mark: this is "bottom line," the intersection of business and economics with the main street perspective. to our viewers here in the united states and those of you joining us from around the world, welcome. hillary clinton will finally talk about the e-mail controversy that has rocked her potential presidential campaign. she is expected to take questions from the news media in about 15 minutes -- 15 minutes at the united nations here in new york. it was discovered she used a

private e-mail account to conduct business as secretary of state. in two thousand eight, barack obama campaigned on the theme of hope and change. now a new poll shows that americans want more change than they saw back then. 59% of those surveyed said they prefer a candidate who wants greater -- you can bring greater change. 51% say that hillary clinton represents a return to the past. while 60% say the same thing about jeb bush. the dollar has strengthened to a near 12-you're a high against the euro -- 12-year high against

the euro. the dow jones industrial average at this hour is also lagging. the dow is down 1.4%. the nasdaq composite index is in the red as well. it is down 1.25%. investors like the shakeup at credit suisse. shares rose after the company said that the ceo, bradley dugan, will leave at the end of june. dugan, un-american, has led credit suisse since 2011. -- dougan an american, has led credit suisse since 2011. >> we have a lot of good people a really great staff. mark: dougan was one of the

few ceos at a global bank that survived. that is a look at the top stories we are following. hillary rodham clinton is opening up about her e-mail practices as secretary of state. the potential 2016 presidential candidate is holding a brief press conference following ace each at the united -- a speech at the united nations here in new york. peter, this has been one of those issues that has been dogging mrs. clinton for nearly two weeks now. republicans have been vehemently supporting calls for an investigation. are there any democrats joining their cause at this time? peter: there are democrats here on capitol hill in the u.s.

senate that have been urging hillary clinton to come clean to explain in more detail why it was she handled e-mails in this way, what the explanation might be, and if she is willing to hand over not just the 50,000 e-mails to the state department and all of the e-mails that she engaged in question was secretary of state. senator dianne feinstein is a strong supporter of hillary clinton and one of those who is calling for that. republicans here would like some clarity at a minimum from hillary clinton. obviously, it is republicans who have dramatically called for hillary clinton to come clean, specifically the house select committee on benghazi. mark: as we watch mrs. clinton speaking at the u.n. event about you -- about women's empowerment, i want to bring in

mark from "with all due respect your quote -- "with all due respect." mark h: we will see how many questions she takes. they do feel pressure within her camp to deal with it. mark c: peter, mark just talked about the pressure within her camp.

if you watched some of the sunday talk shows, some democrats have been asking mrs. clinton to speak out because they feel they have been forced into the position to have to defend her actions. what are they saying now? peter: i mentioned senator dianne feinstein, someone who has been aligned with hillary clinton. i have spoken with other democrats you don't think this will be a huge issue. at least that is what they say privately. but they realize it will become a bigger issue until she confronted directly. so there is pressure coming from democrats for heller jury -- for hillary, if you will to come clean. yes, she is facing pressure from democrats as well. mainly, it is republicans who are grueling over this controversy. mark c: is one of the questions people are asking now is why did it take over a week, nearly two weeks for mrs. clinton to step up and address this issue and give her critics more time, more

fodder, if you will, to find holes in her attentional campaign? mark h: with the clintons' past, there is always prologue. in a case like this, there is potential legal exposure for her. she's got lawyers hired. she doesn't want to make any mistakes in what she says. there has been a lot of controversies between bill and hillary. they thought the storm would blow over. not just the political seriousness of this, but the substantive seriousness of this. i think it forced her to react. mark c: i was watching some of the sunday shows and going back on some of the events of the past week concerning this. one of those democrats who is a

clinton ally but did urge her to speak was senator dianne feinstein. i believe it was back in 2008 when barack obama had won the presidency that senator feinstein had invited president-elect obama and senator clinton to pass out their differences. peter: i can tell you that today, eric schultz faced a question today from reporters. are you getting sick about having to answer questions about hillary clinton's e-mails?

his answer was that they do not want to have to -- his answer was that this is not a focus of the administration right now. this is not a headache that they wanted and they would be very happy for hillary clinton to address this and for the country to be able to move on as well. i think everybody knows this will be more complicated than that, depending on what we hear from hillary clinton. but this is not something that the obama administration wants to deal with and they have kept an arms length distance throughout the entire episode. this is not a pleasant situation for the obama administration, one that they would like to do without. mark: we will have more on the hillary clinton news conference concerning her personal/professional e-mails when "bottom line" continues in

just a moment. ♪

mark: have republican senators gone too far? they sent a letter to iran's leaders warning that congress will have to sign off on any nuclear deal brokered by president obama. the president and vice president widen all -- both responded angrily to the letter. peter cook is standing by with more on this developing story. if the partisan divide weren't big enough, now it is even larger than it was a week ago. peter: that's right. very frayed relations here right now between republicans in congress and the administration and democrats as well over the issue of these iran nuclear talks, specifically this letter signed by 47 republican senators sent to the iranian leadership basically warning that any

agreement the president signs may not hold up over time if congress doesn't sign off on this deal in the first place. this sparked an angry reaction from the president, from the vice president but not every republican signed this letter. today i caught up with bob vogel. he was asked why he did not sign the letter. here is his expedition. >> i didn't view the letter as helping achieve an outcome that i would like to see, which is us having that opportunity to weigh in on an arrangement that is so important to our nation's future and to the stability of the middle east. peter: he said he understands the frustrations that some of his republican colleagues on capitol hill but i can tell you the democrats and the white

house are still very upset with this letter, saying it undermines american foreign policy, undermines the negotiators at the negotiating table at the iranians. today, the white house called it misguided and reckless. i think we will hear more in the coming days. mark: tell us more about senator cotten the senator from arkansas. he was the architect. what was his rationale? peter: this is someone who, in the campaign, was very critical of these negotiations from the start. he is an iraq veteran. it is not a surprise that he is calling these negotiations into question. but as a freshman senator to lead this effort is raising eyebrows as well. this is a place where there are a lot of folks who treat this like an institution. joe biden for one spent 36 years here.

some questions being raised about tom cotton as the architect of this but certainly his views on these issues are certainly well known. as a combat veteran, he has unique standing as well. mark: finally, the reaction from the iranians, their foreign minister he basically called this a propaganda ploy. peter: he did. he sent his own statement in response to the letter, calling it a propaganda ploy, and in some respects questioning whether or not the senators knew their own civic lessons about the constitution and the senate's role in terms of foreign policy agreements like this. so some back-and-forth between the iranians and members of congress over this. but the indication is the iranians say this isn't going to play a role in the negotiations going forward. even today, one of the top religious clerics in iran offered support for negotiations to move forward.

obviously, this letter is having an impact whether they will acknowledge it or not. mark: peter cook doing double duty today on the hill on the top stories we are watching. thank you. stay with bloomberg television. we are awaiting remarks from former secretary of state hillary rodham clinton. she is speaking at the united nations at this hour about women's empowerment principles. following that address, she is expected to take questions from reporters about the e-mail controversy that has dr. for nearly two weeks. -- that has dogged her for nearly two weeks. stay with us. ♪

mark: the apple watch will debut in china next month. we do want to remind you you are looking at a live shot of the press briefing room at the united nations here in new york.

former secretary of state hillary rodham clinton wools be to reporters in a few minutes about the e-mail controversy. it was learned mrs. clinton was using a private e-mail account to conduct official business while she was secretary of state. democrats and republicans on capitol hill have been asking for next nation. and that explanation should be forthcoming in just a few moments. we will have live coverage with mark halperin and john heilemann. the apple watch will debut in china next month. the company is trying to move on the sales momentum they saw there on the iphone 6. john, how did apple reach the top of the chinese market? john: they have done a very good job there, mark.

one of the things that help to them was the launch of the iphone 6 and the iphone 6 plus. that did quite well. prior to that, they gained a distribution agreement to be sold on china mobile's network. they are not only the largest telecom wireless provider in china, but also globally they are number one. so that -- those two events really helped apple a great deal in the region. mark: last quarter, apple sales in china, they rose to 70%. talk to us about consumer preferences. how do they help apple taelor products specifically to the chinese market? john: one thing that apple does well is they are a true global rant mark. brands mean a lot to everyone. i don't care who you are. and the chinese in particular love the apple brand. i think apple as a company has done a great job leveraging that

. they've got a growing base of retail stores in china and it is only going to get larger from here. i think the distribution with carriers in the region, together with a growing retail presence has helped and will continue to help them in china. mark: china's anti-graft campaign, they have been very tough in that regard. that is the corruption on -- the crackdown on corruption and waste. does that a fact the apple watch, specifically the one available in gold? john: the app is not for sale yet. it is very tough to quantify but i think as graph goes, one thing we were hearing from our contacts in the region is that iphones were high on the list when it came to giving gifts. so there is potential for iphone to continue to get hurt by that a bit and surly for the high-end

watches. mark: who is the chinese consumer? are they able to purchase these watches? some of them are pretty high-priced. john: i think there is a range, mark. it's like the u.s.. view have consumers in the region who will probably go for the higher-end watch. and then you have a small middle-class. at the lower end, again, you have those people that want the brand so they are willing to step up and spend that little extra on the apple iphone or, in this case, the watch. so we have to wait and see what happens. i have high hopes for china. mark: is this a necessity for the chinese or is it something that they just want as a status civil? john: -- status symbol? john: the watch is definitely a want and not a need.

the wireless phone, even the smartphone is almost a need for a lot of people. and it's unsubsidized here in the states and it will be in china as well. you are really stepping up and paying full fare for the device. again, it really is about want. it's about getting those apps on your wrist and the convenience of getting notifications, e-mail , caller id and calls received right on your wrist. it really is a convenience factor. mark: tim cook says china could eventually be the company's biggest market. what will it take for that projection to become a reality? john: i think it's going to take time mark. certainly, new products like the apple watch will help. one thing that apple needs to do , and they have not done it yet,

but if they really want success in emerging markets, they will have to move down market a bit. if you look at how the smart phone market is segmented, the high-end is slowing. that premium phone segment where apple has always traditionally played. and the lower end phones, where a lot of these smaller, nimble chinese vendors are playing is really growing quite rapidly. i think apple needs to move down market a bit if they want to see a grand success in china. mark: apple's entry into this market, into the smart watch market, what will this mean for the rest of the field? john: the expectation was that apple would come in and really jumpstart the market. to date, we have seen sam song, lg, wah way, a lot of others out there with smart watches, but the market has yet to emerge in earnest. the hope was that apple would do

for the smart watch market what they did for the smart phone market with the launch of the iphone back in 2007. mark: john butler is senior telecom services and equipment analyst for bloomberg. thank you so much for your time. hillary rodham clinton is moments away from a news conference to take questions about her e-mail practices as secretary of state. let's go to my colleague john heilemann and cohost of "with all due respect" for live coverage. john: welcome to our coverage. it is hillary time. a few minutes away from doing a press conference. she has been under a great deal of pressure to meet the press to answer questions about the revelation that she had conducted all e-mail communications on a private account from a private server in her home in chappaqua.

she is in -- she is at the u.n. where she is giving the speech. mark, i hope you can hear me. i know you are allowed there. please give us a sense of what the scene is like there and what you think the significance of this event is. mark: there are rules here that says that a correspondent is not supposed to report live from the security chamber. hillary clinton will finally address something that seems it has been with us forever but it it's -- but it was revealed only a week ago on the "new york times." we have had long time clinton defenders saying this scandal does not amount to anything when obviously for the clintons it does. clinton has not faced reporters

in a city like this for months and months. she does at august the because she feels an urgency in addressing it. john: i think you are exactly right. it's not as though there has not been controversy over the course of the past months and weeks. issues related to the clinton foundation donors. on this one -- i want to bring in al hunt from our bureau in washington d.c. in your mind give us a sense of how important this is. it is very early in this potential presidential campaign. but what is the significance as far as you can see? what does hillary clinton have to do today to silence her critics? al: they have made it more important than it should be. on a scale from one to 10, it is between a two and a three. but how they have handled it has been revealing.

it shows how rusty and out of practice they are. i don't think most americans will worry a whole lot about what server you get your e-mails from. she clearly broke regulations. those documentsdepartment, many will not be given over to the public but they have not handled it well. in that sense, which he does today is revealing. i also do not think that this will be sufficient. if we are to hear everything that we believe, i don't think she would just get away with a hurry up this conference. john: you have cover the claims for a long time. one of the things that is damaging about this controversy is the notion that it plays upon an existing narrated with her husband, that they are secretive, nontransparent and somewhat paranoid. i agree that average voters, it will not matter much to them but certainly a long son, you have to agree, this creates a problem in terms of what kind of

candidate she will be in raise suspicions about whether she has changed to a substantial degree. al: i agree the perception and reality is there but i'm not sure the clintons are a great deal more secretive than others. george w. bush was certainly secretive on a lot of policies. but the times have changed some and i think the bigger problem that hillary clinton has is issued past or the future? when i see people -- i spoke to a big democrat last night. he says when he sees people like lanny davis out there he says do we want to go back to those days? if they do not learn of this has to be handled better and differently than in the past, it may spell trouble. john: i know it is hard for you to hear me at the u.n., mark, but what are the three most important questions and requests

-- hillary clinton must address if she is to have any success at putting this controversy behind her? >> -- he think that administration policy, which is clear, that government work should be done on a government computer. second, what legal experts did she consult before she decided to do her government business on private e-mail. did she understand that by not having her e-mails in the government system in a timely fashion subpoenaed and a freedom of information act requests were not sufficiently reply to because her material would have been there in full. and finally the question that a lot of people are asking, will she turned over to an independent authority her hard drive to a next her to ensure that all government e-mails on her private server are handed over to the government as part of the state department request and her obligation as a senior official, leaving a complete work.

john: the last question is one that will be asked at his press conference, one that she will have to address. if you some of the rest of them the big question that people want to know the answer to is why. why did you do this in the first place, what was her rationale for going through the trouble to setting up an entirely parallel e-mail system in her home in chappaqua, new york rather than relying on state department services. al i want to go back to you, to your mind -- we talked about the politics of this. you do not believe this is not a significant thing. in terms of the spirit of the law, if not the letter of the law, a lot of argument about the changes in the regulation. in the spirit of the law, she seems to have done something here to circumvent that. i'm a good government

standpoint, is not -- is that not something that we should be concerned about here al: i don't think it violated law but it did violate policy. many politicians are not transparent but we should hold their feet to the fire. the question we should raise is the final one. will she turn over all of those hard drives to an independent archiver? remember, a lot of this will not be public anyway, at least not for years. it is not like the public is going to get a trove of information tomorrow. the other thing that hillary clinton will have going for her here -- and i do think that this is wrong -- once again, the republicans and the benghazi committee will overplay their hand and they will create this huge scandal create sympathy for her, and before it is all over trey gowdy could be her biggest ally here. john: people will be analyzing

the speech in terms of substance. there are also stylistic questions. whether we like it or not, this is the first time hillary clinton has addressed what i would call a hostile press corps. she has not always been perfectly adroit at doing that so there will be some theater coming into play on all of our parts. we want to see what she looks like and how she handles it. what does she need to demonstrate stylistically to show that she is in fighting shape for this campaign she is about to embark on? al: she has to have a command of the questions raised and that the same time not appear to be angry or confrontational. it does not help with the press. they don't care about them, but it does not help her. again, i'm a little bothered that this is a quickie at the united nations. i feel they may need to be a fuller accounting later but we will see. john: mark, if you can hear me,

i want to ask you a question that you alluded to earlier in the day. the extent to which the decision by secretary clinton and her people to do this event was -- that their hand was somewhat forced. you mentioned president obama statement over the weekend where she said nice things but did not fully defend her on this. the white house has been defending her but halfheartedly. obama allies outside of the administration have been very critical. how much do you think the obama administration's action to this controversy over the last week has forced hillary clinton's hand and made her do this thing today, which she normally would not want to do? mark: [inaudible] the state department have been more supportive of the president's remarks

[indiscernible] suggested as valerie jarrett did that this is not in keeping with administration policy. the second thing is dianne feinstein's remarks over the weekend, urging her to come back. not many democrats have spoken publicly but dianne feinstein was a canary in the coal mine. they are hearing privately that a lot of democrats [indiscernible] there are substantive questions here. you can say that this is not a big deal, and i take all the points about how hillary clinton may not have done something so different. i think we are expecting her to walk in pretty soon. john: let me follow on the obama administration question. there had been quotes in the media suggesting that their posture is that whatever -- if there is a problem here, if it

ends up being scandalous, as opposed to being controversial, they want to leave it very much in hillary clinton's lap. clearly, they having knowledge that president obama e-mailed with hillary clinton, he knew she had a private e-mail account, but they suggest that what she did not know is that she was doing all of her e-mail on that account. are they in a sense cutting her loose? mark: i think they want her to explain it, rather than the president explaining it. [indiscernible] he did not know. i suspect he did not know that she had not turn over all of her e-mails. john: to what extent do you think there is still, even though there was rapprochement between the obama and clinton camps that took place at the end

of the 2008 campaign, she was in his close council on foreign policy and national security but as we both know, there was some lingering bitterness that never quite went away. to what extent do you think that bitterness is now bubbling up again in the context of this controversy? mark: i would say it is less bitterness and more so that there was always the feeling that the clinton sometimes played by different rules and handle things in ways that do not always work to their best advantage they are too reluctant to engage and admit errors. that is something that the obama camp never understood. john: to what extent do you think hillary clinton has been hurt by the extent to which her campaign operation is still an embryonic thing, does not have a full scale presidential operation up, has not had a

strong voice in the press. she does not have anything. her decision to put up -- off putting together a formal campaign operation, those are facts. how much has that hurt her so far and how well prepared do you think she is for what is about to happen? mark: it is overstated. she has plenty of people around her. although she has been preparing for this conference, she has the ability to focus on things. that part is overstated. i would not say this is the biggest press conference she has had. she had won during the whitewater controversies as the first lady, but this would be in the top 10 as far as important press conferences she has held. it has been so long since she addressed the media. john: we started our coverage, i

asked you describe the scene. give us another recap, a sense at the moment of what you are seeing, what the atmosphere is around as you await secretary clinton's arrival. mark: there is a lot of shhing going around. [inaudible] john: i want to switch back to al hunt as we wait for hillary clinton. give me your sense, whether in retrospect, the decision that hillary clinton made, natural human decision, but perhaps ill-advised political decision to delay the start of her formal campaign. she has not yet started it and many people wanted her to start last year or early this year. how much has that hurt her with respect to this controversy and more generally as we gear up to

2016? al: it has clearly hurt her in regard to this controversy maybe overall. she should be out there now. the one thing that potentially could bring down her advantage it is, does this and power some of the newer people? her campaign manager is not new but he is not part of the inner circle of hillary people. mark is right, the bitterness between the obama and clinton people may be exaggerated, but if you talk to the obama people they think that inner circle of people around her often give her. advice. they may exaggerate that, but they believe it. already i'm hearing clinton people say that this empowers more of those kinds of people in the world, maybe they can handle the next one better. john: just doing a little history for those that forgot

the 2008 campaign. everyone remembers she was the inevitable democratic nominee in the views of many. but in fact what you know and what we reported on at the time was that much of the democratic establishment was nervous about her as the nominee in 2008, and that nervousness was what open the door to barack obama as an alternative. suddenly, people that she thought she could rely on, long-term friends, turned against her and seized on obama. do you sense, down there in washington, that any of that nervousness or agitation is creeping in again among democratic establishment? maybe not enough to look for alternatives now but the same sort of knot in the stomach, is this controversy bring that back to any extent now? al: there is a bit of that but

there is no alternative right now. i think what worries some people is can hillary clinton present herself as the future? that is what nonincumbent elections are about, change in the future. that nbc poll that came out a few days ago showed 51% of americans think she is about the past. that is what makes democrats nervous. the only good news they got was that more people think that jeb bush is about the past. if they think this is just about the past, i don't care how good the clinton economic record was in the 1990's, i don't think that is a good credential right now. john: an extraordinary poll that came out this morning that show that more people are craving a candidate of change in 2016 and we were in 2008, which was supposed to be the archetypal change election. i want to go to peter cook on capitol hill.

you are hearing about some of the e-mails related to benghazi news coming out of the state department. i think what we have learned is that the state department is about to turn over, before they finish their review, they will turn over the benghazi e-mails. peter: about 300 e-mails that were turned over to the benghazi select committee were turned over some time ago, that those would be made public on the state department website. still trying to figure out the timing. that is 300 of the 55,000 pages of e-mails that ultimately were handed over by hillary clinton and her team in december. it is just a small sampling of what is out there and certainly not the full amount the select committee has been asking for. of course the subpoena asking for personal e-mails and they

are also questioning the cost of this endeavor, whether it could be millions and millions to review these e-mails as there are being handed over in paper format as opposed to electronically where it would have been easier to search and review those e-mails had they been delivered in that form. john: another striking thing about this briefing at the state department peter mentioned jen psaki. she said the media should ask the questions to hillary clinton and not the state department. i am not reading a transcript but a summary of that. al, that strikes me as a pretty unusual posture and maybe not the most helpful posture. the state department has been more helpful recently than the white house in the wake of this controversy but that does not seem like the most helpful thing in the world for jen psaki to be saying. al: if you are jen psaki right

now, you're not sure what the answer to that is. these are questions that secretary was -- clinton will have to answer. i firmly believe -- i said earlier i was between a 2 and 3 on a scale of one to 10 on controversy. i think what you did was wrong and need to turn everything over to the state department or national archives. what is in there is the only thing that would elevate that from a two or three to hire. -- higher. i doubt there is, but we will find out. john: i want to go back to mark halperin, who i think we have back on the phone where he is in the u.n. waiting for hillary clinton to arrive to address these questions about the e-mail controversy that has now consumed a week of political news. i'm curious -- i asked you

before when you thought the most important questions are. what do you think hillary clinton needs to do to silence or appease her critics or do you believe it is possible for her to do anything to silence and appease her most vociferous critics on the right? mark: the spokesperson said this would be a brief conference, and if that is the case, she will not be able to address all the questions that people want to ask. she needs to probably supplement what she does today with more information from her aides. it is important she addresses the bigger question. i think there will be more micro questions but she would be smart to have someone address that on her behalf. the reason she is addressing it people want to hear from her. i agree with al that this is

not some national controversy at this point, but certainly for a lot of people to pay attention to things like the freedom of information act request federal subpoenas, separation of powers people want to hear from her directly. john: you have cover the clintons about as long as anybody in national media. you made reference to this historical precedents of moments where hillary clinton and her husband have met the press. some of those have been quite memorable. i'm curious if you could put this moment into that kind of historical perspective for people that have not followed every twist and turn of the clinton saga in public life as closely as you have. john:mark: certainly, the stakes were high when she was first lady, but this is her first big moment in front of cameras in an adversarial time since she was secretary of state.

i believe she is headed down the hallway. there is a fair amount of activity, so we could be seeing her shortly. this is a moment of pressure. her hand has been forced on this. she would not choose to have this first introduction in an event that she is not controlling. she would not be choosing to do this unless the stakes were high and the pressure was relatively high. as al said before, the tone, how light, unbothered by she seems -- by the controversy she seemed will be important. this is not an area of strength for her. john: the clintons have been the dominant american political family for the past few decades. one of his strength was problem -- improvisation and figure out how to handle political challenges on the fly.

hillary clinton has also strength and weaknesses. one of her strengths is not handling crises on-the-fly. she much prefers to be in more controlled settings, to have more control over her message. she is not somebody who likes to be in situations where things are out of control as they feel right now. not to make a mountain out of a mole hill over the long-term impact of this, but the way that this press conference has been thrown together in the past 24 hours, the setting you are looking at now not any setting that any political campaign would've chosen, in the hallway with all the difficulties happening today with accreditation, a lot of reporters having a hard time getting in. there is a seat-of-the-pants quality to this that no presidential campaign would want to use after introductory moment on stage. certainly, one that hillary clinton did not imagine doing

her first big encounter with the national media as a presidential candidate. to reiterate, she is not officially a candidate, but is all but one. any update on how soon we think we will see her at the podium? mark: no idea. there has been some time that she could be entering from a different way. [inaudible] just to pick up on what you said, perhaps she has gone to a side room to do some final preparations. much is made by reporters often too much, about something thrown together, but it does suggest that they felt under pressure and that they wanted to have this event quickly under the controlled setting of the u.n. imagine if they had tried to stay just event at a hotel ballroom. there would have been much more chaos. they want to take advantage of the accreditation and security

at the united nations. we are behind a large area that is keeping us away from her. it would be difficult to do it on their own. in that sense, it was a smart move but juxtaposing a policy of event with a speech that will not get as much attention so important to secretary clinton, an issue she has worked on for some time. she has been talking about the clinton global initiative here in new york for the last couple of days. all of this getting less attention than a controversy that is not the biggest deal in the world, but certainly one of her own making and one that she will need to talk her way out of. john: you have said several times that this was going to be a brief rest conference. any sense of what the word brief means? clearly, she will not do what chris christie did and took all questions until reporters were ready to pass out, but are we looking at half a dozen questions, 10, what? mark: no idea.

there are a lot of reporters here who are ages to ask questions. the fact that they described it as brief -- my guess -- just from covering the clintons, i think she will read a prepared statement and try to get away with a handful of restaurants. you think about situations like geraldine ferraro controversies over her family finances when she was vice president shall candidate in 1984 and she had a press conference where she took every question. you have seen other people do that. to some extent, she did that earlier in a press conference. i would be surprised if she took more than a handful in this setting. john: let me go back to al hunt. as we await for hillary clinton to appear to took questions

about his e-mail controversy, which we have been hearing about for the last seven days al there was another interesting story yesterday in "the new york times" were they talked about the possibility of donations to the clinton family foundation from some countries in the middle east that are not particularly friendly to women and girls, but those donations would in some way undermine hillary clinton's main achievement at the secretary of state, that she was a champion for women and girls. what do you think about the possibility that it will undermine her in that way, and whether that is a potentially more significant problem which is to say we still have a lot of stories to cover about the donations to the foundation. there is still we do not know

about that. talk about those interconnected issues. >> welcome back to i do not al: -- i do not place much credence in that at all. i think the overall story of contributions to the clinton foundation, including countries that hillary clinton was dealing with when she was secretary of state i think could be a very big deal. there is still a lot out there that we are not sure of. the clinton defense is foundations, churches, all of them take money from that governments. they do, but she is running for president. that is a potential -- that could be potentially more troubling than this. i agree with the notion --john: john: i agree with you about the idea of the donations, but the

question that people ask often is what did hillary clinton accomplished as secretary of state? when she talks about her time she cannot point to a peace treaty, cannot point to a large tangible diplomatic coalition, the kind of thing that a secretary of state like to hang their hat on, so she ends up 20 two -- pointing to the advocacy she had done for women and girls. i wonder if this undermines her claim about her or compliments at the state department and whether it makes her seem hypocritical on an issue that should be one of her great calling cards. >> welcome back to al: i think you are right, but i think benghazi is a phony scandal. nothing will produce out of that. but she was the prime advocate for the libyan policy which was

a disaster. the benghazi investigations -- republicans are actually doing her a favor because it distracts from one of her great foreign-policy failures. john: there was a story in the washington post about that, the notion that broadly speaking, hillary clinton's time as secretary of state, previously seen at one of her greatest assets, -- i will stop by questioning right now because hillary clinton is now approaching the podium. there she is striding in after a bit of a delay. let's hear what she has to say. >> good afternoon. i want to thank the united nations for hosting today's event and putting the challenge of gender equality front and center on the international agenda.

i'm especially pleased that so many leaders are here from the private sector sanding shoulder to shoulder with advocates who have worked tirelessly for equality for decades. 20 years ago, this was a lonelier struggle. today we mark the progress that has been made in the two decades since the international community gathered in beijing and declared with one voice that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights. and because of advances in health education, legal protection, we can say that there has never been a better time in history to be born female. yet, as the comprehensive new report published by the clinton foundation and the gates foundation this week makes clear, despite all this progress , when it comes to the full participation of women and girls, we are just not there yet. as i said today, this remains the great unfinished business of the 21st century. and my passion for this fight

burns as brightly today as it did 20 years ago. i want to comment on a matter in the news today regarding iran. the president and his team are in the midst of intense negotiations. their goal is a diplomatic solution that would close off the wrong's pathways to a nuclear bomb and give us unprecedented access and insight into iran's nuclear program. reasonable people can disagree about what exactly it will take to accomplish this objective and we all must judge any final agreement on its merit. but the recent letter from republican senators was out of step with the best traditions of american leadership and one has to ask, what was the purp