Joining today's show are Mike Barnicle, Richard Haass, Michael Steele, Fmr. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Josh Alcorn, Fmr. Gov. George Pataki, Chuck Todd, Kristen Soltis Anderson, Amy Holmes, Gen. Michael Hayden, Comm. Bill Bratton, John Miller, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Brian Sullivan, 9/11 Moment of Silence and more.
It looks like the Elephant in The Room on Steven Colbert last night is a Donkey. Emotional Biden tells Colbert he’s ‘not there’ on White House bid. Vice President Joe Biden did not use his appearance on the third episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” as a springboard for his potential White House bid.
In an emotional interview, with only the scarce joke mixed in, Biden directly spoke about the idea of running for president when pressed by Colbert but made no major news.
Asked if he had any plans to share, Biden replied: “I don’t think any man or woman should run for president unless, No. 1, they know exactly why they would want to be president and, 2, they can look at folks out there and say, ‘I promise you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy and my passion.’ ”
“And ... and ... I’d be lying if I said that i knew I was there,” Biden said, according to a pool report. “I’m being completely honest. Nobody has a right, in my view, to seek that office unless they are willing to give it 110% of who they are.”
Biden will reportedly decide by Oct. 1 whether he will run again for the White House. He stacks up stronger against the leading Republican presidential contenders than Hillary Clinton does, according to a poll conducted last month by Quinnipiac University.
Clinton has seen her polling lead against others in the Democratic field shrink amid the controversy surrounding her use of a private email account while serving as secretary of state. Sen. Bernie Sanders has had strong poll results in Iowa and New Hampshire, and party leaders are said to be talking about other alternatives to Clinton.
See: Presidential contender O’Malley attracts little attention in Democratic stronghold
During the “Late Show” interview, the vice president became emotional during a discussion of the recent death of his son Beau, saying he felt a bit embarrassed by all the attention. “So many people who have losses as severe or maybe worse than mine and don’t have the support I have,” he said.
Biden also discussed his Catholic faith, saying it gave him “an enormous sense of solace.”
Colbert finished the interview by observing that “it’s going to be emotional for a lot of people if you don’t run. Your example of suffering and service is something that would be sorely missed in the race.”
The show, recorded Thursday afternoon, will air later in the evening.
That was a real interview with a real guy. In my own odd way, I miss Beau (Biden). Joe's son. He seemed like such a great man. I remember at his funeral that his sister said that her two brother (including beau), would make her listen to the Grateful Dead song, 'Fire On The Mountain.' And, last night on the Colbert Late Show was pure Joe. He is also a good man.
In a new set of polls, (Hillary) Clinton has lost ground on The field on Dem's side of the campaigns this season. It has all happened too over the last month. Clinton finally had to apologize for the email debacle but is it too little too late? Even Ben Carson is technically ahead of Hillary Clinton.
Clinton's lead over Sanders shrinks as her edge over GOP vanishes. Hillary Clinton's lead in the race for the Democratic nomination has fallen to just 10 points, and at the same time, her advantage in hypothetical general election matchups against the top Republican contenders has vanished, a new CNN/ORC poll has found.
The new poll finds Clinton with 37% support among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, down 10 points since August, followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 27% and Vice President Joe Biden at 20%. Sanders' support is about the same as it was in August, making Biden the only candidate to post significant gains in the last month. His support is up 6 points in the last month as he weighs making a run for the presidency.
Behind the top three, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley holds 3%, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb is at 2% and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee logs less than 1% support.
In the general election matchups, Clinton trails former neurosurgeon Ben Carson by a significant margin (51% Carson to 46% Clinton among registered voters) while running about evenly with both former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (49% Bush to 47% Clinton) and businessman Donald Trump (48% back each).
The shift away from the former secretary of state stems from shrinking support among women. Clinton's advantage among women has disappeared in matchups against Bush and Carson. Facing Trump, Clinton still carries women by a large, though tighter, margin. In August, 60% of women favored Clinton to 37% for Trump, but that's narrowed slightly to 55% Clinton, 41% Trump now. Clinton's advantage among women against Trump is fueled by independent women, despite that group shifting away from Clinton in the head-to-head against Bush.
The poll suggests Republican women have consolidated their support around their party's front-runners in the last month, and are now more apt to back both Bush and Trump than they were a month ago. At the same time, the near-universal support for Clinton among Democratic women has softened slightly, bringing it more in-line with her support among Democratic men.
With Biden's consideration of a run for the White House gaining attention, the poll finds he outperforms Clinton in these hypothetical general election matchups, topping Bush and Trump while falling just slightly behind Carson. Biden tops Trump by 10 points (54% to 44% among registered voters), leads Bush by 8 points (52% to 44%) and is 3 points behind Carson (50% Carson to 47% Biden). Biden's advantages against Bush and Trump rest on the same kind of gender gap that Clinton appears to have lost: Biden leads Bush by 16 points among women while tying him among men, he tops Trump by 26 points among women while trailing him by 7 among men, and he leads Carson by 5 among women while trailing by 10 among men.
The poll also finds Democrats' overall enthusiasm for Clinton has waned. In April, shortly after she launched her campaign, 60% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said they would be enthusiastic about her candidacy should she win the party's nomination for president. Now, just 43% feel that way. But neither Biden nor Sanders has mustered that level of enthusiasm among the Democratic faithful, 37% say they would be enthusiastic about Biden, 31% about Sanders. And Sanders prompts the greatest potential dissatisfaction, with 30% saying they would be dissatisfied or upset if he eventually won the party's nomination.
Clinton's fade in the Democratic race comes as an ideological divide within the party grows into a chasm. In August, Clinton held support from 43% of moderates and 46% of liberals. In the new poll, her support among moderates holds at 47%, while among liberals, it has plummeted to just 23%. Sanders has increased his share of the liberal vote (from 42% to 49%), while falling 9 points among moderates (from 24% to 15%). Meanwhile, Biden has gained ground in both groups.
And enthusiasm for Clinton among liberals has fallen nearly 40 points. Just 29% of liberal Democrats say they would be enthusiastic if she were the party's nominee, down from 68% in an April poll.
Asked why they back their candidate, most Clinton supporters said her experience is the draw: 58% say it's mostly on account of her on the job experience, 32% because of her positions on the issues, and 9% because they don't like the other candidates. Among those Democrats backing her rivals for the nomination, 55% say their choice was driven by the candidate's positions on the issues, while 27% cite experience and 17% say it's due to dislike of the other candidates.
There is some good news for Clinton in the poll, however, since most Democrats still say they expect her to be the party's eventual nominee and the more enthusiastic Democratic voters are more apt to be Clinton backers. Among Democrats and Democatic-leaning voters, 65% expect Clinton to top the party's ticket in 2016. And among those Democratic voters who say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting for president next year -- a group which may be more likely to cast ballots in next year's primary contests -- 42% back Clinton, 29% Sanders and 15% Biden.
The CNN/ORC Poll was conducted by telephone September 4-8 among a random national sample of 1,012 adults. This sample included 930 interviews with registered voters, 395 of whom were self-identified Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents. For results among all registered voters, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Among Democratic voters, it is plus or minus 5 points.
Here are the Polls on the GOP side of the primary campaign season:
Donald Trump: I wasn't talking about Carly Fiorina's face. Donald Trump said Thursday that when he suggested Carly Fiorina's face would make her unelectable, he wasn't talking about her looks.
"I'm not talking about looks. I'm talking about persona," Trump told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day."
That's how Trump defended the remarks he made about his fellow GOP presidential contender in a Rolling Stone profile published Wednesday.
"Look at that face!" Trump told the magazine while sitting with a Rolling Stone reporter as Fiorina appeared on TV. "Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president."
"I mean, she's a woman, and I'm not s'posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?" Trump said, according to the magazine.
Trump didn't only call in to CNN. He had a similar message on The View, the afternoon talk show geared toward women.
"Look, I'm talking about her persona," he said, deflecting to Fiorina's previous career as CEO of Hewlett Packard. "She failed miserably at Hewlett Packard and ran for the Senate and lost in a landslide and now running for president. I'm talking about her persona."
RELATED: Trump insults Fiorina in Rolling Stone
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton was quick to allude to it Thursday morning during a campaign event in Ohio.
"We hear from candidates on the other side about turning back the clock on women's rights and there is one particular candidate who just seems to delight in insulting women," Clinton said. "I'm just saying, if he emerges, I would love to debate him."
Trump leads in new poll, leads with Republican women
Trump continues to defy the laws of politics. Despite previous comments about women, he has surged to become the front-runner for the GOP nomination. He has support of 32% of Republicans in a CNN/ORC poll released Thursday. He has also led in recent polls of early primary and caucus states. And he is the leader among Republican women in the poll: Their growing support for him has helped him solidify his place at the top of the GOP pack.
While he gained just 4 points among men in the last month (from 27% in August to 31% now), he's up 13 points among women, rising from 20% in August to 33% now.
Trump noted those numbers during his call into The View.
"I did notice in all of the polls and recent polls I'm doing really well with women and really well overall," he said. "I cherish women. And will protect women. And take care of women. And I have great respect for women."
Fiorina declined the opportunity to punch back Wednesday night on Fox News with Megyn Kelly, perhaps preferring instead to let Trump roll around in his own controversy.
"Well, I think those comments speak for themselves," Fiorina said. "Honestly, Megyn, I'm not going to spend a single cycle wondering what Donald Trump means."
But then, sensing an opportunity, Fiorina added: "Maybe -- just maybe -- I'm getting under his skin a little bit, because I am climbing in the polls."
Trump denied that Fiorina was getting under his skin and pivoted to skewering Fiorina's business record on CNN Thursday.
RELATED: Forget what Trump says about Fiorina's face. Her HP record is the issue
"She goes down as one of the worst (CEOs) ever," Trump said, slamming Fiorina's "terrible past" in business, including when she was fired as Hewlett-Packard's CEO.
Fiorina laid off 30,000 employees during her time as HP's CEO and the company's stock value was nearly halved during her time as CEO during a controversial merger with Compaq that she led. The company's stock value rose after Fiorina was fired.
Fiorina has often said on the campaign trail that she lost her job in a "boardroom brawl" and has defended the mass firings.
The company did double its revenue during her time as CEO, largely because of the merger.
CNN Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report
Jindal takes on the Trump 'carnival act' in a way Bush hasn’t. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal blasts Donald Trump at the National Press Club in Washington. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
A senior Democratic political operative told me this week that he thought Jeb Bush’s strategy toward Donald Trump was all wrong.
Bush, like some others including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, has been attacking Trump from the right, hitting him over his past positions on taxes, health care and other issues important to the conservative base.
Bush’s approach should be simpler, more straightforward, the Democrat said. Why doesn’t he just call Trump crazy and ridiculous — attacking him in his own terms and with the same directness that Trump employs?
An hour later, I ran into a Republican operative who said he was equally confused by Bush’s strategy and agreed with the Democrat that Bush was taking the wrong approach.
Well, Bush wasn’t listening, but maybe somebody else was. On Thursday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took that playbook and ran with it, going straight at Trump in personal terms that put questions of maturity and judgment ahead of party or ideological orthodoxy.
“He’s a nonserious carnival act,” Jindal said in a speech at the National Press Club. “Here’s the truth about Trump that we all know, but have been afraid to say. Donald Trump is shallow. Has no understanding of policy. He’s full of bluster but has no substance. He lacks the intellectual curiosity to even learn.”
Jindal, who has been stuck at the back of a 17-candidate primary field, called Trump a “narcissist and an egomaniac” who is “insecure and weak.”
“And that’s why he is constantly telling us how big and how rich and how great he is, and how insignificant everyone else is. We’ve all met people like Trump, and we know that only a very weak and small person needs to constantly tell us how strong and powerful he is,” Jindal said.
Jindal’s most ad hominem attack on Trump came in an interview with CBS News, when he mocked Trump’s personal appearance in response to a question about Trump ridiculing former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who is also running for the Republican presidential nomination.
“Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?” Trump said recently to a Rolling Stone reporter while watching Fiorina on television.
Jindal pounced. “I think it’s pretty outrageous for him to be attacking anybody’s appearance when he looks like he’s got a squirrel sitting on his head. I think he should stop attacking other people’s appearances,” Jindal told CBS.
In his speech, Jindal did echo the criticisms of Trump as a false conservative — though that wasn’t his main thrust — and threw in an accusation of being a phony Christian.
“He hasn’t ever read the Bible. But you know why he hasn’t read the Bible? Because he’s not in it,” Jindal gibed.
But Jindal’s speech used substantive debating points in service of a larger argument: that Trump is (to use one of his own favorite putdowns) a joke, and that he will hand the election to Hillary Clinton if Republicans nominate him.
Jindal spokesman Henry Goodwin crystallized it well on Twitter.
“Others have attacked him for conservative heresy. We’re attacking him for being a clown,” Goodwin wrote.
There is some irony in the fact that Jindal is making this argument. He has “not exactly been a paragon of seriousness” himself, as the Democrat put it. The 44-year-old former Rhodes scholar’s appeals to the conservative grassroots have spawned countless “What happened to Bobby Jindal” pieces as well as rebukes from conservative writers such as Peter Wehner and Matt Lewis, who have taken him to task for playing “pitchfork populist” by, for example, pressing for Republicans to shut down the government over President Obama’s executive order on immigration.
But Jindal and his advisers were aghast at Trump’s continued success, said adviser Tim Teepell.
“We were increasingly frustrated that nobody else was saying it,” Teepell said.
Jindal is just the latest to step into the ring with Trump, making a bid to be the giant-killer following Perry, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and even recently retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. But he is the first to go after Trump in this way.
Jindal’s campaign followed up his speech with a witty video mashup of all the people and things Trump has said he loves, from children to Iowa to Hispanics to the Bible to Kanye West and walls. They mocked him by adding a clip from the Will Ferrell movie “Anchorman,” from the scene in which a dimwitted weatherman played by Steve Carell says, without any sense of why he is doing so, “I love lamp.”
The implication is that Trump is both dimwitted and that his words are meaningless.
Perhaps the next candidate to try this move could use a clip from the film “Idiocracy,” in which a greeter at Costco has been told to welcome customers by flattering their emotions to put them in the mood to spend money. “Welcome to Costco. I love you,” the young man says over and over, staring off into space — taking a statement of the most profound emotion and debasing it by using it to sell groceries.
The presidency ain’t groceries, but that would be a more direct critique of Trump’s overuse of the word “love.”
And, last, 14 years after 9/11, lower Manhattan is rising as WTC work nears its end. Fourteen Septembers after terrorists destroyed the nation’s greatest office complex and crippled its fourth-largest business district, the rebuilding of the World Trade Center and the revival of lower Manhattan continue – one office tenant, subway platform and sidewalk at a time.
“This is not the end,’’ Catherine McVay Hughes, chair of the community planning board, says of the recovery. “But it’s the beginning of the end.’’
Over the last 12 months, the troubled Trade Center building site has witnessed no major milestones, such as the dedication of the 9/11 Memorial (2011) or Museum (2013).
Family members gather during the observance of the
Instead, there’s been unspectacular, incremental, sometimes almost imperceptible progress. On the day the One World Trade Center office tower finally opened for business, for example, there was no ceremony – not even a speech by a politician claiming credit.
As construction fences and barriers come down, and sidewalks, streets, underground passages and bike lanes open up, the Trade Center “is finally being knit back into the fabric of lower Manhattan,’’ says Hughes, who’s lived in the district for 27 years and raised two sons there.
From the first hours after the 9/11 attacks, Americans and New Yorkers were determined to rebuild quickly at Ground Zero. But the task was impossibly complicated; the rail lines, utilities and foundations were an intricate 3-D puzzle; and a host of competing interests – including relatives of 9/11 victims – fought over the outcome, often to a standstill.
But since the last anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the first office workers have moved into One WTC, which at a symbolic 1,776 feet is the Western Hemisphere’s tallest building and the world’s third tallest. The tower’s top-floors observatory and restaurants also opened to the public.
And two key components of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire – News Corp. (which owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal) and 21st Century Fox – announced plans to move from a Midtown skyscraper to anchor the fourth office tower that will rise at the Trade Center site.
Progress under the radar
But most advances have been less striking. They range from the installation of 1,000 pieces of bomb-resistant glass in the retractable skylight of the soaring “Oculus’’ pavilion in the bird-like Transit Hub, to planting trees in Liberty Park at the south end of the site.
Moreover, as construction begins to wind down, people can go places that were inaccessible (like the intersection of Greenwich and Fulton streets, obliterated in the 1960s by the original Trade Center super block) and see the previously invisible (the vista from the WTC PATH subway station mezzanine of the gleaming white marble train platforms).
Pedestrians also can enjoy the first partial public views inside the main hall of the Transit Hub, a space that rivals Grand Central Terminal’s in grandeur and exceeds it in size.
Some of the city’s worst pedestrian choke points – products of a confluence of construction and office workers, tourists and subway commuters – finally are easing. (The crush at Vesey and Church streets was nicknamed “Vesey Squeezy.’’)
For example, the opening of the sidewalk on the north side of Liberty Street, between Church and Greenwich streets, has cleared a pedestrian bottleneck produced by the opening of the memorial, museum and an office tower.
The fear of terrorism that once suffused the area has been assuaged by intense security and obscured by growing congestion.
On Sept. 11, 2001, about 20,000 people lived in lower Manhattan; in the months that followed, about 10,000 left. Today, the area’s population is 70,000 and rising. On Wednesday, in a sign of the times, Peck Slip public elementary school opened to accommodate the growing number of children.
People walk through lower Manhattan past the New York:
Some fears linger. As recently as November, Chris Rock said in his Saturday Night Live monologue that One WTC, originally known as the Freedom Tower, should be called the “’Never Going in There Tower,' because I'm never going in there.’’
But now people wait in line to visit the tower’s observation deck, despite the $32 tab. “They say this is the safest building in New York City,’’ says Shelly Murphy, visiting with her children from Birmingham, Ala. And she believes it.
People look out from the newly built observation deck
People look out from the newly built observation deck at One World Trade Center on May 22, 2015. (Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images)
That sense of security is costly, in dollars and inconvenience.
The entire site is under intense surveillance by local and federal anti-terrorism squads. Every delivery vehicle and bus entering the network of underground service roads will pass through the $700 million Vehicle Security Center, which has yet to open. Greenwich Street, the newly opened north-south route through the site, will be limited to pedestrians because of a fear of car bombs.
How to fill 10M square feet of office space
The Trade Center’s viability as an office location is still a matter of debate. Many of the tenants in the Twin Towers left downtown after 9/11, and few major tenants have been signed in recent months.
Five huge office towers were designed to replace the Twin Towers’ combined 10 million square feet of space. (For comparison, the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet high and has 2.8 million square feet of rentable space):
4 WTC (977’ high, 2.5 million sq. ft.) opened in 2013 and is 62% leased. The largest tenant is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Trade Center site. This summer the building announced deals with several new tenants, including ones in communications, accounting and medical research.
1 WTC (1776’, 3 mill. sq. ft.) received its first office workers in November and opened its observation deck in May. The office space is 63% leased. Conde Nast publications occupies 25 floors (1 million square feet). Moody’s reportedly is negotiating a lease for about 80,000 square feet.
3 WTC (1079’, 2.5 mill sq. ft.), now under construction, should be finished in about three years. The largest committed tenant is GroupM, which has taken about 500,000 square feet.
2 WTC (1270’, 2.8 mill sq. ft.) is being redesigned by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels to accommodate the Murdoch companies, which have signed a letter of intent to rent the lower half of the 100-story building. Anticipated opening: 2020.
Business is better in the surrounding area. Directly west of the Trade Center, overlooking the Hudson River, space in the Brookfield Place office and retail complex (previously called the World Financial Center) is virtually all rented. The Associated Press, now headquartered west of Midtown, has announced plans to move there in 2017.
Two huge developments west of Midtown – Hudson Yards and Manhattan West – have signed several big tenants. A single law firm – Skadden Arps – is taking more than 500,000 square feet at Manhattan West.
Safest building, but most expensive
One of the Trade Center’s problems is cost. The average office rent in Lower Manhattan runs about $55 a square foot, substantially lower than Midtown. But rents in One WTC range from $70 to $100, depending on the floor. In part, that reflects the cost of construction. It may be the safest building in New York, but at $4 billion it is also the most expensive.
The Twin Towers, which were almost fully occupied by 2001, catered mostly to finance, insurance and real estate firms (FIRE). One WTC has had to rely mostly on firms in technology, advertising, media and information (hence the new acronym, TAMI).
But high vacancy in the nation’s tallest towers isn’t unusual. The Twin Towers and the Empire State Building took years to fill up; the latter, completed in 1931, was long known as “the Empty State Building.’’
No, it’s the Transit Hub, designed by Spanish “starcitect” Santiago Calatrava, that’s the site’s signature boondoggle.
When proposed in 2004, the project was supposed to cost less than $2 billion and open by 2009; it has now cost twice that much and taken twice that long. It still has not opened, and there is no firm date this year for when it will.
But Hughes, the planning board chair, says she’s confident Lower Manhattan – the original skyscraper city, which began to decline the day Grand Central opened in Midtown in 1913 – will continue to rise. And the time when the World Trade Center site seemed like the most cursed 16 acres in America finally will be forgotten.
Regardless of it all, please stay in touch.
