American Studies at Princeton University, quoted Avenatti's tweeted responses to the president's denials to mock Trump for walking into the lawyer's latest trap.

"'Welcome to the playing field,' right?" Glaude said. "'Where have you been?' We think he's been playing the media, trying to be kind of out there, (but) he's been really trying to get Trump to step out, and here he's done it."

MSNBC analyst Mike Barnicle said the president's increasingly frantic tweets had already been normalized, and Geist asked presidential historian Jon Meacham to put the latest Twitter rants into context.

"Is there a Franklin Pierce reference, something could you drop in here?" Geist asked.

Meacham found himself at somewhat of a loss.

"I was going to mention that when Chester Arthur tweeted about the Ringling Bros. burlesque show, you know -- you genuinely can't make it up," Meacham said.

The leading headlines before Trump's tweets were the disconnect between the White House and UN ambassador Nikki Haley over Russia sanctions and the death of Barbara Bush, so Meacham put the tweets into context against those stories.

"Someone used the phrase, 'the thinking in the White House,' and the way Nikki Haley said, 'With all due respect' -- there is none on this, it's not," Meacham said. "We have this remarkable cable addict who is tweeting away, and I'm sorry to link the two, but here we are in a day where we're thinking about the way George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Bush presided over the country, and on that morning the 45th president tweets about this. You know, lest anyone miss the point that this all proves Darwin, let's underscore this moment."

Hunt capped off the segment with a tribute to the late first lady.

"I think Barbara Bush is drinking bourbon in heaven right now," Hunt said.