Praise for the fiscal conservatism of Carter and Clinton over Bush and Reagan.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul released an ad earlier this week essentially accusing his presidential rival Donald Trump of being a closet Democrat for criticizing Republicans in the past while praising Democrats.

Doug Stafford, Rand Paul's presidential campaign's chief strategist, attacked The Donald in a statement to the Washington Post.

"Rand Paul is the one following in the footsteps of Reagan, setting the intellectual agenda for a conservative movement of change," Stafford said. "Rand stands for principle. He has detailed plans to end our debt by balancing the budget in 5 years. He has a detailed flat and fair tax that would be a huge tax cut for Americans while ending the corporate welfare gravy train for people like Donald Trump. He has real plans to defeat the Washington machine like term limits and forcing Congress to read the bills."

Paul, however, has a history of praising Democrats over Republicans. He even said in lead up to his Senate campaign in Kentucky in 2010 he would run more as independent than a Democrat or Republican.

One of Paul's lines of attack on Trump is the real estate mogul declaring in a 2004 interview "it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans." Trump's comment sounds similar to Paul's attack on Republicans for driving up the budget deficit worse than Democrats.

As Mother Jones' David Corn dredged up from YouTube, Paul repeatedly said Carter was better than Reagan when it came to deficit.

"A lot of us loved the rhetoric of Reagan," Paul said in 2009 at one event. "My dad supported Reagan in 1976 when only four US congressmen would stand up for him. The deficit still exploded…The deficit exploded because domestic spending rose faster under Reagan, so did military, but domestic spending rose faster under Reagan than under Jimmy Carter…We have to admit our failings because we're not going to get new people unless we become believable as a party again."

In his book too, The Tea Party Goes to Washington, Paul makes a similar point, saying Clinton's budgets were better than George W. Bush's.

"Obama has proved far worse than Bush, no doubt, but this doesn't make Bush preferable, unless preference is dictated solely by party affiliation," wrote Paul. "If judgment is based on spending and the budget, then Bill Clinton should be considered preferable to Bush, given that he spent less money than his successor."

"Thinking that Bush is preferable might be ideologically or emotionally soothing for some, in the same way it makes some people feel good to root for their favorite sports team. But when it comes to politics, it's useless— and worse, it's a large part of the reason our government is in such sad shape."

Paul also made the same point while campaigning for the Senate in 2009.

"The deficits went through the roof all throughout the 1980s and then we got who we think is the worst President of all time in the history of America, Bill Clinton, we all hate him we all hated him for eight years, but what happened to the deficit under bill Clinton, it got better," said Paul.

"Now it got better--it got better for a couple of reasons," continued Paul. "Spending one, spending may have slowed a little bit the rate of increase in spending. Tax revenue went up because they did raise taxes early on in Clinton's administration."

Paul also cited USA Today to make the case that divided government -- where no single party controls both the legislative and executive branches -- is actually more conservative in many cases than one party controlling the whole government.

In one instance in 2009, Paul said he would probably run more as an independent than as a Republican or a Democrat.

"If Bunning steps down there needs to be some true believer who runs for office. To me it's not important whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. It's important whether you believe in something, and if I were to run for office, in the end I would run more as an independent than I would as a specific party person, because I think it's more important the issues than the party," declared Paul in 2009. "So often we get trapped into 'oh well the Republicans are more Second Amendment lets go with the Republicans,' and they just payed you lip service and they've gone to Washington and done the opposite."

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa — Fifteen minutes and one standing ovation into one of the most impassioned speeches of her campaign, Hillary Clinton was leaning into the podium and yelling, literally yelling, about the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, when her voice dropped. She was silent. Then a cough. And another cough.

Cough, cough. Clinton bent over the mic and told the crowd here at the annual Iowa Democratic Wing Ding dinner, “You guys have been revving me up too much.

Cough. “But I want to tell you. Citizens United was about me.” Cough, cough, cough. “A lot of people don’t know that. But,” she paused, “the backstory is eye-opening. Republicans….” Cough. Clinton took a sip of water. The crowd cheered.

Her voice was hoarse, quiet, and gravely. “I’ve been talking too much,” Clinton said. A man in the crowd yelled back, “Not enough!” Clinton thanked him and, sounding not unlike the narrator in a trailer for a very serious and scary film, she went on to describe a movie made eight years ago by the same conservative nonprofit organization, Citizens United, that served as the plaintiff in the case.

“Before the 2008 presidential election, a group of right-wing operatives made a hit-job film with the goal of stopping a Democrat from taking the White House, and then used shadow money to promote it. That film was called Hillary: The Movie. I can tell you, it was no Field of Dreams or Bridges of Madison County.”

This, coughing fit aside, was the bent of Clinton’s speech here on Friday: intense, dramatic, and focused almost entirely on Republicans and what she cast as one big witch-hunt into her candidacy — be it through the investigation into the terrorist attack in Benghazi, or the inquiries into the personal email account she kept as secretary of state. She dismissed it all as a sequel to Hillary: The Movie.

“They took aim at me, but they ended up damaging our entire Democracy,” she told the crowd of 2,100. “We can’t let them pull that same trick again.”

“They’ll try to tell you that this is about Benghazi. But it’s not. Benghazi was a tragedy.” Clinton went on. “But let’s be clear: Seven exhaustive investigations — including by the Republican-controlled Armed House Services Committee and the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee — have already debunked all the conspiracy theories. It’s not about Benghazi.”

“You know what,” she added, almost as an aside, “It’s not about emails or servers either. It’s about politics.”

Clinton cast herself as cooperative, willing to discuss the questions that have come up in recent months about the email server and account she maintained for her government work for four years in the State Department.

“I will do my part to provide transparency to Americans. That’s why I’ve insisted 55,000 pages of my emails be published as soon as possible,” Clinton said. "I’ve even offered to answer questions for months before Congress. I’ve just provided my server to the Justice Department.”

By now, her voice was back, and she was yelling again.

“But here’s what I won’t do. I won’t get down in the mud with them. I won’t play politics with national security,” said Clinton. “I won’t pretend that this is anything other than what it is: the same old partisan games that we’ve seen so many times before.”

Clinton was the first to speak among four other Democratic candidates at the country fundraiser on Friday. Her 20 minutes were followed by Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, and Lincoln Chafee. (Jim Webb, the fifth Democratic presidential candidate, did not attend the Wing Ding.) Clinton’s speech received the most enthusiasm from the crowd, which gave her three standing ovations and multiple rounds of “Hill-a-ree” chants.

At one point, to loud applause, Clinton urged the audience to recognize that “a certain flamboyant frontrunner,” Donald Trump may say “outrageous and hateful things about immigrants,” Clinton said. “But how many of the other candidates disagree with his platform?”

There were two categories of speeches given here in the Surf Ballroom, a historic 1930s dance hall with ocean murals on the walls and a sparkling disco ball floating from the ceiling. From Clinton, voters got direct jabs at Republicans, and from the other candidates, they got something of a more veiled variety: suggestive hits on Clinton and her positions, or refusal to take positions.

Sanders highlighted his opposition for the Keystone Pipeline project, his distance from super PACs, his vote in the Senate against the Iraq War. O’Malley played up his objection to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and called for “new leadership,” and “actions, not words.” And Chafee, who received the most muted response, told the crowd, with Clinton sitting in the fifth row, that he was most proud of the fact that he “never had any scandals” while serving as a governor and senator.

But not much of it seemed to matter.

As Chafee finished his speech, voters were already edging closer to Clinton to be in position for pictures and handshakes.

Amanda Copps, 23, from Sheboygan, Wisc., was the first voter Chafee saw as he stepped off stage. “Hello, uh…” He paused, seemed to consider stopping, then moved away. Copps mumbled something, but Chafee was already gone.

“I didn’t really know what to say." She shrugged and waited for her photo with Clinton.

Karen Roberts (center) and her partner April Miller speak with Rowan County Clerk Kim Russell in an attempt to obtain a marriage license at the Rowan County courthouse in Morehead, Kentucky, Thursday, Aug. 13.

Timothy D. Easley / AP

This week, an employee at the Casey County Clerk’s Office in Kentucky said on the phone that officials are not issuing marriage licenses to anyone — not to same-sex couples or different-sex couples. Nobody at the office would explain the reasoning for the decision, she said, and hung up the phone. BuzzFeed News called back to ask why and get her name, but she hung up again.

A few miles south at the Clinton County Clerk’s Office, an employee hung up when asked if the county was issuing marriage licenses since the Supreme Court’s June ruling for marriage equality. Another call back, another hang up.

Farther east in the Bluegrass State, however, the elected clerk of Rowan County is perfectly clear about her reasoning and practices.

Kim Davis is doing battle with four couples and Gov. Steve Beshear in federal court, arguing in court documents this month that she has a religious objection to her name appearing on the marriage licenses of same-sex couples. So instead, Davis barred all six of her deputies at the Rowan County Clerk’s Office from issuing marriage licenses to anybody — even though at least one deputy clerk was willing.

A federal judge ordered Davis and her office on Wednesday to start issuing licenses, but when a same-sex couple applied for a license the next morning, staff at the office refused.

Cases like these are the exception since the Supreme Court’s June 26 watershed ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, after which the states that still had bans on same-sex couples marrying accepted the ruling. Governors in all those states, albeit some more slowly and reluctantly, since said their state’s policy now reflects the court’s decision. Hundreds of counties in the South and Midwest have updated forms, accepted same-sex couples tying the knot, and issued licenses.

But BuzzFeed News has found more than a dozen counties in which local government officials either refuse to solemnize marriages or refuse to issue marriage licenses entirely. Probate judges and magistrates are refusing to perform marriages in Nebraska counties, for example, while, as in Kentucky, at least 11 counties in Alabama and 1 county in Texas appear to be refusing to issue marriage licenses to anyone.

The position taken by local officials is technically sex-neutral — all couples are denied licenses equally — but critics say the practice specifically marginalizes gays and lesbians.

“The message to straight couples is, ‘We like you and we want to issue you a marriage license, but we can’t because of those darn gay people,'” Scott McCoy, staff attorney of the LGBT Rights Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told BuzzFeed News.

In effect, McCoy said, gay couples become “scapegoats” when couples are forced to drive to the next county, an inconvenience created by government officials.

“The reason they don’t want to issue license at all is because anti-gay bias or a belief in traditional marriage,” McCoy continued. “Otherwise they would be issuing marriage licenses.”

Roger Gannam, who is representing the county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, said issuing these licenses to same-sex couples would violate the conscience of some clerks. The Supreme Court’s ruling did not address a looming question of religious freedom for government employees, he said.

“This case in Kentucky is really the first case,” Gannam, who works for the Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit law firm and self-described Christian ministry, told BuzzFeed News. “It happens to be the first case that tests that issue, so we do hope for a result that finds free exercise rights are not necessarily trumped by the newly announced right to same-sex marriage.”

The push for marriages in all counties, he argued, is not actually a quest to obtain marriage licenses — which couples could get by driving for 30 minutes into another jurisdiction. Gannam contended, rather, “The activist proponents of same-sex marriage want to eliminate all vestiges of dissent.”

On Davis’s behalf, Gannam has appealed the judge’s ruling in Kentucky and sought to have it put on hold — but he did not answer questions from BuzzFeed News about why his client refused to issue licenses while those requests are pending.

Activists, clerks, and local officials are watching that case to see what it could mean for them. In the meantime, BuzzFeed News looked at how marriage equality was being implemented in states like Kentucky and the rest of the country. While in some places it is difficult to precisely ascertain what is happening, here is what we found.

Alabama

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who made repeated attempts to slow marriage equality coming to his state, speaks to the congregation of Kimberly Church of God, Sunday, June 28, in Kimberley, Alabama.

Butch Dill / AP

A quirk in Alabama state law says county officials “may” issue a marriage license — which also means, they say, they “may” not. And several aren’t.

Eleven counties are not issuing marriage licenses at all and five more counties’ practices are unclear, according to a survey conducted this month by staff at the Human Rights Campaign and shared with BuzzFeed News.

The counties not issuing marriage licenses are Autauga, Bibb, Chambers, Choctaw, Clarke, Cleburne, Covington, Geneva, Marengo, Pike, and Washington. The counties where practices are unclear are Colbert, Coosa, Greene, Houston, and St. Clair.

“The public servants whose duties include issuing marriage licenses to all couples have an obligation to serve the public equally,” Jason Rahlan, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, told BuzzFeed News.

“Those individuals who refuse to issue licenses should either check their personal beliefs at the door and accept their responsibilities as public servants, or step aside so others who can fulfill them will,” he said.

Indiana

Katie Burris (left) and her partner Evangeline Cook embrace after receiving their marriage license at the Marion County Clerk's Office in Indianapolis, Monday, Oct. 6, 2014.

Michael Conroy / AP

Throughout Indiana, marriage licenses appear to be available to all couples, but a federal lawsuit underway in one county that provides a twist on the issue in Kentucky. A deputy clerk — an employee, not the elected clerk — is raising a religious objection.

After courts ordered same-sex marriages to proceed in fall of 2014, Harrison County Clerk Sally Whitis subsequently instructed her staff in an email memo to issue licenses to same-sex couples “[e]ven though it may be against your personal beliefs.”

A same-sex couple went to the Harrison County Clerk’s Office seeking a marriage license in December, and they were assigned to get that license from one of the deputy clerks, Linda Summers. But Summers informed her boss that she could not issue the license “because of her religious beliefs” and requested an exemption from the task. The next day, according to a lawsuit Summers filed in U.S District Court in Indiana, Whitis fired her for refusing to issue the marriage license.

Summers argued in court records filed in July that her termination was an unlawful form of religious discrimination and that it denied her equal employment opportunities under federal law.

Rick Masters, one of the lawyers representing Summers and a partner at the private law firm Masters, Mullins, & Arrington, told BuzzFeed News that Whitis should have simply given Summers an exemption. “The clerk has a number of employees and those individuals told Linda [Whitis] that they would process these applications,” he said. “We think it would be a reasonable accommodation that could be made without unduly burdening the clerk’s office.”

Whitis and Harrison County, both named as defendants, however, argued that sort of accommodation “posed an undue hardship,” according to a brief filed on Aug. 7. In denying any wrongdoing or discrimination, they also said that Summers refusing to “perform essential duties of her job and the resulting insubordination were not based on a sincerely held belief.”

Lawyers for Whitis and the county did not reply to calls and emails from BuzzFeed News asking what undue hardship would be created by letting another employee in the office handle marriage applications and why they did not believe she was motivated by sincerely held belief.

Speaking for the fired deputy clerk, Masters said “this is a markedly different case” from the one in Kentucky because it involves an employee of government, not an elected government official who is essentially hired and fired by voters.

Kentucky

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis (right) listens as her attorney Roger Gannam addresses the media on the steps of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky in Covington, Kentucky, Monday, July 20.

Timothy D. Easley / AP

On Thursday — one day after U.S. District Court Judge David L. Bunning ordered Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis to begin issuing marriage licenses — a woman answered the phone in the Rowan County Clerk’s Office.

“No, sir. We are not,” she said, when asked if the office was issuing marriage licenses. Davis was not in the office at all that week, the woman explained. Asked why the staff were refusing to issue licenses despite the judge’s order, she referred BuzzFeed News to Gannam, a lawyer for the private Christian advocacy group Liberty Counsel, which is representing the clerk. Then the woman hung up the phone.

Gannam and other lawyers at Liberty Counsel also did not answer questions about why Davis’s office was not issuing licenses despite a court order the day before. A statement by the group’s chair, Mat Staver, said, “The religious conviction of Kim Davis should be accommodated and this matter needs to be reviewed by a court of appeals, and thereafter perhaps by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

As of Thursday, they filed an appeal with the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and also asked that Bunning put his ruling on hold in the meantime.

The dispute arose after Davis, an elected official, barred her six-person staff from issuing marriage licenses to all couples following the Supreme Court’s ruling that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry nationwide.

In a lawsuit brought by four couples who sought marriage licenses in Rowan County, Davis argued that marriage licenses from her office for a same-sex couple would violate her religious conscience. Kentucky requires the head clerk’s name to appear on all marriage license forms that come from their office. Davis argued that her name on those forms created a type of endorsement of same-sex couples marrying, which infringed on her faith.

Although she is the defendant in the case, Davis has also filed a complaint against a third-party defendant, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, saying that he violated her religious faith by sending a letter instructing county clerks to issue marriage licenses.

In his order regarding Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, Judge Bunning stated that the government “is not asking her to condone same-sex unions on moral or religious grounds, nor is it restricting her from engaging in a variety of religious activities.”

“She is even free to believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, as many Americans do,” the order continued. “However, her religious convictions cannot excuse her from performing the duties that she took an oath to perform as Rowan County Clerk.”

Bunning also addressed the forms in his 28-page order: “The form does not require the county clerk to condone or endorse same-sex marriage on religious or moral grounds. It simply asks the county clerk to certify that the information provided is accurate and that the couple is qualified to marry under Kentucky law. Davis’s religious convictions have no bearing on this purely legal inquiry.”

The preliminary injunction order — which immediately prohibits Davis from withholding licenses — said the couples were likely to succeed as the case proceeds through the courts, with Bunning finding that the clerk’s ban caused them irreparable harm.

Dan Canon, who is representing the couples in the case, seemed unfazed that Davis appeared to disregard a court order.

“Why should this be a surprise?” he said. “She's already ignored the clear mandate of the Supreme Court of the United States and a direct order of the Kentucky governor. Why should a district court be any different?”

Gannam said this earlier in the week about his hope for the outcome of his first-of-its-kind case: “It is our hope that no one is forced to violate their conscience and participate in a same-sex marriage they disagree with. But what I don’t think we will see if Kim Davis is successful is a rush to the courthouse to raise religious objections to same-sex marriage. It’s just not something that happens very often.”

Nebraska

Beverly Reicks (right) and Kathy Petterson, the first same-sex couple to wed in Omaha, Nebraska, leave the Douglas County Clerk's Office Friday, June 26, following their ceremony.

Nati Harnik / AP

Couples can apparently obtain a marriage license in every Nebraska county, but finding a government official to solemnize a marriage is a challenge in some — and certain officials appear to resent the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The day BuzzFeed News called the Dakota County Clerk’s Office, the website’s section on marriage licenses began with a question: “Who can Marry in Nebraska?” The answer, the website said, was a citation of a Nebraska law passed by citizens initiative: “I-29. Marriage; same-sex relationships not valid or recognized,” the clerk’s office website declared.

That language was “an oversight” and “was supposed to have been taken off,” Ted Piephoi, the county clerk, told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview. Piephoi said he would issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple — though none has applied — but he disliked the court decisions that require him to.

“I would want you to know I am resigning partly over that fact,” said Piephoi, who added that his last day will be in October. “If they need to get married, they could have one by contract. I’m a Christian and I’ve got my beliefs and whatever. I think it’s awfully sad when the Supreme Court overrides an election by the people in the state.”

The language about same-sex couples’ marriages being banned had been removed from the Dakota County Clerk’s Office website two days later.

Like in Dakota County, you can obtain a license from the clerk in Red Willow and Hayes County, but you cannot get that marriage solemnized by the clerk magistrate, said Gretchen Wiebe, who served both counties.

When BuzzFeed News asked Wiebe why she refused to perform the marriages, she said it was her own decision and refused to elaborate.

Susan Messersmith, the county clerk in Hayes County, explained that while Wiebe will not solemnize the marriages, a probate judge can perform the ceremony when the judge comes to visit the county one day a week.

In Dixon County, Tara Carlson, a secretary in the clerk’s office, said that while officials will issue marriage licenses, she doesn’t know any officials who will solemnize the marriage. “I honestly believe they have opted out,” she said. “Our judges and magistrates are not performing them.” But, she added, no same-sex couples that she knows of have asked for a government officiant, either.

Texas

Texas marriage equality plaintiffs Cleo DeLeon and Nicole DeLeon, along with Vic Holmes and Mark Phariss, from left, speak at a news conference at the Texas Capitol on June 29 in Austin.

Jack Plunkett / AP Images for Human Rights Campaign

Texas officials were obstinate in the hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling, including Attorney General Ken Paxton, who issued a letter to county officials suggesting that they could invoke a religious objection to issuing licenses to same-sex couples.

“Even though there was a lot of handwringing after the marriage decision, most counties have fallen into line,” Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director of the ACLU of Texas, told BuzzFeed News. Her office sent letters to every county clerk instructing them that religious objections did not constitute a legitimate legal defense. As of this week, Robertson said, only two counties had yet to agree to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples: Irion and Hartley Counties.

BuzzFeed News called officials in both counties.

At the Irion County Clerk’s Office, a woman who answered the phone said couples who wanted marriage licenses needed to show up in person with proper ID. But asked if the office was, in fact, issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, she hung up the phone. When BuzzFeed News called back, nobody answered.

In Hartley County, County Clerk Melissa Mead picked up the phone. She had enjoyed a 25-day waiting period after the court decision, she said, but explained the office would now give a marriage license to any couple who qualifies.

Asked if the office has issued any licenses to same-sex couples, Mead said “no,” paused, then asked, “Do you want know how many marriage licenses we usually issue in a year total?”

“Three, maybe,” she said.

Bill Pugliano / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Email fundraising appeals using Donald Trump's name are spreading through conservative email lists, despite the fact that Trump has said he doesn't need to fundraise.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that conservative publisher Newsmax was handling Trump's online fundraising, and had told other proprietors of conservative email lists that if they hosted Trump fundraising appeals the Trump campaign would give them 30% of the donations made through their lists. One example of a listserv doing this: Herman Cain's.

On Friday, BuzzFeed News was forwarded three other examples of Trump-related fundraising appeals — one of which explicitly asks for donations to Trump's campaign — that have appeared on conservative email lists in the past two weeks.

One, on Aug. 7, went out on a PJ Media list. The note at the top reads: "Dear Reader: In this email, you will find a special message from a paid sponsor, Donald J. Trump. Sponsorships like this help us continue to provide the insightful news and commentary you’ve come to expect from us. We appreciate your support. PJ Media, LLC." The body of the email is a letter from Trump that closely mirrors the text of a draft letter on Newsmax's site, and also matches the language in the appeal that went out on Cain's list.

The same letter was also sent out on August 11 on the Daily Caller's list.

"Currently, we don’t discuss our private business relationships with other specific conservative e-mail lists," Newsmax COO Andy Brown told BuzzFeed News. "As was stated in the Washington Post article, we do have relationships with a number of conservative e-mail lists."

Another appeal that went out on more than one list came from a PAC called True Conservatives. The group sent a letter with the same language out on two lists on Aug. 6 and Aug. 7, the Conservative Intelligence Briefing list and Our Friends of Freedom list, with the subject line "you're a useful idiot."

"Make no mistake—the Washington Establishment does not like conservatives like you. They do not even PRETEND to like us," the letter reads. "They see us as useful idiots whom they can use to get their hands on power, but then they turn around and knife us in the back."

The letter then describes how the True Conservatives group plans to target voters for Trump:

"Here at True Conservatives PAC, we have a really simple game plan:

Step 1: We call every primary voter in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
Step 2: We ask them if they agree or disagree that we need a true conservative to lead on illegal immigration.
Step 3: If they say "yes," we tell them about Trump's stand on the issue. Then, we sign them up to support him in the primary. If they say "no", we hang up and check them off the list.
Step 4: Repeat every month until the election. That way we have a massive list of true conservatives and we have a massive list of persuadable voters.
Step 5: Before the primary we run targeted ads online and through the mail. If you're a true conservative, we make sure you're amped up to go vote. If you're undecided, we hammer home the dangers of our current system. We remind them how rudderless Washington is on the issue, and we explain how Trump will fight for them.
Step 6: Win."

According to Federal Election Commission filings, True Conservatives PAC has neither raised nor spent any money as of June 30. The PAC's website is DefendTheDonald.com.

Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said she had "never heard of the PAC."

Fundraising and organizing through email lists is a key feature of modern political organizing, and is a thriving practice on the right, where lists are often sold and rented to various organizations and can include millions of addresses. Newsmax's Brown told BuzzFeed News that the Newsmax list has 4 million users.

According to a source familiar with the mechanics of conservative email list-selling, Newsmax charges different amounts for access to the lists with which it has relationships, including the National Review Exclusive Email, Dick Morris' list, Mike Huckabee's list, Cain's list, Tea Party Contacts, PJ Media's list, the American Spectator's list, and the USA Carry list. The lists are priced out at cost per thousand impression (cpm). Recent figures provided by a source to BuzzFeed News included a description of Huckabee’s list, for example, with 700,000 users at $25 cpm, adding up to a cost of $17,500 if someone wants to use the list. PJ Media, on the other hand, was described as having 100,000 users at a cost of $15 cpm, according to the figures provided to BuzzFeed News, and Cain’s list with 330,000 users at a cost of $12.50 cpm. (Newsmax's media kit lists PJ Media's list as having 125,000 users.)

Trump has said that he doesn't need to raise funds from donors and lobbyists for his campaign because he's so rich, but in recent days has started appearing at traditional political fundraisers as well as the ramped-up online fundraising campaign.

Did you know it’s illegal to run for president without first stopping at the Iowa State Fair to stuff your face with junk food?

The Iowa State Fair is happening this weekend.

Charlie Neibergall / AP

That means if you're one of the thousand or so people (22, actually) who are running for president it's time to hit the fairgrounds to mix with regular Iowans in the influential primary state.

Jim Young / Reuters

You have to give big speeches in front of big American flags...

Charlie Riedel / AP

And big speeches on big stacks of hay...

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

View Entire List ›

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

DES MOINES, Iowa — On Friday night — with one quick, subtle transition during a speech in northern Iowa — Hillary Clinton made a defiant shift in her approach to the email story still weighing on her campaign. The Republican-led Benghazi investigation isn’t “about Benghazi,” Clinton said. “You know what,” she added swiftly, “it’s not about emails or servers either. It’s about politics.”

The next day, before a tour through the Iowa State Fair, Clinton lumped the two inquiries together again. In response to a question about her personal email account, which she used to conduct government business as secretary of state, Clinton laid out a quick defense — “I never sent classified material on my email” — and then, without transition, was on to her next topic: Benghazi.

“I’m going to let whatever this inquiry is go forward, and will await the outcome of it,” Clinton said. “But I do think that if you look at the Republicans in Congress — the ones running for president — there is an unfortunate tendency to try to make partisan a tragedy in Benghazi, which I just fundamentally disagree with.”

“I don’t think it’s right and I will not participate in it. So we’ll see how this all plays out.”

There was little differentiation of the two very different scandals. One, Benghazi, continues to occupy headlines in the context of a Republican congressional investigation. The other, her emails, commands attention because of new, almost daily developments about her private server and the government’s investigation into it — regardless of the Republicans who do or do not hype the story.

But on Saturday, to Clinton, it was all about what she called "the usual partisanization” of “anything that goes on” in presidential politics.

And voters, Clinton added, just don’t have the time or interest. “It’s not anything that people talk to me about as I travel around the country," she said. "It is never raised in my town halls. It is never raised in my other meetings with people.”

Did she wonder if the story would hurt her chances in the election, a reporter asked, as Clinton took questions from a grassy spot on the state fairgrounds, standing alongside Tom Harkin, the former U.S. senator from Iowa.

Was that on her mind at all?

“No,” Clinton said flatly. “It’s not.”

“I’ve been at this for a really long time,” she added.

The Clintons have been at this for a very long time. They have, for decades, weathered many scandals, insisting along the way that every one has been created, or at least fueled, by the "vast right-wing conspiracy": Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Travelgate, and the Whitewater investigation that became the Monica Lewinsky investigation that became the impeachment of Bill Clinton. On Friday, in the same speech, Clinton recalled a more recent attack: the 2008 film, Hillary: The Movie, financed by the conservative non-profit, Citizens United. And now, in her second presidential campaign, there's the Benghazi and email investigations.

The scandals, in Clinton's own view, come in cycles, and as she put it in a 1996 interview at the height of the Travelgate controversy, the only thing to do is continue beating the questions back. "Eventually they’re answered and they go away — and more questions come up. We’ll just keep plowing through and trying to get to the end of this.”

“Hopefully,” she said nearly 20 years ago, “it’ll end at some point.”

“With Julian’s passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice,” Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder Morris Dees said in a statement.

Former NAACP chairman Julian Bond takes part in the "Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement" panel during the Civil Rights Summit on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, in Austin, Texas.

Jack Plunkett / AP

WASHINGTON — Julian Bond, one of the longtime leaders within the civil rights movement, died Saturday, aged 75, the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which Bond once led, announced.

Bond died in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, according to the SPLC statement released early Sunday.

From Bond's time as one of the co-founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to his leadership of the SPLC, to his time in more recent years as the chairman of the NAACP, Bond was a key figure in most of the major U.S. civil rights battles for more than 50 years.

In addition to his work with civil rights organizations, Bond served for two decades in the Georgia legislature and, later, was a professor at American University and the University of Virginia.

He is survived by his wife, Pamela Horowitz, and his five children.

In his statement, SPLC founder Morris Dees wrote, "With Julian's passing, the country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of justice. He advocated not just for African Americans, but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination, because he recognized the common humanity in us all."

President Obama said in a statement that he considered Bond "a hero" and a friend. "Julian Bond helped change this country for the better. And what better way to be remembered than that," he said.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement, "For me and for so many others, Bond's words and deeds reached into our hearts and inspired us to take up his noble causes of equality, justice, and freedom. The legion of committed and passionate advocates he leaves behind is just one of many ways that his legacy will live on — by advancing his ongoing work, by spreading his timeless message, and by lifting up his example for all to see for generations to come."

Former Attorney General Eric Holder also paid tribute to Bond on Twitter:

Julian Bond speaks during an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013, in Washington.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

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Presidential candidates are hitting the road and doing everything to impress ordinary Iowans. BuzzFeed UK’s Jim Waterson attempts to understand US politics.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

DES MOINES, Iowa – American politics reached a new level of weird for me when Donald Trump arrived at Iowa's state fair Saturday and proceeded to destroy everything in his path.

The Republican presidential candidate cantered onto the site flanked by his private security detail, his route through a crowd of thousands of corndog-eating Iowans cleared by state police, his "TRUMP" branded helicopter hovering overhead like some political take on Apocalypse Now, his entourage blocking movement across the Midwest festival of excess, his every comment caught by 20 cameras and 300 smartphones, his sheer presence bringing the fair to a standstill.

"MOM! MOM! I TOUCHED DONALD TRUMP," screamed a child somewhere.

"He says what people say at home," said another, explaining Trump's appeal to a friend as the Trump circus passed by.

Everyone and everything at the fair — the prize cows, the crowds, the people selling deep fried meats of dubious origins, the children being given free rides in his helicopter around the site — was suddenly subsumed into the presidential campaign of a delighted Donald Trump.

By contrast, if you bumped into former UK Labour leader Ed Miliband just before the recent general election then you'd probably have found him sitting on a train in second class, surrounded by a couple of aides, a press officer, and the odd member of the public asking for a selfie. I've seen the Prime Minister David Cameron with a smaller security detail than Trump had on call at the state fair.

What's more, Trump didn't even feel the need to pretend his visit to the fair had anything to do with politics. This is traditionally considered to be unusual for a political candidate. There was no stump speech at the Iowa soapbox, no pitch to the nation, almost no one in the crowd even heard what he was saying to CNN's cameras. Instead the crowd just chased their man across the site, cheered as his bit into a steak, and then chased behind his golf cart as he headed off to get the last helicopter out of Des Moines.

"He doesn't seem as fake as some of the other politics," explained Trump fan Jenny Moore, wearing a Confederate flag top as she struggled to get a photo of her hero.

"He has strong morals."

In part it comes down to the money that doesn't flow as easily in British politics. Trump is well known in the UK for bizarre appearances on the Scottish coast where he argues with locals in the way of his development plans in a country where privately wealthy politicians are treated with suspicion. What's strange to a Brit in the U.S. is that the fawning crowds praise his wealth as a positive sign: confidence that he can't be bought by outside financial interests in a system they don't trust. After all, the Hillary Clinton campaign has already raised more money than any UK political party is legally allowed to spend in an entire election campaign.

In short, for Trump supporters it seems to be better the rich devil you know. And in Iowa at caucus time there's a lot of money being spent: TV stations are already stuffed with adverts proclaiming obscure Republicans to be the only people standing between the U.S. and the end of civilisation.

Because Iowa in the run-up to caucus season seeps politics from every pore and the level of dedication to wooing the voters in a state that has just 1% of the country's population is astonishing. Candidates will turn up to the opening of an envelope if it means they get to meet a handful more potential backers.

Jim Young / Reuters

At a gathering of the Democratic presidential candidates at the inexplicably named Wing Ding Democratic dinner in the northern Iowa, the amount of time, money, and effort spent on winning over small numbers of residents in the Midwest state is on display.

Outside the venue — an all-American vintage ballroom of the sort Marty McFly goes to visit in Back to the Future — dozens of young supporters wave banners in support of potential Democratic nominee Martin O'Malley. "Give me an O!" they chanted. "Give me an apostrophe!"

No one really seemed to be watching their efforts in this sleepy town and there weren't any cameras filming them, so it's not entirely clear who the show was for or where they came from. Rumours were circulating — denied by O'Malley's team — that some of them had been paid to be there. What was astonishing to me was the idea was even realistic: That a political campaign barely registering in the polls for an internal party selection contest could potentially afford to spend any money at all.

Inside the hall, the overwhelming white and ageing crowd were told by the host to turn to the person sitting to them, shake their hand, and say, "Thank you for being a Democrat" in a quasi-religious fashion. The National Anthem was sung and veterans were told to stand. Republicans were booed, someone pretended to marry a lawnmower to celebrate same-sex marriage, and the entire national press corps were represented.

Clinton hung around at the end to shake hands and take photographs with as many people as possible. If you ever want access to power, move to rural Iowa and wait for the next presidential cycle.

Back at the state fair, other would-be candidates were queuing up to do what Clinton and Trump refused: stand on the Des Moines Register soapbox and take questions from the crowd. A regional Jeb Bush campaign volunteer offered me the chance to wave around a purposefully amateurish homepainted "Jeb!" signs that he'd brought along, presumably to add credence. There's an unreal feeling about the whole thing: slick campaigns, enormous press packs trying to get hints of a news line even for the borderline-irrelevant candidates, and yet all anyone wants to talk about is the billionaire with the helicopter.

Instead, it was self-starting Democratic presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee, a former governor of Rhode Island who is currently polling at around 0% in the state and has the tough job of being the standard bearer for candidates without any financial backing.

"I'm running a low-budget campaign," he told a thin audience that included several baffled paid activists, putting an optimistic spin on his situation.

"This is a chance to test whether it's all about money," he went on, referring to himself in the third person as he appealed to the handful of people not distracted by the glitz of Clinton or Trump's helicopter. "Are we going to [reject] Chafee who has the experience, the vision, but might not necessarily have the money?"

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It’s time for the Iowa State Fair. BuzzFeed UK’s Jim Waterson attempts to understand U.S. politics.

It's the Iowa State Fair, where a million people descend on Des Moines showgrounds and are joined by anyone and everyone who wants to be the next U.S. president.

All the candidates spend lengthy amounts of time criss-crossing this midwest agricultural state – and they're all expected to pay a visit the rip-roaring orgy of drink, food, and heavy agriculture that is the Iowa State Fair.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

If you don't go to this particular state fair, you're going to struggle to get elected.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

The mechanics are simple: Iowa has somehow managed to ensure it always hosts the first caucuses in the country, where voters whittle down potential nominees for president. This means a state with about 1% of the country's population will play a key role in who gets to be selected as the presidential nominee for both parties – the equivalent of giving an English county such as Norfolk the defining voice in selecting who gets to run the country.

No one really stops to question this process.

Still, this means that a visit to Iowa State Fair is a must if you want to endear yourself to potential candidates. It's great to see that the best way to find a candidate to run the country is to subject them to a large dose of carbohydrates and fire testy questions from an irate crowd who only really turned up to look at some prize cows.

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Since she announced her run for president, Hillary Clinton has often included a populist line about how the middle class has been left out — a metaphor about how the "deck is stacked."

Darren Mccollester / Getty Images

The line usually goes something like this, which she said in Iowa in April:

"Unfortunately, the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top, and we need to reshuffle the cards."

The metaphor generally makes sense until you think it through. For instance, who is the dealer now? Are we... electing a new one? Does Hillary Clinton want to be our dealer?

The metaphor doesn't stop there, though. At a house party in New Hampshire, for instance, she said this:

“I think [...] we’ll either ratify the positive steps taken under the Obama administration or we will change radically in ways that will further tilt the playing field in favor of those already at the top politically and economically. The deck is stacked in their favor. My job is to reshuffle the cards and to get those cards back in your hands so you can make those decisions for yourselves.”

This is when the real questions began.

First off, is this card game being played on a tilted surface? And wouldn't people get the cards anyway, regardless of whether the deck was stacked, because that's the nature of card games? What card game is this?

It didn't stop there either, though! Oh, no. In Las Vegas, Clinton said this:

“Even with all of the hard work and sacrifice so many families made, in many ways, the deck is stacked in favor of those at the top. I’m well aware in Las Vegas there is nothing worse than a stacked deck. I want to reshuffle the deck. [...] To help reshuffle the deck, people have to do their part. They have to step up and take their education seriously.”

"To help reshuffle the deck, people have to do their part."

Seriously, who's the dealer here? Why are people helping reshuffle decks of cards? How do you even do that? Like, do you just dump the cards on the ground, kick them around with your feet, and then everyone picks them up?

During a big economic policy address this summer, she dropped this new variation on the original line:

“The deck is stacked in too many ways.”

Just how many ways can a deck of cards be stacked?

Sometimes, Clinton also includes an entirely different card metaphor to applause in Democratic crowds: "If [policy] is playing the gender card, deal me in." But on Friday night in Iowa, she outdid herself:

“If fighting for equal pay and paid leave is playing the gender card, then deal me in. And if helping more working parents find quality, affordable child care is playing the gender card, then I’m ready to ante up. If Republicans say they’re going to win this election by demeaning or dividing women, then they’re the ones not playing with a full deck."

We've got two gender cards, Clinton calls a bet, and Republicans aren't playing with a full deck. Is Clinton now playing cards instead of dealing them? How many decks are there? Are the decks stacked? If Clinton's no longer the dealer, if she ever was, how will the deck(s) be reshuffled? Is life controllable beyond that moment just before you receive cards, or are we just inescapably, unknowably chained to the pain and elation of chance? What card game is this??

“It isn’t ‘special’ to be free from discrimination — it is an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship,” Julian Bond said of gay rights in 2007.

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

WASHINGTON — Fifty days ago Saturday, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that state laws that "exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples" are unconstitutional.

"The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court in Obergefell v. Hodges.

The court's resolution of the case would have been unimaginable almost two decades earlier, when Congress would pass and President Clinton would sign the Defense of Marriage Act into law in order to stop the federal government from needing to recognize same-sex couples' marriages — if any state ended up allowing them.

And yet, when the June 26 ruling did happen, it felt like more of a denouement than the climax — a response made possible, in large part, by the Supreme Court's own actions expanding the marriage equality map across the country before hearing the case resolving the question.

Although, as BuzzFeed News has reported, there are some holdout counties, they are only a dozen or so counties across the entire United States — not even a handful of states locked in battle with the federal government. And, so far as BuzzFeed News has found, these counties are not exactly ignoring the Supreme Court. They have stopped issuing marriage licenses altogether rather than have to issue licenses to same-sex couples.

And while there have been some efforts to advance legislation at the state and federal level to protect the religious viewpoints of those in government or business who oppose marriage rights for same-sex couples, few of those efforts have been successful. More significantly, this attempt to seek exemptions from laws is a far cry from the Federal Marriage Amendment that was voted on in Congress in 2006 and would have banned all states from allowing same-sex couples to marry legally.

Yes, there is litigation — but there always will be litigation. This is litigation at the edges of the issue, predominantly addressing the rights of those businesses that engage in providing wedding-related services to the public and those government employees and officials who are pressing for religious exemptions from needing to provide marriage certificates to same-sex couples.

And while there certainly are Republican presidential candidates who vehemently oppose same-sex couples' marriage rights, none of the top 10 polling candidates in the first Republican presidential debate in August — three of whom had questions posed directly to them about these issues — said anything negative about this right that was declared by the court in June.

In all, as BuzzFeed News detailed this weekend, same-sex couples are marrying across the country, in every state and Washington, D.C.

Marriage equality is not only the law of the land, it is a reality almost everywhere in the country — and that's about it.

On that 50th day since the court's ruling, civil rights leader Julian Bond died.

Bond, along with his friend John Lewis, have been two of the most outspoken civil rights leaders — back into the 1990s — pushing for equal rights for gay Americans.

Long before former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was saying that gay rights are human rights, Julian Bond, as early as 2007, was telling audiences that gay rights are civil rights.

"When I am asked, 'Are gay rights civil rights?' my answer is always, 'Of course they are.' 'Civil rights' are positive legal prerogatives — the right to equal treatment before the law. These are rights shared by all — there is no one in the United States who does not — or should not — share in these rights," Bond told an audience in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in April 2007.

"Gay and lesbian rights are not 'special rights' in any way. It isn't 'special' to be free from discrimination — it is an ordinary, universal entitlement of citizenship. The right not to be discriminated against is a common-place claim we all expect to enjoy under our laws and our founding document, the Constitution. That many had to struggle to gain these rights makes them precious — it does not make them special, and it does not reserve them only for me or restrict them from others."

Even then — in a country where only one state, Massachusetts, had marriage equality at that time — Bond said of marriage, "Why are we afraid of those who want their loving relationship to have the same benefits of the law's protections as most others have had since the country was founded?"

Bond lived to see that, for the vast majority of people, the country is no longer afraid. After more than four decades of fighting over the issue — from state courts incredulous that such claims were even being brought to them to hostile federal officials who corresponded with vitriol — the country is a changed one.

People like attorneys Mary Bonauto and Evan Wolfson — both of whom dedicated their lives to making marriage equality become a reality — deserve and have received significant credit for the country's response to the Supreme Court's ruling.

Bond said in his first address after taking over as the chair of the NAACP in 1998, "Martin Luther King didn't march from Selma to Montgomery by himself; he didn't speak to an empty field at the March on Washington. There is an enormous opportunity for service and for action available to each of us."

As heard in the words of people like Bond and Lewis and seen in the actions of ordinary people like Edie Windsor and Jim Obergefell, the same is true for the story of how marriage equality happened in America.

Julian Bond, speaking about gay rights in 2014:

youtube.com

LINK: Same-Sex Couples Still Cannot Marry In Small Pockets Of The U.S.

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Joshua Lott / Reuters

DES MOINES, Iowa — Ben Carson isn’t a politician, and it shows. At the Iowa State Fair on Sunday, Carson spent a good portion of his 17 minutes on the Des Moines Register soapbox talking about brain science and classical music, barely mentioning policy — and the crowd loved it.

Carson was mobbed at the fair. Hundreds of people watched him speak, and crowds thronged him as he moved down the main thoroughfare of the fairgrounds, taking selfies and signing autographs. Carson is, suddenly, a main contender in Iowa, where according to recent polling he’s second behind Donald Trump after the first Republican primary debate earlier this month, and his reception here — some people arrived two hours early in the blazing sun to get seats for Carson's speech — indicated that the enthusiasm is very real, and that Carson is not the only beneficiary of this year's surge of anti-Washington sentiment.

One voter, Shari Rutledge, 47, told BuzzFeed News that the last time she had participated in the Iowa caucus had been for President Obama. Now, she's a Carson supporter.

"What I like about him is the fact that he has education at the forefront for the kids," said Rutledge, who works in insurance. She said she isn't seriously considering any other candidates. Asked whether she now considers herself a conservative, Rutledge said, "Kind of in the middle. I think I always have been."

Construction superintendent Russ Noble, also 47, said he liked Donald Trump, but Carson "has some good vibes and everything. He's about the country and stuff, so it's between him and Trump."

Carson's "quiet, he's mellow, but Trump's got a set of nuts, you know?" Noble said.

At first glance it seems like a contradiction to be stuck between Trump and Carson, two very different men: Carson is mild where Trump is brash, pleasant where Trump is abrasive. But the men share a penchant for the controversial, a reputation for saying and being willing to say what people actually believe, and both can lay the biggest claim on "outsider" status in the Republican field. In short: Carson and Trump don't sound like politicians.

And in his stump speech on the soapbox, Carson didn’t mention anything policy-related until 10 minutes in (candidates are given 20 minutes each to do as they please on the soapbox), when he started talking about fiscal policy. This was after an extended segue about how the brain works, laden with medical jargon, and more than one aside about his love of classical music. Carson's erudition and meandering speaking style, far from being a turnoff, prompted several rounds of applause and laughter from the crowd. "Carson’s campaign-trail remarks may raise questions about whether his goal is actually to reach the White House or merely to further introduce himself to the American people, to increase his celebrity, and to sell more books," National Review surmised last month.

If his style is what appeals to people, when you try to pin him down on specifics, things can get a little hairy. Asked by BuzzFeed News whether his comments Sunday morning suggesting that by negotiating the Iran deal, President Obama is anti-Semitic, were really meant to to accuse Obama himself of being anti-Semitic, Carson said no, but, "The things that were being said that are accusatory — I have an article coming out tomorrow, you can read all about it."

On the Iran deal itself, Carson detailed the following plan for reversing the deal after he becomes president to BuzzFeed News: “Clearly I would tell them, and I would tell our allies, that we simply don't recognize this. This was negotiated by another administration, it's not binding on us, and we're perfectly willing to engage in conversations about it but they have to include the basic ingredients of a negotiation. Verification, accountability, and enforcement. And if they don't have that, it's a non-starter."

After his speech, Carson took a few questions from assembled supporters and press. Carson's ideas are often unusual, and he talks about issues that other more polished candidates don't pay much attention to.

For example, term limits: Asked about them by a voter, Carson suggested that terms in the House of Representatives be extended from two years to eight, and that members of the House would then not be allowed to run for re-election. Under Carson's plan, the same would go for senators, and the presidency would be limited to one six-year term. Carson also said he believes Supreme Court justices should have term limits.

These are the kinds of ideas that get spitballed around people's kitchen tables, but don't come up very often in presidential politics.

Mother-daughter pair Leah and Joan Doyle, 16 and 49, hovered near Carson to get a picture after he rode the fair's Sky Glider with a local reporter.

Carson is intelligent and he's "got a head on his shoulders," Leah, an even bigger fan of Carson than her mom, said. "That's something I really really want for our country, because right now it just seems like we have people with empty heads in Washington."

"He's a great role model, he has awesome views on the way that he sees race in our country and political correctness," Leah said.

Joan, a social worker who supported Mike Huckabee last time she participated in the caucuses, said she wished Huckabee and Carson would run on the same ticket.

She's not a fan of Trump, whose "lack of a filter is not very presidential," though she said there was dissent on this point in her household.

In the end, for Joan Doyle the most appealing thing about Carson is the same anti-flashy idiosyncratic style that can make him confusing for reporters. His "taking a step back, moving away from the political correctness and worrying about saying the right thing — the way he's able to word it and bring it into a way that people can say 'Yeah, I can see that,' instead of it being, 'You've taken a stand and you've put off other people.' Who can be put off by some of the things he's said, by some of his views of humanity itself?"

Win McNamee / Getty Images News

DES MOINES, Iowa — There is a white wooden fence that lines the southeastern corner of the Iowa State Fairgrounds. On one side, just after 11 a.m., Bonnie Crispin started cheering. On the other, a couple hundred yards away, Crispin could see Hillary Clinton take her place behind a podium and begin fielding questions from a thick wall of press — some 200 bodies and pieces of audiovisual equipment, all creeping closer.

By 11:30 a.m., she watched Clinton walking toward her, heading north along the fence — the pack following from front, back, left, and right. She saw security officers tell voters to back away, clear a path for the moving human mass. And then the next thing she saw was Clinton, her candidate, passing by, quickly.

“I been yelling for a half an hour!” Crispin, 62, shouted over the fence, still clapping. Clinton, she said afterward, “just yelled back, ‘I need you!’” And with that, Clinton was gone.

Past the fence, about 10 minutes later, John Shepard stood back to observe the horde maneuver the turn onto a narrower path, funneling slowly outside the domed Pioneer Livestock Pavilion. He could see Clinton inside the circle of people, shaking hands with the voters she could reach.

“She needs to get outta the box so we can see her,” said Shepard, 47. “We can hardly see her. I’d be hot in there.”

It wasn’t until around 11:45 a.m. — when April Stumpf spotted Clinton, approached the crush, and began elbowing her way toward the center — that a voter did what it took to get in from the outside: past the first ring of fairgoers (just watching), past the second ring (angling for pictures), past the nearby Secret Service members, past the reporters, videographers, photographers — to a spot inside that put her face-to-face with back of a straw Panama hat belonging to Clinton’s fairgrounds companion for the day, the 75-year-old former U.S. senator, a legend in Iowa politics, Tom Harkin.

Clinton was a few paces ahead, still moving.

“Mrs. Clinton?”

No response.

Stumpf, a 34-year-old mother from Riverside, had made the two-and-a-half-hour trip to Des Moines, and wanted this conversation.

She gave Harkin a tap on the shoulder.

“I’m friends with the ambassador to the Dominican Republic,” Stumpf said. “I’m friends with Wally Brewster. My name’s April Stumpf. He’s the ambassador to the Dominican Republic.” Harkin turned his head. “Yes?”

“I didn’t know if…“ Stumpf started, motioning to Clinton.

“…I would love to say hi to her.”

It’s a simple request to make of another human being. But for voters who want a conversation with Clinton — now four months into her second presidential campaign — the proposition remains more difficult and complex than with perhaps any other candidate, Republican or Democrat.

At many of Clinton’s public events, causal interaction is overwhelmed, and often made altogether impossible, by a spectacle that neither she, nor her aides, can much control: the aggregate effect of, in varying degrees, the media attention she commands, celebrity status she assumes, and the Secret Service detail she has required, in public and private life, since the ’90s.

All three forces were at work in the extreme on Saturday as Clinton toured the various delights of the massive and sprawling Iowa State Fair, moving from the show cows near Gammon Barn, down by the Pavilion and the Fun Forest Stage, into the Agriculture Building, past the beet and onion tables and the life-size cow sculpted from butter — out the back door, up the main drag, and over to the front counter of the final destination: the Iowa Pork Producers’ Porkchop on a Stick tent.

The result that Saturday: three bites of porkchop, more than 42 pictures taken with Clinton, and thousands of witnesses to a pandemonium so intense that one young girl, after waiting an hour for a photo with the candidate, burst into tears of joy and exhaustion when the time finally came.

Clinton and company tore through the fair. The C-SPAN footage is almost harrowing. Foot traffic came to a halt everywhere they went. At point, inside the hot and crowded Agriculture Building, the group was going too fast with no room to move: While a campaign aide warned a security agent to please watch Harkin more closely (He was getting “pushed and shoved!”), a security agent snapped at a campaign aide to please keep the entourage moving (“When you stop, it creates a bubble and we can’t move!”).

Meanwhile, from inside her thick circle of people and gear, Clinton was getting shouts of all kinds from patrons. One man let out a long, “Monica Lewwwwiiiinsky,” soliciting a slap on the arm from his wife and an exasperated sigh from a woman within earshot. “You fucking asshole,” she said. Some parents lifted their kids in the air for a better view. “It’s Hillary Clinton! Can you see, honey?” Others pulled them tighter from the crowd. “Stay with mama. I don’t want you to get killed.”

Among the other state fair guests that weekend, only Donald Trump put on a bigger show. The Republican candidate, still leading in the polls, cruised through the fair with an even larger crowd, having arrived that afternoon by private helicopter.

But Clinton’s is not a Trump campaign. The spectacle does her particular effort no good. In the contained, small settings that her campaign aides have prioritized since spring (“intimate” and “low-key” have been their descriptors of choice), Clinton has tried to make herself more available for what she calls “a continuing conversation with the American people.”

This went most awry last month in Gorham, N.H., on the Fourth of July, when aides employed a thick white rope to keep reporters from getting too close to Clinton as she walked a holiday parade. It was all in the spirit of this larger endeavor, they said: to enable genuine interaction with voters, free from the “bubble.”

Parts of that self-made buffer are sure to fade by the fall.

Clinton’s first test, the Iowa caucuses, also happens to be her biggest and most important. (The state has become the phantom center of her campaign. During a briefing in June, senior aides described Iowa as the lifeblood of the operation. One went so far as to say that the campaign, on the whole, is an effort to win Iowa.)

Sometimes after she returns from vacation in September — just about five months until caucus day — the campaign will shift into a faster gear, and Clinton into a mode of campaigning focused even more heavily on an organizing strategy that requires from the candidate a basic ability to connect in genuine, motivational ways. And not just with caucus-goers, but with the operation’s volunteers and volunteer leaders.

And the challenge for the campaign: facilitating settings where Clinton can excel in the organizing role, and where voters can get close — particularly as her unfavorable numbers reach levels worse than in the lead-up to her run for president.

In a caucus state like Iowa, questions of accessibility and authenticity don’t just weigh on a candidate’s ratings. They can underlie the success of an organization. For voters here, none of the campaigning should happen at too far a remove. Over the weekend, many attendees voiced disappointment that Clinton skipped the chance to deliver her soapbox speech, a state fair tradition sponsored by the Des Moines Register.

The conversations that did take place between Clinton and voters on Saturday, mostly in passing, touched on such topics as berry-growing, eggs, Iowa’s zoning programs, and an old saying of Janet Reno’s, which Clinton relayed as follows: “Nothing brings people together like a potluck dinner.”

Only April Stumpf, the mother from Riverside, pushed her way through for more, dropped the name of an ambassador friend, sidled up to Clinton and — upon telling the candidate her story — brought the whole operation to a stop for a few, rare minutes of relative quiet on late Saturday morning.

“I just wanted to introduce myself and say hi,” said Stumpf, face to face with Clinton. “And I also wanted to let you I am a mother of a severely disabled child. She’s on 14 different medications right now: methadone, morphine, and…”

Clinton grabbed her hand. “How old is she?”

“She’s only 3. Her name is Quinn.”

“What’s Quinn’s…?”

“She’s undiagnosed,” said Stumpf. “She’s so severe. She’s got epilepsy, heart seizures that they can’t stop. She arches severely. She’s on a feeding tube. She’s not expected to live very long.”

She told Clinton she’s been advocating for medical marijuana on a nationwide level, that Quinn’s medications are so hard on her 3-year-old body that they will kill her faster than her disability — and that the cause could use Clinton’s support, said Stumpf. “For a real medical purpose.”

“And to do the research,” Clinton said, nodding. “I will certainly support it. I have and I will continue to support it. And I want to get the research going.”

They talked some more about alternative medicine and about Quinn’s clinical trial. “She’s only 3. She’s gorgeous,” said her mom. “She deserves so much. So thank you so much. It was nice to meet you...” When Stumpf turned to leave, Clinton asked her to wait for an aide to collect some contact information first — to stay in touch.

Later, standing near the porkchop stand, after her two hours at the fair were almost up, Clinton said she was grateful for the exchange with Stumpf. Hearing stories like Quinn’s — “that’s what helps me think about what I can do to help them.”

“That’s what I want. I want to hear directly from people,” said Clinton. “That’s really what it’s about for me.”

There’s no question that Clinton can impress, or disarm, voters on the campaign trail when she gets the chance. On Saturday, Harkin suggested that this was the Clinton he’d gotten to know as a colleague — “off the corridors of power, away from the cameras.”

But it’s not always easy for Clinton to “hear directly from people.” And most voters can’t see Clinton "away from the cameras," like Harkin. Or force a way in, like Stumpf. Or get close enough, from some spot outside "the box," as John Shepard described what surrounded Clinton at the state fair, to see something real inside.

And as it played out on Saturday, this reality seemed most manageable for the person at the very center. When someone asked Clinton about the chosen end-point for her tour of the fairgrounds — the porkchop tent — the answer seemed obvious as soon as she said it. “I am just going along the route they mapped out.”

The box, for Clinton, will always be there. This was one more fair — no more chaotic than the marches and parades of her last campaign, or the state fairs of her years in the Senate. This was, in fact, normal. “I loved it,” Clinton said. The New York State Fair, she recalled, had crowds just as big and intense as Iowa’s.

“There were always people everywhere," Clinton said. "Just like here."

“I have a lot of practice."

Swede and low.

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Donald Trump, who on Saturday mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren for making unsubstantiated claims that she had Cherokee and Delaware Native American heritage, claimed in his first book that his grandfather was from Sweden — a claim later proven to be untrue.

"She's caught a little wave. Perhaps it's her Indian upbringing," Trump told the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. The Donald similarly retweeted a tweet referring to the Massachusetts senator as "Pocahontas Warren" in 2013.

Warren had claimed she heard about her Native American heritage from "family stories." The veracity of that claim became a major issue in her 2012 campaign for Senate.

In his first book, The Donald said his grandfather immigrated to the United States from Sweden. As pointed out in multiple biographies of The Donald and as a BuzzFeed News review of immigration records show, the claim isn't true.

Trump wrote about his father and grandfather in The Art of the Deal, which Trump falsely claimed was the best-selling business book of all time.

"His story is classic Horatio Alger. Fred Trump was born in New Jersey in 1905. His father, who came here from Sweden as a child, owned a moderately successful restaurant, but he was also a hard liver and a hard drinker, and he died when my father was eleven years old," Trump wrote.

According to census records obtained by BuzzFeed News, Trump's grandfather and great-grandfather were actually born in Germany.

Trump biographer Gwenda Blair wrote in her book Trump Master Apprentice that the claim was all part of a personality trait we've come to know from Trump: the exaggeration and blurring of facts to fit a story that goes with his flair.

"Apparently Donald did not care that his grandfather was not, in fact, Swedish; that he had not actually given his elementary school music teacher a black eye; or that he had paid top dollar, not below market, for his land in Atlantic City. Instead he was concerned with being engaging and entertaining," Blair writes.

In his biography of Trump, The Lost Tycoon, Henry Hurt alleges Trump made the anecdote up to deceive Jewish tenants in his buildings.

"In his first book Donald implies that his paternal ancestors were of Swedish descent. That was another big white lie presumably designed to deceive the many Jewish tenants who occupied Trump-owned apartment complexes," wrote Hurt. "Fred Trump's father, who was also named Fred Trump, was German born in 1870."

Similarly, the 1999 New York Times obituary of Fred C. Trump's death states The Donald's father made the claim for a similar reason.

"Frederick Christ (pronounced Krist) Trump was born in New York City in 1905," reads the obituary. "From World War II until the 1980's, Mr. Trump would tell friends and acquaintances that he was of Swedish origin, although both his parents were born in Germany."

"John Walter, his nephew and the family historian, explained, 'He had a lot of Jewish tenants and it wasn't a good thing to be German in those days.'"

In a 1990 Vanity Fair profile of The Donald, Trump was confronted about his family not being Swedish, as he had claimed in The Art of Deal. Trump, the story said, was "evasive."

"Actually, it was very difficult," Trump is quoted as saying. "My father was not German; my father's parents were German ... Swedish, and really sort of all over Europe ... and I was even thinking in the second edition of putting more emphasis on other places because I was getting so many letters from Sweden: Would I come over and speak to Parliament? Would I come meet with the president?"

A Trump campaign spokesperson didn't return a request for comment.

Take a look a the census records below, as well as Fred Trump's passport.

Here's the 1910 census noting Fred Trump and his father (The Donald's great-grandfather) both being born in Germany:

1910 federal census

Here's Fred Trump's 1904 passport noting his German birth as well:

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Fiorina on Clinton in 2008: “She was a great candidate. She has helped millions of women all over this country. Women of any political party owe a debt of gratitude to Hillary Clinton and I will bet that every woman up here agrees with me.”

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Throughout much of her presidential campaign, Carly Fiorina has attacked Hillary Clinton, calling on the former secretary of state to "name an accomplishment".

"Throughout this campaign, I have repeatedly asked Hillary Clinton to name an accomplishment," Fiorina wrote in an op-ed for CNN. "She has yet to name one. Note: Flying is an activity, not an accomplishment."

While serving as a surrogate for John McCain's 2008 campaign, however, Fiorina offered high praise for Clinton.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post Ruth Marcus wrote in a column that Fiorina told her in May of 2008 that if she wasn't backing Sen. John McCain, she would have backed Clinton. A Fiorina spokeswoman said that Fiorina couldn't remember the exchange and was probably talking about who she would back in the 2008 Democratic primary if she had to choose.

The article also noted that Fiorina declared her "great admiration and respect for Hillary Clinton and her candidacy and leadership," at one gathering in 2008.

In one video uncovered by BuzzFeed News, Fiorina delivers a long and forceful praise of then-Senator Clinton for a political organization that promoted women in politics. Fiorina called Clinton "incredibly intelligent," "determined," and said she took great pride in her presidential run.

"I have such great admiration and empathy for Hillary Clinton," Fiorina says in the video. "I have great admiration for her because I know what it takes in some small measure to do what she has done. She is obviously incredibly intelligent, focused, tough, determined, empathetic of all the tens of millions of people that she was trying to represent in her quest to become the first woman president of the United States."

"And as a woman, I take great pride in the fact that Hillary Clinton ran for president. And I also watched with a lot of empathy as I saw how she was scrutinized, characterized, talked about as a woman," continued Fiorina.

"While I think woman have made great progress in so many ways I also known from personal experience that women in positions of power – particularly bold women – who are trying to drive change as Hillary Clinton must surely is…bold women, women in power are characterized, scrutinized differently than their male counterparts are."

That glowing praise is in line with a statement she made at another 2008 gathering, a press conference where she said Clinton had been subjected to sexism, albeit not by the Republican Party.

Fiorina said any woman in politics owes a debt of gratitude to Clinton.

"I have said numerous times, I disagree politically with Hillary, but I also have great admiration for Hillary Clinton," declared Fiorina. "Her run for the presidency was historic. She was a great candidate. She has helped millions of women all over this country. Women of any political party owe a debt of gratitude to Hillary Clinton and I will bet that every woman up here agrees with me."

A spokeswoman for the Fiorina campaign said, "none of this is really news,"

"And as I said in the Marcus column, if Carly was asked in 2008 to pick between the two democrats, she would have picked Mrs Clinton. She was a top surrogate for John McCain at the time--so none of this is really news," Fiorina's spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman likewise added that Fiorina "has often listed positive qualities of Mrs Clinton," linking to a Legal Insurrection article from April.

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“I’m the surgeon, I obtained the tissue, I turn it over to the pathologist, and then they examine it, compare it with other specimens and try to get more information of where it came from.”

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Ben Carson says his role in a 1992 study that used fetal tissues to better understand how the human brain develops is similar to that of an archaeologist who turns over a tablet he discovers for other people to investigate.

The retired John Hopkins neurosurgeon recently has questioned the value of fetal tissue research after a series of undercover videos were released claiming to show Planned Parenthood employees discussing the sale of human fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood has denied the claims.

Carson said on the Heidi Harris Show last week that claims he was doing fetal research are "absolutely absurd."

"Well first of all they claim that I'm doing fetal research, which is absolutely absurd," Carson stated on the Heidi Harris Show last week. "I'm the surgeon, I obtained the tissue, I turn it over to the pathologist, and then they examine it, compare it with other specimens and try to get more information of where it came from."

"It's sort of like if you're doing an archeological dig and you found a tablet with some strange writing on it. I'm sort of the archaeologist who found it," continued Carson. "I turn it over and say 'you guys, see if you can figure out where this came from. And they go back to all their archives, and all the things that they've had before, and they compare it and say, 'oh you know, it's sort of like it came from this are over here or Mesopotamia or something.'"

Carson said criticism of him and the study is similar to someone criticizing archaeologists for having an archive to compare their findings to.

"And are you gonna criticize them for having that archive," said Carson. "Well someone's gonna say, 'where did you get that stuff from? You must have stole it from a museum. Aha! You're a thief' Come on, give me a break. Basically, that's what we're talking about."

Carson said his study did not justify Planned Parenthoods activities and if Planned Parenthood wanted to continue in their actions they should lose taxpayer's funding. Carson added that no medical breakthroughs have occurred from fetal tissue research that "could not have been done with other types of tissue."

"You know, basically what they want do is say since some research that you were involved with somehow used fetal tissue as a comparison, that this justifies all the things that we're doing," he continued. "Which is a crazy statement. But you know, then again I question the ability of people who actually think that it's okay to take baby organs and to sell them for profit no matter what they are saying because you can tell that from listening to these videos. "

"What I kind should be done, if they want to engage in these things, as found to be legal, then they certainly are entitled to that but they shouldn't be using public funding for that purpose."

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“I don’t think the people are interested in the battle of personalities and the soap opera.”

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Ted Cruz continued defending Donald Trump last week, saying that, unlike other Republicans, he refuses to "take a stick" to the real estate tycoon.

"Every press interview, question one, two, three, and four is they want you basically to bash Donald Trump," Cruz told radio host Heidi Harris last week.

"That's their favorite thing to ask about. And sadly, a number of other Republican candidates running for president have taken that bait and have jumped in and taken a stick to Donald Trump."

"I like Donald Trump," Cruz continued, "and I'm glad that he has focused attention on illegal immigration. It's a very important issue."

Cruz said, as he often says, that he refuses to bash other Republicans.

"But when the press asks me to engage in bashing other Republicans, I ain't gonna do it," said Cruz. "I don't think the people are interested in the battle of personalities and the soap opera. What they're interested is real leadership to solve the enormous problems facing this country."

Cruz, to be sure, doesn't always follow his own rule against "Republican on Republican violence." Just last month Cruz, in a fiery speech on the Senate floor, leveled accusations of lying at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Take a listen to the audio:

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“We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx”

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Rand Paul's taste in music and movies are very much in line with his political beliefs.

"When I was growing up I was a Rush fan and I went to a Rush concert one time in Houston and was a big fan," the Kentucky senator told radio host David Webb last week. "But lately the band that I've been liking a lot is State Radio which has a cool song Calling All Crows another one called Waitress. and Indian Moon, but they've got some good songs."

Paul added that he enjoyed the Rush song 2112, because it was inspired by the writings of libertarian demigod Ayn Rand.

"The 2112 song is based on the novel Anthem by Ayn Rand and in it, you know, a guy in a future society - when music's been banned - finds a guitar and in 'Anthem' what happens - where technology's been banned a guy falls into a subway and finds electricity," stated Paul. "It's sort of a parallel kind of song, but as a kid I was, you know, a big fan."

And Rand Paul's favorite movie, not surprisingly, is Enemy of the State, the late 1990s Will Smith classic about the National Security Agency.

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State Department lawyers said Monday that 305 emails from Hillary Clinton’s emails have been referred to intelligence agencies thus far.

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WASHINGTON — As the State Department continues its review of Hillary Clinton's emails in response to several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the department announced in a court filing Monday that 305 documents have been sent to intelligence agencies for consultation.

One news report, from the Washington Times, stated that the 305 documents — culled from approximately 20% of Clinton's 55,000 emails turned over — "have been flagged for potential secret information."

At least one senator, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, tweeted out one of the stories reporting a similar assessment.

However, such referrals are common in large FOIA requests that involve documents from multiple agencies, and there is a low bar for flagging such documents for consultation.

According to Justice Department guidance, any document found in the course of a FOIA review that "originated with another agency, or another component within their agency, or which contain information that is of interest to another agency or component" is to be referred to that other agency for consultation.

The consultation only reveals that the 305 emails either originated with an intelligence agency or contain information of interest to an intelligence agency; it says nothing about whether classified information is contained in the emails.

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DES MOINES, Iowa — Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker continued his rightward shift on immigration Monday in Iowa — part of his anti-establishment pitch to conservatives as Donald Trump captures that sentiment.

Walker repeated his call for a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico on Monday similar to the one separating Israel from Palestinian territories in the West Bank, said there should be "no sanctuary cities in this country" and "I don't believe in amnesty."

"I was in Israel earlier this year, they built a 500-mile fence and they have it stacked and it's lowered terrorist attacks in that region by about 90-plus percent. We need to do the same along our border, we've obviously got a bigger border, about four times that, but we're a country that should be able to hold that," Walker said while speaking on the Des Moines Register soapbox at the Iowa State Fair.

Walker said earlier on Monday that his immigration plan is similar to Trump's. This year, Walker has tacked to the right on immigration, focusing on immigration enforcement like many Republicans, but also suggesting he'd examine the current legal immigration system, to ensure it protects American workers. Looking at legal immigration levels is a position popular with segments of both left and right, but generally a position rejected by the business wing of the Republican Party.

Speaking to reporters after his state fair speech on Monday, Walker seemed to indicate he doesn't support birthright citizenship. Walker told one reporter that he would end birthright citizenship, though he wouldn't answer when asked whether American-born children of illegal immigrants should be deported, which is a tenet of Trump's plan.

"Even Harry Reid said it's not right for a country to recognize birthright for people, for families who have not come in legally," Walker said. "But in terms of going forward I'm going to support a legal immigration system that puts a priority on the impact on American working families and their wages."

"I've talked about how going forward we should change the rules, the law, but I think in terms of deporting, the best thing we can do is enforce the law," Walker said when asked whether children born in America to immigrants who came here illegally should be deported.

"What we should do is enforce the law," Walker said when asked again. "If we enforce the law, we're not gonna have that problem going forward, a lot of people in the media here and elsewhere want to talk about several steps down the way," Walker said, saying that it was important first to secure the border and enforce immigration law.

In this summer of anti-establishment fervor, Walker seems to be re-contextualizing himself as an outsider who has bucked his party's establishment. In his speech, Walker repeatedly mentioned that not only did he beat back the unions — a pillar of his pitch to conservative voters — but that he also went against the Republican establishment. Walker, once viewed as the favorite to win Iowa, is now lagging behind as anti-establishment candidates like Trump and Ben Carson are surging in the polls here.

"I'll take on not just unions and not just the other party, I'll take on my own party establishment, which is what we did in Wisconsin," Walker told reporters.

But the people who really don't like Walker, more so than possibly any other candidate, are liberals, not people in his own party. Union protesters wearing cheese hats heckled Walker while he was speaking on the soapbox, and he was heckled consistently while making his way around the fair. "You suck, Scott Walker!" yelled a man in an Iowa State University hat. "Welcome to Iowa, the union state!"

One protester, Ciara Fox, followed Walker to his media availability and continued heckling him there, asking him why he hasn't visited the family of Dontre Hamilton, a black Milwaukee man who was fatally shot by a police officer. Fox, a certified nurse assistant, said that around 50 SEIU protesters had driven from Milwaukee to protest Walker at the fair.

LINK: Some Republicans Fear Scott Walker May Have Already Pulled A Mitt Romney With Latino Voters