And the pope does politics. God bless america. Why this visit to the United States was like no other. Joining me for insight and analysis are david brooks of the New York Times. Andrea mitchell of nbc news. Cnbcs Andrew Ross Sorkin and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post. Welcome to sunday. Its meet the press. Good sunday morning and what a show we have for you today. Hillary clinton, Carly Fiorina, the speaker of the house resigning, scott walker dropped out, by the way, and we have our latest poll and, oh, yes, the popes in america. The quote penny lane in the great movie almost famous, its all happening. Lets start with our new poll, among democrats, Hillary Clintons lead over Bernie Sanders is down to seven points, 42 to 35 . That includes joe biden in the race at 17 . If you take him out of the mix, her lead stretches to 15 points. So you can see biden takes more from secretary clinton than sanders. But look at this. Back in june, clintons lead over sanders was 60 points. Quite dramatic change. Well have the republican numbers later in the show but lets get to our first guest in our meet the candidate interview with our democratic frontrunner. Hillary clinton, madam secretary, thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. And a reminder, i know theres all conspiracy theories out there, there are no limitations to this interview. As far as i know thats true. So lets get that out of the way. Let me start with a piece of sound, its meet the press, this is what you said on meet the press seven years ago about transparency. I want to have a much more transparent government and i think we have the tools to make that happen. I want to have as much information about the way our government operates on the internet. So the people who pay for it, the taxpayers of america, can see that. A year later, clintonema clintonemail. Com, this government server. Had every agency did what you did at the state department there would be a lot of information that wasnt in the public. Do you see that now as a problem as far as the public is concerned . Well, chuck, let me make a couple points. First of all, as i have said very often, all of the emails that i sent were intended to be in the Government Systems if they were work related. Thats why i sent them people at their worked a dresses. The vast majority of them ended up there so i have said also that if i had to do it all over again i would have used a separate email account. I did it for convenience and it turned out not to be that at all. But the bottom line is my emails were predominantly in the state Department System or other government servers and then i said im going to give them all after a very careful review and i did so. I want to unpack a couple of thing there is but let me start with the news of this week. You had said in a written statement under oath that you turned over everything you believed you had for the federal words those 55,000 emails but we have now discovered an email chain between then general petraeus and yourself that took place a couple of months before these records started. Can you explain the discrepancy there . It was the same email address while at state that you were using with general petraeus two months before you said everything was out there. Well, everything we had access to was certainly out there and the reason we know about the email chain with general petraeus is because it was on a government server. So from my perspective we have a very thorough review process that we conducted and my attorneys supervised it, they went through everything and what we had available at the time was turned over. I guess what im trying to figure out is if you said in march that the email system began in march of 09 but we have the same email address popping up in january, explain that discrepancy. There was a transition period. I wasnt that focused on my email account to be clear here. Let me stop you there. You say you werent focused on it but this seemed to be to put an email server at your house is not a its a complicated thing. Yeah, but it was already there. It had been there for years. It is the system that my husbands personal office used when he got out of the white house so it was sitting there in the basement. It was not any trouble at all. I know there are a lot of people who are questioning that but the fact is that it was there. Added took a little time to do that, so there was about a month where i didnt have everything on the server. We went back and tried to recover whatever we could recover. Its also fair to say that there are some things about that that i cant control. I cant control the team aspects of it. Im not a technical expert. I relied on people who were and we have done everything we could in response to the state department asking us to do this review because they asked all the former secretaries. The reason they asked is because they found gaps in their own recordkeeping. My assumption because this system was there before i became secretary, it was there when i left anything that i sent to a dotgov account would be captured. But thats very difficult to capture your emails by going to perhaps thousands of people and their dotgov accounts. It would have been easier if it was sent to your dotgov account. But when you communicate with people in other parts of the government youre not sending to the state department dotgov and that would have been true either way. I think i have done all thick to take responsibility to be as transparent in turning over 55,000 pages and to testify on october 22, which ive been dog do before the congress. You said just now in one of your explanations that you provided by these records because state asked of all secretaries of state. As you know there was a report earlier in the Washington Post that said that isnt quite how it happened in the summer of 2014 they discovered the discrepancy with your records and they wanted to make a request then it became a formal request of the last four secretaries of state. Can you explain that discrepancy . We have explained that. The campaign has explained it. What is it . When the commit committee the eighth or ninth Committee Investigating benghazi asked for investigation from the state department, they were doing a survey and they found discrepancies in their recordkeeping not in my records per say but in their overall recordkeeping. There were gaps and thats why they sent the letter and thats why we did the overall comprehensive search for everything. And it got us to the same place we looked through everything, we gave them everything workrelated. In fact, we gave them so much they told us theyre sending back 1,200 because they were clearly personal and not work related. Can you respond to an alternative explanation that has sort of another Conspiracy Theory . That perhaps the reason you wanted to have a private server and not a government server is that republicans have been coming after you for years, you might have may have been running for president in the future and you wanted to make it a little more difficult for congressional investigators to subpoena your government emails and more difficult for freedom of information act requests. Is that a fair theory or no . Its totally ridiculous. That never crossed my mind. In fact, since more than 90 of my workrelated emails were on the system they are subject to foia or any other request. Thats how the Benghazi Committee got the emails even before we went through our exhaustive process. Now i have as youre rightly pointing out been involved from the Receiving Side in a lot of these accusations. In fact, as you might remember during the 90s, there was a bunch of them and, you know, all of them turned out to be not true that was the outcome. When i ran for the senate the voters of new york overlooked that, looked at my record, looked a what i would do for them and i was elected senator after going through years of this kind of back and forth and it is regrettable but its part of the season. One of the things about this over the last six months that ive heard from supporters is there that theres an allegation about the email server, you provide an explanation, theres a new allegation, you have to provide a new explanation, theres an addendum, it has the feel of a dripdripdrip. Can you reassure democrats theres nothing else here . Well, it is like a dripdripdrip and thats why i said theres only so much i can control. But what i have tried to do in explaining this is to provide more transparency and more information than anybody i that im aware of has ever served in the government and im happy to do that. I cant predict to you what the republicans will come up with, what kind of charges or claims they might make. I have no control over that. I can only do the best i can to try to respond. The Justice Department has the emails, they have the server. Theyre conducting a security inquiry. They will take whatever necessary steps are required to get this matter resolved . Can you say with 100 certain they the deleted emails that the fbi wont find anything there that will cause you to have to explain again . All i can tell you is that when my attorneys conducted this exhaustive process i do not participate. Why . I didnt look at them. I would want to know what emails. Why wouldnt you want to know . I wanted them the to be as clear in their process as possible. I didnt want to be looking over their shoulder. If they thought it was workrelated it would go to the state department. If not it would not. As i just said, over 1,200 of the emails we were overly inclusive in trying to be comprehensive the state department has said we dont want these, these are personal, not work related. Theyre sending them back. So my attorney said what do you want us to do with the personal emails . I said i dont need them or want them. So they talked to the it server, the technical people responsible for maintaining them and said we dont need them. Thats the limit of my knowledge and i know i was sarcastic in one exchange with the press for which i im sorry guys. Im not a technical expert. I said i dont need them. Whatever happened to them happened to them and im very sure my attorneys did the most meticulous job that could have been done. Would anything having to do with the clinton foundation, that would have been personal or work . Well, it would depend. I do not communicate with the foundation. Other people in the state department did in accordance with the rules that have been adopted . For any of these deleted emails, they wont be foundation related at all . Well, there might be theres going to be a meeting but not anything related to the state department. That was handled by professionals and others in the state department. Let me sort of move on from that a little bit. I say sword of move on because youve taken a hit in the polls. I have. Do you believe you have explained this and there arent any contradictions here . Is the issue not truthfulness but the issue of how youve handled it . Let me say this chuck. I have tried to the best of my ability to be able to respond and if people are uncertain, if they have concerns about these questions around the emails its their choice to say thats going to influence how i think about the election. I understand that, i get it. But i also hope people will look at my life long advocacy for kids and families and women and look at what im proposing, the vision i have for the country to move forward on everything from raising incomes to equal pay for equal work to getting the cost of college down to dealing with high Prescription Drug costs, thats what i hope people focus on and people get to make their minds up. Thats the beauty of our process. People can decide on whatever basis they choose. Your husband did an interview on cnn and he basically put it all on the republicans and a little bit of us on the press, this whole thing that has driven down your poll numbers. Do you bear any responsibility . Well, first of all, i love my husband and he does get upset when i am attacked. I totally get that. But we also get the fact that, look, this is a contest and its fair game for people to raise whatever they choose to raise. As he said i think in that same interview, theyre not giving this job away, you have to get out there and earn it and thats what im trying to do. And of course i take responsibility. It was my choice. It was a mistake back when i did it and im trying to do the best i can to answer all of the questions that people have and as i said during the 90s i was subjected to the same kind of barrage and it was it seemed to be at the time endless. And then when i ran for the Senate People said, hey, we are more concerned about what youll do for us. And i trust the voters to make that decision this time around, too. I want to play a little comp weve put together of some of the positions where your positions have changed a little bit. Take a look. So it is with conviction that i support this resolution as being in the best interest of our nation. Ive made it very clear that i made a mistake, plain and simple. I believe that marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman. This morning love triumphed in the highest court in our land. [ cheers and applause ] weve not yet signed off on it but we are inclined to do so. Were either going to be dependent on dirty oille from the gulf or dependent on dirty oil from canada. I oppose it. I oppose it because i dont think its in the best interests of what we need to do to combat Climate Change. How do you respond to critics who say your positions have changed out of political expediency. Whatever the majority is at that time, thats the position you have. Well, i just dont think that reflects either my assessment of issues and i dont think it reflects how people who are thoughtful actually conduct their lives. If we dont learn, if we dont make decisions based on the best information we have available, well, you know, thats regrettable and what ive always tried to do is just say okay, what is the best decision that i can think about making . Now, with those that you did number one on the iraq war vote, ive written about it, ive talked about it, i said it was a mistake. It certainly became a very clear mistake when you saw the way the Bush Administration conducted that war and the decisions that they made. And so i have been very forthright in saying, you know, as i looked at what was happening, it was a mistake. On samesex marriage, like a lot of people, including our president , i did evolve and i was not raised to even imagine this. And im thrilled now that its the law of the land and i have a lot of good friends are who are now able to be married because of the changes weve made legally and constitutionally. When it comes to keystone, you know, i was at the beginning of the process of trying to ev evaluate what was the best outcome. I have did feel that i shouldnt jump in before the president and secretary kerry and make my views known because they here in the middle of that process. But it was uncomfortable to have so many people asking me and my saying im waiting and waiting and it still hasnt happened. I dont know when it will happen. It may have to happen when im president , i hope. So ive said im against it. On the total evaluation. When i made that statement years ago. We did not have the kind of Energy Profile we have. We did not have the full understanding of how the particular oil that would have been extracted from those tar sands was of a different degree of dirtiness and polluting in terms of greenhouse gases. So im not going to sit here and tell people that i make up my mind thats the republicans. They make up their mind, theyre never bothered by evidence. But Bernie Sanders has been where you are on these issues. Bernie sanders was there when it came to marriage 20 years ago. Do you think one of the reasons hes doing well right now is some progressives think, well, you know what . He was there when it wasnt popular. Well he can speak for himself and i respect his views. I can just tell you that i am not someone who stakes out a position and holds it regardless of the evidence or regardless of the way that i perceive whats happening in the world around me. As i was saying, thats where the republicans are. Theyre still believing in trickle down economics even though it was a disaster not once but twice for our country. So i want people because i think my experience on these issues is much more reflective of how people talk to me about how they, too, have evolved and moved in their understanding and i feel very comfortable saying that. I have a lot more questions and the good news is i have a part two interview well do for the new show, my new show mtv daily. We will get into foreign policy, domestic policy, a bunch of stuff. Thank you for coming back to meet the press. Thank you, glad to be here. You can see part two tomorrow on meet the press daily on msnbc. Our latest poll numbers in the republican race and the its one of the most Amazing Things we build and it doesnt even fly. We build it in classrooms and exhibit halls, mentoring tomorrows innovators. We build it raising roofs, preserving habitats and serving americas veterans. Every day, thousands of boeing volunteers help make their communities the best they can be. Building Something Better for all of us. Earlier we shared our new numbers on the democratic race from our new nbc news wall street journal poll, now to where the republican race stands this morning and, yes, things are getting tighter on that side of the aisle. Donald trump and ben carson are tied at the top. Trump at 21 , carson at 20. Two more in double digits are marco rubio and Carly Fiorina tied at third with 11 . Theyre followed in high Single Digits by jeb bush, john kasich and ted cruz. No one else. If you dont see your candidate there, it means they didnt top 3 . And when you compare these numbers to where we were in july you can see carson, rubio and kasich have doubled their support. On the other hand, bush and cruz saw their support cut in half. By the way theres a name you dont see on the board at all, it was scott walker in july. Walker was in second place alone at 15 and he dropped out of the race a week ago. Another big change is for Carly Fiorina. She came from no