Hatch has said that recently deceased Justice Antonin Scalia would have understood that the Supreme Court could go on with a vacant seat.

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Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch — one of the longest serving members of the Judiciary Committee — said on Wednesday that Justice Antonin Scalia would not be upset for the Supreme Court to proceed with a missing seat, saying the deceased justice "knows that the court can function with eight members."

It's not the first time Hatch has spoken on behalf of a dead conservative justice. In September 2005, Hatch argued in an interview aired on C-SPAN that the Senate should proceed with the confirmation of John Roberts because William Rehnquist would have wanted the court to open its next term with as many members as possible.

"Chief Justice Rehnquist would want it to go forward," Hatch said of Roberts' confirmation hearings. "He would want us to move ahead. He revered the court. As you know, gave 33 years of his life to the court. And he certainly would not want to take any—would not want us to take any action that would not have as full a complement of the court sitting the first Monday of October that we can put there."

At the time, President George W. Bush had nominated Roberts to replace the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor. Roberts ultimately replaced Rehnquist as chief justice, after the late chief justice's death, while Bush nominated Samuel Alito to replace O'Connor. President Obama has been criticized in recent days for having joined the filibuster against Alito as a senator in 2006, an approach the White House has said the president now "regrets."

Hatch, who later in the day made similar comments on CNN, also said in the interview that one problem with Bush appointing Roberts to replace Rehnquist was that "the Democrats would try to use that as an excuse to try to delay it and we do need to have Roberts on the court by the first Monday in October."

Beyond his speculation about how Scalia would want the Senate to proceed on selecting his successor, Hatch has argued that the Senate should not confirm any nominee until after the election.

"I don't want to get the Supreme Court embroiled in this. I think Justice Scalia deserves better treatment than that," he told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday. "You know, the American people have already begun voting for the next president of the United States. You know, and I believe that Justice Scalia's replacement should not take place until after the American people have made that choice."

He told Barbara Walters, “I’m probably going to sue Vanity Fair” over the report.

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Donald Trump, whose habit of suing or threatening to sue has been well-documented, once threatened to sue Vanity Fair over a 1990 profile containing a controversial detail: Trump kept a book of Hitler speeches from the book My New Order at his bedside.

The tidbit was sourced to Ivana Trump's divorce attorney. In the profile, the businessman said of the book, "Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew."

Davis confirmed to Vanity Fair he gave Trump the speeches, but clarified some of the details, saying, "But it was My New Order, Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I'm not Jewish."

Trump told Vanity Fair, "if I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them."

In an interview with Barbara Walters to promote his 1991 book, Surviving at the Top, Trump confirmed he owned the book, but said he would probably sue Vanity Fair over the tidbit.

"It is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Trump told Walters. "A friend of mine sent me a book. A man who I think is Jewish, although I don't know, sent me a book, it happened to be that book. All of a sudden Marie Brenner somehow found out that he had sent me a book. It is the most ridiculous thing I've seen and I'm probably gonna sue Vanity Fair over it."

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn plans to endorse Hillary Clinton, according to one campaign source and a second Democratic source.

Clyburn's is one of the most coveted Democratic endorsements in South Carolina, where Clinton is currently polling better than Bernie Sanders. After BuzzFeed News reported on Clyburn's plans, The State reported that Clyburn will endorse Clinton on Friday.

Clyburn originally intended to remain neutral through the South Carolina Democratic primary like he did in 2008. However, in recent weeks, the third-ranking Democrat in the House has indicated he might instead become involved in the race, citing pressure from immediate family members, who are Clinton supporters.

“That was certainly my intention,” Clyburn recently told the Washington Post of his intention to remain neutral. “But I am re-evaluating that. I really am having serious conversations with my family members.”

On Thursday, he reiterated that he would endorse in an interview with WBUR in South Carolina, saying, "Because family and friends have begun to say to me that my constituents deserve to know where I stand, and so I’ve decided that my wife knows best and so I am going to let people know where I stand.”

“Well, you know, I think of both candidates being a certain cachet to the system," he added in WBUR interview. "Bernie is really energizing young voters, and we need them. Hillary Clinton has demonstrated that the older voters feel that she is very reliable, and we need reliability. Hopefully, when one is successful and the other is not, we can combine our forces and resources.”

Last week, Clyburn did not appear at the event where the Congressional Black Caucus PAC endorsed Clinton. Many members of the CBC have endorsed Clinton over the last year.

A spokesman for Clyburn did not respond to requests for comment.

“Are you for invading Iraq?” Howard Stern asked him, and Trump answered, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

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For months, Donald Trump has claimed that he opposed the Iraq War before the invasion began — as an example of his great judgment on foreign policy issues.

But in a 2002 interview with Howard Stern, Donald Trump said he supported an Iraq invasion.

In the interview, which took place on Sept. 11, 2002, Stern asked Trump directly if he was for invading Iraq.

"Yeah I guess so," Trump responded. "I wish the first time it was done correctly."

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he was against the Iraq War before it began, despite no evidence of him publicly stating this position. On Meet the Press, Trump said there weren't many articles about his opposition because he wasn't a politician at the time.

"Well, I did it in 2003, I said it before that," Trump said of his opposition to invading Iraq. "Don't forget, I wasn't a politician. So people didn't write everything I said. I was a businessperson. I was, as they say, a world-class businessperson. I built a great company, I employed thousands of people. So I'm not a politician. But if you look at 2003, there are articles. If you look in 2004, there are articles."

Trump's comments on Stern are more in line with what he wrote in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, where he advocated for a "principled and tough" policy toward "outlaw" states like Iraq.

"We still don't know what Iraq is up to or whether it has the material to build nuclear weapons. I'm no warmonger," Trump wrote. "But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion. When we don't, we have the worst of all worlds: Iraq remains a threat, and now has more incentive than ever to attack us."

Trump, asked by CNN's Anderson Cooper at a town hall on Thursday about the Stern interview, said, "I could have said that."

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LAS VEGAS — Hillary Clinton for the first time said, if elected, she would deal with immigration in the first 100 days of her presidency at an MSNBC/Telemundo town hall — a significant and new promise on immigration, just two days ahead of the pivotal Nevada caucus.

Moderator Chuck Todd asked Clinton whether she would focus on immigration in her first 100 days, and Clinton again would not address the issue in those words, saying that she would immediately begin working on "priority legislation and immigration reform will be among those issues."

But answering a follow-up question from MSNBC's Jose Diaz-Balart on if she would commit to introducing immigration legislation in her first 100 days, Clinton said she would.

"This will be among it," she said, embracing the language she has thus far avoided, perhaps well aware of how Obama has been hit repeatedly on the left for not passing immigration legislation.

Clinton campaign officials confirmed that it was a shift in the way she discussed the 100 days question.

Bernie Sanders, who once said in Nevada in the fall that immigration would be a priority in his first 100 days, would not go there this time, calling it a top priority.

On Thursday night, Clinton followed Sanders — and was able to pivot from a question about her flip-flop on driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants to a woman who had earlier asked Sanders about 3- and 10-year bars. Specifically, the woman asked Sanders about her undocumented husband, who must remain outside of the country for 10 years before coming back to the United States (and is therefore separated from his family).

With just hours before the caucuses, both candidates are trying to make the final case that they are the candidate who can be trusted on immigration by Latinos — though that is not without continued scrutiny of both. People have noted that Bill Clinton signed into law the 3- and 10-year bar; and Sanders voted for it.

Both candidates faced tough questions about immigration, race, and veteran's issues in both English and Spanish.

Sanders, who at times seemed frustrated by questions coming from Clinton supporters (at one point he yelled, "Are any of my supporters here?" to applause), was once again asked — this time by a 20-year-old DREAMer named Dulce Valencia — about his vote against a comprehensive immigration bill in 2007. Because he has said he voted the way he did due to provisions in the bill akin to "slavery" for guestworkers, he was asked whether he would vote against big legislation that was not "perfect."

Sanders noted that he "voted for immigration reform in 2013 because it was a much better piece of legislation" and said his immigration policy is to unite families not divide families.

David Becker / Reuters

As Apple and the FBI battle over encryption, Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton took care not to wade too far into the melee at a Las Vegas town hall event Thursday night.

After a judge ordered Apple this week to help federal law enforcement break into an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooters, Apple refused, escalating a tense, multi-year standoff between Silicon Valley and the Obama administration.

At the town hall, hosted by MSNBC and Telemundo, Sanders and Clinton both emphasized the complexity of the encryption debate, noting the needs of consumer privacy and the duties of law enforcement. But rather than choose sides, as the hosts pushed them to do, the candidates hedged.

“I see both sides, and I think most citizens see both sides,” Clinton said.

“Frankly I think there is a middle ground that can be reached,” Sanders also said.

Clinton and Sanders both emphasized the stakes of ignoring the pleas of law enforcement officials, who fear that robust encryption tools hinder their ability to prevent terror attacks and investigate crime, as in the case of San Bernardino, where a phone belonging to the couple remains locked and inaccessible.

“Clearly all of us would be dismayed if we learned that we could have picked up information about a potential terrorist act,” Sanders said.

Clinton added: “We want to catch and make sure there is nobody else out there whose information is on that cell phone.”

But both candidates also tried to capture the consequences of pervasive government surveillance. “Apple, understably, is worried about opening a door, creating what they call a backdoor into encryption,” Clinton said. She went on to describe the possible international ramifications of the judge’s order, in which Apple would be forced to field not only U.S. government requests, but demands for special access by China, Russia, and Iran.

“We don’t want privacy and encryption destroyed,” she said, adding that, as president, she would bring together tech companies and government agencies to devise a creative solution.

“I am not a tech expert,” she said.

When Sanders was asked whose side he was on, Apple’s or the FBI’s, he said, “ I'm on both.”

“Count me in as somebody who is a very strong civil libertarian who believes that we can fight terrorism without undermining our Constitutional rights and our privacy rights," Sanders said.

CHRIS KEANE / Reuters

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Forty-five minutes after Marco Rubio was scheduled to take the stage at a conservative confab here Thursday night, organizers got word from the candidate's aides that he was canceling his appearance — a perceived snub that set off a late-night war of words between the candidate's campaign and right-wing rivals accusing him of cowardice.

Rubio was one of three presidential candidates who had accepted invitations to speak at the inaugural Conservative Review Convention — an event hosted by talk radio star Mark Levin and commentator Michelle Malkin.

But the crowd that gathered Thursday at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena — just 36 hours before polls were set to open in South Carolina's high-stakes GOP primary — was overwhelmingly composed of Cruz supporters, while a smaller portion of the audience cheered on Ben Carson.

The contingent of Rubio fans in attendance was virtually invisible.

After the event got underway, a Rubio aide informed organizers that the candidate was running late and would likely have to skip the event. According to an organizer who spoke to BuzzFeed News of anonymity, the event's hosts tried to salvage Rubio's appearance — initially informing the audience only that he was late due to an unforeseen "issue," while they worked behind the scenes to reshuffle the speaking schedule for him.

But even as organizers repeatedly offered to accommodate Rubio's tardiness, the campaign demurred. Instead, according to two sources in the Rubio camp, they said they wanted to give their allotted 20-minute speaking slot to their surrogates who were already backstage at the event: Sen. Tim Scott, Rep. Trey Gowdy, and Bobby Jindal.

Organizers refused.

"It was a legal thing," said one organizer, explaining that they had already declined a request from Jeb Bush's campaign to give stage time to surrogates. If they made an exception for Rubio, he said, it might be seen as an illegal contribution.

The Rubio campaign, riled by the organizers' refusal to let Republican lawmakers speak to a conservative audience in their own home state, finally pulled the plug on the whole event. While Cruz paced the stage preaching fervently to a vast crowd of adoring fans, Rubio's surrogates quietly slipped away from the conference.

Meanwhile, Cruz's team sensed an opportunity. Within minutes, Cruz adviser Jason Miller was at the designated media section in the arena, eagerly informing reporters that Rubio would be a no-show.

And by the time Malkin, who was acting as the evening's emcee, told the audience Rubio wouldn't make it — drawing loud boos from some in attendance — Cruz's campaign was already drafting a statement that they would soon blast out to the press.

"This is a final admission that Marco Rubio isn't even going to try to compete for the votes of conservatives in South Carolina or anywhere else," said Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler. "And who can blame him? Rubio isn't a conservative. Instead Rubio and his campaign would rather hide behind their deceptive campaign tactics and liberal record on amnesty for illegals and voting to nominate John Kerry."

Asked for a response, Rubio spokesman Alex Conant fired back in an email to BuzzFeed News.

"Did the Cruz campaign really take a break from photoshopping pictures and recording false robocalls to send out this false press release?" Conant wrote. "This ridiculous attack is just the latest example of Ted Cruz's willingness to do or say anything in this campaign."

The fight continued late into the night on Twitter, as conservatives in both camps hurled accusations and insults at each other with the sort of frenzied intensity that often defines critical moments in the campaign calendar.

While many Cruz supporters called Rubio spineless for refusing to address a potentially less-than-friendly crowd, Cruz's own social media director declared victory more subtly:

Rubio's vocal Twitter cheering section, meanwhile, argued vigorously that the Conservative Review — a relatively new website that organized Thursday's event — has demonstrated a blatant bias against their candidate. While other conservative organizations like Heritage Action and the American Conservative Union have given Rubio's voting record in the Senate near-perfect marks, the candidate receives only a 79% (or a "C" grade) in the site's own "Liberty Score."

What's more, Levin and Malkin, who both serve as senior editors for the site, have been outspoken critics of Rubio. The Conservative Review also employs Amanda Carpenter, a former Cruz spokeswoman who now regularly goes to bat for her former boss as a commentator on CNN.

Pushing back against accusations of bias, an editor at the site said each campaign was given "hundreds of tickets" to disperse to their supporters, and the fact that Cruz was able to pack the arena while Rubio's fans didn't turn out should be viewed as an indictment of the latter's campaign organization — not proof of a malicious editorial agenda by the Conservative Review.

A Rubio adviser told BuzzFeed News the whole episode was simply the result of a campaign that's still working out logistical kinks after adding South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to their traveling operation.

But back at the arena, Levin was in no mood to hear Rubio's excuses.

Speaking to reporters immediately after the event, Levin joked that maybe Rubio bowed out because he had a meeting with La Raza, or the League of United Latin-American Citizens.

"If the conservative convention isn't good enough for Marco Rubio, it isn't good enough for his surrogates. Cruz didn't send a surrogate in here. Carson didn't send a surrogate in here," Levin said, before concluding, "It was pretty damn rude of Rubio, quite frankly."

“Goodbye. Leave. Thank you!”

Katrina Pierson, the controversial spokesperson for Donald Trump's campaign, gets into a political argument and is thrown out of a fundraiser in a new reality show airing on WE tv.

Pierson makes a guest appearance on "Sisters in Law," a new reality series on We tv about a group of black female attorneys in Texas. Pierson, a tea party activist who once called a disabled veteran "deformed" and has a long history of controversial statements about President Obama and others, regularly appears on cable news on behalf of the Trump campaign.

The scene was filmed at the end of July 2015. Pierson was hired by the Trump campaign in November.

In a clip provided to BuzzFeed News, Pierson attends a fundraiser as a guest of one of the cast members. Shortly after arriving, things take a turn to the dramatic. Pierson and cast member Rhonda Wills, a civil attorney who specializes in class-action lawsuits, get into a heated argument.

Here's a play-by-play:

Pierson makes her entrance...

Her introduction as a black Republican isn't very well-received...

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COLUMBIA, South Carolina — The Republican primary hasn’t had many easy openings for a candidate to separate himself and stand alone on a policy issue. Ted Cruz found one earlier this month: the draft.

The idea of making women eligible for the selective service was “nuts,” “wrong,” and “immoral,” he first told a crowd Peterborough, New Hampshire, the day after several Republicans said women should be eligible during a debate.

Here in South Carolina — where he’s facing tough poll numbers in a critical election and hoping to appeal to both evangelicals and to military families — Cruz has made the issue a feature of his stump speech.

“As a father of two daughters, mark my words, we are not going to be drafting our daughters into combat roles,” Cruz said at a rally in Columbia on Tuesday afternoon. Cruz’s Tuesday was designed to highlight his positions on military issues and cast him in a commander-in-chief light; his first event of the day had been a speech on rebuilding the military on the USS Yorktown in Mount Pleasant.

“Two debates ago when I stood on the Republican stage and heard three Republican candidates embracing ‘Sure, we should be drafting women in combat,’ I had to admit I kind of thought Rod Serling was gonna walk out and say, ‘You have now entered the Twilight Zone,'” Cruz said in Columbia. “Have we lost our faculties? Is political correctness so consuming that we’re not willing to say that’s just nuts? The time of political correctness, the time of the military being treated as a cauldron for social experiments, is over.”

Cruz repeated the Twilight Zone joke again at a speech to the Republican Women’s Club in Greenville on Thursday, and again at a speech to a Conservative Review convention in Greenville that night.

The extent to which the issue really resonates, however, is much less clear. Unlike the debate on Twitter among conservatives that the issue provoked, even Rep. Jeff Duncan, one of Cruz’s South Carolina endorsers, told BuzzFeed News he didn’t think the issue was an important litmus test here.

“It won’t be the deciding factor in an election” in South Carolina, Duncan said. “But it is out there, the story’s out here, the Post and Courier’s written an article. And I really think we’re all soul searching about what is the right thing.” Duncan said he didn’t think America is “ready to see” women being drafted into combat roles.

And in South Carolina, where military experience or familiarity with the military is much more common, the idea of a draft seemed sort of a moot, unrealistic point to some voters BuzzFeed News spoke with. Stephanie Simon, 35, a stay-at-home mom whose husband serves in the Air Force, said she hadn't put much thought into the issue because the prospect of another draft in the United States seemed so far-fetched.

"Is it necessary? I don't think it ever will be,” she said.

She said she was theoretically open to the idea of women being drafted into non-combat roles, but didn't like the idea of compelling women into front-line fighting. The factors she did weigh were less philosophical and more practical, like the women's safety, in the bunkers and in the battlefield.

“If they’re ready for it and can handle it, go for it,” said Barbara Krell, 73, of Lexington. “But just to draft women per se — I’m for the draft, boys and girls, when they get out of the high school, because we don’t have the discipline and the structure in the home today.”

“I’m against that,” said Marilyn Newman, 76, of Elgin, when asked about drafting women. “I have four daughters. They would be willing to go, but I don’t want them to be drafted.”

Asked whether he thinks Cruz’s message on women in the draft resonates in South Carolina, Cruz’s Senate colleague Lindsey Graham, who has endorsed Jeb Bush and is a frequent critic of Cruz, said “not particularly.”

“We’re talking about allowing women to be subject to the draft if we ever have one, no one’s going to the front lines who’s not qualified to go, period,” Graham said. “Equating being subject to the draft with being a combat soldier is just misleading.”

The debate over women in the draft started after Sen. Claire McCaskill asked at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about the possibility of women being drafted into the military. Military leaders at the hearing said they supported the Selective Service being opened to women.

The debate is hypothetical, since there has not been a draft since the Vietnam War. Still, the issue is rich with deep-seated conflict over gender roles, the military, and national security, and presents an easy opportunity for Cruz to draw contrast and fortify his conservative bona fides.

Cruz’s team says it’s an issue Cruz believes in and not something where he necessarily sees political benefit.

“Instead of qualifying the issue through a political lens, take it on its merits,” said Jason Miller, senior communications adviser to Cruz. “Sen. Cruz has made his position very clear on this, it’s something he believes.”

“He answered the question of what do you believe on the issue, and it’s for the voters to decide how they stack up,” Miller said.

McKay Coppins contributed reporting.

Jim Young / Reuters

ELKO, Nev. — Bernie Sanders is the first person to say Bernie Sanders's youth appeal has been a surprise in this election.

Speaking on Friday to a crowd featuring many young-looking Nevadans at Elko High School, he showed off just how surprising that appeal can be sometimes. Or maybe how unsurprising it is?

"I know that some of your friends say, 'what? you went to a political meeting? Get a life!'" Sanders said, starting off a standard chunk of his stump speech calling on young voters to buck the prevalent apathy toward politics.

"But I want you to look them right in the eye and tell them I said this," Sanders went on. "If they think that not getting involved in the political process is cool, if they think that not voting is really hip, I want you to–"

Sanders paused for a moment and looked around the room.

"Is that a word we still use?"

The Elko gym broke out in laughter.

Sanders, as he often does, told the young voters in the room to tell their friends that if they stay home from Saturday's Democratic caucuses, people who don't care about the issues affecting young voters will win.

Sanders is relying on youth support to help carry him to victory Saturday. Hillary Clinton has struggled to win over young voters, who polls show have felt the Bern in large numbers this cycle.

Meanwhile, the Sanders campaign needs at least a very good showing in Nevada to prove that his tie in Iowa and landslide victory in the New Hampshire primary weren't just caused by those states' large white populations of Democratic voters.

Sanders said a strong youth turnout is a key to the larger political revolution he promises.

"The issue is do we stand up for ourselves?" he said. "Do we determine the future of this country based on our needs, or do you want a handful of billionaires to make that decision? Tell that to your friends."

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GREENVILLE, S.C. — As Republican candidates compete fiercely for evangelical voters in the run-up to Saturday's South Carolina primary, several high-profile campaign surrogates for Ted Cruz have been circulating reports from Christian websites that Marco Rubio's deputy campaign manager once publicly advocated for same-sex marriage.

As it turns out, though, Cruz's campaign team has its own contingent of vocal marriage equality supporters.

The Cruz camp's new line of attack began 10 days ago, when a website called Baptist Message — tag line: "Helping Louisiana Baptists impact the world for Christ" — posted a 1,100-word story headlined, "Rubio's No. 2 campaign staffer a gay marriage advocate."

Rich Beeson, deputy campaign manager for presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, was one of more than 300 establishment Republicans to sign a controversial friend of the court brief last year asking the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize gay marriage.

Although reported by Politico in an April 2015 article, “Republicans try to have it both ways on gay marriage,” it is an issue that largely has gone unnoticed during the campaign, even as Republican candidates seek to secure conservative support.

Cross checking the names of campaign staffers for billionaire Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rubio against the names attached to the writ of certiorari [which described the signers as having “traditional conservative values” that are “consistent with—indeed, are advanced by—providing civil marriage rights to same-sex couples”] shows no other staff members from the three leading Republican campaigns were among those listed.

The story bounced around conservative Christian social media, and was aggregated by a handful of other websites.

It began spreading rapidly on Twitter in recent days after being shared by prominent social conservatives in Cruz's camp — including Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, conservative talk radio host Steve Deace, and Iowa evangelical powerbroker Bob Vander Plaats, who also serves as Cruz's national campaign co-chair.

But if Team Cruz is, indeed, troubled by the "bad company" Rubio keeps, they appear inclined to give their own candidate a pass on the same question.

Among the Republican signatories in the Supreme Court amicus brief referenced in the Baptist Message story: Cruz campaign lawyer Chris Gober, and digital strategists Zac Moffatt and Abe Adams, whose firm was paid more than $245,000 in 2015 by the Cruz campaign.

Cruz has been outspoken in his criticism of the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which ruled that states cannot ban same-sex couples from marrying.

"I think that decision was fundamentally illegitimate, it was lawless, it was completely inconsistent with the Constitution, and it will not stand," Cruz said at a CNN town hall this week.

A recent poll found that just 40% of people in South Carolina support same-sex marriage, and the proportion is even smaller among Republican primary voters here — a reality that no doubt motivated the Cruz camp's attacks.

But, of course, there is always danger in a campaign picking fights over the ideological loyalties of an opponent's aides and advisers. It is generally well-known in D.C. that professional consultants in both parties tend to support gay rights. And even for an outsider candidate like Cruz, it's hard to build a national campaign without hiring members of the Washington cartel.

A spokesperson for the Cruz campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

And the stock market would continue to soar as a result, Trump said.

Randall Hill / Reuters

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Donald Trump, faced with his own words from 2002 that directly contradict his claim he opposed an Iraq invasion early on, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday night he opposed the war by the time it started.

But in an interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto one day into the Iraq invasion, Trump did not express his opposition to war, and said it appeared to be "a tremendous success from a military standpoint." Trump predicted the war would continue to be great for Wall Street.

"Well, I think Wall Street's waiting to see what happens but even before the fact they're obviously taking it a little bit for granted and it looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint and I think this is really nothing compared to what you're gonna see after the war is over," Trump told Cavuto on Friday, March 21, 2003, the audio of which was obtained by BuzzFeed News through Vanderbilt University.

"I think Wall Street's just gonna go up like a rocket, even beyond, and it's gonna continue and, you know, we have a strong and powerful country and let's hope it all works out," continued Trump.

Cavuto asked Trump if he thought protests to the Iraq War would hurt investments in the United States. Trump replied that the U.S. would have to work on public relations, something he thought could be done once the war was over. And, added Trump, it would be interesting to see what weapons of the mass destruction the U.S. found.

"Well, I guess the French never liked us much except when we're bailing them out, you know, to be totally honest with you,"Trump said. "But certainly we're gonna have to work on our public relations because there's no question that there are a lot of countries in the world right now that aren't too fond of us, but I think that can be solved and probably pretty quickly. The main thing is to get the war over with and just make it a tremendously successful campaign and it'll be very interesting to see what kind of weapons they find."

BuzzFeed News on Thursday uncovered audio from Trump's September 2002 appearance on the Howard Stern Show, where he expressed support for an Iraq invasion.

"Are you for invading Iraq?" Howard Stern asked him, and Trump answered, "Yeah, I guess so."

Trump had long claimed he was an early opponent to the Bush administration's plan to invade Iraq as way to show his judgement on foreign policy. At the Feb. 6 debate in New Hampshire, Trump said, "I'm the only one up here, when the war of Iraq — in Iraq, I was the one that said, 'Don't go, don't do it, you're going to destabilize the Middle East.'"

Though Trump originally claimed he could easily provide documentation showing his early opposition, he backtracked last weekend, saying people didn't write everything he said at the time because he wasn't a politician.

In interviews on the CNN, Today and Good Morning America Trump stood by claims he was against the war, saying the 2002 Stern interview was the first time he asked his opinion about the war and "by the time the war started I was against."

LINK: In 2002, Donald Trump Said He Supported Invading Iraq

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LAS VEGAS – Like clockwork, whenever Bernie Sanders gets hit for his vote against a 2007 immigration bill — which Hillary Clinton's campaign has cited in an attempt to make his immigration record an issue — Sanders begins by saying that LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, opposed the legislation, too.

At the time the group said, "LULAC cannot support a bill that will separate families and lead to the exploitation of immigrant workers," pointing to, as Sanders has, guest worker provisions that it found to be morally wrong.

But LULAC eventually dropped its opposition to the filibuster of the bill, hoping, like other Latino and immigrant groups such as NCLR, that it could be improved in the House.

So how does the group feel about Sanders using them as a shield to protect himself from attacks on the vote? It turns out they're annoyed with Clinton for making Sanders' vote an issue.

"I really think it’s unfair for Hillary to make an issue of that vote," LULAC executive director Brent Wilkes told BuzzFeed News. "I don’t really know, it's hard to separate Hillary’s record from [Bill Clinton's]. The Clintons, when they were in office, weren’t exactly friends to immigrants."

Wilkes said that, at the time, President Bush was saying that "temporary means temporary" when it came to the guest workers staying in the country, in effect making the workers second-class citizens vulnerable to exploitation.

"We thought it was cruel and would lead to bracero-like abuses," he said, pointing to the 1940s program that brought in millions of Mexican nationals, who were in turn treated badly. Many were eventually deported in the infamous "Operation Wetback."

Wilkes said that NCLR, led by Cecilia Muñoz at the time, who is now a top Obama official, leaned on LULAC to support ending the filibuster, "but there was a difference of opinion over whether it could be improved" in the House.

Janet Murguia, the president of NCLR, said her organization understood at the time that any stalling would kill the bill, and they thought it had enough positive elements that made it worth moving forward.

"You could argue that what we had in that bill could have saved a lot of people from the agony and pain of having no action," she said, referring to separated families in the following years.

The Democratic candidates' immigration records have become a source of contention in the final days leading up to Nevada's caucus on Saturday, because of the personal and economic importance of immigration in the lives of residents in the state.

At the MSNBC/Telemundo Democratic townhall on Thursday, Clinton made a major shift, signaling that she would seek to introduce immigration legislation in the first 100 days of her presidency, language that she had previously staunchly avoided.

On Friday, her campaign sent out a tough email, contrasting the way Sanders speaks about his 2007 immigration vote now with how he explained the bill's defeat at the time.

"At a time when the middle class is shrinking, poverty is increasing and millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages it makes no sense to me to have an immigration bill which, over a period of years, would bring millions of ‘guest workers' into this country who are prepared to work for lower wages than American workers. We need to increase wages in this country, not lower them," Sanders said in a press release at the time.

"We need an immigration policy which addresses the very serious problems of illegal immigration, continues our historic support of legal immigration, but protects the shrinking middle class," he concluded.

At the townhall on Thursday Sanders said he voted against the legislation for a number of reasons.

"But I will tell you one of them, included in that legislation was a guest worker provision which organizations saw as almost akin to slavery," he said.

CHRIS KEANE / Reuters

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — Two rows of students warmly greeted Rep. Jim Clyburn when he walked into Allen University’s student center on Friday morning to endorse Hillary Clinton — perhaps the most significant endorsement of her campaign, delivered here on a historically black campus.

Clyburn didn’t bother to be introduced by a student or constituent. It was just him, his speech, the cameras — and something about the occasion being as good as any to skip a class.

“And I believe,” he said, launching into his central applause line, “that the future of the Democratic Party and the United States of America will be best served with the experiences and know how of Hillary Clinton as our 45th president.”

But there wasn’t any applause.

Many of the students in the room told BuzzFeed News that they are, in fact, supporting Bernie Sanders.

“The consensus here is that Bernie is for the people,” said Joyce Haynes, a senior at Allen University who sang the national anthem for Sanders at a recent rally. “Like, literally for the people. Not just playing politics. And that’s what I like about him.”

Sanders has, for one thing, visited the campus. (Clinton has not, though her husband has.) His education platform (free public college) is popular. The argument, several students noted, that Clinton is more qualified doesn’t do much for them.

And then there is the national reality in polling that younger Democratic voters, especially those voting in their first election, are overwhelmingly with him. That the gap in support among young voters between Clinton and Sanders extends to historically black schools (HCBUs) has become a source of concern among the Democratic Party’s black elite in Washington, most of whom are supporting Clinton. It’s not clear, at least in part because of a dearth of reliable polling, how much it will help Sanders in the Democratic primary here, which is on Saturday, Feb. 27. But several black lawmakers know well it’s a key demographic where Clinton struggles.

Sanders’s appeal at Allen — situated on a few sleepy blocks in a residential neighborhood — mirrors that of Sanders’s appeal nationally. The cost of tuition was a big worry for Jonathan Clarke and Dexter Walker, Sanders supporters who, like most students, sat silently during Clyburn’s address, clapped politely when he was done, and nodded their heads in approval when the congressman was asked about Sanders.

After the statement, a reporter had asked Clyburn what he thought about young voters’ enthusiasm for Sanders. “I was once young,” he said, adding that he wants the young getting involved in politics, whomever they support.

“I don't have any problem with anybody who's out working for Bernie Sanders,” Clyburn added. “As I said in my statement, it was a pleasant experience working with him. We worked very closely together on the Affordable Care Act.” He went on to talk about Clinton’s qualifications.

Jonathan Clarke sported a Bernie sticker to hear Clyburn endorse Clinton. Clarke said he plans on voting for Sanders.

Clarke said he rejects the idea that his goals are unachievable — he’s impressed that Sanders is running on the promise of an even more progressive agenda for America than the first black president. “You just gotta follow your heart,” Clarke said, who had a “BERNIE!” button on the strap of his backpack. “Whatever is right in your heart and your mind that’s who you go with and Bernie is who I feel is right for the country right now.”

“It’s clear that he’s trying to relate to us,” Walker said.

Though she sang the anthem at the Sanders event, Haynes is undecided. She’s leaning toward Sanders, whom she feels is most genuine in his approach to HBCUs. But she came anyway to hear what Clyburn had to say about Clinton — and walked away mostly unimpressed. “While he said that his heart is with her, he didn't advocate for her in a definitive way that she was the one candidate that you had to vote for to get changes made,” he said.

Haynes said she was also offended by Madeleine Albright’s “special place in hell” comments. “That was a little extreme,” she said. “I believe that no person has a heaven or hell to put anybody in.”

Raven Bryant, a senior from Charleston, said that she's undecided but won't be making a decision to vote for Clinton because she's a woman. “It's so much more to it than that. The issues don't change just because there's a female president. It really doesn't mean anything. Like, okay, you're a woman president, what are you bringing to the table for America? Students in college are struggling. The people are who matter.”

Bryant said she wants to hear from Clinton how she's going to lower tuition take the burden off of students to be able to afford tuition. “I'm a senior and my sister wants to go to college,” she said. “I don't want it be to be difficult for her to go to college. I want for her to have a great experience.”

Outside where Clyburn spoke, where some students had sat down for lunch, Jerry Wise, a student from the Germantown section of Philadelphia, opened the video of Obama addressing the audience at the White House’s annual black history month celebration. Wise said that the fallout from the Charleston shooting, Black Lives Matter, and taking down the Confederate flag had dominated discussion among his peers, mostly on Facebook, and that Sanders was more aptly talking about what he plans to do — rather that how qualified he is.

Wise, who considers himself among the more politically engaged students on Allen’s tiny campus, estimated there were only two Clinton supporters in the room with Clyburn.

“It seemed like [Clyburn] was talking more about the stuff Hillary did in the past,” Wise said. “She’s been a fighter and a senator all that — that’s good and all, but what can she do for our futures is the main thing. Yeah, she knows the ins and outs of policy but I would say we need someone that’s actually doing to do the hard work of helping us in the future.”

“She does have experience,” chimed in Makedric Funnie, looking up from a plate of roasted potatoes and fried tilapia. “She was secretary of state and is the wife of a former president and I actually like Hillary Clinton as a person — but the problem in the black community right now is the economy. So what’s next? We know she’s a woman! But what are you going to do and how are you going to do it? Too much has been made of her past.”

But isn’t her past what makes her more qualified?

“More qualified?” Funnie asked. “Yes. But right now I personally believe that things are too far out [of whack] in this country for anybody to assume the office with just qualifications.”

“Sanctions against employers who employ illegal immigrants is virtually nonexistent,” and the guest-worker program would drive down wages for all, Sanders explained in a video posted to his Senate website.

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Bernie Sanders once railed against the effects of the 2007 immigration bill and its guest-worker program on American workers and wages, and seemed to lament the lack of sanctions on employers for hiring undocumented immigrants in a video posted to what was then his Senate website.

"Unfortunately, the guest-worker provisions in this bill, which will bring many hundreds of thousands of lower-wage workers into this country will only make a bad situation even worse," Sanders says in the video.

"I believe we have very serious immigration problems in this country," he said, later in the video. "I think as you've heard today, sanctions against employers who employ illegal immigrants is virtually nonexistent. Our border is very porous."

While he says he supports a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, he says the 2007 bill would do more harm than good. Sanders was speaking on June 20, 2007, before the bill failed. Eight days later, he posted similar remarks in a statement after the bill had failed.

As Hillary Clinton has attacked Sanders for his vote against the 2007 immigration bill in the Senate, he's argued the bill's guest-worker program was terrible for the guest workers.

"Included in that legislation was a guest-worker provision, which organizations saw as almost akin to slavery," he said on Thursday night at a CNN town hall.

But in 2007, as has been pointed out over the last several months, Sanders talked about the guest-worker program in terms of its effect on the American worker, including in a video posted to his own website.

Sanders posted the video on his Senate site, which is accessible through the web archive:

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Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images

CLEMSON, S.C. — A new robocall going out to South Carolina voters on the eve of the state's Republican primary blasts Donald Trump as a culture war appeaser in the battle between gay rights and religious freedom — and urges listeners to support Ted Cruz "before it's too late."

The recorded message — which was obtained by BuzzFeed News after an earlier report cited a source in Columbia, S.C. who heard it Friday night — begins with a narrator saying, "Check out how Trump answers this."

The message then cuts to a recording of an interview with NECN reporter Sue O'Connell, who asks Trump if he would, as president, advocate for the expansion of gay and lesbian rights.

“I’m a lesbian," O'Connell tells Trump. "We’ve had some great progress for the gay and lesbian community through politics, through all sorts of judicial actions and elected actions over the past 20 years. When President Trump is in office, can we look for more forward motion for equality for gays and lesbians?”

Trump responds, "Well, you can. And look, that’s your thing, and other people have their thing. We have to bring all people together."

At this point, the narrator's voice, now taking on an incredulous tone, interjects: "Stop. What does she mean by 'forward motion'? What's he agreeing to?"

"It's not about tolerance anymore," the narrator continues. "It’s about mandatory celebration. It’s about forcing people to bake cakes and photograph gay weddings. Forcing clergy to officiate. It’s about transgender bathrooms in your child’s school. It’s about tearing down our Judeo-Christian values. It’s about tearing down our America."

The recording ends with an ominous sign-off from the narrator: "Ted Cruz for president — now, before it's too late."

The recording was paid for by the Courageous Conservative Political Action Committee, the same pro-Cruz group that launched another eleventh-hour robocall this week attacking Trump for praising the removal of the Confederate Flag from the South Carolina statehouse.

The Palmetto State's political scene has a sordid history of last-minute mudslinging and whisper campaign — and election-eve robocalls are frequently part of that tradition.

A spokeswoman for Cruz told the Post and Courier newspaper Friday that the campaign did not condone the Confederate flag call. But she did not respond to requests for comment from BuzzFeed News Friday night about the new robocall, except to say that the campaign wasn't associated with it.

Listen to the full robocall here:

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This story has been updated to include more detail about the robocall as well as the full audio.

Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

RENO, Nevada — Susan Sarandon is worried about Saturday’s Nevada caucuses.

“I'm so begging you to be tough during these caucuses and to know your rights and know how it works,” the actor told a crowd of Bernie Sanders supporters at The Nugget casino on Friday afternoon. “Because I can't figure it out.”

“This is so complicated as far as I'm concerned,” she said.

Sarandon turned her critiques into a dark joke, delivered with a movie star’s smile. “You know what they say! Democracy's messy so that's the way it goes,” she said. “But everybody eat ahead of time, apparently. Don't let your blood sugar drop."

Ahead of Saturday’s caucuses, people are worrying about something really going wrong here in Las Vegas. First the party was concerned about having enough volunteers. Now, conspiracy theories abound, and the fear that Nevada will look like the mess earlier this month in Iowa is haunting both Democratic campaigns. In Iowa, the complicated structure and tight result led to the image of an election being decided by a series of coin flips.

Nobody wants Nevada to look like that, and state campaign officials bristle at the suggestion Iowa is a preview of the Nevada caucuses.

“This is part of a campaign playbook to distract from the caucus results,” Zach Zaragoza, executive director of the Nevada Democratic Party, told BuzzFeed News. “For months now, the state party has been educating voters, training precinct chairs, and modernizing pre-registration tools, all while running an extensive digital and mail program. Since Iowa, we knew the campaigns might push out this false narrative and try to hedge their bets.”

But everyone else has something to worry about.

Clinton supporters were chattering Friday about rumored Republican efforts to take advantage of a loophole in the system to register and caucus with the Democrats for Bernie. The state party and the Nevada Secretary of state warned that Republicans attempting to pretend they’re Democrats to caucus could disqualify them from caucusing with the GOP next week.

Meanwhile, the Sanders campaign, burned by an Iowa caucus process they still say wasn’t fair, has built a robust “election protection program” for Bernie volunteers to fall back on if things go sideways. The system was built, based in part, on lessons learned in Iowa: It includes a handful of attorneys on hand and a hotline for Sanders precinct captains — the trained Sanders partisans on hand to wrangle the rest of his supporters during the raucous caucus process. The team includes experts on the Nevada system, ready to pounce and contest things they think are not going well.

Caucus are always hotbeds of partisan conspiracy, but after Iowa, things are even more torqued up than usual. Part of it is Nevada and the craziness of last time. In 2008, Clinton won the popular vote, but President Obama won the most delegates. That led to headlines declaring two Democratic winners — something that still stings here, and has led many to expect a less-than-smooth Saturday once caucusing gets rolling.

Chris Newman, a lawyer and immigration activist from Los Angeles who once monitored a Hugo Chavez election in Venezuela in 2007, is coming to Las Vegas in his personal capacity to monitor the polls.

He said he doesn’t personally suspect foul play from Clinton, but said "widespread reporting" that a number of precincts came down to coin tosses in Iowa contributed to concern that there could be attempts to game the system, which would lead to distrust over the results.

“You could see that there were a lot of concerns and even some conspiracy theories about what happened in Iowa and this is the best way to avoid that type of situation and ensure the legitimacy of the process,” he said.

The central report in recent days has been that the Sanders campaign is calling lists of Republican voters and telling them to change their registration and vote Saturday in the Democratic caucus, according to a source familiar with the Clinton operation in the state.

“They are the ones inviting Republicans,” the source said.

The source also said that there is concern in the Clinton orbit that Sanders supporters will try to intimidate young Clinton precinct captains because “their attitude is going to be to challenge people.”

Andres Ramirez, a Nevada superdelegate and longtime Democratic operative who endorsed Clinton at a rally Thursday after the MSNBC/Telemundo town hall, said that — if it’s true — the Sanders campaign is within its rights to do what it’s doing, but is misinforming Republican voters.

Ramirez, who is helping the Nevada Democratic Party on Saturday, said the list of voters for the Republican caucus was locked in on Feb. 13, 10 days before the GOP’s caucus. While those Republicans can indeed change their registration and take part in the Democratic caucus Saturday, he said they will not be able to then turn around and vote in the Republican one.

“I’ve talked to the elections department and the Secretary of State, that’s not true,” he said.

But he said the Sanders campaign is the one recruiting lawyers to come and “protect voting rights,” calling the effort “bizarre.” He said a caucus is not like a primary, there will be no casting ballots on a voting machine, and Democrats have same-day registration.

“I don’t understand what the fuck they’re talking about,” he said. “I think the Bernie people are so unaware, so inept about how this caucus works, that they’re going to go and try to create chaos. You’re either registered to vote or not. “

Pundits were already declaring the Nevada caucus a failure hours before they began, citing the swirling rumors and the Sanders campaign request that a volunteer be at each site recording the caucus in case later review is needed.

Steve Pope / Getty Images

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A group that Heidi Cruz sat on the board of voted in 2014 to support a LGBT rights ordinance in Texas of which other Cruz family members had been implicitly critical.

Last year, the HERO anti-discrimination ordinance in Houston failed at the polls after public discussion of the bill devolved into controversy over transgender individuals' use of public restrooms.

The Greater Houston Partnership, a Chamber of Commerce-esque business association in Houston, voted unanimously in support of the measure when the mayor proposed it in 2014, according to the Houston Chronicle. The group reiterated its support for the ordinance in a press release after the Texas Supreme Court forced the issue onto the ballot, and a page still on its website lists FAQs about the group's endorsement of the measure.

On the board of the Greater Houston Partnership: Heidi Cruz, Goldman Sachs investment manager and wife of Ted Cruz, who spoke out against subpoenas relating to the ordinance and whose father Rafael said it was "appalling" that Houston has a lesbian mayor in the weeks leading up to the vote.

A spokesperson for the Cruz campaign said Heidi Cruz is no longer a voting member of the Partnership because of the campaign.

Heidi Cruz's ties to a group that wholeheartedly endorsed a gay rights measure is thrown into relief this week after Cruz surrogates attacked Marco Rubio staffers for supporting marriage equality — despite the fact that Cruz's campaign lawyer and two strategists signed a pro-gay marriage Supreme Court amicus brief. Even among the most conservative Republicans, LGBT issues are often not as clear cut as they seem.

Cruz's campaign says Heidi Cruz had nothing to do with the Greater Houston Partnership's vote in support of HERO.

“Mrs. Cruz wasn’t able to participate in that vote," Cruz campaign spokesperson Catherine Frazier said. "She strongly opposes the ordinance and is glad that Houstonians overwhelmingly voted against it." Frazier added that Heidi Cruz voted against the ordinance as a citizen.

Unlike many political spouses, Heidi Cruz plays a key role in the Cruz campaign, frequently appearing and giving remarks at her husband's events and playing an important role in fundraising.

At the time of the controversy over HERO, Ted Cruz's father Rafael, a preacher who is a frequent surrogate and bridge-builder in the evangelical community for his son, said: "If the righteous are not running for office, if the righteous are not even voting, then what is left? The wicked electing the wicked. And we get what we deserve...I'll tell you what, it is appalling that in a city like Houston, right in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a homosexual mayor." Houston's mayor at the time, Annise Parker, who was pushing the HERO ordinance, is a lesbian.

Ted Cruz himself blasted Parker for issuing subpoenas to pastors who opposed the ordinance. "The mayor should be ashamed," Cruz said in a statement in October 2014. "And we should all be proud to stand up and defend the pastors who are resisting these blatant attempts to suppress their First Amendment rights."

HERO went on the ballot in November 2015 and was defeated by a wide margin.

Trump was confronted Saturday morning with his past statements, unearthed by BuzzFeed News, that show he supported an Iraq invasion in 2002, thought Saddam Hussein having WMDs was a threat, and thought the war appeared to being going well one day after the invasion started.

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Donald Trump, confronted on Fox & Friends Saturday morning with evidence unearthed by BuzzFeed News that he supported the invasion of Iraq and talked up the threat of Saddam Hussein possessing WMDs, downplayed his own past statements and continued to argue he was an early and loud opponent to the war.

Trump has long claimed he warned that the war would destabilize the Middle East, despite no evidence to suggest he held this view or expressed it publicly. Even after his past statements seemed to suggest he was a tepid supporter of the invasion, Trump said Friday: "I said don't go to Iraq and I said it strongly and I said it loud."

Here's what Trump said when confronted with some past statements on Iraq:

Asked about this, Trump answered, "how would I know, I was a civilian, I was a businessman. I read the papers like everybody else, and the government was talking about weapons of mass destruction."

In 2002, Trump was asked on the Howard Stern Show if we should invade Iraq, he said “yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

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The Supreme Court justice was laid to rest on Saturday.

Donald Trump on Saturday said President Obama might have attended Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's funeral if it had been held at a mosque instead of a Catholic church.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

The tweet by Trump, who lent a prominent face to the years-long conspiracy surrounding Obama's birthplace, is seemingly a reference to the fact the president made his first official visit to a U.S. mosque on Feb. 3.

Trump's tweet comes amid heavy criticism from several right-wing figures who were upset that Obama did not attend the justice's funeral.

On Friday, both the president and First Lady Michelle Obama paid their respects to Scalia as his body lay in repose at the Supreme Court.

Pool / Getty Images

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