john: i'm john heilemann. mark: i'm mark halperin. and with all due respect to hillary clinton, you need one phones work, one phone for personal stuff, and one for candy. ♪ a lot of candy. on the show tonight, there were 10 million reporters committee putting the turks at hillary's hallway press conference today. if you missed it, here's one of the most important to she gave on why she used personal e-mail exclusively while she was secretary of state. hillary clinton: i wanted to use just one device for both personal and work e-mails

instead of two. it was allowed, and as i said, it was for convenience. and it was my practice to communicate with state department and other government officials on their government accounts. those e-mails would be automatically saved in the state department system to meet recordkeeping requirements. and that, indeed, is what happened. looking back, it would have been better for me to use two separate phones and two e-mail accounts. i thought using one device would be simpler, and obviously, it hasn't worked out that way. >> so -- mark: and she made a statement, took some questions and then a little while ago, her office put out a statement. which questions did hillary put to rest today? none. john: not fully. i have questions. if i had her sitting here, have questions about -- we will get

to the topic about the questions that remain. there is not a single thing that i do not have follow-up questions on. put to rest? none. mark: not for the haters or the doubters. john glenn i'm not hater. -- john: i'm not a hater. mark: you are a doubter. it is plausible. she wanted one in mail account because she knew she would be doing a lot of business iphone and by secure e-mail. -- by phone and by secure e-mail. i'm not saying that it necessarily going to be believed by everybody, but it is a closet what's the nation. john: it is not wholly implausible. -- it is a plausible explanation. john: it is not wholly implausible. mark: if she could get away with under the rules having one e-mail address, which she has archived officially and

studiously, which she suggested in the documents today that she did, then i don't think that is implausible. john: most professionals who have multiple e-mail accounts on one device, they hear that and it does not immediately pass the test. and i guess the other question is, why not to devices? more: she had to devices -- mark: she had to devices, but shoes one of them for voice. john: there were some questions that she completely ignored, like whether she cleared her personal e-mail server with the state department. let's listen to that. clinton: the system we used was set up for president clinton's office. it had numerous safeguards. it was on property regarded -- and guarded by the grid service and there were no security breaches. john:, you just talked about the questions you feel she satisfied. what were those that you feel she did not satisfy?

market: there were plenty. did she consult the state department? even the documents they put out said they cannot say who they consulted with because it is a matter of security. number two, this question of the freedom of information act and subpoenas. there is some indication that if she e-mails someone outside the government, she made an effort to archive that. but it is not comprehensive. that is one of the most serious things about it. and the last big thing that she did not address was, what was her plan for turning these things over before the state department asked? john: and she assumed the server was secure because it was the same one her husband use. she asserts there was never a security breach. i don't know that is true, or that she would even know whether it was true. and always the most important question in my mind is, what is it that gave her the sense of justification that she would be

the ultimate arbiter over what was work related and what was not? mark: on the merits, that is up to every individual employee when they leave the government. again, she should have done it in a timely fashion, but you go through your records and you decide what is government property. john: but if you are hillary clinton and you know you have a reputation for secrecy -- mark: she herself admitted that she should have done at the other way for just that reason. and another thing she said, she said she deleted personal e-mail. why she would do that, that raises questions. john: that is the big headline in the wool thing. we will get to that later. mark: hillary clinton was at times contract, at times defensive. the haters will hate and the lovers are already swimming. what does this press conference say about the current status of her political skill?

john: i have been harsh so far. actually, she did ok. she took more questions than i thought she was going to take. she occasionally had that little smile and there was a bit of adroitness that we have not recently. by and large, she evaded a lot of questions, but there were a lot of multiple questions and i don't blame her for that. compared to how bad it could have been, she did pretty well i mean, in terms of style. mark: i agree that she was not at her best, but she was good. but i will say she was not herself. this was a performance. that is not the way she would talk about these with her friends or staff. john: although most of the people in that room would not qualify as either friends or staff. mark: i know, but it was very rehearsed and lawyerly. john glenn you pointed out on the air as we were covering it that she has some legal exposure

here. it is not surprising that she would be legalistic in some way. mark: but she did take up some questions and stood up there. it wasn't at her best. it got room to improve and needs to improve. john: she was better today than on her book tour. mark: and she was better today than she was with this topic in general before. john: for now, to more big important clips we have to play. the first is hillary clinton saying she deleted her private e-mails, as mark was referring to earlier. clinton: we went through a process to verify all of my work related e-mails and deliver them to the state department. at the end, i chose not to keep my private personal e-mails, e-mails about planning chelsea's wedding or my mother's funeral arrangement, condolence notes to friends, as well as in yogurt

routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes. no one wants their personal e-mails made public. and i think most people understand that and respect that privacy. john: the second big clip is about the future of her personal e-mail server. clinton: the server contains personal communications from a husband and me, and i believe i have met all of my responsibilities and the server will remain private. i think that the state department will be able, over time, to release all of the records that we provided. john: that is like showing you the two clips and asking you where you think the story goes next, but please. mark: republicans will not accept the notion of they cannot

see the server. i do not know if they will win that fight. there has already been talk about calling her forward to testify about her benghazi practices. the other thing, though, is this question of withholding the document and how complete it was. the fact that she deleted her personal e-mails, i said before, i don't get that. was she running out of server space because she was downloading every bear manilow song? -- every barry manilow song? that is going to make people suspicious to say you deleted e-mails. john: and why? 31,830 were private personal letters. more than half of what she sent were personal. of course, there are private e-mail correspondence that you me, nobody would ever want anyone to look at, but the headlines were that she destroyed thousands of e-mails

number one, and number two, as someone who tweeted "nixon didn't bring the case and hillary didn't destroy the e-mails," it did not give a good take away. mark: for the time being, she is satisfied enough that it is a partisan issue and that satisfies her. bobby jindal signed the letter to iran and perry gave it a thumbs up. you basically have all republicans except for a few senator saying it is great. very few republican critics of the letter and you got democrats saying it is horrible. has this cotton letter on iran destroyed any prospect of bipartisan foreign-policy for the rest of the president's term? john: i think the answer to that is probably yes. the white house has reason to be outraged over this.

this has become a litmus test for republicans who are not even in the senate, as you reported bobby jindal signing on. i think it is a train wreck for republicans. mark: i want to know what james baker and marks for crop -- and scope craft think of that letter. it was certainly a departure from the way things have been done for a long time. i think they've lost democratic support on the sanctions. now if the deal falls apart, whether they are blamed or not if the next step is supposed to be tougher sanctions, they may have a problem. john: there has been a lot of fake outrage, but the outrage on the democratic side over this is real and justified. when we come back, the hillary clinton press conference spoiler alert, not totally popular. ♪

john: by chris christie on a juice, republicans will try to all of the juice of the hillary clinton press conference. what was the juiciest thing you saw today? she could've been worse, but she could have been a lot better. i have two e-mail addresses on my blackberry. two weeks ago, she said she has an iphone and blackberry. her convenience factor is proven to be false.

it goes to the larger problem that she faces. if you don't put this to bed immediately and you have more questions and more revelations after the fact, the story only develops. mark: on the two phones thing, think she had a state voice -- state phone for voice only. doug: the currently she has an iphone and a blackberry. mark: there are a lot of questions and i don't minimize them, regarding how not forthcoming she was with regard to the documents. what aspect to you have on this that real people would care about? doug: nobody has any evidence. i don't think he will see republican satisfied until they have access to her e-mails. mark: if i go to duluth or to orlando and i asked my cabdriver or my waitress if they care about this, my guess is they would say, what are you talking about?

is this something real people care about? doug: i will be in orlando on sunday for some spring training and i will ask people. this is not just the "new york times" and the "washington post" writing about this. transparency is very important and this is something hillary clinton has promised. number two, it is a reminder of everything that makes everyone uneasy about the clintons in general. that is a problem that she will have to confront and so far has not. john: many people in your party do not like hillary clinton and never have liked her. what could she have done today that would have satisfied you? doug: i think of it she had said, i will make the servers have classified information be redacted, the republicans would have reacted differently. instead, we heard a lot of we

thought we would hurt -- what we would here, clearly talk and think that should have been done differently, and that a refusal for public access to what should have been government documents. i waited almost for her to say even secretary of state -- secretaries of state have private e-mail. we all know that is true, but it is not up to her to decide what is private and then to delete thousands and thousands of e-mails, which as you stated earlier, no one really does. mark: did she lie about anything today? doug: i don't know. i don't think anyone knows. john: republicans do not like hillary clinton. they never have. but they have often overplayed their hand against the clintons, which is partly why they have been so durable and successful in public life. what is your party have to do not to screw this up by overplaying in hand and foaming at the mouth and chasing this thing in a way that is unseemly and will backfire on your party?

doug: i think republicans tend to overplay their hands pretty often full to the couple of years in the house i was on the losing end of that as a staffer. they need to sit back and not a given the way. -- not get in their own way. hillary clinton, i don't think, handle things well today. let her control her own damage and her own fate, as she has not done very well so far. mark: republicans and others in the media, including me, said hillary clinton needed to come out and address this. would you say that she needs to address it more, or she has addressed it and you will take it from here? doug: aside from the server issue, she will have to address this, because we will get more questions that come out of this. it is similar to the brian williams situation. if he had made an apology anybody thought that was enough, he was ill be on the air right now. -- he would still be on the air

right now. we will be talking about this not just through tonight and tomorrow. this is going to be something that is just not going away. john: doug, thank you for coming on. after the break, we will have hillary clinton former pollster to tell us how he thinks she did. ♪

mark: joining us now, a man who did the sack same thing that we all did this afternoon, watched hillary clinton. he was hillary clinton campaign pollster in her last presidential campaign. jeff, welcome. mark: what was so great about it in your point of view? jeff: she was serious and poised and you do not see a lot of rest

there for someone who had been operating in that kind of political environment for quite some time. i was pleased with that. more importantly on the substance, she has really taken all or most of the wind out of the sails of this story. i'm sure republicans will still be yakking about it afterwards but it just feels like there is a lot less there than somebody might have thought the forehand. john: i made this comment earlier in the show but it seems to me that to headlines cannot out of this. one is, she destroyed thousands of e-mails. and she did this out of convenience. that sounds very opportunistic. are those not two very bad headlines for hillary clinton? geoff: well, no. it was easier for her to carry one device rather than two

devices. a lot of people will relate to that. you pick words that -- i delete e-mails all the time. i'm not sure how you know it's thousands or whatever. what we do know is that she has turned over on the order of 12,000 e-mails for every week she was secretary of state. that is a lot of e-mails. i think she has stepped up and did what americans would want her to do. mark: she said today that she would not allow an independent party to review the server to see if it is handled correctly. clearly, republicans will weigh in on that. i expect some liberals will stay on that. do you think it is politically tenable for hillary will be i'm -- for hillary to be i'm yielding -- unyielding on that point? geoff: i do, so long as there is

a government -- a level playing field. governor bush said he was not going to release his personal e-mails about golf dates and things of that sort. who is to decide which ones he will release and won't? as long as you ask the same thing of jeb bush and scott walker, who had a genuine scandal around this, as you do of hillary clinton, that will be fine. but my guess is that we will be asking things of hillary clinton that we will not be asking of any other candidate for president right now. john: she was asked many multipart questions where she answered parts and not others, but on several occasions she was asked on whether this would affect her sense of running for president or not. do you have any sense of this controversy, whether it might have any effect on her future plans for seeking the democratic nomination? geoff: my supposition is, no effect whatsoever.

i would refer you to the beginning of the press conference. it's not why the reporter is there, but she talked about her passion around issues involving women and girls. she talked about the insulting actions of the republicans with regard to iran. there are really important issues facing the country right now. and facing the world, that she can make a unique contribution to addressing. and that is, at the end of the day, why she will be a candidate for president. i think she understands that you go through these kinds of things, but i know hillary clinton. she is a person of immense purpose, and i think she will approach this campaign with that sense of purpose. mark: did anything she say today surprise you? geoff: i'm with doug on the yoga thing. i did not know that. mark: do you have any married

children? geoff: i have two wonderful sons with wonderful girlfriends, but not married yet. mark: if one of them had been making plans to get married, would you delete those? geoff: one thing we know about hillary clinton not just recently, but really for her role in public life -- her hold public life, she has been devoted to protecting the privacy of her family. given that, and given the idea that somebody may be poking around, i think i would do that. mark: i have to stop you. we are out of time. but let us know when one of your sons get engaged. geoff: i will. you will be invited to the wedding. mark: thank you for that. i will hold you to that. we will be right back. ♪

mark: we are only on the tube half an hour a day, but we are alive 20 47 at bloomberg.com. up next, taking stock. sayonara. ♪

pimm: hello. the s&p 500 dropped nearly 2%. the dow jones industrial average lost more than 300 points. while stocks declined, u.s. dollar in strength against the euro currency, trading at its highest level in nearly 12 years. and a change at the top for credit suisse. the new chief executive of the swiss bank, replacing brady dougan, comes from the british insurance industry and says he is ready to work. >> great people.