BREAKING: Willie was thoroughly flummoxed today!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 2018

We can't show you the quote: Let's start with what we can tell you.

As of Monday, April 2, the lovebirds were back in the nest. Joe and Mika were on the air together again, side-by-side, in the same physical place.

This was the first such day since Friday, March 16, when we got the impression that Joe offended Mika by rolling his eyes at Stephanie Clifford's ridiculous lawyer. (By way of contrast, Mika had entered "fully stricken" mode in response to the barrister's bombast.)

Our impression may have been wrong. But sure enough! Joe was off ther air the whole next week, with Mika barely even mentioning his name or his absence. At the start of the week after that, Mika skipped a few days, with Joe saying she was taking a few "well deserved" days off.

After that, they were on the show together again, but not in the same physical space. This two weeks of separation finally ended this week.

Are these two really that silly? Have you ever watched the show over the past many years?

On to this morning's broadcast:

We wanted to show you Willie's rumination about Republican pols. During the first half hour, he went on and on, saying he can't imagine why these people don't stand up to Donald J. Trump's various ridiculous stances.

He went on and on, saying he just can't imagine. We wanted to show you what he said, but the video of that part of the show doesn't seem to have been posted at the Morning Joe site.

(Full disclosure: At the Morning Joe site, you can click to watch "Full Episodes." Given the fact that it's Morning Joe, what you get, if you click that link, is not a full episode, though you do get a ton of commercials.)

At any rate, every 6-year-old watching today could have answered Willie's question. Why don't Republican pols break with Trump's ridiculous stances? How many hundreds of thousands of times have you seen that explained by now?

(Key word: "primaried.")

For some reason, it looked like Willie decided to play it a little bit dumb this morning, thereby heightening the sense of frustration with those Republican pols. We wanted to show you what he said, but our search for his oration proved fruitless.

Where it says "Full Episodes," you get a whole lot less. In fairness, there are 14 teams now in the Big Ten, only ten teams in the Big 12.

That's close enough for college football, but also for cable news.