He’s a little late to the party but that’s OK.

President Obama announced on Monday that he finally created a Facebook page just seven years into his presidency.

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The president had a page for his campaign called "Barack Obama" and the White House has its own page, but before Monday there had never been an ~official~ Facebook page for the POTUS.

A White House spokesman told BuzzFeed News that this account, like the @POTUS Twitter account, will belong to the next president after he or she takes office.

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Even though he's a newbie, Obama already has pretty good Facebook game. Just take a look at this nice profile picture.

A headshot always works.

Facebook

And this cool, ~pensive~ cover photo.

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“It was clearly a big deal for him at the time, and yeah I absolutely believe it’s true and there’s really no reason for him to tell a story like that, like I said, before any of this fame came to him.”

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A former colleague of Ben Carson is defending the retired neurosurgeon, whose story of an attempted stabbing has come under intense media scrutiny over the past week.

Dr. Robert Prince, who worked with Carson at John Hopkins Hospital in the late 1980s, said on WBAL's Jimmy Mathis Show over the weekend that years before Carson wrote his first book, the then-practicing pediatric neurosurgeon told him of the time that he tried to stab a fellow classmate when he was 14 years old, only to have his knife break on his friend's belt buckle.

Carson would go on to tell this story in his best-selling memoir, Gifted Hands. Last week, CNN reported that several of Carson's neighbors, friends, and classmates did not recall the incident. Carson has stood by his story, one that he says turned his life around for the better.

"Well, it was, you know, long after it happened. I think it happened when he was 14 years old, but it was also quite a bit of time before a book, before a movie, and before a would be president," Prince said. "And we were in the surgical lounge and we were talking about what led us to become physicians; it's kind of a common conversation for people to have, and at that time I thought he was a resident just like me, because he looked so young and I had come into it a little older because I had done electrical engineering in the interim, and I thought he was at my level.

"You know there is a hierarchy at Hopkins, and I probably wouldn't have been having a personal conversation had I known that he was already attending and chief of pediatric neurosurgery, but of course he took the fast track, and uh, but he was a very approachable and humble guy.

"We just had a personal conversation at about 3 in the morning waiting for a patient to come down and, he told me that story, and in fact, I had never heard the story after that because I didn't read the book, I didn't watch the movie, and in fact, just now, when you played that little tape of him telling the story, that's the first time I've actually heard it aside from him almost 30 years ago, and I saw it on CNN that they were questioning the veracity of that story. And I thought, Well wait a minute, you know, why would he tell lowly me, before he could possibly have known that he would be a famous neurosurgeon if it wasn't true?"

Prince added that he couldn't remember if Carson said it was a relative or not, but he did recall the story was essentially the same.

"What I remember is the knife hitting the belt buckle," he said. "And that it was a life-changing, sort of religious experience for him, where he could have gone one way or the other, and he chose the good way. And it was a self-deprecating story' it wasn't a story to aggrandize him. People like hearing rags-to-riches story, but I don't think they like hearing criminal-to-riches stories. This isn't a story that you tell if you're running for president for example. This is just a very important moment in his life, and I recognized that."

Prince said he believed Carson's story was true.

"It was clearly a big deal for him at the time, and yeah I absolutely believe it's true, and there's really no reason for him to tell a story like that, like I said, before any of this fame came to him," he added.

"He had nothing to gain by impressing me. It was in context of the discussion that we were having. The funny thing about this guy is that this guy tells you you've got a tumor in your head and he needs to go inside and get it out you're gonna believe him, right? So the idea that people are questioning his credibility when of course if it was your child you would say, 'Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, just, you know, go into his head, it's fine.'"

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security has abruptly reversed plans to deport a Somali man who cooperated with the FBI on counterterrorism investigations in the United States, following a more than three-month detention during which officials refused to discuss his case.

In a Nov. 3 letter, Adrian Macias, El Paso field director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security, informed Said Muse Dahir’s lawyer that the agency was no longer deporting Dahir back to Somalia.

“After consideration of all the documents submitted and review of your client’s immigration case, I have determined that your client’s release is appropriate on the basis of humanitarian reasons,” Macias wrote to Dahir’s attorney Nancy Oretskin.

While Oretskin welcomed the DHS decision, she slammed what she called a pattern of harassment of Dahir by DHS, particularly by officials at ICE’s El Paso detention center. During his more than 90 days in detention, “they didn’t do anything [on his case], they didn’t get any further documents. They held him for punitive reasons,” Oretskin said, adding that other African immigrants held in the El Paso detention center that she represents have told her “they feel they’re treated differently in detention.”

“It’s a gulag down here,” Oretskin added.

DHS spokeswomen did not respond to more than 20 requests for comment from BuzzFeed News, the last of which came just days before the decision to reverse Dahir’s deportation order. In fact, since BuzzFeed News first began reporting on Dahir’s case in September of last year, the department has largely ignored more than three dozen emails and phone requests for comment regarding the case.

The decision is a reversal of the Obama administration’s stance on Dahir’s case and is essentially a stay: The deportation order is still technically in effect for Dahir, who had his claim for asylum denied last year despite evidence that he was targeted by the terrorist organization al-Shabaab because of his work as a journalist. In theory, DHS could decide to send him back to Somalia any time it wishes, with little or no warning to either Dahir or his legal team.

In January 2012 al-Shabaab terrorists ambushed Dahir as he was leaving work in his hometown of Galkayo, a dangerous part of Somalia that has increasingly come under the sway of the organization. During the attack Dahir was shot twice, and following a series of attacks on his colleagues, he fled Somalia later that year.

The DHS reversal is the latest move in a series of decisions by federal immigration officials that Dahir’s lawyers allege show a clear pattern of harassment, and highlights the inconsistent application of asylum law by federal officials in El Paso.

Oreskin points to the very beginnings of Dahir’s case, noting that asylum judge Sunita Mahtabfar denied his claim despite evidence he was targeted — including a tweet from the al-Shabaab’s official twitter account.

“#Mujahideen intelligence in Galkayo killed #Said Muuse Daahir who was working with Radio Gaalkacyo,” the HSMPress announced at 11:22 p.m. the night night of the attack when they had thought Dahir had died. Later, after the group launched an unsuccessful attack on the hospital where he was being treated, al-Shabaab’s spokesman for the central region of Somalia would tell Radio Alfurqaan “that they were after this journalist because they blamed him for working with the enemy.”

Mahtabfar, however, agreed with Obama administration attorneys that Dahir should be deported back to Somalia.

When Dahir protested that “You are ordering me to be dead, and you will be responsible for my death,” according to Dahir, the judge simply responded: “Good luck.”

But before DHS could begin the process of deporting Dahir, he began working with FBI officials working to identify potential al-Shabbab terrorists who may have sought to enter the United States through the southern border.

During his time in the El Paso detention “a number of FBI agents repeatedly interviewed him to learn what he knew and if he knew if any of the other Somali detainees were affiliated with al-Shabbab. He cooperated 100% and gave the agents any and all information he had or knew of,” Oreskin notes in a Sept. 16 letter to Adrian Macias, field office director of Enforcement and Removal Operations for DHS in El Paso.

Although the FBI did not respond to requests for comment — and typically will not respond to questions regarding sources in terrorism related cases in order to protect people cooperating — administration sources familiar with the case said it was Dahir’s cooperation with the investigations that resulted in him being given a one year Deferred Action Order on Aug. 11, 2014, which delayed his deportation.

For tens of thousands of migrants from places like Somalia who have had their asylum claims denied, a deferred action order essentially means open-ended permission to stay in the United States. Even migrants who come from relatively stable areas like Latin America, can stay in the United States for years and even decades under Deferred Action Orders, so long as they abide by strict check in rules, have their orders renewed annually, and stay out of legal trouble.

Following his release in August of 2014, Dahir moved to Falls Church, Virginia, and began working. He regularly checked in with his caseworker.

But on July 28 of this year — 13 days before his deferred action order had even ended — ICE agents took Dahir back into custody and shipped him to El Paso, where he would be deported to Somalia from. According to Oretskin, it appears the decision to pick up Dahir was made by El Paso ICE officials and not local agents in Falls Church.

In a 2014 interview with BuzzFeed News, Dahir said that during his time in ICE’s El Paso detention center immigration officials questioned his credibility because he was a Muslim from Somalia. And, according to members of his legal team, when he was returned to the detention center in July, Dahir’s concerns about his safety if he was deported were summarily dismissed and he was told that even if he was not a member of al-Shabbab, Galkayo is a safe city with a stable government.

The situation on the ground in Galkayo is anything but safe: Somalia’s federal government essentially does not exist and even government officials are not safe in the city. International nonprofit organizations and media outlets also view the city as extremely dangerous, and personnel are allowed to travel there only under extremely controlled circumstances and with significant security.

Because DHS spokeswomen have not returned requests for comment, it’s unclear how the Department makes determinations on the relative safety of a region when making deportation decisions — a key factor in deciding to move forward with a removal.

However, other administration officials generally familiar with the situation in Somalia said there are essentially no safe places or functioning governmental bodies in the country and questioned the DHS decision-making process.

Oretskin also pointed out that while dozens of Somalis and other African asylum seekers have come through the El Paso detention center as part of a new wave of refugees coming to the U.S. through Mexico, the vast majority of Africans — and particularly Somalis — have their claims dismissed out of hand by immigration judges.

Dahir’s case is the third instance in which DHS or immigration judges in El Paso have decided against deporting an African immigrant after the cases gained public attention. In 2014, judges in El Paso granted asylum to a Somali English teacher and a gay man from Ghana within weeks of their cases gaining national attention in the media — a pattern that Oretskin said is extremely troubling. “The day after I told [DHS officials] that I was talking to a reporter … the very next day, we received the letter. It just doesn’t seem right me,” Oretskin told BuzzFeed News.

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A former staff member of the Yale Record says that he recalls many of the details of a prank that Dr. Ben Carson wrote about in an autobiography.

The incident has been the subject of media coverage in recent days, after the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that it found no evidence to support Carson’s claim that he was a victim of a hoax that led him to take a fake psychology test, as he wrote in his 1990 autobiography, Gifted Hands.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News on Monday, Curtis Bakal, an editorial assistant at the satirical Yale Record who says he helped write the fake test, said he was “99% certain the way Carson remembers it is correct.”

“When I read about the story in the Wall Street Journal, I immediately said, to my wife and friend, ‘That was the prank we played at the Record! And Ben Carson was in the class,’” said Bakal, who noted he wasn’t actually present during the taking of the fake test. “We did a mock parody of the Yale Daily News during the exam period in January 1970, and in this parody we had a box that said: ‘So-and-so section of the exam has been lost in a fire. Professor so-and-so is going to give a makeup exam.’”

“We got a room to do the test in and one of us from the Record impersonated a proctor to give the test,” he said.

Over the weekend, Carson produced a link to a Yale Daily News account of the hoax. The Yale Daily News article describes an edition of the Record that was a total parody of the Yale Daily News, complete with fake articles meant to sound serious. In one article, the Record informed students that their exams had been destroyed and they needed to redo them.

Copies of the 1970 edition of the Record are not available at Yale’s library, an official told BuzzFeed News. (The school’s archives end in 1969 and don’t pick up again until the late 1970s.)

BuzzFeed News spoke to more than a dozen people listed on the Record masthead in 1969 — the year prior to the alleged hoax. No one besides Bakal could remember the incident, but a number had not been involved with the Record during that school year, or were only loosely involved. Some also noted that the prank did not sound out of the ordinary for the Record.

Lew Schwartz, the author of the Yale Daily News article mentioning the prank, told BuzzFeed News on Monday that he had not personally witnessed the exam and had reported it because “I guess we had heard that some folks had showed up.”

“To my knowledge we didn’t send anyone over to cover the story,” he added, noting that the Daily News had partly written the story to clarify that the issue of the Record posing as the Daily News was not, in fact, the Daily News.

Meanwhile, Carson suggested on Sunday that the Journal owed him an apology and, reached by BuzzFeed News on Monday, he was again critical of the paper.

“Their research teams are not very good,” Carson said over the phone. “I would have thought they would have crackerjack research teams. It really says something horrendous about their investigative abilities.”

In Gifted Hands, Carson writes that after reading that the examination papers for his psychology class, which he calls "Perceptions 301," had “inadvertently burned,” he went to take a makeup exam along with about 150 of his peers. The tests, the story goes, were much harder than anything they’d studied, “so intricate that I figured a brilliant psychiatrist might have trouble with them.” Carson says that all the students walked out of the test, some saying they planned to tell their teacher they hadn’t seen the notice about the makeup exam. By the end, only he remained, at which point, he says, a Yale Daily News photographer showed up to snap a photo and the professor of the class told him it was a hoax. According to Carson, who casts the incident as an inspirational tale (rather than a college prank), the professor then awarded him $10 for being “the most honest student in the class.”

Carson writes that the incident occurred during his junior year, during a time when he was badly in need of money.

A Yale librarian told the Wall Street Journal that no courses called “Perceptions 301” were taught at Yale during Carson’s time there. At the time, the Yale Daily News noted that the psychology class was called Psychology 10 and that the prank occurred during Carson’s freshman year. BuzzFeed News confirmed on Monday that there was a course called Psychology 10 taught during that semester of Carson’s Yale career.

Bakal, the Record editorial assistant at the time, remembered other details about the prank that are compatible with Carson’s account, such as the unusual difficulty of the test. “Several students showed up, and the fake exam, a parody of exam — in fact, it had real psych questions, because I had taken the class the year before, but it was a more difficult and probing personal exam,” he said.

Because he did not witness the fake test, however, he could not confirm that Carson — or only one student — was there at the end of class. But Bakal also backed up Carson’s claim that “at the end what few students remained — it may have just been one or two, I wasn’t there — received a small cash prize.” Bakal noted a staffer from the Record “impersonated a proctor to give the test.” (Carson said a professor had given him the cash prize in his written account.)

Speaking on Sunday, Carson appeared to ascribe some of the discrepancies to his co-author and the passage of time.

“You know, when you write a book with a co-writer and you say that there was a class, a lot of time they’ll put a number or something just to give it more meat,” he said. “You know, obviously, decades later, I’m not going to remember the course number.”

Ilan Ben-Meir contributed to this report.

David Becker / Reuters

WASHINGTON — A top aide to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign cried foul Monday after the League of Conservation Voters endorsed Hillary Clinton, despite her much lower score on the group's lifetime legislative scorecard.

The endorsement is a big one for Clinton, and comes as Sanders is trying to draw lines between his environmental views and hers — Sanders has put himself out front on the so-called Keep It In The Ground movement, the next great cause for an environmental left still sipping champagne over their Keystone XL victory.

Sanders has a 95% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. Clinton, who was in the Senate from 2001 to 2009, racked up an 82% lifetime score.

The Sanders campaign questioned the endorsement of Clinton, given the competing scores.

"He has a 95% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters," Sanders' top communications aide, Michael Briggs, told reporters in a statement. "The league agreed with former Sen. Clinton only 82% of the time, so its endorsement is based on something other than the merits."

An LCV spokesperson defended the endorsement when asked about the scores by BuzzFeed News. Votes missed by Clinton during her time running for president in 2008 count as "no" in the LCV system, and the system only counts congressional votes.

"LCV scores are an important tool but not the only one we use to determine an endorsement," the group's vice president for communications, David Willett, wrote in a series of emails. "The scores are for votes taken in Congress. So it only would be a record of Congress, and does not capture Clinton's environmental record as Secretary of State or as a candidate."

Willett praised Clinton's time as secretary of state as well as her "skills and experience."

He also suggested electability may have been a factor in choosing Clinton over the Sanders.

"We are enthusiastically endorsing her because she's a proven leader," he said, "and we are confident she is the best candidate to both beat her eventual climate denier opponent in the general and then hit the ground running on day one as president."

Seth Perlman / AP

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested Monday his supporters should boycott Starbucks, accusing the company of taking Christmas out of their holiday-themed cups.

While Starbucks has featured snowflakes, reindeer, and other seasonal symbols on its cups during the holiday season, this year's red cup features a minimal design. Some Christians took the design as a sign of a so-called war on Christmas and political correctness.

"No more 'Merry Christmas' on Starbucks. No more," Trump said at an event in Springfield, Illinois on Monday. "I wouldn't buy."

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Trump said that while the coffee giant is among his tenants at Trump Tower in Manhattan, he wouldn't care if supporters took their money elsewhere.

"Maybe we should boycott Starbucks," Trump said.

Representatives for Trump did not immediately return BuzzFeed News requests for comment.

The Republican candidate added that he is a Christian and would like to see more mentions of the holiday in businesses.

"I guarantee if I become president, we're going to be saying 'Merry Christmas' in every store," he said. "The happy holiday, you can leave that over in the corner."

In response to an inquiry by BuzzFeed News, Starbucks pointed out that the company continues to sell its Christmas blend of coffee.

LINK: 15 Christians Who Don’t Care At All About A Starbucks Cup

LINK: Some Christians Are Super Offended By The New Starbucks Red Cup Design

The president is on the cover of Out magazine, which named him “Ally of the Year.”

"This is the first time a sitting president has been photographed for the cover of an LGBT title," Out's editor-in-chief, Aaron Hicklin, wrote, "a historic moment in itself, and a statement on how much his administration has done to advance a singularly volatile issue that tarnished the reputations of both President Clinton and President Bush."

"A president who came to office on a wave of euphoria, appeared to lose momentum halfway through, and has since rallied, helping us secure marriage equality, among other landmark initiatives that are transforming our place in America," he said.

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WASHINGTON — Missouri GOP Sen. Roy Blunt has served in Washington for about 18 years — a time period he once touted to highlight his experience. But facing a young Democratic challenger, that number has also become his biggest liability, as voters grow increasingly wary of career politicians.

Blunt’s Senate seat — considered safe for Republicans for months — is now drawing concern from within his own party, as the race becomes contingent in part on the strength of the anti-Washington, anti-politician sentiment spreading across the country. Although Republicans still believe the seat in the red-state will be extremely tough for Democrats to win, they are well aware that Blunt fits the profile of the type of Washington politician whom voters are turning on.

Republicans are already spending early money on positive TV ads in an effort to help Blunt's image. One Nation, a politically active nonprofit affiliated with GOP strategist Karl Rove, has spent $800,000 on ads that show Blunt’s efforts to support military families.

And sources close to other major GOP groups told BuzzFeed News they are now also watching the race because the same grassroots frustration that has led to the rise of real estate mogul Donald Trump and neurosurgeon Ben Carson in the GOP presidential primary — and many attributed that kind of sentiment in spurring an unexpected landslide victory for Matt Bevin in Kentucky — could sink the longtime lawmaker next year if Democrats make a serious play for the seat.

Blunt’s campaign cautioned against looking too much into the early ads. “Sen. Blunt has a long record of very hard work on behalf of our nation's heroes,” said Burson Snyder, spokesman for Blunt’s campaign, in a statement, adding that Blunt has has traveled to all 114 Missouri counties and the City of St. Louis three times since 2009.

“So it's not surprising that conservative groups are taking a real interest in highlighting Sen. Blunt's track record on this and other issues, as they work hard early to maintain and grow the majority in the U.S. Senate,” Snyder said.

As of now, Democrats don’t have plans to make the seat a priority by any means, but they view it more as a “moneyball race” — a more calculated, smaller investment that could turn out to have a big return.

They believe Jason Kander, the 34-year-old Afghanistan veteran who currently serves as Missouri’s secretary of state, is the ideal recruit to create an effective contrast with Blunt in an election cycle where Republicans face a tough road ahead in defending their majority in the Senate.

On the campaign trail and in interviews, Kander has made his efforts to reform ethics laws in Missouri a central part of his messaging. His campaign also routinely points out that Blunt's wife is a D.C. lobbyist and that his two children have also lobbied.

"Washington is broken right now, and Missouri deserves a senator who looks out for middle-class families and not special interests,” Kander said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. "I think Washington could use someone who hasn’t spent their career in Congress. We can’t change Congress by sending the same people there.”

Before being elected to the Senate, Blunt served seven terms in the House, where he was both majority and minority whip and later interim majority leader.

On capitalizing on the political outsider movement, Kander said: “I think it’s pretty clear that Missouri is not the only place where people feel a change is needed."

Racial tensions in Missouri — with the protests in Ferguson earlier this year and now at the University of Missouri — have also brought national attention to the state. Kander said he’s been talking to voters about race relations and criminal justice issues like determining the best use of body cameras. It's difficult to predict how those issues will play in a statewide election next year, but with the University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe announcing his resignation Monday amid the student protests, Kander said in the interview that the university provided the starting point for “an important dialogue that’s long overdue.”

Although Kander — whose campaign committee has about $1.5 million on hand — has exceeded expectations when it comes to fundraising, his chances of defeating Blunt also depend on an investment from national Democrats, who are expected to focus on battleground states including Illinois, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Florida. The party needs to pick up five seats to win back the majority in the Senate.

But Missouri Democrats are hoping that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and outside groups like Senate Majority PAC will put money into the state, which they argue, would be a much cheaper investment than many other battleground Senate races. Unlike Missouri, other key Senate races are in states that will also see heavy presidential ad spending, making it more expensive to buy air time.

Senate Majority PAC hasn’t spent on behalf of Kander yet. But the group did circulate a memo pushing back on the pro-Blunt ad aired by One Nation — an indication that big-money Democratic groups are interested in Kander, who has also caught the attention of reform groups because of his focus on ethics and campaign finance reform.

Adam Smith, spokesman for the one of those groups, Every Voice Action, said no decisions have been made yet. But he added that "Kander is absolutely right to make the ethics and campaign finance reform a central part of his campaign. It’s an effective message that can appeal to voters fed up with what they see as a broken system that too often caters to the wealthy and well-connected.”

Democratic opposition research group American Bridge is also keeping an eye on the race and has a tracker on the ground in Missouri.

But in the meantime, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has been using Kander’s anti-lobbying rhetoric against him, calling him a “serial panderer,” following reports that the Democrat attended a fundraiser hosted by a lobbying firm.

And Republicans maintain that Kander will struggle next year, because with little help from national Democrats, he could only win if 2016 ends up being a wave year for Democrats.

“It’s hard to see — Todd Akin aside — Democrats winning a Senate seat in Missouri,” said Brian Walsh, who worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2010 when Blunt first ran for Senate. “The DSCC is just putting players in the field in case it turns out to be a wave election.”

Mixed Martial Arts champion Ronda Rousey is voting for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for president, she told Maxim Tuesday.

Ricardo Moraes / Reuters

The undefeated UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion said in an interview with Maxim that she is voting for Sanders "because he doesn’t take any corporate money."

"I don’t think politicians should be allowed to take money for their campaigns from outside interests,” Rousey said.

Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, is running against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

"If he doesn’t win against Hillary, then I’ll probably vote for a third party again,” Rousey said. "To be honest, in 2012 I was against both candidates and so I just picked any third party because I thought if more people voted for third parties then they’d have to take third parties seriously.”

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WASHINGTON — The massive grassroots support enjoyed by Dr. Ben Carson has translated into dollar signs for groups operating in the obscure corners of the conservative fundraising world.

But one of these groups, Black America’s Political Action Committee (BAMPAC), stands out from the rest. That’s because it’s run by Alvin Williams, the brother of one of the people closest to Carson: his business manager Armstrong Williams.

BAMPAC was founded in the 1990s by former Republican presidential candidate and diplomat Alan Keyes, and over the years has endorsed other candidates as well. This election cycle, it is encouraging potential donors to help “Push Dr. Ben Carson to victory in the Republican Presidential Primary.” But a glance through the PAC’s Federal Election Commission reports shows that the group hasn’t spent money this year supporting Carson, but instead in paying Alvin Williams a salary and on fundraising.

Williams was paid $4,700 a month this year up until June, FEC records show. In the 2014 cycle, Williams made $95,700, according to records.

“I don’t know anything about the PAC,” said Armstrong Williams when reached by BuzzFeed News. His brother is “very private about it,” he said, and they don’t discuss work matters.

Armstrong Williams said neither he nor Carson was aware that Carson’s name was being used in a fundraising appeal for BAMPAC. “We don’t know when his name is invoked” in fundraising appeals, he said. “We don’t even know. That’s not something that they would even tell us about, but that’s not something we would even be involved in.”

“I find this funny because this is the first time somebody’s asked me about my brother,” Armstrong Williams said.

BAMPAC / Via bampac.nationbuilder.com

BAMPAC appears to have been most active in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 cycles, and has significantly scaled down its operations in recent years. But the PAC is still accepting donations and the blog on its website was updated as recently as Oct. 26.

A review of federal election records shows that BAMPAC has poured a significant portion of the money it raises back into fundraising costs like renting email lists and direct mail operations. Though the PAC typically spends nearly everything it takes in, it has historically spent much less on expenditures to and in support of candidates than on overhead and fundraising costs.

Take the 2014 midterm election cycle: BAMPAC spent $16,250 on federal candidate contributions, $9,750 on state and local candidate contributions, and $1,400 on independent expenditures — a relatively small slice of the total $349,118 spent that cycle, and much less than the $95,700 Williams took in salary.

As Alvin Williams pointed out, BAMPAC has in the past paid for independent expenditures on behalf of candidates like Allen West and Mia Love. In 2012, records show BAMPAC spent $84,625 on radio ads, for example, as well as spending $77,250 on candidate committees. Still, that’s not much out of the $1,047,230 overall the PAC spent in disbursements during that cycle.

And so far in the 2016 cycle, the PAC has made only two contributions to candidates: $500 to West Virginia congressman Rep. Alex Mooney and $500 to Maryland governor Larry Hogan. Although the PAC’s reported raising $74,458 so far this cycle, it’s already spent $72,993, per FEC records.

Reached by email, Williams acknowledged that BAMPAC has spent most of its money on fundraising. “Fundraising expenses and existing direct mail debt are the two biggest reasons, particularly particular the renting of email/direct mail lists,” he said. “In 2012 for instance, we launched an online program and started totally from scratch in building a house file which continues because email addresses change so frequently. Moreover, we had approximately $250,000 in direct mail debt which we covered during this time period. Recently, we decided to resume our direct mail program which also means it will cost more to mail but hopefully we’ll more than break even and share the netted proceeds with the candidates we are targeting. “

Williams said the PAC’s activities were slow in an off election year and that it is gearing up for 2016.

“In 2015, as in other off-election years throughout our history, we are focusing our efforts on researching potential candidates who support BAMPAC’s mission on the federal, state and local levels, who we will consider supporting next year,” Williams said in an email. “We do continue our fundraising cycle to generate funds to support these efforts. Our fundraising has been anemic this year which is typical in off election years.”

“Even with reduced fundraising results, we have and will continue to support elected officials and candidates this year who share our approach to key issues as we have done since our inception in 1994,” Williams said. He cited South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Love as examples of candidates the group has supported.

According to a former employee who spoke on condition of anonymity, the PAC had never been more than Alvin Williams and one or two other employees. The former employee described being given large amounts of money — $1,000 or more — for routine tasks taking under an hour of work.

This isn’t the first time the PAC’s spending habits have come under scrutiny; BAMPAC figured prominently in a Center for Public Integrity story on “political inaction committees” in 2010. Williams told the Center that he had stopped taking a salary in 2009, but records show he has continued taking a salary through June 2015.

Now that the Carson candidacy is taking off, Williams says he sees an unusually high level of interest that will spur the PAC to action, though the PAC hasn’t spent anything in support of Carson thus far.

“In regards to your question referencing support of the Ben Carson Presidential Campaign, BAMPAC’s approach historically has been to defer providing support or making endorsements of Presidential candidates until the General Election (if at all),” Williams said in an email. “In the case of Dr. Carson, we have seen an unprecedented level of interest and excitement among our donor base for his candidacy and as such we have decided to act on their behalf.”

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Clinton was taking voter questions at an event in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

More like not happy Gilmore.

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Though Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore barely registers in the polls at all, he will be on the ballot in at least two primary states, South Carolina and New Hampshire. In an early state radio interview on Monday he lashed out the media and RNC for keeping him out of the debates.

"They just did the wrong thing, two different motives here, but they've got a devil's conspiracy between them," Gilmore told Girard at Large radio show. "The motive of the RNC was to try to winnow the field for the public and say, 'No, these people should have a chance and these people shouldn't.' But the whole process got out of their control and now everything they were trying to do is backfiring on them."

"As for the national press, they're trying to sell commercials. They want the best show that they can get," he added. "They're not really fulfilling their duty to the people of the United States. Their public duty that justifies their having an airwaves license. They're not doing that. They're playing games themselves with the system, and that's not right."

Gilmore said, however, retail politics in New Hampshire were a "corrective" and "remedy" for the national debate. Still, Gilmore said many people don't even know he's running.

"I have people in New Hampshire say, 'Well, gee, I didn't know you were running,' well that's right because Morning Joe isn't Morning Joe, it's Morning Trump," he said. "That's right, so this is an opportunity to get in here and become known, speak to the people of this state, offer my candidacy as to what I want to do for the people."

"I'm not some weirdo that's out here just kinda running crazy, I'm the former governor of the state of Virginia," he continued. "I'm the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. I am world traveled, I not only have the credentials of being the chief executive of a state but I have deep foreign policy credentials. I am a United States army veteran. I was the governor during the 9/11 attack when the pentagon was struck. I have the credentials to deal with foreign policy issues that the other former governors simply don't have. So I have a right to come out here to tell the people of New Hampshire they ought to be supporting me and to campaign for it."

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At a Trump rally on Monday, a woman in the crowd cracked open a copy of what appears to be Claudia Rankine's Citizen, a book of poetry about race and racism in America.

She waited until about 12 minutes into his speech...

...texted for a bit...

...had a short conversation...

...and cracked open the book...

...to really read it up close.

“Well, you’ve gotta — you’d have to change the Constitution to deal with the super PACs, which, you know, is now protected.”

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Asked whether he thought there's too much big money in politics, and if so, what he'd do about it, Jeb Bush said it would take changes to the Constitution to "deal with super PACs."

"Well, you've gotta — you'd have to change the Constitution to deal with the super PACs, which, you know, is now protected," Bush said during a Nov. 4 stop in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. "You gotta change the Constitution — it's gonna take a long time to do it."

"I think we ought to have total transparency, and money ought to go directly to campaigns," he continued. "It ought to be put on the internet within 48 hours, when you get a contribution."

"That would be my idea," Bush concluded. "But that's not going to happen until we change the Constitution."

Tim Miller, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, told BuzzFeed News that Bush's remarks were less a call to amend the Constitution than an acknowledgement of the difficulty of making changes to campaign finance law without amending the Constitution first.

"I think you are misreading 'You've gotta' as 'I support a constitutional amendment' when he's saying 'you've gotta' as a statement of reality that this can't be changed without a constitutional amendment," Miller explained.

"So that is his position, he would support that, but he recognizes that would take a constitutional amendment, which is unlikely," he continued. "He's laying out his ideal system and acknowledging the challenges given recent court rulings."

Here's the video:

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South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham says he believes Ben Carson is telling the truth about his violent past and a scholarship offer he received to West Point.

When asked by host Hillary Chabot on the radio show Morning Meeting whether he thinks the media’s coverage of Carson has been unfair, Graham, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, said, “Yes. I think what happened with the West Point thing — I can see some recruiter saying, 'Hey, come to West Point, we’ll give you a full scholarship.' That makes perfect sense to me. This is a technical dispute, a semantic dispute.”

Graham continued, saying, “As to what he did in his past in terms of violence, I don’t think he would lie about it.”

Aspects of Carson's personal biography have come under scrutiny from several media outlets who have questioned his claims that he was violent as a child and that he was offered a scholarship to West Point.

“I think Dr. Carson has been vindicated on the West Point thing," Graham said. "I don’t believe that he’s lied about getting a scholarship offer to West Point. Why would he? He went to Yale!”

“About whether or not he he hit a guy with a lock, ya know, hit his mother, stabbed his cousin — I don’t know," Graham continued. "I believe that he is telling the truth. Why would you lie about that? That’s what I don’t get over.”

When Chabot pushed back, suggesting that all candidates face media scrutiny, Graham disagreed.

“I believe that eventually people are gonna understand that the media is trying to nitpick him to death, rather than challenge him as a candidate,” he said.

Graham clarified though, that he still doesn’t want Carson to win the Republican primaries, saying, “I don’t think he’s qualified to be president. I’m not arguing that Ben Carson should be president of the United States. I think his medicare plan is unfound, I think his foreign policy is ill conceived. I like him as a person.”

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Rick Santorum respects the Democrats because, why?

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THEY FIGHT.

ROUND ONE

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ROUND TWO

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ROUND THREE

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Morry Gash / AP

When it came to immigration, the fourth Republican presidential debate was more like a WWE wrestling match.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich took on Donald Trump during the debate on the Fox Business Network for his comments that millions of undocumented immigrants should be deported. Then former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush double-teamed Donald Trump, and eventually Sen. Ted Cruz jumped in to even up the sides.

But Marco Rubio? He never got tagged in at all.

In what has now become the norm in Republican debates, the candidates lined up on their respective sides in the immigration conversation. Trump began by saying he was "so happy" when he saw a Monday court decision against lifting the injunction on Obama's executive orders on immigration that would shield close to 5 million people from deportation.

"We have no choice if we’re going to run our country properly," Trump said when asked if the government can just send millions of people back to Mexico.

An exasperated Kasich invoked Ronald Reagan's 1986 amnesty that allowed 3 million people to remain in the country. Kasich said the problem was the border wasn't secured in turn, but he also questioned the morality of deporting millions.

"If people think we are going to ship 11 million people who are law abiding, who are in this country, and somehow pick them up at their house, and ship them out to Mexico, think about the families, think about the children," Kasich said.

Trump defended the action as something Dwight Eisenhower did when he had the military deport 1.3 million Mexican nationals during the controversial "Operation Wetback." After sniping back and forth with Kasich, Trump earned one of the few boos of the night when he said that as a successful businessman, "I don’t have to hear from him."

Deporting 500,000 immigrants a month is just not possible, Bush argued.

"It's not embracing American values," he said. And, hinting at an area where Bush hopes to be strongest among the Republican candidates if he were to make it to the general election, the former Florida governor referenced the growing Latino vote and the question of tone in discussing immigration.

"And even having this conversation sends a powerful signal," he said. "They're doing high-fives in the Clinton campaign right now when they hear this. That's the problem with this."

Rubio — who was part of the group of senators, known as the Gang of Eight, who helped craft bipartisan immigration legislation in 2013 before backing away from a comprehensive approach — was chosen to speak next by the moderators, but instead was asked about the economy.

During the first debate on Fox News Channel where the candidates fought to be toughest on immigration, Rubio said a fence was needed on the border as well as e-verify and an entry-exit tracking system to prevent illegal immigration.

But instead of being asked about how his positions on immigration have shifted, Rubio was able to speak about one of the few slam dunks on the hot-button issue: frustration with the slowness of the legal immigration system.

"And let me tell you who never gets talked about in these debates," Rubio said during the first debate. "The people that call my office, who have been waiting for 15 years to come to the United States. And they've paid their fees, and they hired a lawyer, and they can't get in. And they're wondering, maybe they should come illegally."

On Tuesday night, while Rubio didn't have to say a word on immigration, Cruz picked up the slack.

Seizing on Bush's comments that Clinton's campaign was celebrating, Cruz said Republicans need to hold their ground. "If Republicans join Democrats as the party of amnesty, they lose," he said.

Framing immigration as an economic issue that depresses wages, the Texas senator joked that if lawyers were coming over the border or people with journalism degrees then Democrats and the media would call it an "economic calamity."

"It is not compassionate to say we're not going to enforce the laws and we're going to drive down the wages for millions of hardworking men and women," Cruz concluded.

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Donald Trump said during the debate that he got to know Vladimir Putin when they were "stablemates" on 60 Minutes.

"I got to know him very well, because we were both on 60 minutes, we were stablemates and we did very well that night. You know that,” he said.

This struck some as a little strange.

Trump and Putin appeared in separate, taped pieces for 60 Minutes in an episode that aired on Sept. 27. Putin was interviewed in Russia, Trump was interviewed in New York.

60 Minutes is a taped broadcast, and it is unlikely Trump and Putin would have shared a green room.

As Trump said, the episode did bring in big ratings.

Brooch game was strong.

At Tuesday night's Republican debate, candidates tried to score points over the national debt and tax policy.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

But the only clear winner was Maria Bartiromo's brooch.

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Ben Carson gave the following answer during Tuesday night's debate to a question about whether he supports President Obama's decision to send 50 special operations forces into Syria and leave 10,000 troops in Afghanistan:

Well, putting the special ops people in there is better than not having them there, because they -- that's why they're called special ops, they're actually able to guide some of the other things that we're doing there.

And what we have to recognize is that Putin is trying to really spread his influence throughout the Middle East. This is going to be his base. And we have to oppose him there in an effective way.

We also must recognize that it's a very complex place. You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians, and you have all kinds of factions there.

What we've been doing so far is very ineffective, but we can't give up ground right there. But we have to look at this on a much more global scale.

We're talking about global jihadists. And their desire is to destroy us and to destroy our way of life. So we have to be saying, how do we make them look like losers? Because that's the way that they're able to gather a lot of influence.

And I think in order to make them look like losers, we have to destroy their caliphate. And you look for the easiest place to do that? It would be in Iraq.

And if — outside of Anbar in Iraq, there's a big energy field. Take that from them. Take all of that land from them. We could do that, I believe, fairly easily, I've learned from talking to several generals, and then you move on from there.

But you have to continue to face them, because our goal is not to contain them, but to destroy them before they destroy us.

This was an otherwise strong debate for Carson, who handled questions about his past easily, avoided attacks from his rivals despite his frontrunner status, and delivered a strong closing statement. But this answer left a lot of people scratching their heads:

Carson disjointedly meandered from topic to topic, not showing a firm grasp of the issues at hand and not giving a clear sense of what his own plans would be (and he didn't address Afghanistan at all). Though he seemed to agree with Obama's decision to place special ops into northern Syria to advise and assist rebels in fighting ISIS, he didn't explain exactly why. He basically stated that the Chinese are involved in the Syrian conflict (they're not — there have been some unconfirmed reports that China plans to send a warship to Syria that the Chinese government has denied). Segueing to ISIS (though he didn't refer to them by name), Carson advocated for a policy of "making them look like losers" and striking at the heart of the caliphate by taking their land, which he believes could be done "fairly easily," despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Carson isn't the only candidate to not be well-versed in foreign policy, and as a former neurosurgeon, he has no experience in the topic. But it's unclear to what extent his campaign is focusing on getting him up to speed on these issues; he has one known foreign policy adviser, retired Army officer Robert Dees, but it's hard to say how often, how much, and what kind of advice Dees is giving Carson.

Carson's campaign manager didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.