A history of Trump’s love for the Bush family.

Trump holds a fundraiser for Daddy Bush.

David Bookstaver / ASSOCIATED PRESS

On Morning Joe last week, Trump said he was "never a Bush fan I will tell you."

"I identify with some things as a Democrat but generally speaking — if you look at what happened, I was never a Bush fan I will tell you. In fact—I just say about this one of the last things we need is another Bush. When the economy crashed so horribly under George Bush because of mistakes they made having to do with banking and lots of other things. I don't think the Democrats would have done that."

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“I refuse to be comped in Vegas, attend a White House Dinner, or live in any property owned by Donald Trump.”

Speaking in Iowa last week, Donald Trump revealed he LOVES the Drudge Report:

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"So while we're there, you probably read it, it was at Drudge, who's great by the way," The Donald stated. "Drudge is amazing. But the story on Drudge – and big story, it's all over the place now – guys swimming across, and big bags of stuff, it's drugs, swimming across the river, swimming right across, and they put the drug,"

"I refuse to be comped in Vegas, attend a White House Dinner, or live in any property owned by Donald Trump," Drudge wrote.

Andrew's copy of Drudge Manifesto

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“Yeah, I’m drawing the line at self-immolation.”

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Republican presidential candidate and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he will not set himself on fire to compete with Donald Trump for attention.

"Yeah, I'm drawing the line at self-immolation, none of us are going to set ourselves on fire," Paul said on Boston Herald Radio last week.

Paul destroyed the tax code in various videos he released last week in which he set it on fire, put it in a wood chipper, and used a chainsaw.

"We set the tax code on fire, but no, you're right," Paul said, adding that he made the various viral videos in hopes of spreading his message in a way that would resonate with people who aren't glued to cable news.

"I mean, there is a -- it is getting through," said Paul. "But also one of the reasons, you know, we try to do things in a visual way is that, you know, I ask my kids, I said, 'Do you ever watch news channels?' and they've never watched the news channel, but if they see something interesting on the internet they'll pass it around to their friends."

"And so I think our visual way of talking about how the tax code is injuring American jobs and sending companies overseas, I think will resonate. And we do pretty well on our social media. You know, we have over 2 million people on Facebook — nearly a million on Twitter — and so we try to get things out really beyond sort of some of the traditional media venues."

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“I’m a little shocked that this getting the kind of pushback that it is.”

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Republican presidential candidate and former senator Rick Santorum said Monday that he was shocked that opponent Mike Huckabee's comment that President Obama was marching Israelis "to the door of the oven" was getting pushback.

"Iran is very clear that they want to destroy the state of Israel, wipe out the Jews in Israel," Santorum said on NewsMax TV's Steve Malzberg Show.

"They have conferences in Tehran, and have for years, for Holocaust deniers. Not to equate what Iran is thinking and contemplating to a holocaust when they are deniers of the Holocaust, and when they are clear in their intent to destroy the state of Israel, I don't know why, and frankly, I'm a little shocked that this getting the kind of pushback that it is. I think it is clear that this is Iran's intent."

Huckabee told Breitbart.com over the weekend President Obama's Iran deal would lead to a second Holocaust.

"This president's foreign policy is the most feckless in American history," Huckabee said. "It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people. I read the whole deal. We gave away the whole store. It's got to be stopped."

“Putting this in human terms, all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent, or a sibling, or even a friend, it’s impossible to resolve the differences to move that relationship forward.”

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told Breitbart.com over the weekend President Obama's Iran deal would lead to a second Holocaust.

"This president's foreign policy is the most feckless in American history," Huckabee said. "It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people. I read the whole deal. We gave away the whole store. It's got to be stopped."

The comments, which many noted seem like an attempt to out-Trump Donald Trump, were met by condemnations from Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, and President Obama.

Huckabee, however, once offered a different prescription for dealing with Iran. In a September 2007 speech on foreign policy delivered to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Huckabee offered a plan seeking engagement with Iran.

In that speech, Huckabee slammed President Bush for including Iran in the Axis of Evil and called for restoring diplomatic relations with the country.

Here are the nine highlights with the audio of the speech below:

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"The wisdom of Sun-Tzu, from nearly 2,500 years ago, is relevant today: Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer. We haven't had diplomatic relationships with Iran in almost 30 years, most of my entire adult life, and a lot of good it's done. Putting this in human terms, all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent, or a sibling, or even a friend, it's impossible to resolve the differences to move that relationship forward. Well, the same is true for countries. Our experience in Iraq should prove a valuable lesson for Iran."

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The executive board voted Monday to end the blanket ban on gay people serving as Scout leaders. Individually chartered troops, however, can decide to keep the ban.

A group of Boy Scouts carry a large American Flag down Capitol Mall during a Veterans Day Parade in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday Nov. 11, 2014.

Rich Pedroncelli / AP

WASHINGTON — The Boy Scouts of America ended its blanket ban on gay leaders on Monday, following an executive board vote that capped off several months of quick movement on the issue.

"On Monday, July 27, the national executive board ratified a resolution removing the national restriction on openly gay leaders and employees," Boy Scouts President Robert Gates said in a video announcing the news. Under the new policy, however, individually chartered troops — many of which are backed by churches — will be allowed to continue the ban.

According to a statement from the Boy Scouts, 79 percent of the board members "present and voting" voted in favor of the resolution.

While change happened rapidly this spring and summer, Monday's vote — in which individually chartered troops maintain the right to continue banning gay leaders — comes more than 15 years after the Supreme Court upheld the right of the Boy Scouts to ban gay leaders.

Evan Wolfson, the lawyer for out gay assistant scoutmaster James Dale in that 2000 Supreme Court case, told BuzzFeed News on Monday that the move was "a big step forward" — but that more was needed.

"I hope that Boy Scouts will finish the job as soon as possible in order to be attractive to parents and young people who only want to participate in an organization that lives up to its own values of respecting all people," he said.

Monday's vote of the executive board followed a unanimous executive committee vote earlier in July recommending the end to the ban.

In addition to ending the nationwide ban and allowing individually chartered troops to keep the ban, the recommended policy approved on Monday night also noted that the national Boy Scouts organization would back any legal challenges faced by religious organizations that kept the ban.

In response to the changes, the Mormon church said it will reevaluate its relationship with the Boy Scouts.

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today's vote," the church said in a statement issued after the new policy was announced. "The admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America."

The committee vote itself followed a speech in May by Gates, who previously was the defense secretary under President Obama, that the blanket ban "cannot be sustained." A month earlier, the Greater New York Councils had hired an out gay man, Pascal Tessier, to serve as a leader at its scout camps this summer — a fact noted by Gates in his speech.

Tessier has been a part of the changing face of the Boy Scouts, having been one of the first known out gay teens to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout — the organization's highest rank — after the Boy Scouts ended its ban on gay youth members in 2013.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, another Scout leader, Brian Peffly, was kicked out of the Boy Scouts this spring because he is gay.

"While this isn't a complete victory, it's an enormous step forward," Peffly said, speaking with BuzzFeed News on Monday evening. "Not to sound too cheesy, but now we can work on living happily ever after."

He described the policy change as a chance for change within the Boy Scouts — and for himself personally.

"We so much closer to getting back to being about what scouting is all about, going on camping trips and teaching how to build fires and tie knots and lash poles together and build stuff," he said, "and learning to be a good leader and good friend and good citizen in the midst of all that."

Peffly also said that, while he is moving with his boyfriend to Phoenix at the end of the summer, he's already talked with the troop in Ohio where he had served as an assistant scoutmaster and, "They made sure I knew that they really want me to be a part of the troop and they gave me a form to fill out to re-apply as an adult leader — and I think I will fill it out."

One of the groups Tessier and Peffly have worked with is Scouts for Equality, a group aimed at ending the ban. Zach Wahls, the executive director of the group, called the vote "the beginning of a new chapter" for the Boy Scouts.

"Tens of thousands of people came together because they wanted to build a better future for the Boy Scouts of America, and that future starts now. I couldn't be more proud of the tireless work of our members, volunteers, and staff over these last three years," Wahls said. "As of this vote, the Boy Scouts of America is an organization that is looking forward, not back."

Watch Boy Scouts President Robert Gates talk about the policy change:

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Amy K. Nelson for BuzzFeed News

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu hopes next month’s 10-year Katrina anniversary won’t just be commemoration of the lives lost during the storm but also a key moment in his efforts to do what few politicians have ever had the chance to do: remake an entire city.

“When I became the mayor of the city of New Orleans, what I said was out of this huge tragedy came this huge responsibility to get it right. Some people say, ‘Oh, you see Katrina as an opportunity.’ I don’t really see it that way. I see it as a huge responsibility to make it right,” Landrieu told BuzzFeed News in an interview this month.

Landrieu, 54, came into office five years after the storm at a time when reconstruction efforts were still struggling to get off the ground in much of the city. With New Orleans’ 300th anniversary in 2018, Landrieu said he’s hoping “Katrina 10” can be used to leverage wholesale changes in the city that have been needed for decades — while cementing his legacy as mayor.

“Don’t just go patch the school up, don’t just patch the playground up, don’t go, you know, rebuild the house just like it was,” he said. “Build it the way it should have been built.”

Landrieu is proud of the changes. He talks about decades of decisions that contributed to problems in New Orleans, and positive developments since Katrina. Landrieu isn’t like politicians in other major cities who delicately tread the rhetorical line between pro- and anti-gentrification forces battling over major changes to a city. More people are moving in than moving out of New Orleans, he will tell you. The city is “ascending.” The “most amazing thing” to happen in New Orleans since Katrina is that people didn’t “go right back to what it was before.”

“We stopped ourselves from going over a cliff.”

Still, Landrieu, who inherited the city in 2010 from former Mayor Ray Nagin (now serving a 10-year sentence for post-Katrina corruption and bribery), acknowledges the often dramatic change in much of the city has not come easily and has many residents on edge.

“Change doesn’t come easily to anybody, especially folks who live here that are used to being steeped in history and, you know, kind of stuck in whatever it is we’ve been historically,” he said. “Change usually comes slow to this part of the country. So it’s been a struggle.”

Those changes have been significant: The city used the Katrina recovery process to undertake a multibillion-dollar redevelopment in the Fifth Ward, the centerpiece of which is a massive hospital and medical research complex, anchored by a new state-of-the-art Veterans Administration facility.

With real estate prices at rock-bottom levels in the years after the storm, thousands of new people have moved into the Fifth Ward, taking over badly damaged homes from residents who didn’t have the money or will to rebuild. City officials this year opened the new Lafitte Greenway, a “linear park” that includes a bike path linking the Treme neighborhood with Mid-City, replaced the old Lafitte housing projects with new, mixed-income housing, and have steered significant federal transportation dollars into rebuilding roads and creating bike lanes in the neighborhoods.

Those efforts there and in other parts of the city have paid benefits: Large swaths of the city are being redeveloped by private businesses and property owners, whole blocks in some of the city’s most run-down neighborhoods have been rebuilt, and new networks of community health and job training groups have sprung up to help black and low-income residents.

And Landrieu is proud of all of it. “I want you to think about now, if you’re a child today in New Orleans, none of that stuff was there.”

“Now, after Katrina, you have a pathway to prosperity within six blocks,” he said. “Wake up in Lafitte housing that’s safe. Walk to Phillis Wheatley to school to get a great education … get on your bike and go to City Park through the Laffite Corridor or go to the French Quarter for work, and then walk down to the University Health Center, where depending on where you are in your life, where you are generationally in your family’s building of generational wealth, you can be a security guard, a phlebotomist, a med tech, a nurse, or the CEO of that hospital.”

This notion of a “transformed city,” as Landrieu calls it, underlies most of his decision-making when it comes to redeveloping New Orleans, an approach he hopes will create an environment in which “people can actually live their whole life in that same neighborhood and go from poverty to wherever it will take somebody.”

“Think of a Ben Carson, think of our U.S. Attorney Ken Polite, who went from the Ninth Ward to our U.S. attorney,” he said, while acknowledging even those changes won’t always mean immediate benefits for longtime residents. “It’s a generational fight … without being trite about this, it takes generations.”

But the changes Landrieu is ushering in have had other consequences, including significant shifts in the racial makeup of many of the traditionally black neighborhoods that have been targeted for redevelopment — a fact the mayor is acutely aware of, if not entirely sympathetic toward.

“It’s a predictable fear. So for a city that doesn’t like change, but needs a lot of it … how do I aggressively change the bad things that made it impossible for us to fully participate in the American dream, the institutions that held us back — the criminal justice system that wasn’t fair, the education system that didn’t teach? Right? The health clinics that didn’t exist before … and then get rid of the bad things but keep the good things that made us who we are today, without sacrificing our authenticity. That’s the challenge. And you see the city marching through that,” Landrieu argued.

He also pushed back on growing complaints about the complexion of the city under his watch, saying “the city of New Orleans is a majority minority city. Nothing has changed, other than a few percentage points.”

Landrieu also bristles at the concern that changes in the city are watering down the city’s culture — the very reason many out-of-towners have flocked to it. “There is little or no chance that a human being not from here is going to come here and change us before we change them. That’s just never, ever going to happen,” the mayor said of the growing concerns about the city’s changing face.

Amy K. Nelson for BuzzFeed News

And in some cases, the city has resisted change: For instance, a push to institute a new noise ordinance — which was viewed by longtime residents as being directed at second-line celebrations — ultimately failed. But in areas of the city like the Bywater and Marigny neighborhoods that have become magnets for out-of-towners, rents and property taxes have skyrocketed in recent years, forcing many longtime residents to leave and changing the racial makeup of the neighborhoods. That, in turn, has resulted in tensions between longtime residents and transplants.

But Landrieu dismisses those concerns, saying that while the city needs to ensure redevelopment and change doesn’t displace populations, the city will ultimately absorb its new residents into itself.

“The people of New Orleans are vicious in the protection of our culture. We’re not trying to be Houston or Atlanta, although they have some wonderful things we can borrow. We want to be ourselves. They don’t know how to second-line other places,” Landrieu insisted.

Landrieu went further, arguing “there’s some people who have this sick mentality that all the bad things kind of help make the good things. That’s wrong. I think that’s wrong. I don’t believe you need poverty to make culture … Lots of people conflate good things and bad things. It’s good for neighborhoods to have housing that’s improving. It’s bad for everybody to be priced out of the market. It’s good for neighborhoods to be diverse and not just racially monolithic. It’s bad when it flips one way or another.”

But despite Landrieu’s optimistic outlook, significant parts of the city are not only still not seeing the benefits of redevelopment, but they seem to be sliding further and further behind.

As floodwaters rushed into the city in the days following the hurricane, America’s televisions were filled with images of the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly black, poor area of more than 15,000 residents. Whole neighborhoods were underwater, and images of terrified residents perched atop the tiny islands of their roofs amidst the muddy waters became a symbol of the city’s destruction.

After the waters receded, cleanup crews slowly made their way through the area, bulldozing whole neighborhoods, leaving only the concrete steps as somber markers of the families who once lived there.

Today the Ninth has an official population of 3,000 residents, less than a fifth of the pre-Katrina level. Huge sections have been overgrown by underbrush and trees; there is little commerce beyond corner stores, liquor stores, and check cashing joints.

The neighborhood is a stark reminder of the significant distance New Orleans still has to go before it fully recovers.

“I would say if you think about the city in its whole context, the water hurt everybody, it didn’t discriminate,” Landrieu said when asked about the lack of progress in the Ninth Ward.

“Some neighborhoods have come back slower than others, because they didn’t have the generational wealth. We’ve spent $500 million in the lower Ninth, that’s a big nut. So you continue to see it’s a struggle … I think the Ninth Ward is a big challenge,” he conceded.

Landrieu argued part of the problem has also been a lack of interest from the private sector in redeveloping the area.

“It was not in great shape before the storm. And so building back is harder and tougher and it’s going to take longer. It just is. Because we have limited resources. And the market needs to help too. There’s no way the government by itself can rebuild this entire city. And that’s been a real challenge for us,” he said.

Additionally, violence remains high in New Orleans.

“You see those books, you see those red books?” Landrieu said, motioning toward a stack of binders behind his desk. “All those books are pages of human beings who’ve been killed on the streets of New Orleans since I’ve been mayor. It’s a lot of 'em, right? What I’m trying to do is focus people’s attention on the losses of lives of young African-American men.”

“It’s a national epidemic … I want to find a way of changing what I call a culture of violence into a culture of peace,” Landrieu said, explaining that the city’s inability to contain the violence in its streets is perhaps his most significant outstanding challenge.

While other traditional issues like the economy or health care are a matter of “muscle memory” for governments, “what we do not know how to do is stop the violence on the streets of America. I’m frustrated and impatient, because we can’t get there faster and sooner.”

In a local interview Monday, Hillary Clinton said she supported marriage equality “as a right, not to be given or taken away by states” as soon as she left the State Department. However, she told NPR in 2014 that “for me, marriage has always been a matter left to the states.”

Speaking in an interview with WHO13 in Iowa Monday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implied she supported marriage equality nationally when she left the State Department in 2013:

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Hillary Clinton: I do think it took a while for someone of my age and someone with my experience, despite my great group of friends, to really, as we say, evolve. Say, 'you know what? This is not just a state-by-state decision, because I did support what states were doing. I thought that was…

WHO'S Dave Price: Like the civil unions.

Clinton: Yeah, because you know marriage had traditionally been an authority exercised by the states, and so I believed the states were proceeding, we should support that. Iowa being among the very first. But the more I thought about it, and I had a chance when I was Secretary of State to enact some rules that really created much more equal treatment between our LGBT employees at the State Department and others, so I was very much in the forefront of trying to end discrimination. But the more I thought about it, and the more I realized that this should be viewed as a right, not to be given or taken away by states, as soon as I was free to do so, leaving the State Department, and getting back into domestic politics, which as Secretary of State, I was not, I said this should be a right, and I was very pleased when the Supreme Court decided it was.

NPR's TERRY GROSS: "So what's it like when you're in office and you have to do all these political calculations to not be able to support something like gay marriage, that you actually believe in? Obviously you feel very committed to human rights, and you obviously put gay rights as part of human rights, but in doing the calculus you decided you couldn't support it. Correct me if I'm reading it wrong."

HILLARY CLINTON: "I think you're reading it very wrong. I think that, as I said – just as the president has said – just because you're a politician doesn't mean you're not a thinking human being. You gather information, you think through positions, you're not 100 percent set, thank goodness, you're constantly re-evaluating where you stand. That is true for me. We talked earlier about Iraq, for goodness sakes. So for me, marriage has always been a matter left to the states and in many of the conversations I and my colleagues and supporters had, I fully endorse the efforts by activists to work state-by-state. In fact, that is what is working and I think that being in the position that I was in the Senate, fighting employment discrimination which we still have some ways to go, was appropriate at that time."

Clinton did indeed endorse marriage equality after leaving the State Department, but did not say at that time that she believed it was a constitutional right.

In a March 2014 Human Rights Campaign video, Clinton said: "That includes marriage. That's why I support marriage for lesbian and gay couples. I support it personally and as a matter of policy and law, imbedded in a broader effort to advance equality and opportunity for LGBT Americans and all Americans. Like so many others my personal views have been shaped over time by people I have known and loved. By my experience representing our nation on the world stage. My devotion to law and human rights and the guiding principles of my faith. Marriage after all is a fundamental building block of our society."

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“…we’re not talking about some wild-eyed blogger, we’re talking about the official Iranian government, promising, not just threatening, promising that they will kill Jews.”

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Monday defended his statement that the nuclear deal with Iran "will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven," telling radio host David Webb that "you're an idiot" if you don't believe the Iranians want to destroy Israel.

Huckabee prefaced his comments by saying that he's visited the former concentration campaign in Auschwitz three times and visits Israel regularly.

"I've been to Auschwitz three times," Huckabee said. "When I talked about marching to the door of the oven it is because I've stood at the door of the oven in Auschwitz, three times. I've been going to Israel since 1973. I've visited dozens of times with Holocaust survivors. Some who in ways I can't even imagine survived Auschwitz."

Huckabee said the Iranian government is clear that they "will kill Jews" and "you're an idiot" if you don't believe they will do it.

"Here's the point, when people say they're going to kill you and they keep saying it, you're an idiot if you don't start believing it," said Huckabee. "And when we take lightly the threat that the Iranian government has made -- we're not talking about some wild-eyed blogger, we're talking about the official Iranian government, promising, not just threatening, promising that they will kill Jews."

"One of the most outrageous things is they're so glad that Israel is in one place they don't have to go hunt them down all over the world. They can just destroy Israel and they get rid of the Jews. I mean, those are kind of things that we have now accepted as normal behavior from a government and I just can't imagine what the president was thinking in making such a deal."

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“That’s okay but it is also a clear indication why nobody pays for a subscription to that paper anymore because no one can take it seriously. It’s a glorified blog is all it is.”

Scott Olson / Getty Images

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Donald Trump's campaign manager is under the impression that The Huffington Post is a print newspaper with subscriptions.

"Well, look, you know this, you've got a tabloid publication called The Huffington Post," Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said on the John Frederick's Show last week. Lewandowski was responding to the Huffington Post's politics team saying they would cover Trump's campaign as entertainment not politics.

"It doesn't carry much real news anyway. It continues to lose money and doesn't want to report on the frontrunner of the GOP race for president. That's okay but it is also a clear indication why nobody pays for a subscription to that paper anymore because no one can take it seriously. It's a glorified blog is all it is."

The Huffington Post said Trump's campaign "is a sideshow" last week worthy of coverage next to the Kardashians as part of the explanation for their thinking.

"After watching and listening to Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for president, we have decided we won't report on Trump's campaign as part of The Huffington Post's political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section," they said. "Our reason is simple: Trump's campaign is a sideshow. We won't take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you'll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette."

The Clinton campaign planned its first Latino fundraiser last week in Los Angeles and wants it to be a big deal. But some donors want more love from the campaign and feel squeezed by the lack of $500 donation levels.

Mary Altaffer / AP

In a high-rise at the law offices of Akin Gump in Los Angeles on Thursday, the Hillary Clinton campaign ironed out the details on its first official Latino fundraiser of the election cycle, an October event aimed at Hispanic donors in the city, underscoring the importance it is putting on this crucial portion of the electorate.

The plan is to have the fundraiser serve as a major Latino kickoff event with 400 to 500 people in attendance and tickets at $2,700 each, though an exact date has not been chosen, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

But as the campaign seeks to raise as much money as possible in the early stages of the election, with a $1 million goal for the event, some Latino donors are privately asking for more of a personal touch from the Clinton operation and wondering why more lower-dollar events with $250, $500, and $1,000 levels aren't happening.

The issue was front and center at the finance meeting Thursday, when attendees repeatedly pressed Jose Villarreal, the campaign's treasurer who sources say is informally running point on Latino fundraising, on including lower donation levels to energize Hispanic donors and bring them into the fold early on in the process. The idea they impressed upon him was that, while the campaign is trying to raise as much money as possible, it also is going to want Latinos to feel like they are a part of something, like they too have ownership of the campaign.

Villarreal sought to assure those at the meeting, saying the Los Angeles event won't be the first Latino fundraiser (two informal Latino fundraisers already happened in New Mexico and Texas) or the last one, and there will be plenty of opportunities to include lower dollar figures later on. As the meeting closed, Villarreal seemed open to a $1,000 level but not $500 or $250.

But besides those in the room, a Clinton campaign bundler echoed the concerns, saying they have Latinos who want to donate $500 but are feeling left out and craving a personal touch from the campaign.

The Clinton campaign told BuzzFeed News that it has and will continue to hold events hosted by supporters from the Latino community but declined to answer more specific questions for this story.

A separate Clinton campaign source said that with affinity groups, the thinking is to do a first phase of people donating the maximum amount allowed, and then following it with a second phase that is mixed — some at $2,700 and some at lower levels like $500.

That plan is tougher in bigger markets, the source said, because there are more people who will write a $2,700 check, but the campaign is playing around with bigger venues that could accommodate different tiers. Whether the Los Angeles event features lower dollar amounts will depend on what happens this quarter. Summer is a tough time for fundraising, so the campaign may need higher dollar events in the fall.

The Clinton operation is currently building out plans to do more constituency events like Latino, African-American, and LGBT fundraisers after the summer, the source said.

A source who was at the meeting last week defended the campaign, saying that from a cash management point of view you want to get as many people as possible to donate the maximum amount right away, because if you give them the option not to, they won't.

The source added that the campaign is feeling the pressure from a Republican field that together is showing how much more money it has in play compared to her. Clinton, along with Democratic PAC Priorities USA, raised more than $63 million, a sum dwarfed by Jeb Bush's campaign and his Right to Rise PAC, which raised $114 million.

It is also unclear is whether the campaign plans to bring someone on to handle Latino fundraising, something Villarreal is doing informally right now, though he is already the campaign treasurer. While Lorella Praeli, the prominent DREAMer activist who was hired by the campaign as Latino outreach director, is involved with some of these conversations with donors, the Clinton campaign source said Villarreal will continue to play a role because of the connections he brings to the operation.

There is also the issue of raising money from Latinos when Clinton isn't in the room, something that often falls to high-profile Hispanic surrogates like celebrities and musicians. The source who defended the campaign's approach noted that there are surrogates who want to be used but have not been approached as of yet.

In 2012, actress Eva Longoria worked with current DNC Finance Chair Henry Muñoz and Andrés W. López, a lawyer from Puerto Rico, to raise $32 million with the Futuro Fund. The group now works with the Democratic-aligned Latino Victory Project.

Ralph Patino, a Cuban-American donor in Miami who has raised $30,000 for Clinton, said the campaign already has a grassroots movement underway. "The Hillary campaign is inclusive of the lower-figured donors," he said. And, moving forward, "They will be invited just as everybody else will."

A Latino source who already maxed out said the campaign has been consistent, asking all groups to donate at the $2,700 level, adding that there will be plenty of opportunities later on "to press the flesh" and meet Clinton at $500 and $1,000 events.

But there is the question among those opposed to this approach over whether Latinos, who represent a crucial voting bloc and could be the difference in the election — but might not be able to donate the max — should be treated differently, engaged and energized early on to show that the campaign values them.

Eddie Escobedo Jr., the son of longtime Latino activist and Clinton supporter Eddie Escobedo, who died in 2010, is an influential activist in his own right and runs the Spanish-language El Mundo newspaper in Las Vegas. He maxed out to Clinton.

He attended her major immigration event in Las Vegas on May 5 and then a private cocktail reception at the home of Brian Greenspun, a Clinton ally who runs the Greenspun Media Group (which includes the Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas Weekly, and Las Vegas Magazine).

While he loved the opportunity to once again meet and take a picture with Clinton, this time with his wife by his side, Escobedo Jr. said he is familiar with the complaint about lower dollar figure donating, having heard it from local businessmen itching to attend an event with her, if the price is right.

"Money is tight with everybody," he said, laughing. "People want to be involved, they want to give the money, but the campaign is very strict with their donation policy right now."

“What he does in the business world could not be replicated in the world of government or in the world of international relations.”

Scott Olson / Getty Images

"I don't answer it anymore," Christie said. "That's my position. I don't comment on his comments. It's just not worth the time."

Here's the audio of that remark on the Mike Gallagher Show:

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Mike Huckabee has, in the past, supported a pathway to citizenship or legal status for undocumented immigrants. He just doesn’t want to talk about it when he is running for president.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

In April, during the lead up to the launch of his presidential bid, Mike Huckabee's political action committee released a web ad on immigration. The ad features a farmer from Texas, who warns that an open border has let in "the drug runners, the terrorists, the human traffickers."

In the video, Huckabee says, "We've got to repeal Obama's unconstitutional executive orders, oppose amnesty and secure the border. You don't punish people for living by the rules. If you're rewarding people who play outside the rules, and punish people who live within the rules, pretty soon nobody is going to play by the rules."

"By securing the border and protecting American workers and their livelihoods, we'll finally help every American earn his or her maximum wage," Huckabee concludes.

The ad's message was clear: Huckabee is going to protect American workers and will be tough on undocumented immigrants.

Mike Huckabee’s political action committee released this web-ad on immigration in April.

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When asked about a pathway to U.S. citizenship for undocumented immigrants in May, Huckabee avoided answering the question directly, instead saying, "Until we have a secure border, there isn't any other discussion for us to be having."

But Huckabee has expressed support for such a measure in the past.

When the Senate was debating the bipartisan immigration bill in 2013 – which included a path to citizenship – Huckabee said he supported the bill.

"You don't just wait and do nothing on the pathway process while you're working on the fencing," he said on Fox News. "And let's be clear: We're never going to have 100 percent border security. There's always somebody who's going to find a way to break into the system."

Even as recently as January of this year, Huckabee was touting his support of a pathway to citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, so-called DREAMers.

"I don't believe that it is a just thing to punish someone who had nothing to do with the breaking of the law," Huckabee told a crowd hosted by the Family Foundation, a Christian advocacy group that lobbies the Virginia legislature. "What I want to do is see, what can we do to put that person in a position where they do abide by the law and become a citizen? I would like that person to become a very generous tax-paying citizen rather than somebody who is going to take taxes away from the rest of us."

This is not the first time Huckabee has tried to downplay what some conservatives would view as a soft stance on immigration policy.

Prior to his 2008 bid for the Republican nomination, Huckabee had, as governor of Arkansas, proposed a plan to grant financial aid for college to children of undocumented immigrants, arguing that Arkansas should "open both our doors and our opportunities to them.

Huckabee defended that proposal during a November 2007 primary debate, saying, "It accomplished two things that we knew we wanted to do, and that is, number one, bring people from illegal status to legal status; and the second thing, we wanted people to be taxpayers, not tax takers, and that's what that provision did."

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WASHINGTON — The dustup over a top Donald Trump aide's comments about rape highlights the ambiguous role of the aide, Michael Cohen, with Trump's political efforts.

Cohen, Trump's lawyer, is also an executive vice president at the Trump Organization. He has no official role with the campaign and, per Federal Election Commission documents, isn't being paid by the campaign.

Despite this, Cohen frequently appears on television talking about Trump's campaign and often fields reporters' campaign-related questions. Though he told CNN on July 16 that "I'm not part of the campaign," his high-profile role as a surrogate for the campaign, brought into sharp relief by Monday night's controversy after he said that spouses cannot rape one another and threatened a Daily Beast reporter, raises questions about his exact role within the organization and as it pertains to the campaign.

After this story was published, the Daily Beast reported that the reporter who wrote the story that prompted the controversy, Tim Mak, had reached out to Hope Hicks, a campaign spokesperson, with the question about the Ivana Trump allegation. Cohen had been the one to respond, and had "repeatedly read from the e-mail that we had sent the Trump campaign, suggesting that it had been forwarded between the Trump campaign and his corporate organization," Mak reported.

A source who knows both Cohen and Trump said that Cohen is not deeply involved with the campaign and that his involvement mostly consists of his string of media appearances. "The only thing that I know that he’s doing is the media stuff," the source said. Trump has only a small group of campaign staffers.

According to campaign finance laws, there are two potential issues if Cohen is taking on campaign-related duties. Campaign finance and lobbying regulations expert Joseph Sandler, a lawyer for Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock, explained to BuzzFeed News that it would be a violation of the law if Cohen were to reduce his hours devoted to Trump Organization work in favor of the campaign without having reduced his pay from the Trump Organization, constituting an illegal corporate in-kind contribution to the campaign.

Also, the time spent working on campaign-related affairs could be a factor. "If Cohen is working out of the Trump Organization’s offices and doing campaign work during working hours, if that work exceeds four hours a month, that would constitute an unlawful use of corporate resources for a federal campaign," Sandler said.

Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, echoed Sandler in an email to BuzzFeed News. He said that anyone can volunteer for a campaign legally, but "if Mr. Cohen is actually being paid by the Trump Organization for the campaign work he’s doing—i.e., he’s 'on the clock'—then the Trump Organization is making an illegal in-kind corporate contribution to the Trump campaign. In all likelihood, Mr. Cohen is a salaried individual who can simply say/decide when his is on and off the clock for the Trump Organization. By contrast, it would be clearly illegal for the Trump Organization to pay hourly workers to do campaign work on the clock."

Cohen did not immediately respond to requests for comment about what work he does or does not do for the campaign. A spokesperson for Trump's campaign did not return a request for comment.

Cohen has been the most recognizable spokesman for Trump's presidential efforts so far. He has recently been a guest on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, talking about Trump's campaign trip to the border and Trump's expected participation in the upcoming debate.

On July 23 on Hannity, Cohen explained the way Trump comes up with his campaign speeches.

"Mr. Trump doesn't come in with stump speeches," Cohen said. "He's not reading off of a teleprompter. He speaks from the heart. And when you speak from the heart, you say things the way you say it."

In that same appearance, Cohen told Hannity of the chances of Trump being shut out of the debate ("zero"), and commented on the possibility of a third-party run ("I can't assure you of anything"). Cohen was on Hannity the next day, defending Trump's remarks accusing Mexicans crossing the border of being rapists.

Cohen has appeared frequently on CNN and Fox News for several weeks talking about Trump's campaign, sometimes more than once in a day.

He has touted his appearances acting as a surrogate for Trump's campaign, tweeting on Monday that he would be discussing #Trump2016 on Anderson Cooper's show. The day before that, he tweeted about going on Hannity's and Cooper's shows.

On July 24, he told his Twitter followers that he was "guaranteed to be talking #Trump2016" on Chris Cuomo's CNN show.

Cohen also spoke for Trump on Monday morning, telling CNN that Trump didn't disagree with rival Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's assertion that President Obama was marching Israelis "to the door of the oven" by singing the Iran nuclear deal.

Cohen's Twitter feed, in fact, was far less active before Trump formally entered the race in June. Since the beginning of the campaign, he's tweeted and retweeted many times per day, with nearly all of the content pertaining to the campaign.

During the 2012 cycle, Cohen set up a pre-campaign organization called Should Trump Run? that quickly raised questions about whether it had broken campaign finance laws. Cohen took a trip on Trump's jet to Iowa to "test the waters" for a potential Trump campaign which had been funded by a business supporter of Trump's, which campaign finance experts said had violated fundraising requirements about "testing the waters" efforts.

Cohen has worked for Trump since 2006, according to his Eric Trump Foundation bio. A lawyer, Cohen is a graduate of the Thomas M. Cooley law school at Western Michigan University and had previously been a partner at law firm Phillips Nizer before working for Trump. He had also bought several units in Trump properties. "Trump properties are solid investments,” he told the New York Post in 2007.

Cohen had previously been involved in politics himself. He ran for New York City Council against Eva Moskowitz in 2003, and lost. He also had a brief flirtation with running for New York State Senate in 2009.

Like many of the people who surround Trump, Cohen shares some of his boss' bombast. He sued a NYU psychiatrist from whom he rented a vacation home last summer, alleging that the house's beds were too small and the air conditioning faulty, and that he had been promised a "wow" factor that wasn't there.

On Monday, Cohen told a reporter for the Daily Beast inquiring about rape allegations that Trump's ex-wife had made against him that "You cannot rape your spouse" and then threatened the reporter, saying "I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting."

The source who knows both Cohen and Trump said that in Trump world right now, Cohen's "biggest problem is his insensitive comment about 'you can’t rape your wife'" and not the threat against the reporter.

Cohen apologized for the comment on Tuesday.

Photo illustration by BuzzFeed News / Trump: Getty Images

When Donald Trump's longtime political adviser and attorney was asked by the Daily Beast Monday to comment on a potentially explosive story about his boss, he could have stonewalled or sweet-talked, bartered or begged, or attempted any of the other diversion tactics regularly employed by professional campaign strategists.

Instead, he opted for a more distinctively...Trumpian response.

"I'm warning you, tread very fucking lightly," Trump adviser Michael Cohen reportedly told a Daily Beast journalist, before unleashing a torrent of threats that read like rough-draft dialog in a low-rent gangster movie. "Because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?"

What had set Cohen off was a question about a long-forgotten 1993 book, Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, that accused the billionaire of sexually assaulting his ex-wife Ivana when they were still married. The book's account — taken from Ivana's divorce deposition, and denied by Trump himself — is studded with bizarre, gruesome details.

But when the Daily Beast scoop first cannonballed into the pool of political Twitter Monday night, the conversation in the immediate wake focused on the Trump henchman who had provided such operatically awful quotes in defense of his boss: Who was this Michael Cohen person and why was he sputtering outlandish threats ("I'm going to mess your life up"), and incendiary nonsense ("by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse")? Was this really the best goon money could buy?

Cohen's outburst was, in fact, emblematic of the loyalists who have long populated The Donald’s inner circle. Trump's key lieutenants tend to fit the same consumer profile as his discount luxury-brand targets: They are men with middle- and working-class roots; lacking in elite credentials; mesmerized by made-for-TV displays of lavish wealth. They are impressed with brashness and bored by subtlety. They are amused by dirty jokes and averse to irony. They are likely to buy a Trump-branded necktie sometime this year, and if they feel like splurging they'll get the matching cufflinks, too.

This isn't a caricature I came up with; it is central to the ethos of Trump's political operation. On the day after the 2012 election, one of Trump's advisers described for me the billionaire's appeal to blue-collar voters: "If you have no education, and you work with your hands, you like him. It's like, 'Wow, if I was rich, that's how I would live!' The girls, the cars, the fancy suits. His ostentatiousness is appealing to them." That may be crass, but it didn't strike me as elitist: Trump's political advisers see themselves as descendants of this same tribe.

The problem is now that they have hustled their way into "Mr. Trump's" entourage, they are constantly trying to imitate his signature brand of menacing machismo, superlative-obsessed self-regard, and bombastic bravado. This isn't easily pulled off. The Donald's persona is a character of his own creation — honed over decades of method acting that eventually supplanted whatever humanlike personality he once possessed. It is an unparalleled achievement in celebrity showmanship. But when the schtick is attempted by Trump's mini-me's, it has a vaguely pathetic off-brand feel to it — often sliding into inadvertent displays of insecurity, and occasionally (as in Cohen's case) careening wildly into overwrought, theatrical thuggishness.

The perils of this strained Trump pastiche are best illustrated by the toxic dynamics within the candidate's small team of warring political advisers — a war I briefly found myself in the middle of last year.

After a blizzard late in January 2014 rerouted Trump's LaGuardia-bound private jet with me on board and landed instead in Palm Beach, I spent much of my 36-hour stay at the billionaire's sprawling Mar-a-Lago compound with one of his young political advisers, Sam Nunberg. A 32-year-old New York native who sported tailored suits and double-Windsor knots, Nunberg had a disarming way of working to exude a macho, Trumpian aura of authority, before inevitably slipping back into his own good-natured neurosis.

One minute, he was bragging about the "beyond decadent" lifestyle he had grown accustomed to while working for Trump; the next, he was marveling at Mar-a-Lago with the wide-eyed wonder of a little boy on his first trip to Disney World. More than once, he confidently informed me of his intentions to chat up a hostess or waitress who he believed was sending him signals, only to fumble through a brief, clumsy conversation with the women before bowing out. I found the routine endearing — but inside The Donald's political orbit, it seemed clear that such revelations of vulnerability were not encouraged or rewarded.

Instead, the gold standard was Roger Stone, a gleefully nihilistic, nakedly cynical operator who helped Trump pretend to explore a presidential bid in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket, and who remains one of the candidate's closest political confidantes. Stone is an eccentric and a dandy who boasts a vast collection of pricey pocket squares, a Richard Nixon back tattoo, and an approach to politics that he describes as "performance art, sometimes for its own sake."

Pick any moment of high-profile political mischief in recent American history, and there's a decent chance Stone has either been involved, or claimed to be. (He has boasted that in 2000, for example, he helped shut down the ballot recount in Miami by stage-managing an eruption of preppy, fed-up Republican voters that would become known as the "Brooks Brothers Riot." Some have questioned whether he was actually there.) While Stone's over-the-top persona predates his work with Trump, he has been a key player in keeping the billionaire's long-con political career alive, and his firm, which also employs Nunberg, represents one long-standing power center in The Donald's political camp.

The other is occupied by Cohen, Trump’s attorney, fixer, and right-hand man. Though his official title in the Trump Organization is “special counsel,” he has eagerly embraced — and possibly invented — a slew of more intimidating nicknames for himself. A 2011 ABC News profile referred to Cohen as both a “pit bull” and “Tom Hagen” (as in, the consigliere to Vito Corleone in The Godfather).

During his interview with the network, Cohen seemed to summon all the brutishness he could muster to explain his mobster moniker: “It means that if somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit. If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck, and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.”

If Trump was impressed by his attorney’s chest-thumping back in 2011, it wasn’t enough to stop him from hiring a slightly more polished set of political operatives to run his 2016 campaign. Even still, Trump seems to have stuck with his preferred type: A recent Politico story describes his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, as an antiestablishment “bomb thrower” who grew up poor in a “hardscrabble mill city” in Massachusetts, playing hockey on frozen ponds and later attending state college.

Of course, by surrounding himself with a retinue of mini-Trumps, the candidate has not only put himself at risk of further Cohen-esque eruptions; he has fostered a Hunger Games–like climate in which his advisers are always trying to bludgeon each other to death to prove their supremacy.

Last year, when Trump’s appearance at CPAC was met with a lackluster response and a poor showing in the 2016 straw poll, Stone busied himself circulating not-for-attribution emails to political reporters (myself not included) that pinned the “embarrassing” episode on Cohen.

Cohen, meanwhile, tried to use my profile of Trump as a cudgel to batter Nunberg, who helped arrange my interview with the billionaire. The day after the story was published at BuzzFeed News last year, Nunberg called me to gripe that Cohen had gotten into the office extra early that morning to throw him under the bus with the boss.

“I want you to help me take down Cohen…” Nunberg told me, before stopping abruptly, going quiet for a moment, and then offering a clipped, “I’ve gotta go.”

When I called him back later that day, there were voices in the background, and Nunberg answered with full Trumpian bravado.

“Hello, McKaaay,” he said, stretching out the last syllable in a cold and convincingly ominous manner. “What do you want?”

I was sort of proud of him.

He never answered my calls again.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — On what was a good night for Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor still ended up having to stop, stare into a camcorder, and take questions from a young black activist and a young white Bernie Sanders volunteer.

O’Malley was there on Tuesday night, at a packed bar near the D.C. Convention Center, to meet with — and fundraise off — young Washington professionals.

Far away from the bustling campaign trail of Iowa and New Hampshire, though, O’Malley was confronted by some of the demons that have been dogging him in his bid for the nomination. He also showcased the endurance and patience that have defined his underdog presidential campaign so far.

Hosted at the trendy downtown bar Baby Wale, the standard-issue D.C. fundraiser featured a drink list heavy on craft beer. Attendees sipped beer and wine from the open bar and waited for O’Malley to arrive — he was late due to unexpectedly tough traffic between his headquarters in Baltimore and the event in downtown D.C. Befitting a crowd in the nation’s capitol, attendees were wary of talking with a reporter, even when asked questions like “Why do you like Martin O’Malley?”

“What’s not to like?” one attendee said before scurrying off.

O’Malley staffers were elated by the event. And there was a lot to be proud of: More than 300 packed the bar, an event organizer and O’Malley staffer told supporters. More than $40,000 was raised, a serious sum for a candidate whose fundraising has lagged behind both of his Democratic opponents.

For the most part, the execution was flawless. O’Malley was introduced by his teenage son, William, who gave a practiced and easy rendition of his dad’s stump speech, hitting on his father’s plans to make college debt-free among other Millennial-friendly proposals. Eric Swalwell, the young California congressman who endorsed O’Malley last week mingled around in the background, tieless and sporting his House of Representatives lapel pin.

When O’Malley took the stage he belted out a loud, succinct version of his stump speech followed by a request that the gathered young professionals follow up their donations with a commitment to take a month off in January to come to Iowa and support his caucus operations.

After the speech, he waded into the crowd, taking dozens of questions, more selfies, and exchanging still more handshakes. That’s when three undergraduates who had traveled from the University Of Maryland to take him on made their move.

Colin Byrd, an activist at the university, pulled out his video camera and recorded several questions with O’Malley. Several were detailed questions about the Sandra Bland case, he told a reporter later. He plans to post the video to YouTube soon.

Asked how O’Malley did with the questions about the Bland case, Byrd shook his head, unimpressed.

Joshua Tyler Stanley, 21, a member of College Students For Bernie, like Byrd, purchased $50 tickets for the event and wore a nametag as he mingled with the pro-O’Malley crowd. He said he was there to ask O’Malley detailed questions about the environment. A friend and fellow UMD student, Ori Gutin, and deciding between O’Malley and Sanders, actually asked O’Malley the question, a query about liquified natural gas.

The trio of protesters argued about how well O’Malley had answered that one.

O’Malley took the questions, as he takes most questions. He stood in Baby Wale for more than an hour, shaking hands, talking to everyone who wanted to talk to him. A senior O’Malley staffer cut off Byrd’s ambush interview, promising to provide the activist time with the former Maryland governor at some point when the candidate wasn’t actively shaking hands. Afterwards the aide told a reporter it was serious offer.

Neither Byrd’s move, nor Gutin’s, phased the candidate or the campaign staff. In his brief stump speech, O’Malley highlighted his environmental proposals that have already drawn praise from activists, the college plan that mirrors the one pushed by liberal groups like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and promised to be the the first Democratic candidate to offer a comprehensive “justice agenda for the U.S.,” a move aimed at distancing him from his tough-on-crime past and getting things right with #BlackLivesMatter activists, who are still upset with O’Malley after his performance at Netroots.

O’Malley’s team expect to take a lot more questions as things go on. They say their candidate can talk his way out of the skepticism and criticism looming over his candidacy like a stormcloud.

On Tuesday, at a crowded bar in D.C., it was clear some of those problems still haven’t gone away, even as O’Malley continues to talk, talk and talk some more about them.

“His advice: Lie to them; tell the people they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Ron Paul writes in his new book that Nazi leader Hermann Goering's advice on war propaganda reminded him of the tactics used against those who opposed going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Paul writes in his new book, Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity, which he published earlier this month, that Osama Bin Laden didn't lie about his reasons for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but American leaders were "deaf" to what Bin Laden had said.

"Hermann Goering, in his classic quote on war propaganda, was unseemly blunt and honest. Osama bin Laden, to my knowledge, never lied about his reasons for supporting the 9/11 attack," Paul writes. "But our leaders were deaf to bin Laden's revelations. What is scary is how Goering concludes that 'it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.'"

"His advice: Lie to them; tell the people they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Paul says Goering's claims reminded him of what he said were "denunciations" of those who did not support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Considering Goering's war propaganda explanation, I am reminded of all of the denunciations of those who opposed the fighting and killing of the last couple of decades, especially in the run-up to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," Paul states.

Paul also slams "chickenhawks," those "who promote war, but never participate in war" as "hypocrites of the worst kind."

"Check the military service of other war promoters including Bill Bennett, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, David Wurmser, Scooter Libby, Norman Podhoretz, John Podhoretz, James Schlesinger, Dov Zakheim, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen, and David Frum," Paul adds.

The hypocrisy of the instigators of wars should be enough to awaken the people to reject the war profiteers. The true warmongers rarely die in war, nor even serve in the military. But, they reap the material benefits of the wars they provoke and promote. The chickenhawks of today should be held in contempt. Those who promote war, but never participate in war, should be seen for what they are—hypocrites of the worst kind. This is especially true for all the neocon warmongers who managed to get deferments from the draft. In contrast, individuals like Muhammad Ali consistently refused to be drafted to fight and said no one else should be forced to fight either. Multiple times Dick Cheney and other current war promoters sought refuge from the dangers of a war similar to the wars they eagerly supported later on. Refusing to participate in an unjust, undeclared war like Vietnam is not being "chicken ." To do that takes courage, something the chickenhawks are devoid of. Prison and even death can result from refusing to fight in an unjust war. Chickenhawks, in contrast, rarely suffer any consequence. Check the military service of other war promoters including Bill Bennett, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, David Wurmser, Scooter Libby, Norman Podhoretz, John Podhoretz, James Schlesinger, Dov Zakheim, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen, and David Frum. Proponents of war and violence can sometimes be very revealing when they blurt out the truth. Hermann Goering, in his classic quote on war propaganda, was unseemly blunt and honest. Osama bin Laden, to my knowledge, never lied about his reasons for supporting the 9/ 11 attack. But our leaders were deaf to bin Laden's revelations. What is scary is how Goering concludes that "it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship." His advice: Lie to them; tell the people "they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." Considering Goering's war propaganda explanation, I am reminded of all of the denunciations of those who opposed the fighting and killing of the last couple of decades, especially in the run-up to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I’m troubled that what this essentially does is after fifteen years it legitimatizes Iran as a nuclear threshold state.”

JIM WATSON / Getty Images

New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Tuesday that he's troubled by aspects of the nuclear deal with Iran, which he added doesn't really prevent the country from getting a nuclear weapon.

"It's not a matter of hearing the answers that I want to hear," Engel told WCBS Newsradio 880. "It's a matter of trying to be satisfied that this deal is the way that we should move forward. I'm troubled by aspects of this deal."

"I'm troubled that what this essentially does is after fifteen years it legitimatizes Iran as a nuclear threshold state. After fifteen years Iran can produce weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium without limitations and that is disturbing because what that means to me is it really doesn't prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. It just postpones it. I have to try work through that."

The New York Democrat singled out a provision giving Iran up to 24 days to give inspectors access to nuclear sites as something he said was worrying.

"It's questions like that that concern us," he added.

Engel said sanctions relief would make Iran "awash in cash," and might use that money to fund terrorism.

"These are things that are very concerning to me," Engel said, adding that he found it "disconcerting" Iran still had American hostages.

Take a listen:

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O’Malley met with Black Lives Matter activists in Harlem days before Netroots.

Jim Young / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Martin O'Malley was getting ready to answer a question about social security at Netroots Nation, when activists from Black Lives Matter began chanting: "What side are you on, my people, what side are you on?" He even exchanged pleasantries with Tia Oso, the activists who addressed the crowd present for the presidential forum.

But it wasn't the first time the former Maryland governor had interacted with Black Lives Matter. Just four days before Netroots, at his campaign's request, O'Malley sat down with some Black Lives Matter activists at a private residence in Harlem.

Activists in Harlem had a clear message for the former Baltimore mayor: Whatever you do, don't say "all lives matter."

Days later, O'Malley sandwiched the phrases into an awkward reference on repealing the death penalty in Maryland in response to questions yelled from the audience, which he initially handled well. O'Malley was booed and later apologized.

"The worst part about that is we told him not to say it," said a source who requested anonymity because the meeting was off the record. "And then he did it anyway."

The meeting, first reported by BuzzFeed News, took place on July 14. O'Malley was flanked by his deputy campaign director Karine Jean-Pierre, who orchestrated the meeting at O'Malley's request. The Democratic candidate is said to soon rolling out a big policy proposal on changes to the criminal justice system.

The intimate setting, which paired a presidential campaign not yet 30 days old and a movement still trying on its bona fides in politics signaled how charged interactions between campaigns and activists can be.

According to two activists who attended the meeting, O'Malley seemed unprepared and unfamiliar with their work, despite the campaign being provided background information weeks in advance.

O'Malley "never said anything about Black Lives Matter or all lives matter or anything like that," said one attendee. "He didn't know who was at the table despite having our bios on hand a week before the meeting. He wasn't prepared or informed. He lost us after he gave us his stump speech."

Activists felt as if the O'Malley that emerged from the meeting was similar to the one from Netroots: As a politician stuck talking about what he did as mayor — and, as one said, nothing about what he'd do as president.

Jean-Pierre, the deputy campaign director, the meeting was about introducing more people into the candidate's policy-making process.

"For us, the governor has been reaching out to Black Lives Matter and since criminal justice reform is the next policy proposal that he'll be unveiling we are making sure we...are bringing as many people to the table as possible and listen to what they have to say," Jean-Pierre told BuzzFeed News.

O'Malley apologized for the "white lives matter, all lives matter" gaffe because "he understood what it meant to the community and wanted to convey that he didn't mean any disrespect," a source close to O'Malley said.

"He wants to make sure the black community has a voice. He gets why they were upset" by the statement, the source said.

O'Malley is expected to drop what aides say is an ambitious proposal on criminal justice. They say his boldness to meet with Black Lives Matter activists early in the game is in keeping with his progressive leadership on issues debt free college and immigration.

The meeting was "an opportunity for him to mostly listen, and hear what they have to say," Jean-Pierre said. "The movement needed a voice and they wanted to be heard. And we're going to continue to do those types of meetings."

“I like Mike Huckabee, but this is about the most sensitive subject matter I can imagine.”

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U.S. Senator and Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham said Tuesday that fellow GOP presidential contender Mike Huckabee was wrong to "question President Obama's motives" when Huckabee said the administration's nuclear deal with Iran will march Israelis "to the door of the oven."

Graham said in a radio interview that, though the deal has the potential to be "the worst deal in the history of the world in terms of throwing the world into chaos," the bad outcome was a result of Obama "misjudging our adversary."

"I don't question President Obama's motives," Graham said. "That's where Mike has gone down the wrong road. I like Mike Huckabee but this is about the most sensitive subject matter I can imagine. I am not accusing President Obama of marching the Jewish people to the ovens. I'm accusing him of misjudging our adversary, the Iranian Ayatollah, and constructing a deal that will empower them, that will create a certain nuclear arms race. Not his motives, but the outcome."

Graham further emphasized the need for Congress to block the deal, adding that Huckabee's "kind of rhetoric does not help."

"And if you say 'no' to this deal, it gives the next president some leverage to negotiate a better deal," Graham argued. "I think we can get a better deal, we must get a better deal. But I don't want to do anything to hurt our cause of stopping this deal and this kind of rhetoric does not help."