John ford and myself, kayla has the morning off. We are less than ten hours away from the first president ial debate between Hillary Clinton and donald trump. The candidates facing off at Hofstra University 9 00 tonight. In what is expected to be the most watched president ial debate in history. Lets bring in head of Public Policy and chief political strategist and wormer george w. Bush senior aide. Good to see you both. Good morning. Good morning, thank you. I know you did work on this what each candidate needs to do, walk us through some of that and characterize the degree to which the market is now invested in all things political. Well, certainly if you look at both candidates, they have very specific tasks tonight. Hillary clinton has to raise her game in terms of having people have more confidence in her ability to lead and to be the safe pick, and donald trump has to be more president ial, and i think those are the two primary tasks before both candidates. The markets are going
Have been lost as a result of all of that. The biggest blizzard though turned out to be inside the New York Stock Exchange today. Well put. Take a look at whats happening in the market. We are geared up for a negative start then got a flurry of earnings. Caterpillar disappointing. Microsoft didnt help thing. Both stocks getting hit hard. Whats interesting, thats contributing to the dow being a weaker performer than the s p today. Its off 231 points. The s p mean while down less than 1 . So you could argue perhaps its an oversized reaction to a couple big companies, but by the way, theyre important companies, and by the way, the nasdaq also off 1. 3 . If we get a moment could we see crude oil settled higher. We did see a comeback in that sector and energy was one of the leaders to the upside in an otherwise down day. Crude oil was up 2 . It was up 3 in the settlement. Were in the electronic trading right now. In fact, i will just point out, the aaa Daily National average gasoline gauge
This inning russia probe, which i said is really russia fever that the country needs to get out of its system. Will he address it in any way . To answer your first question, we want full transparency and well make a decision when and if that time becomes necessary. In terms of the state of the union, im not going to get ahead of the president s address. Its tomorrow night. I know youre all excited and will eagerly tune in and youll see exactly whats included. Will helpful a need to address it . Weve addressed it every single day weve been here. Its one of the questions you guys ask every and over and over again. We spend more time on that than on any other topic. Despite that poll after poll my guess is that will be the focus of the president s state of the union tomorrow. April . Two topics. Typically when the president s give their state of the union address, this is first. President s normally are optimistic when they say the state of our union is. What is the state of our union tod
time ago. as someone who lives and works here the town is infinitely more shut off than it used to be. can i give you a quick shoutout though? carol lenick. thanks for ruining the g block. the g block is where we talk about carol winning the pulitzer prize. but i hope she s going to give you mad problems for the double mention on this hour of msnbc. josh julia, chris, thank you all very much. top industry honors have come today as chris cillizza mentioned, the 2015 pulitzer winners have just been announced and we ll tell you who they are after the break.
punching bag over the weekend. i could have sworn i saw hillary s scooby doo van outside. just listening to her is something like out of north korea. i m starting to worry that when hillary clinton travels, there s going to need to be two planes, one for her and her entourage, and one for her baggage. hillary clinton is back in the state that gave her a comeback. after kicking off her campaign in iowa, clinton headed up to new hampshire today for a two-day stint focused on her emerging economic platform. for her debut 2016 appearance clinton chose to tour a small manufacturer of children s furniture and toys where she held a round table with employees. now it s not enough just to tread water. we need to get ahead and stay ahead and people need to feel that their work is being rewarded, that the deck is not stacked in favor of those at the top, that they too have a chance to go as far as their hard work and their aspiration will take them. in new hampshire, the for