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MILWAUKEE — Search the transcript of Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate and you'll be hard-pressed to find Ted Cruz uttering a single unkind word about his "good friend" and primary opponent Marco Rubio.

But read between the lines, and you'll find that Cruz foreshadowed some of the attacks his campaign plans to unleash against Rubio this winter.

Without calling out his Senate colleague by name, Cruz twice took subtle digs at Rubio during the Fox Business Network debate. At one point, he warned against Republicans who would turn the GOP into "the party of amnesty" — without specifically mentioning that Rubio had championed a bill that would have provided undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

At another point, while railing against "corporate welfare," Cruz singled out subsidies for the sugar industry — a policy Rubio has consistently, and controversially, supported despite objections by free-market critics.

"Sugar farmers farm under roughly 0.2% of the farmland in America, and yet they give 40% of the lobbying money," Cruz said in the debate. "That sort of corporate welfare is why we're bankrupting our kids, and grandkids."

Rubio, whose home state of Florida contains hundreds of thousands of acres of sugarcane fields, remained silent.

The two candidates are slowly but steadily rising in the 2016 polls, and in recent weeks it has become fashionable for pundits to predict that the nominating contest will ultimately come down Rubio as the establishment standard-bearer and Cruz as the right-wing crusader.

Though Rubio's team remains fixated on keeping expectations low and retaining their underdog status ("We're not the frontrunner," Rubio campaign manager Terry Sullivan repeatedly insisted to a scrum of reporters Tuesday), Cruz's aides are less coy.

"What did we learn tonight? The two frontrunners on substance weren't as strong as some of the other people below them," said Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler in the post-debate spin room. He argued that Donald Trump and Ben Carson — who are currently in a dead heat for first place — were exposed for their lack of policy know-how when they receded into the background of Tuesday's wonkish debate, and he implied that ultimately they would fade in the polls.

Who might replace them? "Cruz turned in a very solid, substantive debate," said Tyler. "You could argue that Rubio did as well. So then [the question] is, What is the substance of those two policies?"

Tyler said Cruz has focused so far this year on introducing himself to voters and articulating his positions on issues. "But now we've been through four debates and so we're moving into a new phase ... 'Hey, I'm for this and they're for that.' In the end, all campaigns are about contrast. So you draw the contrast and let people decide."

In politico-speak, "contrast" is generally used as a nice-sounding word to justify deploying negative ads and attack lines against an opponent — and Tyler made clear he wasn't working from a different definition.

"Our record on amnesty is clear and consistent and [Rubio's] is not as clear and consistent," Tyler said. "He was for the Gang of Eight bill, then he said he wasn't. Then he said he was for a step-by-step approach." He continued to list the litany of alleged flip-flops before concluding of Rubio, "He essentially has the same position as the president."

Tyler stressed that the Cruz campaign would keep their "contrasts" strictly focused on policy issues, not mudslinging.

But when BuzzFeed News asked him what he thought of this week's New York Times report that a pro-Jeb Bush super PAC was threatening to unload $20 million of attack ads on Rubio designed to "damage [his] reputation," Tyler grinned.

"I don't think it's enough," he said. "It should be 40 or 60 [million]. I would double or triple it instantly. Why be cheap?"

Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton after announcing he had received the wrong execution drugs.

Sue Ogrocki / ASSOCIATED PRESS

The head of Oklahoma's Department of Corrections has overseen three scheduled executions during his brief time in Oklahoma. Each time, there was a major screw-up.

In Robert Patton’s first execution as director, just two months after he started on the job, inmate Clayton Lockett sat up on the gurney after he was declared unconscious and told his executioners, “Shit’s fucking with me.”

Patton called off the execution after realizing it was going awry. Lockett died 45 minutes after his execution began.

In Patton’s second execution as director, which took place this January, Charles Warner’s last words included, “My body is on fire.”

In what was supposed to have been Patton’s third execution in the state, officials called of the scheduled execution of Richard Glossip in late September after the doctor discovered the state had obtained the wrong execution drugs. Oklahoma’s protocol calls for potassium chloride, but the state received potassium acetate. State officials “briefly considered” using the wrong drug, but eventually decided to call off the execution.

A few weeks later, it was revealed that Oklahoma had already used the same wrong drug earlier that year, in the Warner execution. Now, a grand jury is investigating what’s been going wrong. Warden Anita Trammell, who oversaw the prison where the executions took place, has already resigned. The Department of Corrections insists that she had considered retiring for some time and was not forced out.

And yet, in the state’s investigation into the botched Lockett execution Patton disclaimed responsibility, even though he had been on site, watching the execution as it went wrong.

"Understand the current Oklahoma protocol does not require anything from the director,” he told investigators, “and I'm not trying to deflect any responsibility, but that's just the way the protocol is written at, at this current time."

The Glossip execution would have been the 20th execution in which Patton participated — and there have been similar problems before. A BuzzFeed News examination of Patton’s prior job as the the corrections division director in Arizona shows that the errors of the past two years were also errors made, and criticized, during his time in Arizona.

On April 29, 2014, Oklahoma executioners had trouble finding a vein to carry out Lockett’s execution, eventually settling on a femoral vein. They cut Lockett’s scrubs and underwear to gain access and decided on placing a sheet over his body to, as Patton said, “protect his dignity.”

The Department of Public Safety found that the inability of the executioners to see the IV was a factor in the botched execution, a decision that kept officials from seeing what was going wrong until it was too late.

During the execution, Lockett began to move. When a doctor looked under the sheet, he discovered clear liquid and blood. Lockett had swelling between the size of a golf ball and tennis ball where the IV was inserted. Both the doctor and the warden, who decided to cover Lockett, agreed that the swelling would have been noticed sooner if they had been able to see the IV.

Three years earlier, Patton was involved in several Arizona executions where similar mistakes occurred, even though the protocol in that state specifically required the IV be uncovered during the execution. The incident was detailed in a 2011 deposition of Patton obtained by BuzzFeed News.

As in 2014, Patton gave the same response in Arizona years earlier, testifying that the sheet had been placed over the inmate’s groin “to protect his dignity.”

During the 2014 investigation into the Lockett execution, Patton admitted he was concerned that no one could see the IV and said he was unsure if anyone could.

“Now, was I 100 percent [sure] that she couldn’t see it? No, I was not 100 percent sure,” Patton told Oklahoma investigators afterward. “And purposely you shouldn’t be able to see it from the witness room, but I was concerned enough to go, ‘Oh, I hope she can because I knew [the IV] wasn’t in the arms.”

Patton said he had those concerns “based on experience” from Arizona, but admits that he did not voice those concerns to anyone at the time, or instruct the warden to make a change.

Warden Anita Trammell, who resigned in October, told investigators after the Lockett execution that she looked toward Patton for guidance when things started going wrong.

“I was kind of panicking,” Trammell said. “Thinking, ‘Oh my God. He’s coming out of this.’ It’s not working and so he did that, and I wasn't sure where the director was sitting at out there, but I looked up to look for the director, and he was sitting directly in front of me.

“So I looked at the director hard like, ‘Gimme some, you know, gimme some pointers,’ or, ‘Give me some advice,’ and he looked up at the clock, the director did," she continued.

State investigators found the Lockett botch was caused by issues with the insertion of the IV; that personnel did not have the medical equipment that they needed; that they could not notice the problems due to the sheet covering the inmate; and that training was inadequate.

After promising changes, the Department of Corrections was allowed to carry out another execution in January. In that execution, the state used the wrong drug.

During his time in Arizona, Patton also admitted to several deviations from the protocol. He allowed an executioner to participate in several executions in 2010 and 2011 even though the person did not have the required qualifications, and he did not do the proper criminal background checks on the executioners. “That was an was oversight on my part," he said in the deposition. And he said that, to his knowledge, no one checked the professional licenses of the executioners.

In the 2011 deposition, Patton said he never checked the forms that would indicate how much and which drugs were actually used during the Arizona executions.

State officials have not said publicly, at this point, who, if anyone, was aware that the wrong drugs were used in the January execution of Charles Warner.

In a statement through a corrections spokesperson, Patton disagreed that there were mistakes under his leadership in Arizona, and said that the judge in the case did not take issue with the selection of the execution team.

When BuzzFeed News provided direct quotes from his deposition, in which he admits to these deviations from the protocol, and the ruling from the federal judge in which he finds that Arizona indeed deviated from the protocol, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections declined to respond.

Gov. Mary Fallin’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment on if she still stood by Patton.

Patton’s path to the center of the debate over the implementation of the death penalty began 30 years ago at the State Prison in Fort Grant, Arizona and has involved his participation in 19 executions, with repeated questions raised about oversight and adherence to protocol.

He started out as a corrections officer in 1985 after spending time in the Navy. He worked his way up the corrections-level ranks in the state — sergeant, lieutenant, captain — and then to management-level roles as associate deputy warden, deputy warden, deputy warden of operations, and then warden of the Arizona State Prison Complex in Douglas.

Patton eventually went back to school, obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 2004. He then went to Nebraska, where he ran the Douglas County Correctional Center. He came back to the Arizona Department of Corrections and eventually received a Master’s of Administration degree from Northern Arizona University in 2007.

Patton was soon promoted to be the director of the Division of Offender Operations. He said he started getting involved in execution planning in 2009.

While Patton oversaw planning of executions while in this role in Arizona, Patton also said he was involved in executions in the state before taking on that role.

During the 2014 investigation into the Lockett execution, Patton told investigators in Oklahoma that he played a role in 17 executions during his time in Arizona. The state, however, only conducted 13 executions after Patton took on a planning role.

Patton said he first started participating in executions in the early '90s, which would have been while he was still in a corrections-level role. From this time through 2000, Patton was involved in at least three executions, although his exact role is unknown. Officials redacted Patton’s response when asked what his role was during those executions.

Oklahoma Department of Public Safety

While specific information about his role in those earlier executions is not known, Patton said in his 2011 deposition that he did not begin playing a role in planning executions until 2009.

Investigators also asked Patton if there were any instances in Arizona “where there were issues with an execution.” Patton asked to go off the record, which they did for 15 minutes.

Patton, questioned this week about the earlier executions, refused to discuss his involvement.

“Whether I did nor did not participate in any executions prior to becoming Division Director in AZ would be protected under AZ law,” Patton wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “I will not confirm, nor deny that I did.”

The 2011 deposition stems from a lawsuit brought by Arizona inmates, which alleged the state deviated from its written execution procedures. A federal judge found that the department of corrections, under Patton’s leadership in executions, “failed to follow certain components of its execution protocol,” but that the deviations did “not suggest cruelty or give rise to a substantial risk of serious harm” for the inmates.

A few years later, in January 2014, Patton was selected by the Oklahoma Board of Corrections to run its prisons.

When he started as the director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections the next month, in February 2014, he sent an email thanking Arizona’s director, and his former boss, Charles Ryan.

“Sitting at my desk and thinking of you,” Patton wrote. “The enormity of this task is really starting to sink in. I can only hope to accomplish it with the dignity and honor that you show everyday. I will never forget all you have taught me over the years.”

Ryan responded a few hours later.

“The enormity is sometimes mind-boggling! I believe you have the experience and tools to get the task accomplished. Shades of gray will become more visible as you progress in the job.”

Talking of his experience in Arizona in 2011, Patton said he would always spend time with the inmates before they were executed, discussing whatever they want to talk about. Patton said it’s important to him.

“There’s no set structure to it,” Patton said in his deposition. “It’s whatever we can do to make him as comfortable as possible. Our goal is professional and humane, and I feel discussion with an inmate, whatever he wants to talk about in his last moments of life is very important.”

Just a few months after he started in Oklahoma, though, Patton was facing controversy. His first execution as director, the Lockett execution, was one of the worst botches in lethal injection history.

Patton wrote to Ryan and Arizona Deputy Director Jeff Hood a couple days afterward, clearly upset over what had happened. He forwarded an email from an angry member of the public that called him “a cruel and inhumane murderer” and that “Hell awaits.”

“My staff didn’t get to this one fast enough before I read it,” Patton wrote. “I am told this is typical of the hundred or so call, letters and emails that have came through.”

Ryan offered support.

“Robert, stand your ground… you asked for an independent review… the facts will become public…” he wrote.

Hood was more blunt.

"Opinions are like assholes - everybody has one,” Hood responded. “If people only knew the extraordinary efforts undertaken to treat these vile examples of humanity with respect and dignity in their last hours..."

Just a few months later, Arizona — under Ryan and Hood’s supervision — carried out the longest lethal injection in history, taking nearly two hours to kill inmate Joseph Wood.

An Arizona Department of Corrections spokesperson said that Hood’s email was “intended as a message of support to his former colleague.” As to comparisons between the Wood and Lockett botched executions, the spokesperson said there were “distinct and undeniable differences between the facts of each of those events.”

Several weeks before the Wood execution, Patton hired Lance Hetmer, the warden at the prison where the Wood execution took place, making Hetmer his "special assistant," a newly created position that pays $88,000 a year.

The Wood execution was the last Arizona execution in which Hetmer participated. He started in Oklahoma one week later.

In last night's Republican debate, Donald Trump repeated something that he and his campaign have been saying for several weeks: that he is self-funding his campaign.

Joshua Lott / AFP / Getty Images

"Over the years I've created tens of thousands of jobs, and it's a company I'm very proud of — some of the most iconic assets anywhere in the world," Trump said in his closing remarks at the Republican debate on Tuesday evening. "And, I can tell you, I don't have to give you a website, because I'm self-funding my campaign. I'm putting up my own money."

Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, also told Breitbart News Radio on Wednesday morning that Trump was the "only candidate in this race that is self-funding his campaign." Last week, on the same program, he alleged Trump wasn't even taking donations.

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While it is true that Trump has donated his own money to his campaign, he is accepting donations on his campaign website.

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. / Via donaldjtrump.com

In fact, most of money Trump's campaign has spent recently has come from donations.

"Mr. Trump revealed in a filing Thursday to the Federal Election Commission that the vast majority of the money he raised and spent this summer as he rose to the top of national polls came not from his own coffers, as it had in the spring, but from about $3.7 million in what he called 'unsolicited contributions,'" read the New York Times on his filing. "Some 74,000 donors pitched in an average of about $50 to help his campaign, he reported."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has frequently railed against drug abuse while out on the campaign trail.

Darren Mccollester / Getty Images

Kasich has said that he considers the movement to legalize drugs a form of "insanity" and has said his state is committed to helping those addicted to drugs through rehabilitation.

In 1996, to prove how committed he was to stopping drug abuse, Kasich, then a congressman, took a drug test and then publicly displayed his cup of urine for the media.

Doug Mills / Associated Press

Wrote the Columbus Dispatch:

So it was that Rep. John R. Kasich dashed into a bathroom yesterday and emerged, in front of reporters, cameras and congressional aides with a cup of urine. The Westerville Republican was participating in ''Member Drug Testing Day,'' sponsored by Reps. Joe L. Barton, R-Texas, Rob Portman, R-Cincinnati, and several other Republican House members.

"It's just about saying that you really want to lick this problem," Kasich said at the time, according to the Dispatch. "In a nutshell, you take the test and people understand you think this is important."

Some members of Congress, according to the Dispatch, looked uncomfortable holding cups of pee: "Some members looked uncomfortable as they either emerged from bathrooms carrying a cup of urine."

The testing came during the 1996 presidential election, when some Republicans were accusing then-President Bill Clinton of being weak on drugs.

h/t to Pat Dennis' tweet.

Ben Carson's favorite movie is True Lies, but he also likes Independence Day.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

In his 2009 book The Big Picture, Carson wrote that the movie showed how differences dissipate in a time of crisis.

"I do not get to see many movies, but when I watched the video of Independence Day with my sons, I was struck by the portrayal of the resistance efforts mounted against the alien invaders from outer space," Carson wrote. "The frail and arbitrary distinctions so often made between various segments of society, even between different countries and ideologies, instantly melted away as the people of the entire world focused not on their differences but upon a common threat and the common goal uniting them — the protection of the planet from alien invaders."

Carson noted the similarities between the response to the aliens in the film and American mobilization after the Pearl Harbor attacks.

"I know Independence Day is science fiction, but the same heroic emotional reactions it portrayed were very much alive after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Recruiting stations across the nation experienced a virtual flood of people from all ethnic backgrounds ready to sign up for the protection of our country," he added. "Crises that threaten an entire nation, or the entire world, may be horrible, but they force us to embrace a common vision. They remind all of us, who may have forgotten, exactly what it is that unites us. In times of crises even small minds get a clearer view of the Big Picture."

"Naturally, I do not suggest that America start a war or send out engraved invitations to a Star Wars-type invasion from some galaxy far, far away," Carson continued.

20th Century Fox / Via tumblr.com

"I just wish I could convince more thinking people of what I believe is true — that continued racial divisions within our society pose every bit as great a threat to our survival as a nation as any outside attack, be it from earthly or other-worldly enemies," he concluded.

At one speech in 2004 (at Mannatech!), Carson entered the room to the end credits theme song from the movie.

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“I would shoot his planes down, I would literally shoot his planes down…”

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South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham says he would shoot down Russian planes in Syrian airspace in order to protect U.S.-backed forces in the region.

"First thing I would do is tell Putin that, if you bomb the people that we train in Syria, I shoot your plane's down," the Republican presidential candidate said on AM970 The AnswerTuesday morning, before slamming President Obama for letting the Russian military bomb targets on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"I would tell him, Putin, you're not going to attack the people we train. I would arm the Ukrainians so they could fight back for their own freedom. I would export natural gas to Europe to undercut his monopoly and I would tell him that Assad's going to go. We're gonna deal with ISIL first."

"I would put Putin on notice that you're not going to destabilize countries with military intervention," Graham said.

"I would shoot his planes down, I would literally shoot his planes down if he attacked the people we trained because we have to do that. It is not right by the American president to entice people to come to a fight, train and equip them, side with them on their cause, and sit back and watch them being slaughtered by an adversary of their people and adversary of the United States."

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Courtesy Andrew Swartz/iHeartRadio

MIAMI — As thousands of Hispanics packed the American Airlines Arena in Miami on Saturday to watch some of the biggest Latino acts perform including Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez, and Don Omar, an unlikely group was enjoying the show from a VIP lounge next to the stage.

Nearly 20 political operatives from pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, the Republican National Committee, the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, EMILY's List, Voto Latino, and more were invited to the iHeartRadio Fiesta Latina for a weekend on South Beach, that included a private luncheon with top executives overlooking the beach, with champagne and without a hard sell ("It's a fiesta!" they repeated). In September, the company hosted a similar set of 25 general market operatives (and their plus ones) in Las Vegas for the iHeartRadio Music Festival, before an invitation to talk business in D.C.

Included in all this is a short but clear pitch: If you want to target Latino voters, iHeartradio has the tools and the audience to do it.

Many think of political radio as conservative talk radio — one of the enduring ways to reach millions of Republican voters. But there’s another radio market, one more digitally based, growing, and younger. iHeartRadio, and its online competitor Pandora, have become an integral market for reaching tens of millions of Hispanics.

Both iHeartRadio and Pandora boast robust targeting programs in line with the data-driven campaigns of the present. The reach is huge: iHeartRadio reaches 30 million Hispanics monthly across 858 terrestrial radio stations as well as 8 million on its app, on mobile, and on desktop, according to Comscore. Pandora — used in 2012 by the Obama campaign and the RNC, and in 2014 by Rick Scott's successful campaign for governor of Florida — reaches 15 million Hispanics monthly on digital platforms. Hispanics, according to Arbitron, listen to three more hours of radio per week on average than other Americans.

"We are able to tell political campaigns exactly where the persuadable voters are, precisely at the time they should deliver their message and what artists their target audiences like," said Kenny Day, iHeart’s political director.

What iHeartRadio calls the "Rising American Electorate" program is already a success: The spending so far is “unprecedented,” according to the company. (Eight campaigns have already used the platform: Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Chris Christie.) Pandora says candidates are up earlier than ever before in Nevada, the early state where the Latino vote is sizable. The company declined to say which campaigns, citing nondisclosure agreements, but said they’re already working with seven.

"People think radio is the old guard, some distant, uncool cousin media device," said Dolores Inés Casillas, a University of California professor in the department of Chicana and Chicano studies. "I think in some ways immigrants, Latinos have seized radio.”

Casillas, the author of Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-language Radio and Public Advocacy, noted the long history of Spanish-language radio, particularly regarding immigration, from the 1950s during Eisenhower's deportation program of Mexican nationals and Mexican-Americans called “Operation Wetback” (which Trump cited favorably at the GOP debate Tuesday) through Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty program to 2010 in places like Los Angeles where radio stations developed codes to alert listeners of immigration checkpoints and raids during the rise of hardline immigration laws like Arizona’s SB1070.

And, she noted, traditional radio is listened to on the way to jobs and during shifts by working-class Hispanics.

Yvanna Cancela, the political director of Nevada's culinary union, where Latinos make up more than half of the 55,000 member organization, agreed. When the union decided to advertise an anti-Trump rally at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas in August to juice attendance, they chose Spanish-language radio.

"We know that at a certain point our members have to get to or from work and the likelihood that they have a radio on near them is pretty high," she said.

For its part, iHeartRadio has a stable of terrestrial radio stations, but where the company and competitor Pandora feel they offer something new and fresh is in their unique ability to target the tough to corral Hispanic market, particularly the holy grail — young Latinos.

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Pandora has been gearing up to reach Latinos for a while now. At an industry conference in 2014, Pandora CFO Mike Herring said "the first half a dozen [audience segments available to target] have been around Hispanic and Spanish speaking and political affiliation and income levels” — in other words, the company’s early targeting programs were for Latinos.

The company offers a level of sophistication: In ads reviewed by BuzzFeed News, Rick Scott’s campaign ads aimed at Hispanics were over English-language music by artists like Pink and Alicia Keys. But if someone was listening to reggaeton star Daddy Yankee, the ad promised "leadership during difficult times" — in Spanish.

If, in 2012, the company was viewed as a new publisher, political campaigns now come to them as a proven partner, said Sean Duggan, Pandora's vice president of ad sales. One of their fastest growing segments is listeners over 35, and in 2014 Pandora was increasingly used to reach voters 35+ and 45+, he said.

iHeartRadio told BuzzFeed News they put voters into 12 nuanced political categories, from "ultra conservative" to "left out liberals," and are finding that a major opportunity exists with the "informed but unengaged" and "on the fence" blocs.

Hispanics, who are always said to over-index in their use of social media and mobile, do so because they are disproportionately younger than other ethnic groups. Here too, streaming companies see an opportunity in the English-language stations with Latino listeners — iHeartRadio calls these stations English with a "cultural wink."

In addition to their 42 Spanish-language stations, iHeartRadio has 125 English stations "whose audience ranges from 16% Hispanic listenership up to 50% Hispanic listenership," said Liz Sarachek Blacker, executive vice president of Hispanic strategy and sales.

"It’s the most targeted form of communication in modern politics," said political consultant Chuck Rocha, who was in Miami for the iHeartRadio event. "It’s so effective because when you leave your house, you get your keys, your wallet or your purse — and headphones."

And in Miami, the pitch was working.

One source said iHeartMedia particularly targeted Anne Caprara, the executive director of Priorities USA, and had a receptive audience. According to the source, Caprara suggested that she wanted to do ads and more, leaving no stone unturned to reach Hispanics. Priorities spokesman Justin Barasky denied this and said in an email that while the PAC has run ads aimed at Hispanics in Nevada and Colorado, “no additional decisions on spending have been made at this point."

Other organizations said that while ads on the platform may not necessarily be right for them, working together with iHeartRadio is definitely in the cards, possibly with sponsorship opportunities at each other's events. During the luncheon in Miami, the company's executives said iHeartRadio is planning a major parade for Hispanic Heritage Month in 2016 on the level of something like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, feeling that Hispanic Heritage Month doesn't have a big, signature event to call its own.

The RNC, which has worked with Pandora during the last two cycles and showed interest in targeted ads during the midterms in states like Florida, Colorado, and North Carolina, said they might be interested in future events with iHeartRadio where they can interact with Hispanic voters on the ground.

"We’re going to work together to find different ways we can leverage our political relationships with their relationships with celebrities," said U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Ammar Campa-Najjar, pointing to the Hispanic chamber's convention next year as a possible opportunity.

Voto Latino said they’re “excited about the prospect of partnering with iHeartMedia” as part of their work to get young Latinos “informed, engaged and to the polls,” said María Urbina, vice president of politics and campaigns.

And the focus on Hispanics is only going to intensify as the election draws nearer. The Latino strategists were asked to film short videos answering questions on camera for use by iHeartRadio's sales team. Questions like "why is it important for companies like ours to court Hispanic consumers?" And "what does multiculturalism mean to you?"

Then they were free to network and have fun, but not before getting a taste of the data that would be afforded to them if they choose to work with iHeartRadio in the future.

iHeartRadio had surveyed their listeners, the operatives were told, and across ideology, across candidates from both parties, listeners had one thing in common: Pitbull was on most lists of their favorite artists.

“This represents a milestone in the immigration debate.”

Joshua Lott / AFP / Getty Images

White supremacists are praising Donald Trump for citing a 1950s U.S. government policy that deported hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants.

After Trump mentioned the policy, called "Operation Wetback," at Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate, Richard B. Spencer, the president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute, tweeted, "Operation Wetback, fuck yeah!"

"Mass deportation would be easy and could easily be done humanely," he added in another tweet during the debate.

A post that ran on the white nationalist site Vdare.com and the white supremacist site the Daily Stormer called it a "milestone in the immigration debate."

"This represents a milestone in the immigration debate," wrote James Kirkpatrick. "At a stroke, Trump demolished the argument that deporting illegals is not feasible. The only question now is whether we have the will to do it."

A photo of President Dwight Eisenhower pointing at the reader ran at the bottom of the post declaring, "Ike wants you to help Make America Great Again."

Under "Operation Wetback," which was implemented under Eisenhower, the government deported hundreds of thousands of Mexicans (the exact total has been called into question) via buses and ships, depositing them in various places in Mexico. The operation has since been widely condemned for violating human rights.

Trump previously referred to Eisenhower's policy in an interview for CBS's 60 Minutes as an example of how he planned to round up undocumented immigrants in a "very humane way, a very nice way." At the Republican presidential debate on Tuesday night, Trump suggested Eisenhower's popularity shows that mass deportation could be done humanely.

"Let me just tell you that Dwight Eisenhower. Good president. Great president," Trump said at the Fox Business debate. "People liked him. I liked him. I like Ike, right? The expression 'I like Ike.' Moved 1.5 million illegal immigrants out of this country. Moved them just beyond the border; they came back. Moved them again beyond the border; they came back. Didn't like it. Moved 'em waaaay south; they never came back. Dwight Eisenhower. You don't get nicer, you don't get friendlier. They moved 1.5 million people out. We have no choice. We. Have. No. Choice."

Jared Taylor, who runs the site American Renaissance (which says that "one of the most destructive myths of modern times is that people of all races have the same average intelligence"), wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News that the policy was a "useful model."

"If jobs dry up and illegals realize the feds will come for them eventually, they won't wait. They'll choose when and how to leave," Taylor said.

"Most whites want illegals gone because most illegals are Hispanic," Taylor added. "They wouldn't dare say that, but look at what they do. When the neighborhood or the school turns Mexican, they move. I'm different from other whites only because I say it out loud: I'd rather live in a white society."

Trump's citing of the policy was also well-received on StormFront.org, the white nationalist Internet forum site founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist Don Black.

On his radio program, Black called Trump "the alpha male" on the debate stage, and his co-host Don Advo said he was happy that Trump "evoked Dwight Eisenhower" on immigration.

"Trump is holding firm on his anti-immigration policy," said Advo

"Donald Trump is to be commended. He really is to be supported," stated Advo. "One thing that you can do to support him and support the cause of the pro-white narrative is that if you live in a state where you are not registered as a Republican you need to register as a Republican so you can vote for him in the primary."

"He is telling the truth about the racial realities of the immigrant invasion," added Black.

Brad Griffin, who runs the white nationalist blog Occidental Dissent under the pseudonym "Hunter Wallace," expressed disappointment in Trump for saying he would let deported immigrants back into the country.

"I watched the debate and Trump said that he would deport the 11 million, but he keeps saying he would allow them to come back. That disturbs me. What's the point of deporting all these people if you only plan to let them back into the country?"

LINK: Top Racists And Neo-Nazis Back Donald Trump

“He offered a trillion dollars, with a t, for new spending for the new military, with no explanation about how he was going to pay for it.”

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Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday continued his attack on Florida Sen. Marco over military spending.

The two candidates for the Republican presidential nomination clashed at Tuesday's GOP debate over defense spending and the budget in one of the night's more heated exchanges.

"I went right at Marco Rubio, because I frankly don't think he's a conservative," Paul said of his presidential rival. "He offered a trillion dollars, with a t, for new spending for the new military, with no explanation about how he was going to pay for it. But then he also offered a trillion dollars of a new entitlement program which will be refundable tax credits."

Earlier in the interview, Paul said of his opponents, "They all want unlimited funds for the military and they think the military can't have enough."

"I don't want us to be hallowed out by debt," added Paul, saying he understood and felt the nationalism calling for a strong military but the nation couldn't survive mounting debt.

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“Now everybody knows that they don’t do that in Utah anymore, right?”

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Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson managed to find humor in a sad story from his past.

Telling the story of his parents' divorce to the crowd at a 2010 Martin Luther King luncheon in Peoria, Illinois, Carson cracked a joke about his mother discovering that his father had a second wife and family.

"Years later she discovered he was a bigamist. Had another family. I remember telling that story at a gradation at the University of Utah. Nobody thought it was that strange."

"See that! I offended somebody," Carson said. "Now everybody knows that they don't do that in Utah anymore, right?"

"Now it's Texas."

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Ben Carson says if the United States were to establish a no-fly zone in Syria and Russian planes were to enter it, then those planes would have to be shot down.

The Republican presidential candidate made the comment to Iowa radio host Simon Conway on Wednesday after arguing that the U.S. should establish a no-fly zone over the "Turkish-Syrian border" to provide a safe haven for refugees.

Asked whether he would enforce the no-fly zone if a Russian plane were to enter it, Carson first said, "If they come into that area, after you have given them adequate warning, after we have talked to Putin, you shoot ‘em down, absolutely."

When the host noted that shooting down a plane could provoke a response, Carson said, "Whatever happens next, we deal with it, but we can't continue backing down because in the long run, that'll hurt us."

Carson also said that he favors dialogue with the Russian president.

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Ben Carson isn't only challenging Donald Trump's frontrunner status in the Republican presidential primaries — he's beating him in book sales, too.

Trump's new book, Crippled America, will debut on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list at #5 — one spot below Carson's book, A More Perfect Union. The yet-to-be-released list was sent to BuzzFeed News by a publishing industry source, and will appear in the Nov. 22 edition of the New York Times Book Review.

Trump's title does edge out Carson's in the less-closely-followed "combined print and e-book" category: On that list, Crippled America is at #4 and A More Perfect Union is at #5. But many industry observers expected Trump's book to dominate the bestseller list.

As BuzzFeed News recently reported, the celebrity billionaire's proposal was passed over earlier this year by some publishers, who were skeptical of his staying power in the 2016 race, and then came to regret their decision.

Carson's performance on the Times list is particularly impressive given that his book has already been out for more than a month: This will be A More Perfect Union's fifth week as a bestseller. By contrast, Cripple America is benefitting from the surge of publicity and sales that typically accompany a book's first week on the shelves.

Carson and Trump — currently locked in a dead heat for first place in the 2016 primary polls — are both prolific bestselling authors. Carson became the country's most famous neurosurgeon, and an icon in the African-American community, thanks largely to his bestselling 1996 memoir Gifted Hands. And Trump has spent much of this year touting his popular 1987 business book The Art of the Deal, which he calls his second favorite book (behind only the Bible).

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Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says protesters at the University of Missouri never identified the exact policies they were protesting.

Mizzou students have been protesting the school administration's handling of several recent incidents of alleged racism on campus. These incidents include the black student body president being called a racial slur and a swastika drawn in fecal matter. The university's chancellor and president both resigned from their roles this week after the football team threatened to strike.

On his “Huckabee Exclusive Podcast” on Wednesday, Huckabee said the protests “supposedly started with one drunken student saying some racist things to some black students. That flared into a major protest of the alleged racist policies of the university's, [policies] that were never exactly identified, other than the administration didn’t officially wade in on on the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson. I didn’t know that was their business. I thought there business was teaching young people to be rational, well-educated adults. Well obviously not."

Huckabee said the protestors' demands at Mizzou and at Yale, where there have also been protests over campus racial tension, were "ridiculous" and said in both cases the administration folded to the "tantrum throwers." He added that Mizzou president Timothy Wolfe "capitulated to the mob" by resigning.

Huckabee concluded his podcast, saying, "I’m old enough to remember the sixties, when many adults couldn’t understand why students would pay a load of money for a college education, and then destroy their campuses. But at least they were protesting an actual war. Today they pay ten times as much tuition, then destroy their colleges' reputations and protest over one drunken idiot, or someone else's Halloween costumes.”

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Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said on Thursday that, contrary to what conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer thinks, the Federal Reserve is a "sexy" issue.

“He needs to come to some of our rallies," Paul told Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson when asked about Krauthammer calling America's central bank unsexy. "You’d be surprised. I get people from all walks of life, including guys who are welders and electricians, who show up and are unhappy that the Fed is stealing the value of their dollar, that the Fed seems to be making income inequality worse."

Arguing that that income inequality was not just a "Democrat issue," the Republican presidential candidate went on to say, "There are those of us on the Republican side who have seen government distributing income and allowing the rich to get richer and the middle class to have their wages stolen from them. That comes from the Federal Reserve. And you’d be surprised, that it’s a little more of a sexy issue than Charles understands.”

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WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton is making a foreign policy-focused newspaper ad buy in four early primary states, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Bolton's 501c4 nonprofit organization, the Foundation for American Security and Freedom, is placing the ad in the Des Moines Register, the Union Leader in New Hampshire, The State in South Carolina, and the Las Vegas Review Journal, at a cost of around $50,000. The ad proposes a "Bolton Test" of five questions voters should ask of the Republican primary candidates on foreign policy. There will also be a $15,000 online ad campaign.

Bolton, who publicly flirted with the idea of running himself before deciding not to, signaled months ago that he wished to play the role of a powerbroker on foreign policy issues in this election. However, though pundits predicted that foreign policy would be more of a factor in this race than in previous years, that hasn't entirely proven to be the case; most of the candidates have similarly hawkish views, and the one outlier, Rand Paul, has not been able to pull others in the field over to his point of view. Tuesday's debate in Milwaukee, where Paul and Marco Rubio sparred on military spending, was one of the first instances of substantive debate on national security issues between the candidates in some time.

"I’ve thought for quite some time that we need to have more of a national debate in the context of the presidential election in foreign and defense policy," Bolton said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. "Having watched the first four debates, I don't think yet there’s been enough serious conversation about it."

Bolton's foundation (he also has a PAC) caused a stir in August for an anti-Rand Paul ad that showed a family at the dinner table right before a nuclear bomb goes off, then cut to a clip of Paul saying that Iran having one nuclear weapon wouldn't pose a threat to the United States.

On Thursday, Bolton declined to say how he thinks the candidates are stacking up on foreign policy so far, saying he doesn't want to be the "S&P rating service of the candidates," apart from reiterating his opposition to Paul. He declined to comment on Ben Carson's rambling answer on the Middle East that has garnered a lot of attention.

"There were a few good lines" in Tuesday's debate," Bolton said. "I don't care about good lines."

Bolton believes candidates need to develop an ingrained understanding of these issues instead of simply memorizing lines and regurgitating them.

"It's not enough for a candidate to give a good speech that his staff writes for him," Bolton said.

Bolton said he's been sought out by some of the candidates for foreign policy advice, but wouldn't say who. (Ted Cruz has sought Bolton's advice, and a top Bobby Jindal aide told BuzzFeed News last year that Bolton was advising the governor. Donald Trump has said he looks to Bolton for advice, though Bolton aide Garrett Marquis told BuzzFeed News in August, "I believe he referenced that he watches Bolton on TV and picks up his foreign policy views as such. The Ambassador doesn't comment on conversations he has had with candidates, or if he has had then. He lets the candidates share.")

The group is soliciting voter questions on their website, and the ad will appear on Sunday. It was provided in advance to BuzzFeed News:

Jim Cole / AP

Ted Cruz hit back at Marco Rubio on Friday, saying that he "laughed out loud" at Rubio's comment that Cruz's position on immigration was not "dramatically different" from his own.

“Yesterday, Marco had a fairly remarkable comment in that he suggested that my record was exactly like his on immigration and I have to admit, I laughed out loud at that," Cruz told radio host Mike Gallagher.

Rubio had said that Cruz was a "supporter of legalizing people that are in this country illegally," citing amendments Cruz introduced to a 2013 immigration bill he (Rubio) championed, one of which would have increased a cap on H1B visas for high-skilled workers.

On Friday, Cruz went on to compare Rubio's comment to Obama suggesting that he and Cruz had the same stance on Obamacare or the Iranian Ayatollah saying that he and Cruz had the same position on the recent pact between Iran and the United States.

"Marco’s a friend, and, uh, but that statement was truly stunning," Cruz said of his rival for the GOP presidential nomination. "That’s like Obama saying my position is the same as his on Obamacare. That’s like the Ayatollah Khamenei saying my position is the same as his on the Iranian nuclear deal. It is laughingly, blazingly, on its face false.”

Cruz also addressed his stance on H1B visas, telling Gallagher he thought that the program had been abused to bring in "relatively low-skilled IT workers, sometimes with a bachelor's degree, sometimes from a diploma mill." He argued that those workers replaced American workers.

“That is utterly unacceptable, it is wrong, it is an abuse of the program, it is a manifestation of frankly the lawlessness of the Obama administration," Cruz argued. He said that he would not allow such abuse if he were elected president.

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will be revisiting abortion laws this term, agreeing on Friday to take up a case out of Texas addressing restrictions on abortion providers.

The case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, will address how far Texas can go to pass restrictions on abortion providers. Specifically at issue are two measures signed into law that require abortion facilities in Texas to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers (where outpatient surgery is performed) and require doctors who perform abortions to have admissions privileges at a nearby hospital.

Opponents of the law have argued that the law effectively shutters many of the clinics now operating in parts of the state.

In June, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the restriction. Later that month, in a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court put that ruling on hold pending the outcome of any appeal.

The court will hear the case in early 2016, with a decision expected by late June 2016.

The court took no action, however, on the other pending abortion provider restrictions law cert petition, presented in a case out of Mississippi.

The justices first considered whether to take an appeal of the Mississippi case in May, and have re-considered taking the case multiple times since then, but have taken no action on it. Given today's decision to take the Texas case, it is likely the court will just hold the Mississippi case until the decision is handed down in the Texas case.

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Ahead of the second Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton's campaign released a memo titled "Winning the Latino Vote,” which details the campaign's strategy with Hispanics, her record on issues facing the community, along with requisite bashing of Republican rhetoric and policies.

But at the top of the memo, first obtained by Monica Alba of NBC News, there is also this:

"As early as May, Clinton traveled to Nevada to hear directly from DREAMers about the challenges their families face and express her commitment to defending President Obama’s immigration executive actions.”

That one springtime event may have proven critical in the Democratic primary. Her detailed, robust, and liberal immigration platform blunted attacks from immigration activists on the left who were rendered temporarily speechless and impressed.

The event blocked for someone to challenge Clinton from the left on immigration — beating Martin O’Malley to the punch on a perceived progressive strength. And the event provided a very clear, very liberal immigration agenda for Clinton as a general election candidate that will likely be in sharp contrast to the eventual Republican nominee’s.

Though Bernie Sanders and O’Malley have released more details of their executive action plans this week, all of the Democratic candidates are in similar places on immigration: They support significant changes to the current immigration system and would go further than Obama administratively in terms of stopping deportations, but it has thus far been difficult to stand out as they've jockeyed to pledge support for the most progressive immigration policies that would be legal under the law.

O'Malley's initial plan, a June white paper, was widely praised by figures like influential Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and immigration activists alike — though it produced little traction for the candidate. And Sanders, after criticism over comments he has made throughout the years about how immigrants affect American wages, has hired some of the top immigration activists in the country and announced new executive action details at a Nevada event on Sunday.

Since then, both the struggling O’Malley and significantly more successful Sanders have become more critical of Clinton. At a lunch with an undocumented family Thursday in Austin, Texas, for instance, O'Malley accused her of "speaking out of two sides of her mouth" on immigration — and presumably will raise the immigration issue in Saturday’s debate.

Both could challenge Clinton’s record on immigration ranging from her flip on driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants, comments about unaccompanied minors who came from Central America, and this week in New Hampshire where she said she voted to “build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,” but when O’Malley and Sanders have tried to attack Clinton as not going far enough on issues that matter to activists, the hits haven’t yet broken through.

The campaign writes that Clinton would "phase out private immigrant detention centers" — O'Malley and Sanders have said they would close them. But Clinton talked about detention centers on May 5, too, saying she was "very worried about detention and detention facilities for people who are vulnerable and for children.”

That May event in Las Vegas, with the aggressive, out-of-the-gate policy proposal has paid dividends. As her campaign’s memo points out: polling shows Clinton is dominating her opponents with Latino voters.

“…I describe myself as an independent. I consider it a waste of our human brainpower to be otherwise.”

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Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson wrote in his 1999 book that he did not identify as a conservative Republican and that he considered it a "waste of human brainpower" to be anything other than an independent.

Carson identified as an independent for years in his home state of Maryland, and only recently switched his affiliation to the Republican party last year.

"By this point some readers may conclude from all this talk about self-determination and the need to assume personal responsibility that I must be a conservative Republican. I'm not," Carson writes in The Big Picture: Getting Perspective on What's Really Important in Life.

"But I would like to say something about political affiliation," Carson continues. "I am troubled by the growing rancor and divisiveness that has marked so much of our national political climate in recent years. Too many of us want to describe ourselves as Democrats or Republicans and never the twain shall meet."

Carson said that identifying as just a Republican or Democrat does not give enough credit to an individuals ability to assess different issues on their own merits.

"Therefore, I describe myself as an independent. I consider it a waste of our human brainpower to be otherwise. Of course, that is just my own opinion. Some of my best friends are still Republicans and Democrats."

“So he’s using this atrocity to make his point that people should be able to carry guns, basically.”

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was called out on French television for a tweet he sent about the deadly terrorist attack in Paris on Friday. The former speaker and presidential candidate had speculated in a tweet that citizens with concealed carry permits for guns would have stopped the deadly shooting at a Paris concert hall.

Gingrich's tweet prompted France 24's Mark Owen to say he found capitalizing on crises to advance a political agenda to be shameful. "Newt Gingrich, shame on you," Owen said.

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"So he's using this atrocity to make his point that people should be able to carry guns basically," Owen said. "It's funny how people will very distastefully use this kind of situation to express their own particular political [inaudible]. Newt Gingrich, shame on you."

Owen declared another tweet from former New York Times reporter Judith Miller to be a "weird point."

"I don't understand what she's getting at," Owen said of a tweet from Miller. "It seems to be a strange time to make that kind of weird point."

"Now maybe the whining adolescents at our universities can concentrate on something other than their need for 'safe' spaces," Miller had tweeted.

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