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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich floated whether the death of a DNC staffer was related to Wikileaks' release of thousands of emails. Gingrich contended that there are scenes where you realize "dangerous things are going on in the world" — like in his espionage novels.

Gingrich made the comments on the Mike Gallagher Show on Wednesday when asked about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange floating the possibility this week that a murdered Democratic staffer was an informant for the organization. (Assange said the organization protected the anonymity of its sources, while also saying the death was "concerning.")

"First of all, of course it's worth talking about," Gingrich said. "And if Assange says he is the source, Assange may know. That's not complicated. Whether it has any meaning in the presidential campaign, I don't know, but obviously, look, I'm old fashioned. I think not only do black lives matter, I think all American lives matter."

Seth Rich, a DNC employee who did voter outreach, was shot to death last month early in the morning in Washington, D.C. The case is unsolved and police have speculated it was an attempted robbery. After Assange's comments, Rich's family released the following statement:

"The family welcomes any and all information that could lead to the identification of the individuals responsible, and certainly welcomes contributions that could lead to new avenues of investigation. That said, some are attempting to politicize this horrible tragedy, and in their attempts to do so, are actually causing more harm than good and impeding on the ability for law enforcement to properly do their job. For the sake of finding Seth's killer, and for the sake of giving the family the space they need at this terrible time, they are asking for the public to refrain from pushing unproven and harmful theories about Seth's murder."

On Reddit, Rich’s death has become the source of theories about whether he was involved in the leaks of emails and files from the Democratic National Committee last month. US intelligence officials have linked the leak to a Russian hack, though there has been no official conclusion on the matter.

"If someone is gunned down in our national capital, we ought to have a pretty passionate interest in knowing why," continued Gingrich. "And if it clearly wasn't a mugging and it wasn't for money, what was it for? I think just in that sense, as you know I've written two novels: Duplicity about terrorism and the presidential campaign and the follow-one Treason is coming out. We have these kind of scenes in there where you begin to realize that there are dangerous things going on in the world."

"I think part of what happens to all of us though is there is so much clutter, but it's all about Hillary and the emails," he said. "There are so many different points of sickening corruption between Bill, the foundation, the secretary of state's office, the emails. There's so much of it you can't get it straight."

In the early hours of Tuesday, July 27, 2004, I made my way out of the secure perimeter of the Democratic National Convention in Boston and toward the 7-Eleven just outside the fence, the last place to buy a liter of Coke for a long writing night.

As I approached, I saw what seemed like news: two white Boston police officers, one small and one tall, frog-marching the Rev. Al Sharpton out of the convenience store.

“You got me shoplifting!” Sharpton yelled, and I thought I had a story.

Then the police officers snapped photographs, they thanked the activist for playing along, everyone started laughing, and Sharpton waved his pink Tropicana Smoothie as a trophy. “He’s a funny bastard,” one of the cops said.

I wrote the story up, and have thought of it since as a kind of sad one. Sharpton had run for president that year, and he lit up the debates. He gave a genuinely gorgeous convention speech, little remarked on then or since, about listening to Ray Charles sing “America the Beautiful.”

And yet in the early hours of that Tuesday, there was Sharpton as New Yorkers like me had always known him. A more familiar character — a raspy-voiced, messy, and mischievous urban figure, the radical foe of the police yet game to goof around with them. He was simultaneously iconic and somehow harmless.

And it wasn’t to be Sharpton’s convention. That Tuesday would be remembered in politics for the debut of a junior Illinois senator named Barack Obama, who delivered his breakout convention speech bringing together black and white, red and blue, the dawning of a new post-racial American politics. Al Sharpton and his ilk were brushed off into history.

I had asked to spend some time with Sharpton at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia after I recalled that moment in Boston 12 years earlier, and how wrong I’d been to write him off then. I was hardly alone at the time. In 2008, Obama won the Iowa caucuses, and the former Reagan aide and CNN commentator Bill Bennett, watching the returns come in, brought up Sharpton. Obama “has taught the black community you don't have to act like Jesse Jackson; you don't have to act like Al Sharpton,” he said.

President Barack Obama greets Rev. Al Sharpton on April 11, 2014 in New York City.

John Moore / Getty Images

“I was like, out of all the things happening, why did he pick me?” Sharpton recalled. “And then we went into this whole media thing. We were in a post-racial generation.” He said the word with a wry emphasis: post-racial. Well, that didn’t happen. He concluded: “I think that people underestimated.”

What people underestimated was the enduring heat of American racial conflict, its deep roots, its ongoing violence, its flawed protagonists. But Obama’s first term and its half-forgotten racially charged incidents — the beer summit, the Shirley Sherrod tapes — reminded even optimists that the first black president wouldn’t be able to wave the stories away. Sharpton was not surprised; nor, he said, was Obama, who never distanced himself from the New York preacher.

“The president understood more than a lot of others,” Sharpton told me.

Sharpton has spent his career reading his obituary. A child preacher, a James Brown protégé, he never fit neatly into political categories. He was lampooned in Bonfire of the Vanities in 1987. He was supposed to be done, finally, in the late 1980s when he championed a young woman, Tawana Brawley, who claimed — falsely, it turned out — to have been sexually assaulted by white cops. His role defending the (later vindicated) alleged Central Park jogger rapists brought the tabloid outrage to fever pitch. But he was always more in control of the narrative than it appeared. As Amsterdam News publisher Wilbert Tatum told an impressed Joan Didion in 1991, “Al is probably the most brilliant tactician this country has ever produced.”

“I’ve been buried politically since I started. Howard Beach was ’86, 30 years ago. With Mario. I’m on my second Cuomo,” Sharpton told me when I saw him in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago.

But Sharpton survived the racially polarized Giuliani years, and he survived the post-racial fantasies of the early Obama years. Now it’s the intense and explicit new racial politics of the #BlackLivesMatter movement — and a wave of commentary has reduced him to a member of the faded old guard.

Sharpton met me in Philadelphia at the Hilton, where his National Action Network was about to host a marathon of speeches and sermons on voting rights, police brutality, and the election, on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention. The Delaware River was behind him, and his longtime lawyer, Michael Hardy, was slouched at the round table. The luncheon was set to start just as I walked into the room around noon, but Sharpton has always made time for the press.

As an older crowd, heavy on clergy, gathered in the ballroom down the hall, I asked Sharpton to think back to that convention in Boston 12 years earlier, and how he wound up there. Sharpton told me he ran for president in 2004 for a couple of reasons. He wanted to stop the “drift toward triangulation” and pull the party left. Moreover, he "couldn’t believe there wasn’t going to be a black in the race” — in the Democratic Party, in 2004. In the end, former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun ran too, and Sharpton didn’t galvanize black voters. And Howard Dean got credit for pulling the party left; Sharpton played his wittier sidekick.

Democratic presidential hopeful Rev. Al Sharpton speaks during the Democratic National Committee Winter Meeting, Feb. 22, 2003 in Washington, DC.

Mike Theiler / Getty Images

His presidential run was not itself a triumph. He won 27 delegates and wound up a historical footnote. He faced accusations that an unconventional campaign adviser, Republican Roger Stone, had orchestrated the whole thing as a dirty trick, which Sharpton dismisses. Stone — a longtime Trump retainer — is “just anti-establishment,” he said, and Sharpton wound up campaigning loyally for John Kerry. The campaign ended, as other Stone ventures have, in a particularly messy kind of defeat. Sharpton spent the next five years under investigation by the Federal Elections Commission for spending undisclosed money on his campaign and mixing nonprofit and campaign funds; in 2009, he and the campaign paid $285,000 to settle the case.

But the campaign changed Sharpton’s own trajectory. He won every debate with his flexible wit and quips, which were viral one cycle before that was the name of the game. Bush’s tax cuts were “like Jim Jones giving Kool-Aid. It tastes good, but it will kill you.”

“It changed my life and changed my career,” he said. “It made a lot of people that considered me controversial say, ‘I’m watching the debates. I may not agree with you, but I don’t think you’re that extreme.’ I think it got me past the 30-second sound bite and the caricatures. It became more difficult for people to be dismissive on a national level.” Pretty soon came the ultimate validation of arrival into the political elite: “George Bush started inviting me to stuff.”

Sharpton also followed the increasingly common path from being a canny media subject to being a media professional. (Who’s ready for Trump TV?) In 2005, the black radio magnate Cathy Hughes, who owns Radio One, signed him to do a talk show, which has aired around the country since then from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. every weekday in dozens of markets, which in turn put him on course for a show on MSNBC.

His narrow but continuous presence has given a grassroots constancy of a sort that few national figures can match. As he stood proudly to the right of the podium at the Hilton, one Texas pastor said that he watched Sharpton’s PoliticsNation Sunday mornings to make sure he’d have smart things to say to his congregation.

Sharpton remains only an ambivalently national figure, however. There were only two politicians seated at his table at the gathering — the New York state attorney general and the New York City comptroller. He will cheerfully gossip at length about an Upper West Side state Senate race. Sharpton’s media relationships, too, are deeply New York — something that was, perhaps, as much of an asset as a liability as a generation of New York political reporters ascended the national press. He recalled to me that when Maggie Haberman, now the dominant New York Times political reporter, was a young New York Post reporter, she’d call him to berate him when he gave scoops to her rivals. He said he’ll probably have to give her the news when he endorses Clinton.

After the gathering at the Hilton, I left with Sharpton and his small entourage — his lawyer, Michael Hardy; his national field director, Rev. De-Ves Toon; and a mild, hulking security guy — in the usual politician’s SUV. Sharpton has a handful of young staffers helping with this and that, but he isn’t quite the personal assistant type. He pulled a grimy wire out of his briefcase to charge his phone so he could check Instagram, his favored social network.

Sharpton is broadly at home in the new media. At the Hilton, he pointedly told the ministers present that they should be tweeting, not handing out fliers. His morning routine begins a bit after 5:00 with Huffington Post, Politico, Daily Beast, BuzzFeed, and Salon, followed by a set of black sites — The Root, theGrio, News One. “Then I read the papers in the car,” he said, though his daughters tell him, “People aren’t reading newspapers anymore, you look old!”

The Reverend Al Sharpton stands with Eric Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, at the site where two police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were killed in Brooklyn in 2015.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

He prides himself on his nearly 500,000 Twitter followers, but he’s not in the hashtag game and doesn’t really engage on the platform that has been central to a new black civil rights movement. And he has an ambivalent relationship with the new generation of organizers loosely affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, who have driven a wave of progress and outrage on the police brutality fights he’s spent his career on. He’s faced suspicion, and occasional confrontation. In 2014, one of the most prominent protesters and now a leading figure in the movement, Johnetta Elzie, seized the stage at a Washington, D.C. rally Sharpton arranged. Some of the younger activists who favor direct action see him, as one close watcher of the movement told me, "as a relic and an opportunist." (Sharpton, of course, used to be seen as a violent radical; he lost much of his once iconic weight during the three months he spent in jail to protest the test bombing of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in 2001.)

Sharpton took an oblique shot at the movement from the podium of his Philadelphia gathering: “You don't have a confrontation because you're a confrontation freak," he told the approving crowd.

Sharpton told me he admires and talks to some of the Black Lives Matter activists, including DeRay Mckesson, whom he sees as goal-oriented; others he thinks are more like Occupy Wall Street, protesters without a cause or a clear trajectory. The split reminds him of his own youth at Brooklyn’s Samuel J. Tilden High School, where “all my friends … were in the black nationalist organizations, the Black Panther Party.” Sharpton was, he says, seen as a moderate, aligned with Martin Luther King Jr.’s Operation Breadbasket.

“I could hardly get a date because all the fine girls in school were all a lot more radical,” he said.

And so he’s not troubled by the new narrative. He has his broad media base. Regular people, he notes, recognize him in the street. The idea of a generational conflict is “media, and not understanding the culture.”

“Do you think a young extremist could have walked in that room today and anybody would have done anything but tell them to sit down and shut up?” he asked, referring to the room full of pastors and established officials — from Rep. John Conyers to Urban League President Marc Morial — at his luncheon in Philadelphia. “Name me anybody else with that kind of reach and visibility on a daily and weekly basis. Which is why I can call a march and get thousands right away. I talk to them every day. I don’t have to gear up.”

We were supposed to be headed for the Wells Fargo Arena, but instead wound unpredictably away from the river, destination unknown. The SUV pulled up in front of a modest cigar shop — I was told it was Philadelphia’s second-nicest — offering Sharpton a break and a chance to indulge a habit he modeled on Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the legendary Harlem congressman.

It’s a habit that brings him into contact with an unpredictable group of people. In the back room at SJ Cigars, we could hear an older white man explain to Hardy his theory that Edward Snowden had hacked the DNC. The man came around a divider to see Sharpton, and to admit he’d liked him since seeing him on The Morton Downey Jr. Show in the 1980s.

“You’re lookin’ excellent. You look better than you do on TV!” the man said.

“Well, you’re kinda cute yourself. Who are you votin’ for?” Sharpton asked.

“If you were running, I’d vote for you.”

In New York, sometimes it’s his old enemy Rudy Giuliani, with whom he’s now cordial. Sometimes it’s Donald Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric, whom he bumps into at the Grand Havana Room in Midtown, where they’re all members. “It’s only hello-goodbye niceties.”

Sharpton’s tolerance — even enjoyment — of ideological adversaries does not extend to Donald Trump, though he recognizes the parallels in their public lives.

“Both of us were outside of the New York power structure,” he reflected. Trump was "a Queens guy," to the Manhattan real estate barons, Sharpton continued, “and I was outside of even the black political structure, a Brooklyn guy, and a civil rights guy that wasn’t a member of the club. And I think that we both figured out how to get past them and to deal with the tabloid-crazed media in New York."

“And there was another similarity: Both of us had a lot of our growing up in New York that was meshed with the entertainment world. So we learned how to use showmanship for something serious,” Sharpton said. That, he said, is where the similarity ends.

“I think the difference is that I was trying to get attention because I really believed in a cause,” Sharpton reflected, after recoiling a bit at the comparison, and noting that his mother, unlike Trump's, was on welfare. "I’ve been in it since I was preadolescent. I think that his cause was him. So he never got the chip off his shoulder, ’cause the chip is him. ‘Y’all rejected me, y’all rejected my dad.’ And it’s revenge."

Sharpton is self-aware enough to understand his own place in the media game, but he sees his role differently than Donald Trump's.

“Mine was, y’all are gonna deal with these issues that the established blacks won’t deal with. So when I sit back and see a black president, when I sit back and see a Geneva Reed-Veal [the mother of Sandra Bland, who died in a jail cell in Texas] stand on the stage at the Democratic Convention, I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. Because I did a lot of what I came to do. Y’all gonna deal with these issues."

“I ain’t mad at nobody. He is,” Sharpton concluded. “He will never, ever go to bed and wake up and be the toast of the Regency breakfast room. But I will see police reform laws.”

Then he made his way out of the cigar parlor, pausing for a selfie with the delighted women behind the counter. The rain was falling, so he got in his SUV and headed straight back to New York.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

KISSIMMEE, Fl. — In a rare show of humility on Thursday, Donald Trump said it would be "OK" if he lost the presidency.

"I go back to a very good way of life," he said. "I'm going to have a very, very nice long vacation."

But at a rally later in the night in Kisssimmee, Florida, the stakes were much higher for Trump's supporters, who said they feared for the country's future — and even its very existence — if Republican nominee were to lose the presidency.

"He's not going to lose," said Donald Buzzelli, who was at his fourth rally of the campaign season. "This country would become like a third world country."

Donald Buzzelli.

Buzzelli added that he most fears the corruption that would overtake the political system without Trump's influence.

"He doesn't need this job, he's not beholden to anyone," Buzzelli said. "That's what I like about him, he's not trying to get in with special interests."

Many Trump supporters said they were urgently worried about the Supreme Court if their candidate were to lose.

"I think they'll take away our constitutional rights," said Karen Fenske of Melbourne. "They'll tear up our constitution."

Others, like Michelle Fleming, feared a major cultural shift if Trump were to lose.

"I'm just afraid that our political correctness will get even worse than it is," she said. "We are so off-balance, so far to the left, and if Trump loses people will end up hating even more. The civil unrest will get worse."

In the crowded Kissimmee arena Thursday, Trump also doubled down on his controversial claim that President Obama was "the founder of ISIS."

"He's the founder in the truest sense," Trump told the crowd.

As speakers began, a Confederate flag stamped with the word "Trump" was hung not far from the stage, guarded by a rowdy group of young men in "Make America Great Again" hats. But after a heated conversation with campaign staff and police officers, the Confederate banner was replaced with an American flag.

Few supporters said they believed the polls, which show Trump behind by significant margins and struggling in key swing states.

"The polls are swayed in favor of Hillary," said Sam McGee, a campaign volunteer. "They're asking more Democrats, and so of course you have the Democrat winning."

Trump, too, seemed to put little stock in the polls.

"We're tied," he said, at one point. Later, he asked the crowd, "Can you imagine losing to Hillary? I mean, can you imagine?"

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

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In a late 2007 interview with Howard Stern, Donald Trump said he was pushing for Hillary Clinton win the 2008 Democratic primary calling her a good friend of his for whom he'd hosted fundraisers.

"Well, it's gonna be between Rudy (Giuliani) and Hillary in my opinion," Trump said. "I don't know, it's gonna be a very tough race."

"Who are you gonna vote for?" asked Stern.

"I don't want to comment yet because they're both very good friends of mine," responded Trump. "They're both very, very good friends of mine. They're both great people."

Trump also conceded he thought the economy did better under Democrats.

"You know, it's very interesting with Democrats. Democrats get it. Business does very well, although in theory they're not good for business," he said.

When Stern asked Trump if he'd ever hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, he responded he did.

"I did, yes, I'd like her to win on the Democratic side, Rudy to win on the Republican side," he said. "And then I have to make a decision. But they're both great people. I think they're both gonna win and it's gonna be interesting to see what happens."

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Republican Rep. Reid Ribble of Wisconsin says he's leaning toward backing libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.

"I'm definitely leaning that way, I haven't had a chance to talk to him," Ribble told BuzzFeed News on Monday.

Last December, Ribble said he would not be backing Trump, making him one of the first Republican members of Congress to say so. At the time, the Wisconsin congressman told radio host Charlie Sykes that “dozens” of his fellow Republicans, including members of Congress, said they wouldn't support Trump as well.

Ribble said Johnson had reached out to him, but they hadn't had to set up a conversation as of yet.

The Wisconsinite is retiring from Congress this year.

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images

Mike Pence wrote in a 1992 column that the American public was like a cheating husband's angry wife who sought to get back at him by spending the night at a "no-tell motel" with a "most unsavory character."

Pence wanted to know why America was on the verge of electing Bill Clinton even though, he argued, the country had voted for the more conservative candidate in every election since 1968, including when Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976.

"The answer may be found in the old story that ends at the check-in desk of the 'no tell motel,'" Pence wrote, in an op-ed published in the Daily Journal, a local paper, on Oct. 21, 1992.

"You know the one," Pence continued. "The neglected wife discovers her husband's infidelity and, simply in order to get him back for the harm he has caused her, she begins in the bar and ends in the motel with a most unsavory character indeed. She doesn't care about the suitor, he is merely a vehicle of her vengeance. The sadness comes the morning after, when she awakens, soberly, to her indiscretion and shame."

Pence went on to say that America was like the wife "standing in the lobby of the motel while Slick Willie parks the car." He said that incumbent president George H.W. Bush's "dalliances with the left-wing Congress," such as raising taxes and other infidelities, were the cause of the country's anger.

"Oh, it will feel so good to see the look on his face, we surmise," Pence wrote. "But the joke's on us because while we may vote for him as a convenient tool for our revenge, this guy's coming home with us for four years."

Here's Pence's column:

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

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Carl Paladino, the co-chair for Donald Trump's campaign in New York, defended the Republican nominee's attacks on Khizr Khan, whose son died in Iraq in 2004, saying Khan doesn't deserve the title of a Gold Star parent because he's shown himself to be "anti-American" and may be a supporter of "the ISIS-type of attitude against America."

“We’ve got an un-indicted felon as his opponent and you’re talking about Khan, about him making a remark about this man," Paladino, a former New York gubernatorial candidate, told interviewer Connell McShane on Imus in the Morning. "All right, I don’t care if he’s a Gold Star parent. He certainly doesn’t deserve that title, OK, if he’s as anti-American as he’s illustrated in his speeches and in his discussion. I mean, if he’s a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or supporting, you know, the ISIS-type of attitude against America, there’s no reason for Donald Trump to have to honor this man.”

Khan, a lawyer and longtime critic of Trump, has said that "is the time for us American Muslims to rat out any traitor who walks amongst us. This is high time for Muslims to stand firm [against terrorists]." In his DNC speech, Khan praised American democracy and the "hard work and goodness of this country"; then criticized Trump on the grounds of his rhetoric toward religious and ethnic minorities, as well as women; he then asked Trump if he had read the U.S. Constitution, and then held up his pocket-sized copy. His son, an Army captain, was killed by a car bomb in Iraq.

Paladino also fueled conspiracy theories that Hillary Clinton is hiding health problems, calling her "devious" for doing so.

“If you sit there and just dissect Donald Trump, you may feel that way," Paladino said of criticisms of Trump. "But if you’re really looking at what’s been exposed about Hillary and Hillary’s demeanor. I mean, just look at the deviousness, if it is true about her health problems. I mean, how devious can a woman possibly be? And not telling the American people that she’s got some sickness, she’s definitely impaired.”

In the interview, Paladino also reiterated his belief that President Obama is Muslim, a comment first noted by Mediaite.

Gov. Phil Bryant

Mike Blake / Reuters

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday denied Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant's request that the state be allowed to enforce a recently passed anti-LGBT religious exemption law while the state appeals a trial court's order halting enforcement of that law.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in denying the request for a stay pending appeal, also denied the governor's request to expedite the appeal.

Bryant signed the bill, HB 1523, into law on April 5. The bill provided protections for individuals, religious organizations, and certain businesses who take actions due to their “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” regarding same-sex marriage — or any sex outside straight marriage. It also provided similar protections for those who object to transgender people.

The trial court judge who halted enforcement of the law on the night before it was due to go into effect, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves, denied the request for a stay pending appeal on Aug. 1.

Friday's order came from a three-judge panel of the appeals court: Judges James Dennis, Catharina Haynes, and James Graves. Dennis was nominated to the bench by President Clinton, Hanes by President George W. Bush, and Graves by President Obama.

Bryant now could seek a stay from the U.S. Supreme Court or proceed with the state's appeal without being able to enforce the law in the meantime.

Read the ruling:

Read the secondary appeal order:

Donald Trump attends a campaign rally Pennsylvania Friday.

Eric Thayer / Reuters

Donald Trump told a crowd Friday afternoon that the only way he could lose Pennsylvania in November is if Hillary Clinton cheats.

The Republican nominee made the comments during a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where earlier in the day he had toured a factory. During the rally, he mentioned the region's economy and repeatedly suggested voter fraud could cost him the election.

"The only way we could lose, in my opinion — I really mean this Pennsylvania — is if cheating goes on," he said.

Trump then suggested Clinton "can't beat what's happening here," and reiterated that the only way he would lose Pennsylvania is "in my opinion, and I mean this 100%, if in certain sections of the state they cheat."

This week, multiple polls showed Clinton with double digit leads over Trump in Pennsylvania.

At recent campaign rallies, Trump has made railing against what he describes as a "rigged" system a key part of his speeches. Though he has been vague about specifics, the candidate has repeatedly taken issue with voter ID laws. During Friday's rally he hit the topic again, saying it is "shocking that you don't have" voter identification.

In interviews with BuzzFeed News at rallies in several states, Trump's supporters have generally agreed with the candidate's claims that the electoral system is somehow rigged.

During Friday's gathering, however, Trump went further, calling on both police and his followers to monitor polling places around the state to "make sure thats its 100% fine."

He did not elaborate on what his supporters might do if they suspect cheating is occurring, but urged them to do more than just vote on election day.

"We're going to watch Pennsylvania," Trump said. "Go down to certain areas to and watch and study and make sure other people don't come in and vote five times.

Also at Friday's rally, Trump read The Snake — a favorite poem of the candidate's about a "tender hearted" person who is bitten by a serpent — and said he hoped to emerge victorious after the November election.

"I hope I win," Trump said. "I'm going to feel very, very foolish if I don't win."

LINK: Donald Trump Supporters Believe His Claims Of Rigged Election

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Bill Clinton, the so-called "explainer-in-chief," got a simple question at the end of his hourlong appearance Friday on behalf of his wife at a Nevada presidential forum.

The voter identified himself as a Democrat, a fan of the first Clinton administration, a supporter of a second, and then asked, "How do you explain to American voters how we should trust Hillary Clinton when she lied about her emails?"

"Wait a minute," Bill Clinton said, objecting to the premise. "It's not true."

The voter tried again. "OK. But how do you explain to the American people who believe that she lied?"

Bill Clinton is a more adept and disciplined surrogate now than eight years ago during his wife's first presidential campaign: At points on the trail, he has been far better than the candidate herself at trying to knit together her myriad policy proposals and make sense of a tumultuous and unprecedented election year.

But his attempt on Friday night at a forum in Las Vegas, hosted by the Asian-American Journalist Association, to explain the unending email controversy and untangle related questions about record-keeping, security, and classification, signaled the possibility that, even after the conclusion of this summer's FBI investigation, the issue may long remain unresolved.

"It's too complicated to explain to people," Bill Clinton finally said after wading into the various classification rules and the system of markings that became central to the question of whether his wife ever sent or received classified information on the private email server she maintained at her home in Chappaqua, New York.

The former president referred to some emails that had been marked with the letter C. “This is the biggest load of bull I ever heard,” he said, prompting laughter from the crowd gathered at Caesars Palace Hotel who also heard from the two third-party candidates, Green Party nominee Jill Stein and libertarian Gary Johnson.

The emails, Bill Clinton said, “were about telephone calls that she needed to make. And the State Department typically puts a little ‘C’ on it to discourage people from discussing it in public in the event the secretary of state, whoever it is, doesn’t make a telephone call. Does that sound threatening to the national security to you?”

Messages that were later marked classified included messages to or from about 300 career diplomats, Bill Clinton said. “All of whom were careless with the national security? Do you believe that? Forget about Hillary. Forget about her,” he said, waving his arms at the lectern.

“Is that conceivable? If it was that important, shouldn’t we have all heard about this earlier, and shouldn’t there have been some comprehensive resolution of this?”

(Earlier this summer, FBI director James Comey said that Clinton had sent or received 110 emails in 52 email chains that contained "classified information at the time they were sent or received.” Approximately 2,000 emails have been subsequently deemed to contain classified information, even if the information was not classified at the time. Comey told Congress that the 'C,' which appeared in three emails, indicates classified information.)

To round out his case on Friday, Bill Clinton cited the various Republican national security leaders who have endorsed his wife over the prospect of a President Trump.

“If it was something to worry about," he asked, "would President [George H.W. Bush’s] national security adviser, Admiral [Brent] Scowcroft, have endorsed Hillary? Would Gen. Colin Powell’s assistant at the State Department [Richard Armitage] have endorsed Hillary? Would a 33-year CIA veteran who was acting director of the CIA [Michael Morell] … have endorsed Hillary? You should ask them.”

“Would everybody who’s ever worked for her be for her, if she were not trustworthy?” he said to cheers from the crowd. “If people you went to elementary school with were still campaigning for you... If you haven’t lived in Arkansas since 1993 and hundreds of people at their own expense went all over America to campaign for you... If the people who worked with you in every walk of life, and then people who know you in your official capacity, all have good things to say... It seems to me that should offset people who have a vested interest in tearing you down.”

In Bill Clinton’s telling, the questions about the private email server had lingered largely because “her adversaries are very good at doing reverse plastic surgery.”

He offered an over-simplified account of what past secretaries of state did with their own emails, suggesting that only Clinton was “transparent” enough to turn over her records. “She was the only one who gave anything. You may think the others were smarter, since there’s not much reward in being transparent,” Bill Clinton said.

But neither Condoleezza Rice nor Colin Powell, her two immediate predecessors, had records to turn over. Rice did not use email during her tenure as secretary of state, and Powell did not preserve paper or electronic copies of his email.

The former president did admit that his wife could have avoided the upset.

“She should have known there would be a different set of rules applied to her if she ever ran for president,” Bill Clinton said, then returned once again to the thorny “dispute” at the State Department and intelligence agencies over classification.

This, he said, “I can’t resolve this for people.”

Donald Trump appears at a rally Friday in Erie, Pennsylvania.

AP / Evan Vucci

Donald Trump has launched a campaign initiative seeking volunteer "observers" to prevent his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton from "rigging" the November presidential election.

"Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!" an apparently new page on the Republican candidate's official website says. "Please fill out this form to receive more information about becoming a volunteer Trump Election Observer."

The form collects users' contact information, then directs them to a donations form. Those who sign up also receive an email promising that "we are going to do everything we are legally allowed to do to stop crooked Hillary from rigging this election."

Donald J. Trump for President / Via donaldjtrump.com

It was not immediately clear when the page launched, but it began drawing attention late Friday.

Earlier Friday, Trump repeatedly told a crowd gathered at a Pennsylvania rally that he would only lose the state to Clinton if "cheating goes on." He also called on his supporters to "go down to certain areas" and "make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times."

The Trump campaign webpage calling for "observers" appears to be the first and most significant move toward formally organizing the candidate's supporters around an idea — cheating and rigged elections — that has becoming an increasingly prominent part of his stump speech. However, it was not clear what the campaign would have the volunteers to do beyond making donations.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News request for additional comment.

LINK: Trump Says The Only Way He Can Lose Pennsylvania Is If Clinton Cheats

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

In a deposition earlier this summer, Ivanka Trump said she drafted a statement last summer in the wake of her father’s comments about the “rapists” that Mexico sends to the United States — though she denied that she had asked her father to issue a “retraction.”

The deposition — as well as those of Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. — is part of a legal dispute related to a restaurant lease in the Trumps’ Washington, D.C., hotel property.

When he announced his bid for the presidency, Trump infamously said that Mexico “sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Following those comments, a chef pulled out of the hotel property, prompting the lawsuit.

Last summer, New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported that Ivanka Trump wrote “several drafts of a statement” to walk back the remarks (she declined to comment at the time). In June, she was asked whether she had drafted statements, as been reported.

“His statements were mischaracterized as being a categorical attack on Hispanics,” Ivanka Trump said during her deposition. “And I felt that it was very important that he clarified the fact that that was not the case. He had not said that. He had not attacked Hispanic people. But that was the immediate narrative that had been spun.”

In the deposition, Ivanka Trump said she “never” asked her father to issue a “retraction.”

“I had suggested a clarification because I felt that his comments were being misconstrued,” she said. “Not a retraction. I don't think that's my place.”

Asked if she had written something, she responded, “I drafted something for myself, but — so I wrote something down. But it was — yeah. But it was not used.” Ivanka Trump said she had written it down herself, but did not believe she still had the statement.

Asked what it said, Ivanka Trump said the following:

It said that I — it said — basically I was playing around with the idea of the fact that the media was spinning what he said to be about Hispanic people generally, as opposed to illegal immigrants, which he subsequently clarified on his own in countless interviews. And the fact that my father has a tremendous relationship with people of Hispanic descent. You know, this is — this is something that personally was very hard for me because I know how many friends my father has who are Hispanics, how many people work at our company who are Hispanic. So when the media took the narrative in a bad direction it was upsetting to me, because I know it to not be true. So I thought it would be helpful to — to articulate that. But ultimately he did. I mean, he's — he's very articulate and very capable of sort of speaking his opinion. And he said that numerous times. He said that, you know, how many Hispanic friends he has and how many — how fortunate we are to have so many great Hispanic people working for us. So I don't think there was any need to clarify after that point in time.

Donald Trump, in his deposition, said he did not remember having a conversation with Ivanka about the matter.

“Did anyone have any conversations with you about — along the lines of, ‘Look, if you retract these statements, like, if you, you know, can clarify, modify, make it clear that you didn't mean what people are saying you meant, maybe we can salvage these deals’?” Trump was asked.

“I don't think so,” he responded. “No, I don't think so. I mean, you would have to ask my children, but I don't think so.”

Asked whether he had a conversation in which Ivanka "urged" him to issue a clarifying statement, he said, “No. Not that I remember.”

The Trump campaign did not return a request for comment.

In July 2015, Trump did release a lengthy statement about Mexico, trade, and immigration.

During his deposition, Donald Trump Jr. appears to have been asked about that statement and whether he sent it to the chef, Geoffrey Zakarian.

“When Mr. Zakarian wrote, ‘Thanks, but this is in no way an outright apology,’ does that reflect the fact that he had asked you whether your father was apologizing for those statements or would withdraw them?” Trump Jr. was asked.

“I don't know,” Trump Jr. responded. “As I said, I don't — I don't know if he asked me if — you know, for an outright apology. You know, we sent him the statement to clarify what was actually said. And, you know, I followed up saying, Hey, why don't we sit down tomorrow and see what we can talk about. And that's when I read about it in the New York Times.”

Asked whether he viewed the statement as an apology, Trump Jr. said, “I don't know that I — it's — I don't know that it's mine to say. But I don't know that there's anything to apologize for. It's a political opinion. It had nothing to do with the lease.”

Whether Zakarian was justified in pulling out of the project because of the comments is at the center of the legal proceedings. In her deposition, Ivanka Trump is clear about whether she was worried the comments could negatively affect the company.

“No,” she responded. “I view politics and business as separate and distinct.”

LINK: Trump Showed Investors “Rosier” Numbers For His DC Hotel, Testimony Shows

Afp / AFP / Getty Images

CAMBRIDGE, Ohio — In the middle of Mike Pence's stump speech attacking Hillary Clinton and highlighting party unity, a woman near the front of the crowd inside the local civic center repeatedly yelled, "The polls are rigged. Trump's going to win!"

Pence ignored her. He pressed forward with his speech, glancing frequently at his notecards behind the podium.

He also ignored the sporadic "lock her up" chants that began in a different corner of the room each time he mentioned Clinton.

He mentioned the "great governor" of Ohio, John Kasich — who has been targeted often in recent weeks by the Trump campaign — and got loud boos from the crowd.

He ignored those, too.

Donald Trump seems to thrive on these kind of interruptions — they often produce some sort of acknowledgement and riff — but they have no effect on Pence.

In every campaign event during a recent swing through Pennsylvania and Ohio, Pence did what Republicans have been begging Trump to do for months: stayed relentlessly on message and talked about a “united party.” But with fewer than 90 days before the election, the GOP presidential ticket feels like two different worlds.

As Trump told the crowd at a rally in Wilmington, N.C., that "the Second Amendment people, maybe there is" something they could do to keep Clinton from appointing justices who could weaken gun rights, Pence in Pennsylvania re-told a romanticized story of getting “the call” from Trump and accepting the vice presidential slot "in a heartbeat."

As Trump proclaimed President Obama the founder of ISIS at an event in Florida, Pence stuck to the usual GOP foreign policy talking points attacking the administration, bringing up the $400 million in cash payment to Iran, Benghazi, and the party’s approach to the Middle East.

"The failed policies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton weakened America's place in the world," he said, lowering his voice. "It's undeniable. You know history teaches us that weakness arouses evil… Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's policies of leading from behind; moving red lines; feigning resets with Russia; the rise, rule, and reign of ISIS are a testament to what happens when a weak America stands."

Pence later tried to clean-up Trump comments — as Trump, of course, doubled down on them before walking them back — in an interview with an NBC affiliate, repeating his line on the billionaire’s aversion to political correctness and adding, “Everybody in the country knows exactly what Donald Trump means.”

A Pence aide maintained that both Trump and Pence are saying the same thing. “The language that they use is a reflection of their personality and their styles and how they choose to communicate,” the aide said, adding that the two talk at least once a day if not more often and compare notes on their speeches and audience response.

When Trump makes controversial comments, he encourages Pence to do what he thinks works for him and not to be completely tied to Trump and his statements. “The media isn’t used to having the ticketmates retaining their own styles,” the aide said. “But it speaks to Mr. Trump’s leadership style. He wants strong individuals out there and wants their voices to be heard.”

But the difference between the two styles is jarring.

Jeff Swensen / Getty Images

Pence’s events feel familiar — they follow the norms and patterns of what people expect from a politician. Trump’s rallies, meanwhile, are still Trump’s rallies.

They still boast a festival atmosphere — in Fayetteville, N.C., on Tuesday, one attendee remarked how he’d been to the last one Trump had held there and it was “like a rock concert”; in Kissimmee, a large Confederate flag with Trump’s name on it was hung by a fan on the side of the arena before security made him take it down.

At this point, his audiences are so familiar with the proceedings that some parts of the speech are call-and-response, like the much anticipated vow to force Mexico to pay for a border wall. In Kissimmee, Florida, Trump bellowed “Are you ready?” and then asked, “Who’s going to pay for the wall?” “Mexico!” the crowd roared. Trump, unlike Pence, loves to feed off and interact with people in the crowd.

“It's totally unprecedented,” said Ryan Williams, who served as spokesman for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “You usually try to keep the top of the ticket positive and delegate the attacks to the vice presidential candidate. Now, it's the opposite.”

“It's not style or personality,” he said. “Mike Pence is a sane, rational person who wants to win and is acting like a candidate who knows he has to expand his base, while Trump is just flailing around and not listening to anybody and destroying his own campaign.”

At Pence events, the difference between the two isn’t lost on voters. Several contended that the governor “balanced out Trump” and his sometimes “rash” statements. One of them, Pittsburgh attorney Tony Kovalchick, said Pence “brings a lot of experience… and gravitas to the ticket — like Dick Cheney did.”

In Moraine, Ohio, another attendee, Lance Feldman, who said he was a former Obama volunteer, said, “Pence seems like a normal politician, reserved in his demeanor. And Trump is — I’ll say it — a blowhard, but I can overlook that because he’s got the best interest of the people at heart.”

At Trump rallies, there’s too much going on for voters to be thinking much about Pence at all.

Asked about the governor, Terry Gibbs, 61, of Melbourne, Fla., said he didn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other.

“I didn't know him before he was picked as vice president,” Gibbs said. “I vote for the president, I don't vote for the vice president.”

After an initial pause, Donna Aiken, 65, of St. Cloud, Fla., said, “I like Mike.” Aiken has been following Trump’s career since the late 1980s.

“In the beginning I thought (Pence was) kind of well, a little bit I would say liberal would be the word. But I think he's really common sense,” she said. “And that's what's lacking is just common sense.”

Gray reporting from North Carolina and Florida; Parti reporting from Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Afp / AFP / Getty Images

w.soundcloud.com

Donald Trump's running mate Mike Pence said Saturday he'd be releasing his tax returns.

"I believe, I believe we're completing those forms right now, as is appropriate under federal law, and we'll be filing that, but I promise you, when my forms are filed and when my tax returns are released it’s going to be a quick read," Pence said on WABC radio's on Election Central with Rita Cosby.

"I can assure you and your listeners the Pences have not become more wealthy as a result of 16 years in public service," he added. "There's been a lot of sacrifices, we're a middle-class family, and it’s been a tremendous honor to serve as I am as governor of Indiana, and my years in the Congress, and we'll look forward to making all that information available."

Trump has said this year that he will not be releasing his tax returns, claiming he cannot because of an open audit.

Here's the full interview:

w.soundcloud.com

Donald Trump speaks during a rally Saturday in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Evan Vucci / AP

FAIRFIELD, Conn. — Donald Trump's supporters crammed into a sweltering gym Saturday, standing shoulder to shoulder for hours to hear the candidate rail against "Crooked Hillary" and demand change that everyone there seemed to agree was needed.

But in more than a dozen interviews with BuzzFeed News, many said they wanted something else: for Trump to quit making controversial comments and focus more on the issues.

The gathering took place at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, as the National Weather Service warned of dangerous heat and humidity. Inside, thousands of people overwhelmed the air conditioning and the floor became coated in spilled water and sweat.

But despite the oppressive heat, Trump's supporters kept coming, until in certain parts of the room there was nothing to do but hold still and wait for the Republican presidential nominee to arrive.

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While Trump eventually took the stage and delivered a typical stump speech, BuzzFeed News asked attendees about their candidate's waning poll numbers and what they wanted him to do to turn his campaign around.

George Genuario III at a Trump rally in Connecticut Satuday.

Jim Dalrymple II / BuzzFeed News

Like most of Trump's supporters, George Genuario III, of Norwalk, was bullish about his candidate's odds of winning in the fall. But Genuario — a small business owner drawn to Trump's economic comments — said that if Trump wants to beat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton he needs to resist the temptation to say whatever pops into his head.

"Trump talks off his mind, not a teleprompter," Guenuario said. "But he needs to tone it down a little."

He added that avoiding gaffes would be especially vital as Trump begins squaring off with Clinton in debates.

"If he screws that up," Genuario said, "we're fucked."

Sue Barney, left, and Ken Barney at a Trump rally in Connecticut Saturday.

Jim Dalrymple II / BuzzFeed News

Sue Barney, of Waterbury, agreed.

"He needs to talk about what people care about," she said. "Cutting taxes, immigration. He's got to calm down."

Jeff Goolsby at a Donald Trump rally in Connecticut Saturday.

Jim Dalrymple II / BuzzFeed News

Jeff Goolsby — who drove to the rally from New York and left with an autographed campaign sign — said that while he expects Trump to win in the fall, it will be a long and hard battle that will rely on mobilizing Republicans and first time voters alike.

"You have to get those guys out," he said, when asked what the candidate should do next. "And Trump has to have appeal across the board."

And one of the keys to doing that: "Decorum."

"I think that's something he could work on a little bit," Goolsby said.

Mary Ellen attends a rally for Donald Trump on Saturday in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Jim Dalrymple II / BuzzFeed News

But not everyone who spoke with BuzzFeed News wanted Trump to change. Mary Ellen, of Milford, acknowledged Trump's propensity to make inflammatory statements, but added that he should "stay true to himself" and continue holding rallies for supporters.

Still, the vast majority of the rally attendees, when asked how the candidate could buoy his campaign and defeat Clinton, quickly brought up the need focus on issues and not create controversy.

"He needs to give us a few more details on a few more things," Jack Piccolo, of Stratford, said. "For instance, the Mexican border. I think Donald should start talking about drug impact."

"I'd tell him to count to 10 before he talks," Judi Duffy, of Milford, said.

"I'd like to see him control himself more," Donald Miller, of Stamford, said.

Though a majority of supporters said they plan to vote for Trump, and had not been deterred by the candidate's most recent controversies, many pointed to his comments as a liability for luring moderate and left-leaning voters. And though most said they were drawn to Trump's willingness to say whatever he wants, many also seemed ready for the candidate to make some changes.

"Stop the Hillary bashing," John Conroy, of Gilford, New Hampshire, said. "And I'd like to know more specifics."

LINK: Trump Seeks Volunteer “Observers” To Stop Clinton From “Rigging” The Election

LINK: Donald Trump Supporters: He’s Right, Hillary Clinton Is A Cheater

WASHINGTON — With fewer than three months before Election Day, in the states that matter most, Donald Trump’s campaign is still barely operating field offices and running no television ads in key states.

On the ground, some are confused as to who is calling the shots — his campaign or Republican state and national organizations that have picked up the slack. In North Carolina, it’s not entirely clear where the campaign is headquartered. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, volunteers have opened makeshift field offices.

Some are advising that the Republican National Committee, which is running its planned robust field operation, cut off money to the Trump campaign and focus on other races — something that an RNC staffer acknowledged to BuzzFeed News could be a possibility.

There's been no public shift in the RNC's stance toward Trump; chairman Reince Priebus made a surprise appearance with him at a Pennsylvania rally last week. But Trump’s drag on down-ballot candidates has not gone unnoticed. “I think that there is a possibility that could happen,” the staffer told BuzzFeed News of a potential move to cut off Trump. “I think over the last seven to 10 days or one to two weeks, there’s been a great deal of frustration at the top of the ticket.”

The staffer said that such a shift would be “quiet” and not announced publicly. And it would not necessarily be evident in the ground game: “When you’re going door to door, the investment to ask one more question about the national ticket doesn’t change your resources. Where you would see it would be in paid efforts and TV and all that kind of stuff.”

According to Politico, RNC strategist Sean Spicer made the case for a move to focus on down-ballot races and cut off Trump by October in an off-the-record meeting with reporters last week, to which Politico and BuzzFeed News were not invited. Spicer did not return a request for comment on Sunday morning. The Trump campaign also did not return a request for comment.

Besides the controversies, a core complaint with Trump is that his campaign is doing little to organize and mobilize voters, or assist the RNC’s efforts. Sources say the campaign is also beset by poor communication between different levels of the organization, and there’s confusion over who is calling the shots in various state organizations.

“They have had a lot of trouble integrating original Trump staff with new folks,” said one Republican operative familiar with the campaign. “And they have regional directors whose authority level is very unclear over states in their region.”

“I think there has been a level of the Trump campaign trying to come in and act like they are the big boys on the block as opposed to a partnership,” said one RNC staffer.

In key swing states like Florida, the campaign has been operating a bare-bones operation, with one office in Sarasota and four staff. The RNC currently has 75 staffers on the ground in Florida, as well as 1,400 volunteers and fellows in charge of local organizing.

“From the RNC’s perspective, if you’re looking at those states, we’ve been on the ground in those states since 2013,” said RNC spokesman Rick Gorka. “There was an early investment in the ground game to fix what went wrong [in 2012]."

Karen Giorno, the campaign’s chief Florida strategist, said that the operation will be expanding soon, and that the campaign is adding up to 25 more offices and is in the process of hiring 14 more full-time staff. The campaign is opening an office near the site of the Pulse shooting in Orlando, Bloomberg reported.

But Giorno sees less need for a traditional approach to the ground game because of Trump’s near-universal name recognition and the large attendance at his rallies, and she sounded confident about her approach when interviewed outside Trump’s Kissimmee rally last week. “I’m not big on bricks and mortar and office spaces because as you can see we have a very unique kind of campaign,” Giorno said. Giorno says she’s still relying on the large attendance at Trump’s rallies to reach voters. And she cited the campaign’s social media outreach, saying her team has a 100% response rate to social media queries from voters.

“This is the best type of outreach you can possibly have,” Giorno said of the rallies. “He’s touching over 40,000 people in two days.”

“I think we win this handily,” Giorno said. “I would be hard pressed to say that the Clinton campaign is doing anything to move the dial.”

In North Carolina, which Mitt Romney won in 2012 and where the most recent NBC poll showed Trump nine points behind, it’s unclear where exactly the campaign is based. The office in Fayetteville that had been used for the primary, where Trump held a rally last week, appeared to be shut down when a reporter visited it last week, and an office in Raleigh that had been used during the primary was being used by the local GOP but didn’t appear to be serving as a headquarters.

“The Trump campaign is in the process of moving,” said Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party. “They do sometimes work out of my building but it is hit or miss.”

“In North Carolina, we have almost 50 paid staffers and more than 200 neighborhood team leaders across the state (in addition to the existing county and local party organizations and hundreds of volunteers across the state) — a number that grows everyday as our team members recruit and train more volunteers,” Woodhouse said. “Our team members function like paid organizers and field staff, as they commit to training, benchmarks, and hours of commitment each week to elect Mr. Trump and our Republican nominees in November.”

“Donald Trump started the general election with a head start on the ground because of the operation the RNC and the NCGOP has built,” Woodhouse said.

One key North Carolina Republican activist had a much less rosy view of the situation.

“It is less than to be desired,” the activist said. “I think the RNC is doing a really good job from a field program. They are taking a huge role. He's also keeping it pretty lean. We're going to see if this theory works."

“You can't just come to a rally once a week and go on CNN, that's crazy,” the activist said.

A source of major concern to Republicans at this point is the campaign’s failure to run any ads. "I am far more worried about the lack of TV,” the North Carolina activist said.

Another Republican operative called the lack of advertising “very worrisome. At a certain point the fundamentals matter.”

Giorno, the Florida state director, said she expected ad spending from the campaign to start after this month. The Clinton campaign and the main super PAC supporting Clinton have already spent millions advertising in the state.

“We’re letting our powder dry till people come back from vacation,” Giorno said. “We’re going to spend as much as it requires.”

In Pennsylvania — a state whose Rust Belt areas should be a natural fit for Trump and where the RNC has 80 paid staffers — the approach has been scattershot, and volunteers are taking matters into their own hands.

The office near Pittsburgh.

Tarini Parti/BuzzFeed News

Trump's campaign website still lists an office in Western Pennsylvania — located in Monroeville, outside of Pittsburgh. Although a sign on the door said it had re-opened Aug. 8, it was was locked in the afternoon when a BuzzFeed News reporter stopped by.

A contact listed on the office door, Tricia Cunningham (whose voicemail tells callers to "have a Trumptastic day!"), later explained that the office was no longer an official Trump campaign office. The campaign shut down its Pennsylvania offices after the primary, but she decided to take over the lease and organize her own field office, which is located on the sixth floor of a big office building with a gold exchange on the ground level and a number of doctors offices and salons spread out on different floors.

"It was originally set up by the campaign," she said. "When I found out other offices were shuttering, we collectively said this can't happen… I'm now the glue between the GOP and the Trump campaign."

"The volunteers that are doing this are doing this for the love of the country and the candidate. Our model is being replicated across the state and nationally," she said of other volunteers setting up their own operations in areas where the campaign doesn't have offices.

Cunningham, a "life and weight loss coach, speaker and author," said she's been going to county fairs and other gatherings to register voters. She also organized a skydiving event for Trump volunteers called "Take a Leap of Faith — Jump for Trump." The volunteers jumped out of a plane above a large field with Trump's name spray painted into it.

The home in Ohio.

Tarini Parti/BuzzFeed News

In Southwestern Ohio, Trump supporters have again taken matters into their own hands, converting a house into an office because of the lack of organization in the area from the campaign. The house, which is decked out in Trump signs and patriotic bunting, is now operating as a satellite office for the Butler County Republican Party. An organizer at the house declined to talk to a BuzzFeed News reporter and directed questions to the state party, which did not respond to requests for comment.

The "Ohio for Trump" Facebook page is full of comments from Trump supporters asking for more campaign offices and yard signs. "No offense but we need Ohio to be overwhelmingly trump and by taking so long to open a campaign headquarters does not help our cause," one of the supporters wrote. The campaign is beginning to hire staff in Ohio, but it still only has one field staffer in Southwest Ohio compared to the 250 Clinton has across the state, the Cincinnati Enquirer recently reported.

Even in New Hampshire, where Trump won handily in the primary and where his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has longstanding connections, the campaign’s presence isn’t what it could be.

“They are finally beginning to hire some people,” said former Mitt Romney and John Sununu aide Ryan Williams. “They have one office that I'm aware of. It's a largely invisible campaign and you're beginning to see some signs of activity but it’s the type of activity you would see at the beginning of the cycle. They are light years behind the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire. The New Hampshire Trump effort is a ragtag bunch of staffers... but they're warm bodies and that's better than having nobody.”

Michelle McLoughlin / Reuters

In a series of tweets on Sunday, Donald Trump attacked the New York Times and the notion of press freedom after the newspaper published a critical look inside his campaign.

"It is not 'freedom of the press' when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false," Trump said in one of seven tweets today attacking the Times.

Trump, however, took a much different view of the media's role in covering presidential candidates back in 1987, when he told ABC News' Nightline that he believed the press should do "very strong investigative reporting" on those running for the nation's highest office.

“I think that you really want that man covered from morning 'til noon, 'til night, and I personally like to see very strong investigative reporting of anybody that’s going to be the president, especially the president of the country," Trump said.

Trump's made the comments while Gary Hart's presidential campaign was imploding over an affair. Video of his appearance is available through Vanderbilt University's Television archive.

An unflattering picture of Trump's campaign was reported in the Times on Saturday, looking at attempts to turn around Trump's campaign by his advisers. The article, which described Trump's mood as "sullen and erratic," reported that Trump's advisers wondered if he was "beyond coaching."

Before his run for president, Trump on several occasions paid lip service to press freedom.

In December 2013, Trump tweeted George Washington's famous quote on press freedom. "If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter," Trump tweeted Washington saying.

In November 2014, Trump keynoted the Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award banquet where he said he understood press freedom better than anyone. “I think nobody really understands freedom of the press a lot better than I do because of the fact that I believe in speaking my mind,” Trump said.

Hans Pennink / Reuters

Donald Trump's New York state co-chair is not backing off comments he made last week in which he said Khizr Khan, whose son died in Iraq in 2004, doesn't deserve the title of "Gold Star parent."

In an email to BuzzFeed News on Sunday, Carl Paladino said Khan dishonored the memory of his son by speaking at the Democratic National Convention, a speech Paladino claims Hillary Clinton paid Khan to deliver. Paladino also accused Khan of connections to Islamic terrorists. He did not provide any evidence to support either claim.

"Kahn's [sic] history of advocating for Islamist terrorists like the Muslim Brotherhood and his prior communications with terrorist individuals and organizations give reason to his dumb attempt to enter the arena and re-define to real Americans the Trump they know as a patriotic leader who will confront and destroy America's demons and do what Hillary and her hero Barack don't have the fortitude or disposition to do," Paladino wrote.

"Allowing himself to be so controlled by Hillary that he would dishonor the memory of his heroic son shows the man's lack of character and backbone," he added. "I am certain that most Gold Star parents would despise Mr Kahn's [sic] attempt to politicize his son's loss. Hillary should be ashamed and pillaged for encouraging the Kahn's [sic] to so tragically make fools of themselves."

Paladino said last week on Imus in the Morning that Khan doesn’t deserve the title of a Gold Star parent because he’s shown himself to be “anti-American” and may be a supporter of “the ISIS-type of attitude against America.”

Khan has said in the past that this “is the time for us American Muslims to rat out any traitor who walks amongst us. This is high time for Muslims to stand firm [against terrorists].”

Here's his full email to BuzzFeed News:

Mr. Kaczynski, in response to Connor McHale and the other politically correct progressive pariah's in the press intent on degrading Donald Trump with the Kahn issues, it's not difficult for the everyday American including military and veterans to understand. In fact it's just plain simple.

Learning that Mr. Kahn was paid big money by Hillary to take the stage and demean Trump clearly defines the man's lack of objectivity and submission to Hillary's hideous effort to compel him to disgrace the memory of his son.

Hillary's staff obviously wrote the speech. She even bought him the pocket constitution which he probably never read but also returned to the staff after the speech.

Hillary tried to get 5 other Gold Star parents to do the theatrics and they all said no and were paid handsomely to keep the request confidential.

Kahn's history of advocating for Islamist terrorists like the Muslim Brotherhood and his prior communications with terrorist individuals and organizations give reason to his dumb attempt to enter the arena and re-define to real Americans the Trump they know as a patriotic leader who will confront and destroy America's demons and do what Hillary and her hero Barack don't have the fortitude or disposition to do.

Mr. Kahn's son died 12 years ago in a war Mr. Trump did not agree with but Hillary did. He graduated from Punjab University Law College and specialized in International Trade Law in Saudi Arabia. A lawyer for Islamic oil companies Khan wrote a paper, called In Defense of OPEC to defend the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), an intergovernmental oil company consisting of mainly Islamic countries. Khan promotes Islamic Sharia Law and is also co-founder of the Journal of Contemporary Issues in Muslim Law (Islamic Sharia).

The law firm (Hogan & Hartson and Lovells) for which Mr. Kahn worked COINCIDENTALLY is also the law firm for the Royal Court of Saudi Arabia, the tax lawyers for Bill & Hillary Clinton (and the Clinton Foundation) and also where Loretta Lynch worked.

In addition, they also represent a small tech firm in Denver, CO. (yes, the same little firm that "managed" Hillary's private server)"

The COLLUSION AND CORRUPTION of Hillary RUNS DEEPER THAN IMAGINABLE. No wonder the media is falling all over itself to defend this man.

Allowing himself to be so controlled by Hillary that he would dishonor the memory of his heroic son shows the man's lack of character and backbone.

I am certain that most Gold Star parents would despise Mr Kahn's attempt to politicize his son's loss.

Hillary should be ashamed and pillaged for encouraging the Kahn's to so tragically make fools of themselves.

I retired as a Captain after serving in the US Army reserves for eleven years. I too lost a son, not in the military, but to an auto accident. I can see how the horror of the loss can come out different ways in different people. I would never use my son's memory in a political exercise. Shame on the progressive press.

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In a previously unreported exchange from 2008, Donald Trump threw his support behind then-Senator Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic nomination, calling her "fantastic."

BuzzFeed News found a transcript of the exchange online and was able to obtain video of it after asking Media Matters, which has archived old Fox News shows.

In the January 2008 interview, Trump is asked by Fox News' Neil Cavuto which presidential candidate he prefers. Trump said that he didn't want to reveal who he was supporting because he wanted them to win.

Cavuto interjected, saying, "But you gave money when Hillary Clinton was running for Senate, right?"

"Well, I support Hillary," said Trump. "I think she's fantastic. I supported Rudy. I think Romney is doing a very good job. I mean, there's — every one of them, they are very..."

Asked again about his preference later in the interview, Trump said, "I don't want to say."

Trump has a long and well-documented history of publicly praising Clinton in the years before he decided to run for president. When faced with his past praise, Trump has explained that he was speaking as a businessman who had to maintain a good relationship with politicians in both parties.

In an October 2007 interview on the Howard Stern Show uncovered by BuzzFeed News last week, Trump said he was pushing for Hillary Clinton to win the 2008 Democratic primary, calling her a good friend of his for whom he’d hosted fundraisers. In December of last year, BuzzFeed News found a 2008 blog post where Trump said Clinton would make a great president.

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Former Sen. Evan Bayh moved his namesake charitable foundation’s address in 2011 to the Washington D.C. K Street law firm he joined shortly after leaving the Senate, tax documents reveal.

Bayh, who is running for his old U.S. Senate seat in Indiana, is facing questions over his decision to remain in Washington, DC, and join the law firm McGuireWoods instead of returning to Indiana. While the former senator and governor has insisted he maintained ties to Indiana after left Congress, a CNN report published on Monday showed Bayh listed his DC home as his primary residence on several documents.

Tax documents for the Evan and Susan Bayh Foundation from before Bayh left the Senate in January 2011 list an Indianapolis address used by the foundation’s tax preparer Baker and Daniels LLP. Baker and Daniels was still listed as the tax preparer for 2011, but the address of the foundation was listed as McGuireWoods. Since 2012, the tax records have been prepared by an Virginia-based accountant.

The foundation was founded in 2002 with money remaining from Bayh's Indiana gubernatorial campaigns.

Donations from Bayh’s foundation also show his deep connections to Washington, with most grant money going to St. Alban's School of Public Service, a month-long summer program at the elite DC private school for kids around the country interested in government. The program has a financial aid fund for those who could otherwise not attend the school.

A spokesperson for Bayh didn't comment on the address change, but said the donations to St. Albans School of Public Service went to support underprivileged children attending the program.

"Evan Bayh is a proud fifth-generation Hoosier, and has used his foundation to support students who couldn't otherwise afford to attend the St. Albans School of Public Service."

Between leaving the Senate in 2011 and 2014, years overlapping with his sons’ high school attendance, Bayh’s foundation gave $42,068 to St. Alban’s School of Public Service and $47,200 combined to a handful of other charities, including $4,000 to the Clinton Foundation. The foundation gave more money to the school summer program most years during this timeframe than it did to any other single organization. In 2014, the foundation's largest donation was to the Indiana University Foundation.

In 2014, the foundation also gave $3,500 to Friends of Harvard, Bayh’s twins’ new school.

Also between 2006 and 2010, St. Albans received $50,000 of the $144,000 the foundation doled out. The school was its largest beneficiary in 2008, 2009, and 2010.

In 2004 and 2005, the foundation gave just $1,500 to the St. Albans School, with the $55,000 going to the Indiana National Guard Relief Fund in those two years. Nothing was given in grants during the first two years grants of the foundation's existence. The charity has assets of hundreds of thousands of dollars.