All In with Chris Hayes, Transcript 09/11/15

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN -- RICK PERRY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I`m suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States. HAYES: Well, he`s gone. The Republican "Hunger Games" primary claims its first victim. And -- DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (via telephone): I think that he is overrated as a doctor. HAYES: For the first time since becoming the frontrunner, Donald Trump has a real fight on his hands. BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I am an OK doctor. HAYES: Where did Ben Carson come from and why is he gaining on Trump? And then, the shocking new video of James Blake`s arrest. Tonight, the former tennis star is speaking out again. And Joe Biden opens up to Stephen Colbert. JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He said, "Dad, I know how much you love me. So you got to promise me something. Promise me you`re going to be all right." HAYES: The vice president, the campaign and the politics of authenticity. STEPHEN COLBERT, COMEDIAN: I want to talk about the elephant in the room, which in this case is a donkey. HAYES: When ALL IN starts right now. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. And tonight, we have our first casualty of the 2016 presidential campaign. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PERRY: Today, I`m suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States. I give you this news with no regrets. It has been a privilege for me. It`s been an honor to travel this country, to speak with the American people about their hopes and their dreams. Indeed life is good. I`m a blessed man. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Rick Perry suspending his campaign late this afternoon after less than 100 days on the campaign trail. The longest-serving governor in Texas history, Perry was the GOP presidential front runner at this time four years ago, before his campaign flamed out thanks in part to the infamous oops moment in the debate when Perry could not name one of the three federal agencies he wanted to eliminate. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PERRY: It is three agencies of government when I get there that are gone, Commerce, Education and the -- what`s the third one there? Let`s see. MODERATOR: You can`t name the third one? PERRY: The third agency of government I would do away with Education, the Commerce and let`s see -- I can`t, the third one I can`t. Sorry. Oops. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: This time around, Perry had been unable to gain any sort of traction in the Republican race, failing to rise above five percentage points in national polls. Most recently polling around just 1 percent, leaving him off the main stage for the first GOP presidential debate. The writing has been on the wall for Perry`s exit. Last month, Perry stopped paying his staff as his fundraising dried up. Soon after, Perry`s Iowa campaign chairman quite and went to work for Donald Trump. After Perry`s announcement today, many of the remaining Republican presidential hopefuls released statements wishing him well, including one Donald J. Trump who tweeted that Perry is, quote, "a terrific guy and I wish him well", adding, "I know he will have a great future." A response that was markedly different to other comments Donald Trump made about the former governor during his short and ultimately futile run. Starting with the beginning of his campaign when he announced his candidacy in an aircraft hangar in Texas June in 90-degree heat providing a visual that Trump could not resist knocking. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Some of the candidates they went in. They didn`t know the air conditioner didn`t work. They sweated like dogs. NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS: What do you make of Donald Trump`s apparently unimpressed reaction? What did you think? PERRY: Well, I`m not going to run against any of those other candidates. TRUMP: I see Rick Perry the other day and he`s so -- he`s doing very poorly in the polls. He put glasses on so people will think he`s smart. It just doesn`t work. People can see through the glasses, but he`s got the glasses, the whole deal. CAVUTO: When you hear comments on physical features, or in your case the glasses at all, what do you think? How do you respond that? PERRY: I happen to believe that my record is what`s going to stand out, not either how I do my hair or whether I wear glasses or not. TRUMP: So far, everybody that has attacked me has gone down in the tubes. You have Perry attacked me. Now, he`s getting out of the race. He was at 4 or 5 percent. FEMALE TV ANCHOR: Is Donald Trump right? Are you getting out of the race? PERRY: You know, a broken clock is right once a day. So -- (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Joining me now, MSNBC political analyst Howard Dean, former Vermont governor, presidential candidate and chair of the Democratic National Committee. This is my question for you, Governor. As someone who`s a governor of a state, when you watch this happen, when you think this is the first person to get out, the guy who -- you know, whatever you think of Rick Perry`s politics -- I don`t particularly like them. I think his record was bad in many ways. He really did run the second largest state in the union for 12 years and there`s something a bit perverse about him getting out before certain other people in this race. HOWARD DEAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, two of them are already out. Pataki and Gilmore aren`t really running campaigns. They are sort of already out, even though they haven`t formally said so. This is inevitable. You get 17 candidates and there`s not enough money. There`s only four or five that are getting the attention. And I think there are going to be ten at the most that get to the starting line in Iowa and then there are going to be a bunch more that drop out after that. HAYES: Yes, part of what is interesting to me also is there is a lot of back an forth about what do polls mean this early on, right? Oh, it`s not predictive and, oh, it`s ridiculous. Four years ago Perry was up at this point. But what they certainly do mean is they do affect the dynamics of fund-raising and viability in the short term. And in this case, you can say whatever you want about the Donald Trump phenomenon, he`s never going to be nominee, he`s never going to be president. He has succeeded at certain level at knocking out Rick Perry who is certainly a plausible candidate. DEAN: Well, Donald Trump is going to knock out more people than Rick Perry. A lot of legitimate candidates are never going to get to the starting line. You`re going to see -- I`m going to bet you now that about seven or eight of these candidates aren`t going to get to the starting line, which is Iowa. Christie`s probably one of them. The two we already mentioned. You know, they are going to be -- more. We don`t know which ones. I mean, someone today, who is pretty smart, said he thought Scott Walker wasn`t going to get to the starting line. That would be shocking given where he started. But, you know, when you have 17 candidates and a guy like Donald Trump and now Ben Carson leading the pact, it`s not a lot of room for conventional politicians. HAYES: Yes. So, you are saying seven or eight. I mean, that`s -- you know, that is fascinating. There`s a Keynes line about markets, where he says markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent, right? Which you know actually is a great line. DEAN: That`s right. HAYES: Which you knew firsthand, because he was actually a very adept financial trader, made a lot of money in the markets. It strikes me we are seeing a similar thing in the Republican primary, right? The primary market can remain irrational longer or voters can, quote, "not come to their senses" longer than you can remain solvent, longer than you can stay in the race with enough oxygen and enough fundraising and enough organization to keep at it. DEAN: Right. And the emergence of somebody like Kasich who`s really done well in New Hampshire, for example, that makes it even harder for some of these candidates like Chris Christie or Lindsey Graham is another that I don`t think is going to make it to the starting line. In his own state, most people think he ought not to run. That`s tough. HAYES: Yes, we`re going to -- yes, I think that`s an interesting prediction. I wouldn`t be surprised if you are right, seven or eight not making it to Iowa. Howard Dean, always a pressure. Have a great weekend. DEAN: Thanks, Chris. HAYES: Perry maybe out of the race, but for the first time in months, there is a candidate making Donald Trump sweat. A new Quinnipiac poll out of Iowa shows Dr. Ben Carson in second place with 21 percent support, putting him six points behind Trump in a state where Trump has led since July. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon with no political experience, has been steadily rising in national polls and now sits solidly in second place, having risen from if 9 percent in mid-August to 19 percent in the most recent poll, but that still leaves him 13 points behind Trump nationally. Carson`s rise has come from a catastrophic slide, as alluded earlier by Governor Dean, for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who is polling double-digits in July but has now fallen to about 5 percent. Polls have been particularly rough for Walker in Iowa where he was leading the PAC as recently as July. In that new Quinnipiac poll, Walker is all the way down in tenth place with just 3 percent support, an utterly disastrous showing for a candidate, staking his claim on a strong Iowa showing. As for Carson, well, he campaigned in Ferguson, Missouri, where he tried to play down his burgeoning rivalry with Trump. Carson on Wednesday questions the authenticity of his faith, promoting -- prompting Trump to return fire, casting Carson as, quote, "just an OK doctor" who holds, quote, "horrendous views on abortion". Carson later apologized and said he would not hit back. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CARSON: What I have are discovered is that the media loves to stoke up controversy. And have people fighting each other like gladiators and I think that`s exactly the wrong thing to do. You know, I`ve made it clear that I was not attacking him. It was interpreted that way by the media and I think he took the bait, but I`m not taking the bait. I`m not going there. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Carson struck a similar note in an interview with NBC`s Ron Allen today. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CARSON: I`m not going to get in the mud pit. If people want to attack me and say horrible things about me, that`s fine. I`m not going to get back in the mud pit with them. RON ALLEN, NBC: And you think that can be a winning strategy, even in the way that politics is played these days? CARSON: Whether it`s a winning strategy or not, that`s who I am. And, you know, I don`t talk about people. I just don`t do it. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Carson and Trump are both positioned far outside of the Republican political establishment, neither of them ever held elected office. But beyond that, they don`t have much in common. I mean, Trump is a legitimate celebrity, brash reality television star who`s been in the national consciousness for decades. Carson is something else entirely, staunch religious conservative, an accomplished neurosurgeon that doesn`t seem particularly comfortable frankly in the spotlight. Carson seems to recoil from the sorts of insults that Trump relishes and he has managed quietly garner huge audiences in the campaign trail and emerge now as a legitimate threat in the polls. Joining me now are "Washington Post" national political reporter Dave Weigel, who`s on the trail with Carson today, and Dorian Warren, host of MSNBC`s "NERDING OUT" on Shift, a senior fellow at Roosevelt Institute. Dave, I was thinking to myself today would I have taken the bet a year, eight, six months ago, Ben Carson at number two, Rick Perry out of the race at this point. I don`t think I would have taken the bet, frankly. DAVE WEIGEL, THE WASHINGTON POST: No, thank goodness that none of us are held accountable for our predictions. The media has not done a good job of saying who will rise and who would fall. You were saying before that Carson has done that quietly. I can`t emphasize enough. I was with him in California, Texas and today in Missouri. He had maybe a fifth as much media attention as Donald Trump, maybe a third as much as Jeb Bush that consistently circled him on the launch pad trying to find a way to take off. There`s a confusion how to cover this guy I think because his support base and his celebrity were with very under the radar. A lot of home schoolers who loved him for years. A lot of evangelicals who we`ve heard, a lot of people who had seen him speak at events as a celebrity inspirational speaker. He really did creep up on people and he`s still creeping at people at 25 percent. HAYES: Yes, Dorian, David`s point there I think is important. In some ways, Ben Carson had carved out celebrity for himself. It just wasn`t the celebrity that Donald Trump had. It was among a certain segment of the population who knew who he was, who bought his books and gone to his events and view him as a sort of inspirational national figure. What do you -- what is your understanding of the Ben Carson appeal? DORIAN WARREN, MSNBC HOST: My understanding, Chris, is twofold. First, you have to look at whose dropped in the polls. You mentioned Scott Walker earlier, but also look at the drop in support for Jeb Bush, right, and you look at where are the supporters for someone, not only for Trump but Carson -- evangelicals, as well as climate change deniers which is a little ironic considering he was a neurosurgeon who believes in science but he denies that there is manmade activity that causes climate change. And then also look at women. So, across those three groups and there are more, but climate change deniers, evangelicals and women, Carson has been quietly building support. By the way, for a party in the midst of dog whistling racial politics, it actually I think makes white Republican primary voters feel good about supporting a black candidate. Remember Herman Cain, Mr. 999, Ben Carson is experiencing the same thing. And he believes he can get black voters which is a total misconception. There is a Ben Carson of the `90 that black America loved and frankly black America think he`s kind of lost his mind. And now, there`s a Ben Carson that`s trying to run as a Republican who white Republican voters are starting to love. HAYES: Well, OK, I want to come back to that, the Ben Carson, because I think that`s also a fascinating story. But having talked to folks at these events the last few days, what do you get -- what kind of sense do you get about how politically involved these people are and what their politics are and why they are there? WEIGEL: Well, this is something if I was a Democrat or working for a Democratic campaign it would make me worry. I meet a lot of people at these events and Trump events who say they have not really been involved in politics. Maybe they voted. Many say this is the first guy they have donated to. Many people who never organized in politics but they have chosen to become a Ben Carson precinct captain or a state director in some cases, people who just met this guy years ago or saw his prayer breakfast speech from 2013 and followed him. So, I think a lot of evangelical voters who are not interested in politics or given up certainly just in the last nine months of the year have given up decided he is so unique and inspirational, in the way, you know, it (INAUDIBLE) a lot of liberals, that they are going to work for him. There`s no one else they would consider working for. It`s a question of whether they stay involved in politics. But for now, they are really passionate about him. HAYES: Dorian, your point there that David mentioned the 2013 prayer breakfast, which was a breakout moment for the current incarnation of Ben Carson. But, of course, Ben Carson was famous among African-Americans, particularly in Baltimore for a very long time as this amazing, path- breaking, rags-to-riches story about a guy that went from dirt poor to one of the most celebrated doctors in the country. What do you mean when you say that 1990s Ben Carson could have won a lot of black votes, this one can`t? WARREN: Well, that 1990s Ben Carson was telling an inspirational story of uplift from poverty. He didn`t take hard-line political positions. This Ben Carson has situated himself squarely in to multiple bases of the Republican Party, right? So, around, again, denying climate change, most of his issue positions actually don`t coincide with black America. So, for him in Ferguson today, he doesn`t think there is an issue with police in the midst of the news about James Blake, the tennis player being tackled by New York City police officers, that doesn`t ring at all with black voters. There`s no chance in hell black voters will say oh, Ben Carson, you represent us. Now, let`s be clear, Ben Carson is a shrewd and savvy politician. He knocked at Donald Trump. He basically Bible whistled and said I don`t know if he is really a Christian. Then he backed away from it. That is a shrewd political move. Let`s not underestimate his political skills. HAYES: Yes, I think that`s actually a really good point, even if he`s sort of playing naive. Obviously, an incredibly accomplished guy. Dave Weigel, Dorian Warren, thank you very much. Still to come, the new shocking video of a plain clothes NYPD officer taking down tennis star James Blake. Plus, the petulant response from congressional Republicans after they failed to stop the president`s Iran deal. And later, Joe Biden sits down for his first interview since his son Beau died, in a moving conversation about grief and his possible presidential bid. Those stories and more, ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOY REID, MSNBC NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think I`m just going to go for the lowest number on the board strategy to, you know, just to explain my -- HAYES: Number three. REID: Yes. HAYES: Another prime number. REID: Yes. HAYES: Three, will it deliver for Joy? Rick Perry. ANNOUNCER: Rick Perry, he`s got three good reasons to run but can only remember two. PERRY: What`s the third one there? Let`s see. ANNOUNCER: The former governor of the lone star state is back. But this time, he`s got four eyes on the prize. PERRY: Today has been awesome, girl. ANNNOUNCER: He`s former Texas Governor Rick Perry. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Well, Rick Perry`s announcement he is pd suspending his campaign for president isn`t just a loss for supporters. It`s a loss for Joy Reid who picked Rick Perry in our ALL IN 2016 fantasy candidate draft back in January. Well, there are no penalties for your draft candidate dropping out. Rick Perry`s decision does mean Joy won`t get more points from him. The rest of the scoreboard will light up like a pinball machine next week as most of the remaining Republicans head to the Reagan library for their second debate. We`ll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Across the country today, Americans observed the 14th anniversary to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Family members gathered for a somber ceremony at the Lower Manhattan site where the Twin Towers once stood. Vice President Biden met with first responders. In Washington, President Obama observed a moment of silence on the White House lawn with the first lady. Up on Capitol Hill, however, House Republicans were using the occasion for a different aim -- denouncing the president`s nuclear deal with Iran. A day after Senate Democrats handed the White House a momentous victory on the deal, the House GOP passed a symbolic resolution disapproving it, adding the nuclear accord to a very long list of things President Obama has managed to achieve without a single Republican vote. During the floor vote this morning, one speech in particular illuminated the politics of the vote. It came from Republican Congressman Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania fresh off of his appearance at the anti-Iran deal rally on Wednesday. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. MIKE KELLY (R), PENNSYLVANIA: We need to echo what we said on September 11th before and that is -- never forget, never forget, never forget, never forget, never forget, never forget, never forget. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: In his speech today, the congressman invoked 9/11 once again. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KELLY: As we let our eyes fill with tears over the great loss that day, and as the ears picked up on the message from our enemies in the east -- death to Israel, death to the great Satan, death to America, let us resound with love and strength and temerity and say, listen, never again, never again, never again. Do not sacrifice the safety, the security and stability of 330 million Americans for the legacy of one man. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Those comments provoked a strong response from member of New York`s congressional delegation, Democrat Joe Crowley. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. JOE CROWLEY (D), NEW YORK: Mike Kelly is a good man. I like Mike. I admire him. But I think he did a disservice to the House and to this debate by bringing up the issue of 9/11. I thank him for his honesty, for at least showing that that`s this is all about, having this debate and vote today to stir the emotions of the American people. My emotions always stirred on this day. Fourteen years ago, I knew people who died that day. My cousin died. My friends died. I don`t need to be reminded of that. But it will not cloud my decision making on this important issue. Now, after all of this discussion and talk about bipartisanship, a real profile of courage would be for one of you to support your president, one Republican to stand and support your president. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Joining me now is Congressman Joe Crowley, Democrat from New York. Congressman, do you think this was a cynical attempt by the House Republican leadership to hold this vote on this day explicitly to try to use the sort of emotion of the day to cow Democrats on this vote? CROWLEY: I think it has taken 14 years, Chris, but they finally politicized 9/11. I think it`s very unfortunate. We`ve avoided it for the first 13 years, but unfortunately, they did it this year. I do think there was some calculus in this. We could have started debate a day earlier, had the debate yesterday. We could have started the debate later and had the vote next week. The timing of the vote really didn`t matter anymore once the Senate had gone home. So, I do think they rushed this, they moved this vote forward. We initially thought this vote would be next week, but it was this week, and I think they did it to time it on 9/11. HAYES: I have to say I remember when 9/11 was with invoked as the reason to go to war in Iraq. That Saddam Hussein had connections to Mohammad Atta, that was subsequently debunked. Now, being told by a certain quadrant of American politics that the reason to vote down on Iran nuclear deal is because of 9/11. And it just seems to me, in some says a disservice of the memory of the event to not be accurate about who exactly did 9/11 which was neither Saddam Hussein or Iraq and not the Iranian regime. It was al Qaeda and bin Laden and Zawahiri, and those are different people. CROWLEY: Chris, you`re letting the facts get in the way. You know, I made comments on the floor about the fact that many of my Republican colleagues never read the deal before they came out against it. They criticized us for not supposedly reading the Affordable Care Act before we brought it forward. They were against it before they read it. The facts -- they don`t let the facts get in the way. And I thought it was outrageous was the base level they brought the debate to the floor on. As I said, I like Mike Kelly, but I thought he did a disservice to the House and floor and to the institution that I love. We were not able to focus on the deal itself. Not once did they focus on the deal, only the rhetoric and it really did a disservice to the American people. They`re not dumb. They know what happened. They know what happened on 9/11. They know that Iranian regime had nothing to do with it. They`re not great people. The regime is not a good regime. They do bad things. But they were responsible for 9/11. HAYES: Well, and when you woke up this morning to go to work, did you know, like most days I imagine when you have a vote that, you know, you are not going to get a single Republican vote on this. CROWLEY: I knew that. In fact, I was mulling that in my mind about this outcry for bipartisanship in opposing the president, yet not a single Republican. I know there are Republicans that know what they are doing is wrong. Not one of them had the courage to stand with their president, our president. He`s not my president alone. He`s not a Democratic president. He is all of our president and they let politics and the bullying of their party get in the way of doing the right thing. HAYES: All right. Congressman Joe Crowley, great pleasure today. Thank you very much. CROWLEY: Thank you, Chris. HAYES: Coming up a massive update on the Clinton e-mail controversy that remarkably no one seems to be talking about. I want to tell you what it is. So don`t go anywhere. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: OK, so at the heart of the Hillary Clinton email controversy, you have been hearing so much about is this -- did she break any rules or violate the law? Yesterday, though practically no one in the media noticed, we got the best indication yet from the Department of Justice that Hillary Clinton did not violate the law when she deleted personal emails. The headline from the Washington Times was "Justice Department rules Hillary Clinton followed law in deleting emails." Similar headline appeared in Buzzfeed today. But otherwise extremely small amounts of coverage of this development. So, here`s what happened. The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a petition with U.S. district court in Washington, D.C. basically asking that the State Department make public the personal emails Clinton had deleted from her email server. The Justice Department responded on behalf of the State Department in an official legal brief submitted to the court. Quote, "there is no question that former Secretary Clinton had authority to delete personal emails without agency supervision. She appropriately could have done so even if the were working on a government server." The legal brief was 10 pages long, but that was the heart of it. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, was within her legal right to delete personal emails. This particular legal battle does not address whether classified emails were sent or received or whether she knew at the time they were sent or were received. It does take, however, one plank of the controversy that Clinton did something illegal by deleting personal emails and show that in the opinion of Justice Department there simply is no there there. And you would think given how much coverage has been given to this whole thing that maybe that plain fact would get a little more attention. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: Tonight we have disturbing video of the arrest of former tennis star James Blake outside a New York City hotel in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. Surveillance footage released this afternoon by the NYPD shows Blake standing outside of the Grand Hyatt Hotel two days ago when he is rushed by a plains clothes police officer who tackles him. The officer than handcuffs the former tennis pro while he is laying face down on the ground. Blake, who first spoke about the incident on Wednesday, says he was detained for 10 minutes before the officer and his colleagues realized they had the wrong man. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JAMES BLAKE, TENNIS PLAYER: I immediately talked to my wife. She was the first one I talked to. And she said, what if this happened to me and immediately I was furious because I thought about what I would be thinking if someone did that to my wife, if someone tackled her in broad daylight, paraded her around on a busy crowded sidewalk in New York City with handcuffs, with her cuffed behind her back and taking away her dignity and I just couldn`t accept that. And I know that a lot of people have no voice to have any recourse and I`m lucky enough to have the opportunity to sitting here with you to be able to tell this story and let people know that this happens too often. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: The NYPD brass, who first learned about the incident through media reports, they say, said that Blake was with mistaken for a suspect in a fraudulent credit card ring. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BILL BRATTON, NYPD COMMISSIONER: The concerns we have was the force used appropriate and the initial review, we believe that it may not have been. And that secondly, what transpired after the release of Mr. Blake relative to reporting of the incident, which was not done. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: The officer, who was seen on video tackling Blake, has since been placed on desk duty pending investigation. He has also been identified as James Frascatore, a four year veteran in the NYPD. Now Frascatore is currently named in two open federal civil lawsuits involving men who claim they were beaten, pepper sprayed and falsely arrested. Not only that, an investigation done by WNYC last year found that Frascatore was named in five civilian complaints during one seven- month period in 2013. New York City Bill de Blasio and NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton who both apologized to Blake about the incident. Today he thanked the two men but said, quote, extending courtesy to a public figure mistreated by the police is not enough. For that reason, I`m calling upon the city of New York to make a significant financial commitment to improving that relationship particularly in those neighborhoods where incidents of this type, the type I experienced occur, all too frequently. Joining me now, New York City councilman Jumaane Williams, Democrat representing the parts of Brooklyn where those do occur fairly frequently I think it`s safe to say? COUNCILMAN JUMAANE WILLIAMS, NEW YORK CITY: absolutely. HAYES: My first thought when seeing that video was forget mistaken identity, let`s say that was the guy. I mean, really? Let`s say that was a person who was doing -- was part of a credit card ring that was doing bad stuff. It still seems a completely excessive and unnecessary use of force. WILLIAMS: Sure. First of all, it is 9/11, a lot of people are remembering their families, so I want to say grace and peace to them. But of course, the first thing is irrespective, the guy is leaning up, just chilling. It`s not a violent crime he was suspected of. You don`t think he is a violent suspect. HAYES: There`s no APB out saying this guy might be packing. WILLIAMS: So, why do you rush him and throw him down to the ground? I think that is really inexplicable. And so we have to talk about that. And the second is why does this happen so often to certain type of people? And I think people try to divorce the two with and you shouldn`t. Now, this happens to people who don`t have melanin in their skin? I`m sure it does. But if you look at how many times this occurs and how many times we see this, it happens more often to people who have more melanin in their skin. And if people -- remember, it happened to me and a friend of mine on Labor Day. And I remember thinking it got a lot of attention. Whatever happened to me wasn`t substantiated because there was no video, what happened to my friend was substantiated because there was video, but we were able to deal with it, get policy change. And I remember thinking what if I wasn`t a council member. HAYES: You got stopped and frisked essentially by cops. WILLIAMS: Well, we were going to an event on Labor Day weekend. They didn`t believe who we said we were. They roughed us up, arrested us. He worked actually for Bill de Blasio at the moment in time. He was thrown to the ground. And we said what if we weren`t public officials, what would happen? We would have records and nothing -- no one would have been the wiser. HAYES: Well, one of the things I think that`s disturbing about this case, and again, I think one of the things we have learned about this is you can have a very small number of police officers who act in a reckless, sometimes cruel fashion who could do a lot of damage if they are left to do that. In this case, and I don`t want to -- I don`t know the full record of this person, but we have reporting that suggests that this is a cop who`s had a lot of complaints lodged against him. WILLIAMS: What`s tough here is being a police officer is a tough job. Getting people to do things they don`t want to do is tough. Getting someone -- to arrest who doesn`t want to be arrested is tough. But that`s not what is happening here. This was inappropriate force used. And it seems like there was a person who has a record of doing this. So, where is the Tickler (ph) system to make sure that if we see something going on here that we say pause on this person, either work with them or remove them. And -- so the good things that happened, the apologized, which is good. And they and modified duty. We need to see accountability, real accountability after the investigation. But what I didn`t like was that there were people trying to pretend that race had nothing to do with it. HAYES: Yeah, instead of Commissioner Bratton said it is ridiculous and he said if you look at the photo of the suspect he looks like the guy`s twin brother. WILLIAMS: So, the thing is -- the bad part is if you can not admit part of the problem, we can`t fix it. So, if we say race has nothing to do with it, then we won`t be able to deal with the part that race plays in the fact that every time we look at this, we know what the person looks like that`s happening: black, Latino mainly. The other thing is what if he, rightfully so, had responded. We might have had another person injured or dead on a nonviolent crime. HAYES: This is such a key point. According to Mr. Blake, the police officer did not identify himself. And if you see from that video the police officer is not in uniform. There`s no point at least in the initial approach where he appears to flash a badge. And you can imagine that Mr. Blake thinks that he is being assaulted and possibly fears for his own life. Maybe this guy is going to kill him right there and if he had fought back, if he whacks him or if punches him, the next thing you know the police officer fears for his life and he could be dead. WILLIAMS: And the two things here, one is, we have to have accountability for these officers. They have to be punished for actions that are wrong. The second is we have to just be honest about how race plays in policing and in these issues. HAYES: Jumaane Williams, thanks so much for being here. Appreciate it. WILLIAMS: Thank you for having me. HAYES: All right, still ahead, Joe Biden`s emotional interview with Stephen Colbert and a look at the struggle for authenticity in politics. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) HAYES: We have an ironclad editorial policy here at All In, which is that on those occasions when my children visit the set they get to choose something to play on air, usually it`s an animal. And tonight, we`re expanding that. My daughter`s request tonight is pandas. So, Ryan (ph), here are some pandas. Pandas are really important to the world, because they are cute, people enjoy watching them and they are beautiful part of nature and life. My son, who is 17 months old, speaks enough that when I asked him this morning what he wanted to see, he replied with his current favorite word choo-choo. So David here`s a choo-choo train. Trains are fun, great in getting people from one place to another, generally extremely cool and awesome to look at. And because I am nothing if not an equitable arbiter between my two children, and here is a panda on a train. Right now, really, nothing is better than a panda on a train. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, LATE NIGHT: Everybody likes Joe. And even -- I have to say even talking about you in the third person I`m uncomfortable calling you Joe. You are the vice president of the United States. JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That`s fine. COLBERT: No. No. I want to give your office the respect it deserves. How much is that? (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: Vice President Joe Biden`s first interview since the death of his son Beau was a really remarkable piece of television because he was so much more than what we are used to seeing when a politician sits down with a comedian. Joe Biden`s conversation with The Late Show`s Stephen Colbert was honest, and tender and at times profoundly moving. It began with Colbert trying to shed some light on Biden`s likability factor. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) COLBERT: Everybody likes Joe Biden, right? I`ll tell you why I think that is, I think it`s because when we see you, we think that we`re actually seeing the real Joe Biden. You are not a politician who has created some sort of facade to get something out of us or triangulate your political position or emotional state to try to make us feel a certain way. We see the real you. How did you maintain your soul in a city that is full of people trying to lie to us in subtle ways? BIDEN: What always confuses me about some folks I work with is why in god`s name would you want the job if you couldn`t say what you believed? I`m not -- there`s nothing noble about this, but ask yourselves the question. Would you want a job that, in fact, every day you had to get up and you had to modulate what you said and believed? If you are going to run, you are running for a reason. You want the job for a reason and if you can`t state why you want the job, than there`s a lot more lucrative opportunities other places. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: When the topic later turned to Joe Biden`s son Beau who succumbed to cancer back in May, the vice president had a sympathetic ear. Biden, of course, lost his wife and daughter in a car crash in 1972 shortly before he was elected to the senate. Colbert lost his father and two of his brothers in a plane crash as a child just two years later. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BIDEN: Think of all of the people you know who are going through horrible things and they get up every morning and they put one foot in front of the other and they don`t have, like I said, anything like the support I have. I marvel -- I marvel at the ability of people to absorb hurt and just get back up and most of them do it with an incredible sense of empathy to other people. I mean, it is interesting. The people I find who I am most drawn to are people who have been hurt and yet -- I`m not going to embarrass you, but you are one of them, old buddy. No, no, no. Your mom, your family, losing your dad when you were a kid and three brothers. I mean, you know, it`s like asking what made your mother do it every day? How did she get up every single day with, you know, 11 kids? COLBERT: Well, she had to take care of me. She did. No, that`s it. We were there for each other. BIDEN: By the way, that must have been a hell of a job. COLBERT: And I had to take care of her. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: And towards the end of the interview it was time to address the elephant in the room. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) COLBERT: You said recently, you said this weekend, that you don`t know if you are emotionally prepared to run for president? BIDEN: Look, I don`t think any man or woman should run for president unless, number one, they know exactly why they would want to be president, and two they can look at the folks out there and say, "I promise you, you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy and my passion to do this." And I`d be lying if I said that I knew I was there. It`s a -- I went out to Denver and I landed on a military base and I met a whole group of military families which is not unusual. On the rope line, 100 yards from the aircraft and about two-thirds were in uniform, the other were family members. And I was thanking them and I really meant it. This 1 percent is fighting for 99 percent of the rest of us. And I was talking about them being the backbone and sinew of this country and all of a sudden, it was going great, and a guy in the back yells, "Major Beau Biden, bronze star, sir, served with him in Iraq." And all of a sudden I lost it. How could you -- that`s not -- I shouldn`t be saying this. But that -- you can`t do that. (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: One of the last things Colbert told the vice president was, quote, I think we`d all be very happy if you did run. And a lot of people agree. And a lot of people last night watching that I think felt that feeling. There`s a paradox here, though, it`s that the Joe Biden that everybody saw last night cannot be the same Joe Biden who runs for president. And I will explain next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CLINTON: It`s not easy. It`s not easy. And I couldn`t do it if I just didn`t passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I have so many opportunities from this country, I just don`t want to see us fall backwards. You know? So... (END VIDEO CLIP) HAYES: That was Hillary Clinton famously tearing up on the campaign trail in 2008 while answering a question about dealing with the riggers of a presidential campaign that of course credited for launching her to victory in New Hampshire. Joining me now Hari Sevugan, he`s former national press secretary for the DNC, and Lynn Sweet, columnist and Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Sun-Times. And Hari as someone who has been on the other side of the press during this, here`s the way that I view the paradox of authenticity in a political campaign. The press demands authenticity, ranks people by authenticity, also demands total discipline and no gaffes. And those two things are of course -- like normal people say stuff all the time that could be misinterpreted or that they regret, but that`s part of actually being authentic. And so in some ways it is a mug`s game trying to live up to these expectations of authenticity. HARI SEVUGAN, FRM. NATIONAL PRESS SECRETARY DNC: Yeah, that`s absolutely right. And I think that`s the paradox of Joe Biden in a lot of ways. He`s so honest and sometimes that honesty leads to a gaffe and more times than not it allows people to see who he really is and create that sort of empathy with the American people. I think when Joe was talking about, last night, when he was talking about Beau`s fellow serviceman coming up to him and talking about serving with him and Joe breaking down and saying I can`t do that, I think what he was referring to, I don`t know this for sure, but what I think he was referring to as president of the United States you can`t afford those kinds of emotions. But you are absolutely right, Chris, there is that paradox. But I think that`s what allows people to connect with the vice president in such a meaningful way. HAYES: But do you think that is a fair characterization of the way the political press approaches this, this sort of -- this sort of seeking authenticity and sort of analyzing whether people are seeming staged or awkward at the same time punishing things that might be authentic, but are also gaffe inducing? LYNN SWEET, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Well, I think you make it a little more complicated than it has to be. When you talk about the raw emotion of your son dying where you don`t have to worry about one wrong word about policy or anything you do come across as more authentic. The reason people stick to talking points is that they don`t want to make mistakes and my god I think we are all grateful that we do shows like this and don`t say something because you can`t take it back. But having said that, I think the overriding thing here is that the -- Biden is getting sympathy because if you couldn`t be authentic, if you couldn`t speak about your sorrow and the death of your son it almost would seem unnatural, wouldn`t it? HAYES: Yeah, it would. But I can also imagine another politician handling it very differently and not talking expansively about it. I can imagine a variety of ways. I can also imagine Michelle Goldberg made this point that a female politician making the same point about breaking down and feeling emotion would be more dangerous. SWEET: I don`t know. I think it depends how people are. Someone who is a veteran Biden watcher told me that how he processes his grief is through talking. This is very characteristic and I don`t know if this is a gender thing or not, of course women always have to be careful if they tear up or cry. HAYES: I guess my point, though, is more that like it`s like -- I love watching that interview last night, because it felt like it was existing in a space of just -- it had left the sort of fourth dimension of politics or media, it felt like I was watching a human being -- two human beings like just talk about some of the most profound aspects of life and suffering and faith and things like that. And, you know, I was reminded of that documentary about Mitt Romney that was on Netflix, which was -- he was the most I ever liked Mitt Romney. It was him just being a person, right, talking about things with his family and in some things you say well why can`t that be the guy on the stage, Hari, but of course that can`t be the guy on stage. SEVUGAN: No, it can`t. I mean, there`s a difference between being able to go on a show and talking about the loss of your son and then running a campaign. You know, and I think one of the things that the vice president hit on last night that is very important is he`s got to be ready for this. He has to be able to say to the American people that he can give 110 percent. I mean, a campaign is grueling thing. You are up at 4:00 a.m. every day and you`re not going to bed until midnight or one and shaking a million of hands and you`re on a bunch of planes. And governing is equally hard, especially in the White House. So, having that sense of contemplation, which he showed last night, I think is also real important. And it serves as a stark contrast for what we see on the Republican side. And I think that is also terribly important for the American people to see. HAYES: You know, Lynn, I was thinking about Hillary Clinton`s favorability ratings. And there is this pattern throughout her whole career, right, they are high when she`s not running for office and then they come down when she is running for office. SWEET: And that is instructive as to what I think Vice President Biden will face if he gets in the race. Now, this is a -- what a grace period. HAYES: That`s right. That`s exactly the point. And I thought about Colbert saying everyone likes Joe Biden and then talking about the most tragic, overwhelming awful thing you can imagine, you know a father having to deal with. And -- but you know, if he declares a month from now, you are like back in the pit and people are going to be making fun of you saying something out of line. SWEET: It is brutal. Politics is -- you know, at this level it`s brutal. The only one who seems immune right now from paying any consequence of a gaffe is Donald Trump, but who knows. HAYES: Who knows how long that lasts. Hari Sevugan and Lynn Sweet, thanks for joining us. That is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow show starts now. Good evening, Rachel. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. 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