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Trump Calls For "Extreme Vetting" And "Ideological Screening" Of New Immigrants

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Eric Thayer / Reuters

Painting a grim picture of global security, Donald Trump on Monday called for "extreme" new measures to counteract terrorism, including an "ideological screening test" for all new US immigrants.

In a lengthy speech read in an uncharacteristically slow pace in front of a Youngstown, Ohio, audience, the Republican presidential nominee said, if elected, he would institute "extreme, extreme vetting" to ensure all US immigrants "share our values and respect our people."

"In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test," Trump said. "The time is
overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today. Those who do not believe in our constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country."

In a bid to counter the political correctness he blamed for leading people to ignore the warning signs of terrorism, Trump also said one of his firsts acts as president would be to establish a "Commission on Radical Islam," whose members, he said, would include "reformist voices in the Muslim community who will hopefully work with us."

"The goal of the commission will be to identify and explain to the American public the core convictions and beliefs of radical Islam, to identify the warning signs of radicalization, and to expose the networks in our society that support radicalization," he said.

Trump also signaled that he would leave Guantanamo Bay open, call for international conference on radical Islam, and end "the era of nation-building" he said was responsible for creating lawless countries in which terrorism could flourish.

Eric Thayer / Reuters

Trump laid the blame for the so-called "Age of Terror" squarely at the feet of President Obama and Hillary Clinton, describing their foreign policy as failed and dangerous.

His speech, billed for days as a major and detailed address on Trump's plans to combat "radical Islamic terrorism," opened with an exhaustive account of the various deadly attacks that have occurred in recent years: the 2009 shooting at the Fort Hood military base; the 2013 Boston marathon bombings; the 2015 attack on military centers in Chattanooga, Tennessee; the 2015 San Bernardino shooting; and July's massacre inside a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

He also meticulously catalogued the recent bloodshed in Europe, name-checking attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice, as well as the slaughter in a French church and aboard a German train.

Trump painted a rosy picture of the Middle East in the pre-Obama administration era, describing Libya as "stable," Syria as "under control," Egypt as being ruled "by a secular president and an ally of the United States," and Iraq as "experiencing a reduction in violence."

"Fast forward to today. What have the decisions of Obama-Clinton
produced?" he asked, describing Libya as "in ruins," Syria as "in the midst of a disastrous civil war," Egypt as containing a "foothold" for terrorists, and Iraq as "in chaos."

In fact, Trump, who supported and praised the invasion of Iraq, once called on the Obama administration to take action against Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi and described the toppling of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak as a "good thing."

In recent days, Trump has shocked many political observers with his comments that Obama and Clinton were "the founders of ISIS," a line of attack that he continued on Monday.

"With one episode of bad judgment after another, Hillary Clinton’s
policies launched ISIS onto the world," he said. "Importantly, she also lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS, and all the many adversaries we face – not only in terrorism, but in trade and every other challenge we must confront to turn this country around."

Jeff Swensen / Getty Images

Trump also assailed the Bush and Obama administrations for not seizing Iraq's oil after the US invasion.

"In the old days, when we won a war, to the victor belonged the spoils," he said. "Instead, all we got from Iraq – and our adventures in the Middle East – was death, destruction, and tremendous financial loss."

With questions swirling about his possible ties to Moscow and President Vladimir Putin, Trump told the audience he believed he could find "common ground with Russia in the fight against terrorism."

He also criticized Clinton's desire to take in refugees from the Syrian civil war.

"In short, Hillary Clinton wants to be America’s Angela Merkel, and you
know what a disaster this massive immigration has been to Germany and the people of Germany," he said, referring to what he said was a booming crime rate.

A German police report his campaign cited as evidence of the crime rate noted 69,000 crimes were committed or attempted by migrants in the country in the first quarter of 2016, but most were carried out by those from North Africa, Georgia and Serbia. The report did not state what percentage the 69,000 crimes or would-be crimes represented of the country's total crime rate, Reuters reported.

As soon as Trump's speech ended, his campaign staff released a transcript of his prepared remarks, complete with citations and footnotes.


MIA For Trump: The Spanish-Speaking Mormons Who Did Hispanic Outreach For Romney

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Mary Altaffer / AP

They came in buses, from Utah and elsewhere, excited to help elect Mitt Romney in 2012. Spanish-speaking Mormon volunteers — former missionaries at ease making phone calls, knocking doors, and pitching strangers on the street — were a unique resource for the Republican nominee in the key southwest swing states.

In East Las Vegas, a Latino working-class neighborhood where the Romney campaign opened the first Republican office, around 10% of the volunteers were Spanish-speaking Mormons, according to former Romney aides. Outreach efforts in Colorado were similarly infused with bilingual Latter-day Saints. Romney's hardline immigration stance made the candidate a tough sell with Latino voters — but when the campaign ended, many in the party were hopeful that they'd tapped into a new longterm resource for the GOP.

Instead, four years later, Mitt's Mormon army is missing in action.

Not only is Donald Trump deeply disliked by Hispanic voters, according to polls; he is also historically unpopular with Mormons — struggling to consolidate support in deep-red Utah, and embroiled in a months-long feud with Romney, who's refused to endorse the nominee. That disconnect is depriving Trump — and his party — of free labor from one of the few GOP constituencies that could actually speak directly to Spanish-speakers.

Bettina Inclan, who led Hispanic outreach for the RNC before joining Romney as deputy coalitions director, said Mormon volunteers — many of them armed with experience as missionaries in Latin America — were indeed an important cog in 2012 Hispanic outreach.

"Having bilingual volunteers made it a lot easier to go into communities, to make the phone calls and do the outreach on the ground," said Inclan.

While other volunteers were intimidated by door-to-door canvassing, she said, the Mormon ex-proselytizers were unafraid, and comfortable striking up conversations with voters. "At the end of the day that’s what people want. People want to feel like their vote is important and that they're valued as individuals. That's why this outreach is so important."

Ryan Call, a Mormon who served as chairman of the Colorado Republican Party in 2012, said the party relied heavily on his coreligionists to reach Hispanic voters during the election. From his vantage point, he said, the Trump campaign is receiving a small fraction of that support.

"I think it's clear that they're having trouble drawing enthusiastic [Mormon] volunteers," Call said. "I can't tell you how many times I get cornered in the foyers at church and there's literal handwringing. They're concerned about whether they can even bring themselves to vote for Trump ... let alone volunteer for him, or be perceived as openly supporting him."

Call said it isn't just Mormons' language skills that made them valuable to Hispanic outreach efforts. He said he learned Spanish during his own Mormon mission in Southern California, and the experience altered his worldview.

"It very much colored my view on [immigration] issues," he said. "We do have a much more nuanced and kind of a personal perspective on the challenges of new immigrants," Call said, adding that many of the people he sought to convert as a young missionary were probably undocumented immigrants — "but we weren't asking them about their legal status; we wanted to share the gospel with them."

Josh Baca, who led coalitions for Romney in 2012, said in Colorado the top Spanish-speaking Mormon was Craig Romney, Mitt's son, who went on a bus tour that took him to intimate meet-and-greets in Colorado Springs and Denver with Hispanic leaders to try to dispel hardening perceptions of his father. Anyone can learn Spanish, Baca said, but Craig Romney "had a good appreciation for Hispanic family culture, he connected at a personal family level that made a big difference in regards to outreach to the community."

Jesus Marquez, a conservative Las Vegas radio host who knocked on doors for Jeb Bush in the 2016 primary, and is open to supporting Trump, said he hasn't seen the same commitment from Mormons in the state this time around.

"Not really, not here," he said. "The Mormons are not too involved, they were with Marco Rubio in the primary."

For now, many outreach-minded GOP operatives are already looking past 2016, hoping they'll be able to reignite the excitement among Mormon volunteers when they have a more palatable standard-bearer.

One Hispanic Romney staffer recalled entering the campaign's office in East Las Vegas — strategically situated near the city's Mormon temple — one day in 2012, and seeing it buzz with LDS volunteers.

"Fuck yeah, Mormons!" the staffer exclaimed to a colleague.

After being informed that the group might not appreciate such salty language, the staffer recalibrated: "Hooray for Mormons!"

A GOP Congressman Thinks Trump Is Trying To Lose To Help Clinton

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Carlos Curbelo Facebook

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Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, one of the first congressman to say he would not vote for Donald Trump in November, says he believes the Republican nominee is trying to lose on purpose to help Hillary Clinton.

The Florida congressman added that Trump should step aside to allow another Republican to assume the nomination.

"I have no hard proof for my theory, but I think the relevant question is do people actually think that Donald Trump is trying to win?" Curbelo asked on the Fernand Amandi Radio Show on News Radio 610 WIOD Miami on Monday.

Curbelo pointed to Trump's failure to focus on Clinton's false claim that FBI director James Comey said she was truthful about her email and new revelations about the Clinton Foundation as evidence supporting his theory.

"Mr. Trump has not focused, he instead, that day or around that time, made the comment about the Second Amendment people — whether he meant it one way, it created a huge distraction," he said.

The congressman also cited Trump's visit last week to Connecticut, a state he has no chance of winning, as further evidence.

"To all my passionate friends who are Trump supporters," he continued. "And I understand why, there are a lot of people who are angry and frustrated in this country, they really don't like Hillary Clinton for some obvious reasons — put together his recent conduct together with the fact he's a close friend of the Clintons, they attended his wedding, the pictures are there to prove it. Donald Trump spoke to Bill Clinton three weeks before launching his campaign. I mean, again, I don't have any hard proof, it may be nothing, but is this the conduct of someone who is trying to win? I just, I don't see it."

When asked if Trump should make room for another Republican nominee, Curbelo answered, "Oh, certainly."

Sanders' Highest-Ranking Hispanic Staffer Joining Company Aimed At Young Latinos

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John Minchillo / AP

Bernie Sanders highest-ranking Latino operative Arturo Carmona is joining mitú, a digital media company aimed at young Hispanics, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Carmona, who crisscrossed the country for Sanders as deputy political director with a focus on garnering the support of young Hispanics who responded to his candidacy much more than older Latinos did, will lead community engagement and public affairs.

The platform, which calls itself "unapologetically Latino," uses humor and cultural connections to engage young Hispanics through videos, and launched an initiative called T.A.C.O. (Take Action, Commit Others), with a goal of using social media and celebrities to help register 1 million Latinos, which Carmona will spearhead.

"One of the many things that the Bernie Sanders campaign revealed is that the younger voters across America are looking for a better future, an aspirational view of this country that advances their interests and those of their families," he said.

He sees parallels between the campaign and what the young site is trying to do. In practice, he said that would mean venturing into political issues from the campaign like immigration, education, and climate change, and said the "unapologetically Latino" aspect of the company means they will take on Donald Trump and have not made a determination if they will go further.

“With a long track record culminating with his most recent experience as a top manager for the Bernie Sanders for president campaign, Arturo’s hands on experience in organizing Latinos digitally, politically, and on-the-ground will be essential for our work ahead,” said Beatriz Acevedo, mitú president and founder.

Carmona hopes to expand strategic partnerships outside the company and create special initiatives around the election. Young Latinos are an oft-repeated target for companies and campaigns, because the Hispanic electorate is disproportionately younger than other groups.

National Council of La Raza (NCLR) partnered with mitú on the T.A.C.O. voter registration effort that launched in May and includes a website and a Latinos Vote app.

At launch, Rosario Dawson — a staunch Sanders supporter and critic of Hillary Clinton all the way to the Democratic convention — called Latino millennials "the face of the new American majority" with a responsibility to transform the country.

"That's why I'm proud to be a part of a historic effort to register and activate 1 million Latino millennials. This election will be decided by us, all of us, and we must do everything in our power to ensure that we create the kind of future that we know is indeed possible," she said at the time.

The company was unable to provide BuzzFeed News with the number of Latinos that have been registered to vote since May.

While Carmona seeks to continue his campaign work reaching Latinos, another high-profile Sanders staffer Erika Andiola is set to join "Our Revolution," the political organization created by Sanders alumni to continue the work started by the Vermont senator.

Trump will be a target because he's a threat to Latinos, Carmona said.

"As a company we're extremely concerned by the messages that Donald Trump is advancing, it's a very dangerous precedent for our country," he said.

Of Trump's policy pronouncements and comments moving forward, "we're going to have a robust discussion and analyze — or make fun of — what is said," he added. "We're going to push interesting memes and take the gloves off a little bit."

Bernie’s Best-Known Latina Staffer Set To Join Post-Campaign “Our Revolution” Group

GOP Senator Lindsey Graham: I Think Trump Is Going To Lose

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Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

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Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says he thinks Donald Trump is going to lose the election. Graham, who has said he's not voting for Trump, argued that demographics and Trump's rhetoric make it nearly impossible for him to win.

"His supporters, who I would like to form a new party with and beat the Democrats, I’d like to make friends with his supporters. Reality is reality," Graham said Tuesday on WABC Radio's Imus in the Morning.

"Mitt Romney got 27% of the Hispanic vote. By 2050, a majority of the country will be African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and others, and we’re losing demographically. We’ve gone from 44% with Bush to 27% with Romney, and I don't think Trump is going to get 20%."

Graham said Trump's candidacy has put the Republican Party on a course for a "demographic meltdown."

"The problems we’ve had with young women, he has made exponentially worse," continued Graham. "So if we do lose, and the reason I think we’re going to lose, is because the demographic meltdown that came from harsh rhetoric and policies by Mr. Trump, making every problem we had in 2012 worse. It’s not about me not voting for Donald Trump, I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton, it is about America is changing and the party is being left behind."

"It breaks my heart because Hispanics are conservative, they’re entrepreneurial, they’re Catholics, they’re pro-life, they should be our voters, and we are driving them away," he added. "Nobody is going to vote for you, when you tell them you are going to deport their grandmother. And there is a difference between a meth dealer, a gang member, and a grandmother who has been here 30 years, working really hard raising a couple kids."

Mike Pence Defends Paul Manafort: "He's Not Running For President"

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Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence defended Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, after the New York Times reported that Manafort has been named in a corruption investigation in Ukraine relating to his work for the country’s former president.

"I think Paul Manafort has dismissed that as completely false and inaccurate and I accept him at his word,” Pence said in an interview with Fox 28 Columbus.

Before joining the Trump campaign, Manafort worked as a political adviser to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown in 2014. The Times reports that Ukrainian anti-corruption authorities have a handwritten ledger that shows $12.7 million in off-the-books cash payments from Yanukovych’s political party being earmarked for Manafort.

Pence went on to accuse Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation of financial improprieties.

“What's hard for me to understand is how, a week ago, documented information came out to demonstrate that wealthy foreign donors who made major contributions to the Clinton Foundation, who were apparently then gained access to the State Department has gotten such little attention," he said.

"The truth is Mr. Manafort is involved in our campaign, but he's not running for president. Donald Trump is running for president and so is Hillary Clinton. I think it would be very important that the public have the ability to know and understand the extent to which this ultimately was a pay-to-play arrangement.”

Pence continued to say that the FBI had wanted to initiate an investigation into Clinton, but that President Obama’s Justice Department pressured the agency not to do so.

Aide: Clinton Camp Would Prefer That FBI Notes Be Released To Public

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Dominick Reuter / AFP / Getty Images

PHILADELPHIA — Hillary Clinton’s campaign signaled Tuesday that it may ask Congress to release the notes from the interview she gave FBI agents in cooperation with this summer’s email probe.

An aide told reporters here before a rally that Clinton hoped the notes would be made public — a move that would allow voters a full view and avoid the prospect of targeted “piecemeal” leaks from “people with motive,” the aide said.

Asked by a reporter on Tuesday for a reaction to the release, Clinton said, "I have nothing to say.” She did not respond to a question about whether she wanted the notes to put out.

The notes are classified top secret and could require redactions, according to NBC News. But the Clinton aide suggested that Congress could make the documents public.

The FBI has shared a summary of the July interview with members of Congress following requests to do so from House Republicans. On Tuesday afternoon, Jason Herring, an FBI official, sent those members a letter detailing the materials and why the FBI did not recommend prosecution.

The notes are a summary, not a transcript, of the three-and-half hour interview, conducted at FBI headquarters. The investigation, focusing on the private server Clinton used as secretary of state, concluded last month with no charges recommended.

Still, the FBI interview summary could provide Republicans, including Donald Trump, with a fresh angle into a controversy that resonates with voters’ belief that Clinton can’t be trusted.

The Democratic nominee has sought to address questions about her trustworthiness, acknowledging the concern in some of her speeches, while insisting that FBI Director James Comey had cleared her of wrongdoing.

Comey, in remarks last month that were at times very critical of Clinton's handling of her email, detailed the results of the investigation and the bureau’s recommendations.

Questions about the email server have continued to dog Clinton for more than a year. Last week, Bill Clinton offered a new defense of the situation, suggesting that the fact that prominent national security figures have endorsed his wife should reassure voters. “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?”

Trump’s Post Advocating For Intervention In Libya Is Still On His Facebook

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Jeff Swensen / Getty Images

If you are looking for evidence that Donald Trump initially supported an intervention in Libya despite now calling the U.S. action there a "disaster," look no further than Trump's own Facebook page, where there is still a post from February 2011 calling on the U.S. to take "immediate actions to stop the carnage."

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Facebook: DonaldTrump

Throughout the campaign, Trump has contradicted himself several times on his position on Libya. At a debate in February, he said he never discussed Libya and that the country would have been better off with Gaddafi in charge. In June, he conceded to CBS News' John Dickerson that he was "for doing something” but he wasn't for "what you have right now.”

There are also posts still on Trump's Facebook that boast of his relationship with Bill Clinton, who Trump called a "good friend of mine."

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Facebook: DonaldTrump

Trump used Facebook more regularly for longer posts in 2010, 2011, and 2012, a time period when he was still sparsely using his now famous Twitter.

Trump's campaign adviser Dan Scavino, who previously worked for Trump at one of his golf properties, can be seen in the background of this photo Trump posted with Bill Clinton.

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Donald Trump Literally Today On Iraq: "I Said Get Out"

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Donald Trump oddly admitted on Monday he called for U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq — just one day after slamming President Obama for the same.

Trump was speaking to Wisconsin NBC affiliate WEAU where he made the comments.

"I said, get out. I said don't go in, OK, to Iraq," Trump said, citing his frequent and false claim that he always opposed the Iraq War. "But, I also said get out, but I also said keep the oil. Therefore, you're staying back to keep the oil. If they would have kept the oil, they would have had no money to fund. You wouldn't have ISIS, and I've been saying that for years. Even you must have heard me say that over the years. But, I've always said keep the oil. And, he got out, announced the date, and just a very bad thing. A very bad thing happened."

Trump blasted for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in his foreign policy speech Monday saying it led to the rise of ISIS.

"After we had made those hard-fought sacrifices and gains, we should never have made such a sudden withdrawal — on a timetable advertised to our enemies," Trump said Monday. "Al Qaeda in Iraq had been decimated, and Obama and Clinton gave it new life and allowed it to spread across the world."

As BuzzFeed News reported last week, Trump loudly called for the immediate removal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2006, 2007, and 2008. He has said the same policy created ISIS.

Latina Former Bush Treasurer Endorses Clinton, Blasts Trump

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Ron Edmonds / AP

A top former Bush administration official has endorsed Hillary Clinton, warning that Donald Trump is a "perilous" threat to the country.

Rosario Marin, appointed as the first Mexican-born person to serve as United States Treasurer by George W. Bush and a fixture of five Republican presidential campaigns, endorsed Clinton in a Univision op-ed Wednesday morning.

"I will stand up for my community against the menace of a tyrannical presidency that does not value the countless contributions of immigrants," Marin writes. "There is too much at stake both domestically and abroad to have a thoughtless individual at the helm of the most important economy in the world."

Despite often disagreeing with and criticizing Clinton, Marin said that the Democratic nominee understands that words spoken from the White House have consequences, and that sarcasm is not a strategy for dealing with delicate global situations — a reference to Trump's recent comments that he was being sarcastic when he said President Obama was the founder of ISIS.

Marin was out against Trump early on, signing onto a letter last summer with other Mexican-Americans that have held elected office to send a message that his comments about Mexicans and immigrants were unacceptable. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Marin credited her long time in politics for her immediate opposition to him.

"I know a demagogue when I see one," she said.

In the op-ed, Marin laments that despite assurances from RNC Chairman Reince Priebus that the party would make efforts to appeal to Hispanics after Mitt Romney's 2012 loss, "the party left me and my community all alone again."

"I have come to the devastatingly painful realization that my party right now doesn't want my vote nor that of my community," she said.

Marin along with many other Hispanic conservatives has been a vocal Trump opponent, ripping his bombast as offensive and saying that she will not do the crucial work of acting as a surrogate for him on Spanish-language networks as she has for past Republican presidential nominees.

She twice held a press conference with other Latino Republicans before primary debates to take Trump to task, but while others who were part of the group have come around to supporting him, Marin has been a vocal holdout.

She says a common refrain from Trump supporters that he is bashing "illegal immigrants" and not Hispanics is flawed because of the way he went after a Mexican-American federal judge and because of his policy suggestion that he could force Mexico to pay for a border wall by withholding money that immigrants send back to family back home.

"There's something evil when he’s talking about that, which would be so unconstitutional," she said. "He didn’t say that because it was a carefully thought out policy — what it showed was this racism that he has against the Mexican community."

Still, some Republicans feel Marin went too far, when upon Trump wrapping up the nomination in May, she went on CNN to proclaim, "I will not vote for this little orange man."

But GOP Hispanics also say they are loath to criticize her, viewing her as a hero, because she was the first Latina to have her name appear on U.S. currency across the country.

"For someone who grew up without a pair of shoes and whose family came from nothing to get that position, it still means something," said one Republican operative. "It's a testament to the American dream." In 2012, the Romney campaign created ads featuring her and her life story.

Artemio Muniz, a Texas Republican who joined Marin at the press conferences denouncing Trump, said Marin endorsing a Democrat is the end of an era.

"I love Rosario with all my heart," he said. "I hate to see part of the George W. Bush legacy crumble like that, the last brick of the Bush legacy when it comes to Hispanic outreach."

The Clinton campaign has made it a point to reach out to Republicans and independents who can not stomach Trump, and the number now stands at more than 50 endorsers, including Meg Whitman, and high-profile Latino Republicans like former commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

While many Republicans oppose Trump, some question the wisdom of endorsing Clinton — a decision they feel will come to haunt people like Marin, when they want to support a future Republican nominee and once again be critical of Clinton.

"I don’t understand the Republicans that are doing this kind of stuff, there will be a Republican Party when Trump loses, because he is going to lose," a former RNC official said.

Marin countered that she knows some of her friends will be disappointed with her decision but she can not think four years into the future when there is a clear and present danger right now.

"My party and its standard-bearer leave me no choice," she ultimately concludes on Univision. "On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton."

Donald Trump Brings In Breitbart News Executive Chairman To Run His Campaign

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Ben Jackson / Getty Images

Donald Trump shook up his campaign management structure for the second time in months by bringing in Breitbart News' executive chairman as the chief executive officer and promoting a senior adviser to the role of campaign manager.

The GOP presidential nominee announced he has hired Stephen Bannon as CEO and elevated pollster and senior adviser, Kellyanne Conway, to campaign manager early Wednesday, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

“I have known Steve and Kellyanne both for many years. They are extremely capable, highly qualified people who love to win and know how to win,” Trump said in a statement. "I believe we’re adding some of the best talents in politics, with the experience and expertise needed to defeat Hillary Clinton in November and continue to share my message and vision to Make America Great Again."

As Bannon joins the campaign full-time, he will temporarily be stepping down from his position with Breitbart News and, according to a news release, will “bolster the business-like approach” of the campaign.

In a statement, the news group said Bannon would take a "temporary leave of absence" and resume work at Breitbart News on Nov. 8, 2016, after the polls close.

There will be no interim replacement, a Breitbart News spokesperson said.

The move is seen by some as a demotion to campaign manager and chief strategist Paul Manafort, who Trump said will remain in the same position.

"It’s an expansion at a busy time in the final stretch of the campaign,” Conway told the New York Times. "We met as the ‘core four’ today," Conway said, referring to herself, Bannon, Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates.

In the statement put out by the campaign announcing the personnel moves, Manafort said, “Steve and Kellyanne are respected professionals who believe in Mr. Trump and his message and will undoubtedly help take the campaign to new levels of success.”

In June, Trump fired his controversial campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who had been charged with simple battery after he allegedly manhandled then-Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields in April. He was not prosecuted on the basis of insufficient evidence.

Fields and Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro resigned from the company over the site's handling of Lewandowski's alleged assault. A senior editor at the site ordered staffers in an internal chatroom to stop defending Fields after she was allegedly assaulted by Lewandowski.

"I do not believe Breitbart News has adequately stood by me during the events of the past week and because of that I believe it is now best for us to part ways," Fields said after resigning.

Shapiro said Bannon, who he described as a "bully," had "sold out" the mission of Breritbart's late founder, Andrew Breitbart, "in order to back another bully, Donald Trump."

He said that Bannon had "shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter."

According to results of an NBC News/Survey Monkey weekly poll released Tuesday, Hillary Clinton is leading Trump by nine points.

Here's Some More Footage Showing Trump Pushed For Egypt, Libya Actions He Now Bashes

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In interviews in 2011, Donald Trump expressed support for the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and for some intervening action in Libya, despite his current claims to the contrary.

BuzzFeed News has uncovered two previously unreported interviews, where Trump again expressed those positions. Trump on Monday criticized President Obama and Hillary Clinton for supporting Mubarak's overthrow and for intervening in Libya.

"I have a problem with Mubarak for a different reason," Trump said in Feb. 11, 2011 interview on Fox and Friends. "I hear he's worth $50 to $70 billion. That means that all of the money we've been putting in, he's been taking. OK, I hear he has houses that are as beautiful as Mar-a-Lago throughout the world. And I wonder, how does a man that's supposed to be a president, the head of a country, how does this man get all of these houses throughout the world and how is he worth $50 billion? So something's going on that's not good."

"If I were in that nation and I heard that he's worth $50 billon, he goes immediately," Trump added.

One month later, on ABC News' Good Morning America, Trump said he wanted a "surgical" airstrike to take out Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

"That's a holocaust. If we could surgically strike and stop that from happening I'd be for it, but not to get into a war," Trump said.

"A surgical strike on Colonel Gaddafi?" asks the reporter.

"On Colonel Gaddafi," replied Trump.

Donald Trump Jr: CNN Pits Trump Supporters "From The Street" Against Pros

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Brian Snyder / Reuters

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Donald Trump Jr. on Tuesday accused CNN of picking supporters of his father "from the street" and pitting them against liberal professionals on its panels.

Appearing on Sean Hannity's radio program, Trump Jr. said CNN has "a panel of 8 professional, liberal but professional, people on a panel, and they find like one Trump supporter from the street, who has no real political knowledge, and they just happen to be supporter, and they put that person up against 8 people who do this for a living and try to make it seem like that's a fair fight.

"I mean, it's so ridiculous I can't even watch it anymore."

Among CNN's paid pundits advocating for Trump are former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, former Reagan staffer Jeffrey Lord, radio host Scottie Nell Hughes, and lawyer Kayleigh McEnany.

Trump Jr. added that CNN was getting "crushed" in the ratings because of its political coverage, which Hannity agreed was true. CNN's primetime audience grew by 70% in the second quarter ratings and had the smallest audience gap between it and juggernaut Fox News since 2008.

Trump Jr. and Hannity also criticized CNN anchors Chris Cuomo and Brian Stelter, who have both covered Trump critically.

"I think the worst offender is CNN. I literally watched, there's this –," Hannity said.

"You mean the Clinton News Network," interjected Trump Jr.

"Yeah, the Clinton News Network, they have little pipsqueak, so-called media critic, his show is 'Unreliable Liberal Media Matters Sources' and it's sort of like the Media Matters show," Hannity said. "You've got Brian 'the stenographer' Stelter doing the bidding of Jeff Zucker."

Hannity said he took issue with Stelter not challenging a professor on his show who said demagoguery leads to dictatorship (the professor was actually just reading the Wikipedia definition of the term).

Hannity also said he was upset Stelter criticized him for conspiratorial coverage of Hillary Clinton's health. Hannity falsely claimed Clinton had not released her health records, something she did over a year ago.

Trump Jr. said, "They make it so blatant, when you have, what was it, Chris Cuomo, the other day saying, 'we did everything else we possibly could to help Hillary.' They're saying this stuff on air.

"He's always been very nice to me, but you know, he's terrible to us on the air. And when they're saying 'we've done everything we possibly could to help Hillary Clinton,' I'm saying `'what? what?' They've gotten rid of even the notion that you're supposed to be objective."

The clip of Cuomo took place in 2014, not the "other day," and he was discussing the possibility of Clinton running for president. Cuomo said the media had given Clinton a "free ride" so far in its coverage.

Donald Trump's New Media

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Trump in March, defending a staffer who grabbed a Breitbart reporter.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

The effective merger of Donald Trump's campaign for president and the obstreperous, resilient media outlet Breitbart makes more sense than anything else that has happened so far this crazy year.

Trump's campaign has always been, to a degree greater even than the usual model campaign, almost entirely a media product: Trump on TV, Trump at rallies, Trump yelling on Twitter. And Breitbart is an exemplar, to a far greater degree than even the old partisan journalism, of a pure and focused “media activism,” in which the technical tools of journalism are turned to clear political ends.

Andrew Breitbart, the site's founder, saw his work this way: not as journalism, but as “war.” “War means that everything is on the line,” one of his reporters, Matthew Boyle, explained when he announced that he was “shipping out” to join the site. “We’ll fight the war on the battlefield of new media.”

I didn't really understand what that meant until a puzzling experience in 2012. BuzzFeed News's great Andrew Kaczynski, scouring the archives, had unearthed an interesting video of a young Barack Obama participating in a diversity rally at Harvard. As he tried to get a copy of the video from the Boston public television station, Breitbart started bragging about a coming video revelation, which we suspected was the same video. So we scrambled to beat them, and we did.

Breitbart's editors didn’t react the way I would have — by being angry about being scooped. They saw it differently, and assumed an ulterior motive. They wound up arguing — really — that we must have published the video in order to cover up the video. (Does this appear not to make sense? It does not make sense.) The logic is usefully flexible. Whenever we, or other non-movement outlets, broke news that was unflattering to Breitbart’s enemies, they could explain it this way: We were breaking the news in order to keep Breitbart from breaking it, and to help its targets get ahead of their searing exposé.

Breitbart staffers coined the term "Bensmithing" (!) to explain this phenomenon. It’s defined as: “A political tactic that disguises itself as journalism in order to protect Democrats.”

This projection continues to this day. This week, Katie Baker’s deep and sympathetic profile of a woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton was positively received, deservedly so, by left and right. But the Breitbart headline was the literal reverse of other conservatives’ reaction: “BuzzFeed Shames Juanita Broaddrick.” If you’re at war, you need enemies.

The projection is laughable — but revealing. If the core value of your media work is the effect it has on politics, then your motives are at the center of everything you report. The opposite and traditional view — which I share— isn’t that there’s no such thing as bias, implicit or explicit. It’s that reporters’ ultimate responsibility is to their readers, not to their side in the partisan wars. That entails publishing whatever information you find, without regard to political consequences.

The merger of political and media power is a formidable thing. It wasn't by accident that a central standoff in the recent Turkish coup plot was in a television station's office. In 1991, Soviet troops trying to hold the Union together opened fire on crowds at Lithuania’s main television broadcast tower. Modern autocrats assert control in large part through taking over television.

That kind of monopoly power isn’t available in the American digital media. But an owned-and-operated media has been a politician’s dream since the internet made it technically possible. George W. Bush's old-fashioned attempt to “go over the heads of the filter” was replaced by a vision modeled on sports media. Back in 2008, the Clinton campaign told me they were taking a cue from MLB.com when they launched HillaryHub as its own Drudge Report — but Obama’s slick in-house video was really the political media product of the cycle. Now it's 2016 and she has a podcast. Breitbart is a kind of Players' Tribune for Trump.

Every American politician has this fantasy. And it can work as long as it works — when you're popular, riding high, in control of your own narrative. That is not Donald Trump, who has lost control of the campaign story and can only win by appealing to people who aren't Breitbart readers.

But as campaigns become more fully media creations, and as media activism rises around the world as a central political force, this merger may wind up being his central legacy.

LINK: Donald Trump Brings In Breitbart News Executive Chairman To Run His Campaign

Roger Stone Hits Trump For Banning Reporters: Not Even Nixon Or Reagan Did That

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Ben Jackson / Getty Images

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Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to Republican nominee Donald Trump, called the Trump campaign's decision to ban certain reporters and outlets from covering its events "a terrible idea" and something not even Richard Nixon would have done.

Asked Tuesday on the Fernand Amandi Show if he agreed with the Trump campaign's decision to ban outlets like Politico and the Washington Post, Stone responded, "No, I think it's a terrible idea."

"Not even Richard Nixon, in the depths of his anger, and his press secretary Herb Klein, would ever do such a thing. Reagan never did such a thing," Stone said. "We knew that there were reporters out there that were both biased and openly hostile. But that's part of the game. That's kind of how it works."

Stone continued, saying, "I am opposed to censorship of all kinds."

Trump's campaign has routinely blocked from its events certain reporters and outlets, including reporters from BuzzFeed, the Washington Post, and Politico.


18 Times The Media Introduced A New Donald Trump

Steve Bannon's Hire Highlights Breitbart's Cozy Relationship With Trump

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Darren Hauck / Getty Images

Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon's ascent to the top of Donald Trump's campaign Wednesday caps a long, cozy, and mutually beneficial relationship between the candidate and the right-wing news outlet.

While Breitbart's militant Trump-championing has been widely observable in its coverage for years, the site's behind-the-scenes entanglements with the campaign have only become more conspicuous in recent months. And those ties will only become more obvious in the coming days and weeks, said sources close to the site and to Trump.

According to one Republican who works closely with the Trump campaign, more Breitbart staffers could soon be "transitioning" to the candidate's team. The source, who requested anonymity to describe his firsthand knowledge of the talks between the two camps, stressed that the situation is fluid and that plans could change. But he "a few" Breitbart employees have shown interest in joining the campaign, and Bannon may bring them with him.

Early this year, Breitbart editor-at-large Joel Pollak reached out to a former Trump aide to inquire about a potential speechwriting job on the campaign. Pollak did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but he told BuzzFeed News in March that he had considered "returning to speechwriting" and reached out to several campaigns at the time. According to two sources who know Pollak, he is the most likely Breitbart staffer to join the campaign.

"Joel is not someone who's particularly known as a traffic-getter, so shifting him over to the Trump campaign where he can put on his ... policy wonk that would be more suitable to him," said one former co-worker.

According to two sources, Bannon told people earlier this summer that he helped write Trump's speech about Hillary Clinton in June. The speech referenced Peter Schweizer's book Clinton Cash, which was released by the Government Accountability Institute, which Bannon co-founded and leads as executive chairman, though a spokesperson for the group said he is stepping down from the position temporarily and will return after the election. The book, and its corresponding movie, has been a centerpiece of Trump's and Breitbart's attacks on Clinton this cycle — and Bannon has heavily promoted the book on the website and on his radio show. Bannon did not respond to a request for comment.

The Breitbart staff has at times demonstrated an unusual amount of comfort with the Trump campaign. According to a source who heard him talking about it, Breitbart reporter Matthew Boyle boasted that Trump was paying for the Breitbart staff's rooms at the Ritz-Carlton in Cleveland during the convention. There is no indication that Trump did pay for the hotel rooms, and a Trump spokesperson did not respond to a query about it. Boyle, who declined to comment for this story, has reportedly also boasted in the past that he could be White House press secretary in a Trump administration.

Trump's campaign also paid $8,000 last year for consulting to a Breitbart national security editor, Sebastian Gorka. Gorka, a professor at Marine Corps University and is the chairman of Threat Knowledge Group, a national security consulting group, has repeatedly been identified as an editor on Breitbart's website, and frequently appears as a commentator on Fox News. The amount was listed in a Federal Election Commission report as payment for "policy consulting."

Breitbart's coziness with Trump has been a matter of debate and controversy within the site's editorial ranks since at least 2014, when multiple staffers speculated that Trump had provided undisclosed financial backing to the company in exchange for favorable coverage. Bannon strongly denied this to BuzzFeed News.

The internal tension between pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions of the site continued to fester, however.

Those tensions came to a head in March, when then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabbed Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields after a campaign event in Florida. During the ensuing fallout, the site's reporters were instructed by management not to publicly defend Fields.

Fields and editor-at-large Ben Shapiro resigned in protest, and a number of other staffers followed.

In a statement announcing his resignation in March, Shapiro wrote, "In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully and ... has shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda."

Trump's campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.


Newt Gingrich: Steve Bannon Hire "Strengthens" Trump's Campaign

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John Moore / Getty Images


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Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Wednesday said Donald Trump's hiring of Breitbart's Stephen Bannon as CEO and his decision to promote Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager will strengthen his campaign.

"Well, I think they're very good for Trump because it strengthens it," said Gingrich on Fox News Radio's The John Gibson Show. "In many ways Paul Manafort has been a transitional who has brought the campaign to a much more professional, much more national capability. But the campaign had to continue growing. Trying to run in 50 states, deal with the national media, take on the Clinton machine. That's a lot."

"So I think that bringing in these two people, Steve Bannon is a tremendous manager," continued Gingrich. "He is a great fighter in the conservative tradition. He at Breitbart and elsewhere has really made an impact and he understands the news cycle and how to fight the left. Kellyanne Conway has been just a great pollster, I've worked with her for many years. She will bring a, I think again, a very aggressive tough-minded approach, fact-based policy approach to it. I think these are both terrific choices and I'm delighted that he's bringing them in."

Jan Brewer Clarifies Clinton "Lying Killer" Remark: It Was A "Stumble Of The Tongue"

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Former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she suffered a "stumble of the tongue" on Tuesday when she seemed to call Hillary Clinton a "lying killer" during a radio interview.

“People want a fighter. They’re tired of the lying killer, uh, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clintons of the world,” Brewer told Mac & Gaydos on KTAR News, the audio of which was first reported by Mediaite.

When reached by phone by BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, Brewer said she just mispronounced Clinton's name.

"I was trying to say Hillary Clinton," Brewer said. "It was a stumble of the tongue."

"Good grief," she added.

Black Republicans Growing Even More Frustrated With Trump Effort

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WASHINGTON — In many ways, Donald Trump’s speech in Wisconsin addressing disillusioned black Americans was exactly what black Republicans had been looking for: a measured, read-from-TelePrompTer speech on which to hang their hats, a rhetorical justification from the candidate that, for all of his professed affinity for his African Americans, he still cared about trying get their vote.

“I’m asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different and much better future,” Trump said. “It's time for our society to address some honest and very very difficult choices. The Democratic Party has failed and betrayed the African American community.”

But black Republicans are privately fuming about the emphasis Trump insiders place on white turnout and watching for— in the words of one senior Republican strategist — “heated rhetoric” they believe is designed to turn out a segment of the white vote that is anathema to their strictly conservative and racially-proud wing of the Republican Party. Black Republicans once intrigued by the prospect of a Trump candidacy are now thoroughly perplexed by it. That frustration is expected to be a central theme of a national call Thursday night, featuring operatives from the campaign and the RNC, as well as black Republican down-ballot candidates and activists.

“There are ways to reach black voters,” a Congressional aide said. “And promising to restore law and order ain’t it.”

The new leadership inside the Trump campaign is not expected to be part of the call, being billed in an email circulating as the “RNC African American Engagement Update.”

“I think they want to see a sign that he’s trying,” said one well-known Republican who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “Any sign. Every politician does it. It’s not rocket science. Kiss babies. Shake hands. You hope and you hope but at some point you wonder, ‘Is this going to happen?’ It’s three weeks (after the convention) and we’re still talking about it.’”

The RNC said it remains committed to black outreach — the committee hired three black consultants earlier this month. “Under Chairman Priebus, the RNC has made a commitment and invested resources into engaging and building relationships across the African-American community,” RNC spokesperson Telly Lovelace said in an email to BuzzFeed News. “We remain committed to this effort. Through programs such as the Republican Leadership Initiative (RLI), we will continue to work with and train those African-American Republicans ready to support Republican candidates this cycle and beyond.”

But black Republicans are frustrated with the overall climate. Hillary Clinton has dominated ad spending in swing states with significant black communities. She’s hiring field staff and organizers on the ground. Her running mate is impressing crowds at the annual meetings of the National Urban League and Progressive National Baptist Conventions. With black voters, Trump remains at or near 1%. And no one, not even on the campaign, seems to know how many black staffers actually are working for Trump.

In June, a group of Republicans displeased with the RNC’s minority outreach sent a letter to the RNC, writing that Trump had “caused massive defection, disgust, and disinterest with comments and behaviors that are offensive to the very demographics groups we need to win this election” and that their research showed the “unrealized potential for the GOP to do better among minorities in this election cycle.”

The letter annoyed prominent black Republicans all over the country; even as many agreed with its content, they let it be known that there are better, less public ways to deal with frustration. The Trump campaign’s outreach efforts haven’t gotten better, the source said, and the campaign is showing little promise that it will. It led this source to believe that there is a movement by some black Republicans to endorse Clinton.

“‘Black Republicans for Hillary,’” the source said, moving their hands apart, looking up as if to see the words on a marquee. “Look at what Clinton’s doing. Are we doing any of that?”

Charles Badger, an anti-Trump aide who worked for Jeb Bush in the Republican primary, told BuzzFeed News he’s voting for Clinton. “I don't know of any effort. But I've personally offered my help to her people. Told them I'll do whatever they need.”

“Trump's ‘What have Democrats done for you lately, black people?’ act is old,” Badger continued. “[It’s been] done better, by better, many, many times before. It's so old and tired, not to mention insulting.”

Niger Innis, the Congress of Racial Equality’s national spokesperson said he’d never vote for Clinton, but agreed on black outreach that Trump “needs to ramp it up for sure.”

Trump asked for the black vote Tuesday. But some black Republicans said the message didn’t jibe with how black people have been treated by members of the campaign. Several black Republicans referred to an incident involving Sean P. Jackson, a young Floridian Republican strategist. Jackson, whose plan to reach black voters has reached the inboxes of select black conservatives in his state and nationally, recently told friends that the Trump campaign’s chief Florida strategist Karen Giorno told him during that primary that Trump didn’t need his “classification of people” to get elected.

At a recent event in Florida, two sources said that Jackson was approached by Secret Service and escorted out of the event. But when he confronted Giorno to vouch for him, a source said she declined to acknowledge Jackson, the chairman of the Black Republican Caucus of Florida, a group that once hosted Dr. Ben Carson.

Giorno did not respond to an email seeking comment.

According to Jackson, he first reached out to Giorno in January. He said the state’s Republican leadership needed to “get on the ball” when it came to trying to reach black voters. Jackson said Giorno got annoyed when Jackson sent an email to her and then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. “I made it clear we had to start sooner than later. You can’t afford to come 100 days before the election and expect to do anything. It just won’t happen. They will look at you like an opportunist.”

Jackson with Trump in Daytona.

Jackson / Via Facebook

But according to Jackson, Giorno told him in person during the primary that Trump didn’t need black voters to win, “I was just floored,” Jackson told BuzzFeed News. “I didn’t know what to say to it. I’m, like, she actually said that to me.”

Black conservatives were buzzing about the Jackson incident because Jackson had worked closely with the Trump campaign and was a fixture at the RNC in Cleveland, which was low on young black delegates, surrogates, and media personalities.

That dearth is frustrating to many black Republicans, as is Trump’s failure to speak before black organizations like the NAACP and Urban League. One strategist observed, “He’s from New York. He must have been to the Apollo at some point and knows that black people will boo your ass off the stage of you don't come correct. But it’s no excuse. He has to address black America.”

On national calls like the one happening Thursday night, there is usually a point at which the principals open the line for questions. People briefed on the organization of the call said they expect people to vent about the lack of awareness over what the Trump campaign is doing to reach voters, and lack of a sense of how they can help. One aide described a recent Latino engagement call as “very lively — if you had an issue that was the time to get it out.”

A frustrated aide working in a battleground state said they hoped that the call produced talking points that go beyond attacking Clinton on Libya and her emails. “It seems like you can get talking points on that all day,” the aide said. “But when it comes to black youth unemployment, or addressing job creation or education or HBCUs, there’s nothing. What is Trump going to do for HBCUs? Clinton has a plan. Where’s his?”

Annoyed Republicans are also worried that certain representatives from the campaign are not a good representation for either the campaign, the nominee, or the party. Senior Republicans described the duo of “Diamond and Silk” as the kind of schtick serious black conservatives dislike. “White conservatives love them,” one senior Republican who cringed at their encounter with the journalist Roland Martin who is voting for Trump said, “because they’re saying exactly what they want them to say.”

For now, there’s a desire to see Trump run a more conventional campaign, but wide pessimism that he actually will. “At some point you have you think he’s going to pick up the traditional playbook and fight for black votes,” a black Republican said. “Because right now, if he were to win this election based on the white vote it would just be, like, wow. They were right. They didn’t need us. I guess I’d be a registered Independent.”

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