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MSNBC's "Morning Joe" panel derided Sarah Palin's hinting at a potential U.S. Senate run, including wondering what would happen "if someone asked her where the Middle East was."

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Nicolle Wallace, a senior adviser to John McCain's 2008 campaign who afterward notoriously criticized Palin as unsuited for the vice presidency, said Wednesday that if Palin were to run any statement she made would dominate the news cycle.

"If Sarah Palin injects her voice into a national conversation in any form, it's obviously going to bleed across the spectrum," Steele said. "That piece of it is largely irrelevant, because the press will make her relevant to any conversation the minute she says something."

Wallace, who had joked that she "speak[s] Palin," said that if Palin runs "she will be asked to weigh in on all the policy debates that a serious candidate is going to have to."

"If you're running for office in a state, you're going to have to weigh in on how you would vote vote on the immigration bill. The challenge would be whether she is talking and speaking out as a commentator, as a reality TV host, if she gets her own cooking show, or if she runs for president, the kinds of questions she'd have to field I think would be intertwined with the serious policy debates," Wallace said.

"It's one thing if she's running her own cooking show and being asked about what's going on in the Middle East versus being a candidate for the United States Senate and being asked," Steele said.

That comment brought a retort from regular MSNBC commentator Mike Barnicle: "The trick question would be if someone asked her where the Middle East was."

"...on her cooking show," Wallace said.

"If she could figure out," Barnicle said.

"If it was visible from parts of her property," former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. said.

Watch below, via Mediaite: