Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images

Donald Trump, asked on Wednesday why he changed his position on President Obama's place of birth, said he just wanted to get on with the campaign.

"Well, I just want to get on with, you now, we want to get on with the campaign," Trump said to local news ABC6 in Ohio. "And a lot of people were asking me questions. And you know, we want to talk about jobs, we want to talk about the military, we want to take about ISIS and how to get rid of ISIS. We want to really talk about bringing jobs back to this area because you’ve been decimated. So we really want to just get back on the subject of jobs, military, taking care of our vets, etc."

After questioning President Obama's citizenship for six years, Trump last Friday finally said he believed the president was born in the United States.

Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Rep. John Lewis said he believes women were discriminated against in the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century.

On Wednesday night, Lewis, who was the young chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was asked a question about whether the current civil rights movement — which emphasizes fighting police brutality and racial discrimination, and is often led by women — needs central leadership. Lewis said the civil rights movement of the last century was “dominated” by men, preachers who “treated the movement like it was their own church.”

“Most of the leaders of the movement were ministers,” Lewis said. “There were some women like Ella Baker, Diane Nash, a student in Nashville, one of leaders, the leader of the Little Rock Nine effort — and others, you had Gloria Richardson. But I truly think and believe women were discriminated against.”

Lewis took the question at an event with Politico, where he addressed the state of the election, his own history as a civil rights leader, and his belief that “Hillary Clinton is going to prevail.”

But his comments on the movement reflected a long observed but rarely addressed part of the movement’s treatment of women.

“They did all of the work, they did the heavy lifting,” Lewis said. “They were kept back.”

Dr. King and others, he said, had credit bestowed on them for the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. “But it was a woman, a teacher at Alabama State College, Jo Ann Robinson that said we should boycott the buses. [She said] you should organize your students. So we made leaflets and people spread them all over the city of Montgomery. Then people started staying off the buses.”

On the current movement, Lewis SNCC had adopted a group leadership model that is a touchstone of the diffuse and decentralized Black Lives Matter movement. Lewis, however, said he believed in symbols, and that one leader should “emerge as a symbol of the struggle.”

Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images

Donald Trump Jr. said one of the reasons his father is not releasing his tax returns is because there's a lot of stuff in the presidential candidate's business career and it "wouldn't make sense to open up" to public.

Trump Jr., speaking on the Doug Wright Show on KSL News Radio on Wednesday, declined to elaborate on what that was, but also said the family's tax counsel has advised them not to release their returns, citing a mysterious audit. Trump promised at various times while running and before running for president that he'd release his returns if he ran.

"I think we've been under audit for five years," Trump Jr. said. "Who knows if that's politically motivated or not, but our tax counsel, going through a 12,000-page tax return, has said they wouldn't advise us to do it. It could create all sorts of other problems. I'm going to listen to them on that."

"We've released a 110-page disclosure form," he continued. "That disclosure form is larger than most people's tax returns. When you have a business record, a business track record of my father and 40 years of it, there's a lot in a 12,000-page tax return that wouldn't make sense to open up."

The younger Trump added that the campaign wanted to keep their focus on message and avoid the distraction of the disclosure of his returns.

"What we want to do is keep the message on point," he said. "We've seen how viral that craziness goes. We want to keep on point. We want to talk about the things that really matter to Americans and do that. When the people question, 'Well, does it show that your father's not rich?' Well, I don't know. He put $65 million into a primary campaign that people said he had zero chance of winning. I don't know. He had zero chance, yet he was willing to risk $65 million cash that he's forgiven, not a debt — it's gone into a campaign to do what's right for the American people. I'd say he's been pretty successful if he can do that. I don't know a lot of people that would do that."

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said on Wednesday that Hillary Clinton should be examined for health problems other than the pneumonia her doctor said she was diagnosed with earlier this month.

Speaking to host Tom Roten of 800 WVHU radio, Paul said that the episode should be concerning even for Clinton's family members.

“I think it is troubling when we look at the reports from Clinton not just the potential health problems that she has but also sort of the dissembling, the dishonesty about it," Paul said. "And when they trotted out that diagnosis of pneumonia a couple days after the fact, America just didn’t buy it because they assume the Clintons will probably lie to you anyway. And I think it is concerning really even if you’re her family member and you’re very concerned about her health that maybe they need to look deeper into finding an answer."

On Sept. 11, Clinton left an event early and was seen struggling to walk while getting into her car. The Clinton campaign first released a statement saying that the Democratic nominee had become overheated, before releasing later in the day a statement from Clinton's doctor that she had been diagnosed two days earlier with pneumonia, and then become dehydrated. The news came after weeks of conspiracy theories that Clinton had been hiding a serious medical condition.

On Wednesday, the Republican senator went on to say that "people with the pneumonia, who are recovering from the pneumonia, who are not, you know, febrile, and short of fluid don’t go out in 79 degree morning weather and faint. So there are a lot of other possibilities they need to look into: heart, neurologic, you know, post-concussion type of syndromes in the brain. So there’s a lot of things they need to look into with her health. I think it hurts her politically because she doesn’t appear to be forthcoming about it.”

Clinton has since released further medical information in the form of a letter from her doctor detailing the results of a recent physical exam. Last week, her opponent Donald Trump went on the TV show Dr. Oz to discuss his health.

Paul, who is running for reelection this year, also commented on the shooting of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, saying that, though it "he wasn't listening and it sounds like he might've been on drugs," police should not have used deadly force.

"Because you could also have somebody who’s insane, let's say somebody who has schizophrenia, they don’t listen either," Paul said. "Maybe they’re homeless and walking around and not listening to commands, we don’t shoot them. So the police have to do a better job at figuring out, you know, when they use deadly force. And there are a lot of things short of that that would’ve brought him down."

Mark Kauzlarich / Reuters

Republican congressman Steve King called the Congressional Black Caucus the "self-segregating caucus" in a radio interview on Thursday while discussing members of the caucus who have labeled Donald Trump a racist.

"And now we've got the Congressional Black Caucus here in Washington, DC, today will be leading a protest and they have declared Donald Trump to be a racist. Now, why are they the authority on that?" the Iowa congressman said on KVFD AM1400 radio in Iowa. "I call them the self-segregating caucus, and so, they long ago moved away from the integration that we really need in this country."

King also lambasted reporter April Ryan, who he tangled with on a panel on MSNBC at the Republican convention in July when he said “white people” had made more contributions to civilization than any other “subgroup."

"I think of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, when we had a story where I defended western civilization and a lady who was on the panel, I think her last name is Flynn, I think it's April Flynn and she's African-American," King said.

"She approached me at the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame a day or two later, with her tape recorder — it was one of those things you call a media ambush — and so, she began to call me a racist," he added. "And I said, 'use that word again, again, again, say it a million times. You're devaluating the effect of it. You've got no basis of it because you've got more melanin in your skin does that give you the right to call me a racist?'"

George Frey / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Evan McMullin said Donald Trump’s stop-and-frisk strategy is a “cocktail of racism” that reinforces his belief that Donald Trump’s America will be a police state.

“It's a cocktail of racism and a violation of civil rights," said McMullin, a former CIA officer from Utah running on a platform of stopping Trump. “He’s communicating to people that their civil liberties do not apply in certain situations in which they have not even done anything to raise any credible suspicion of law enforcement. Your race should not be a factor for deciding whether you should be suspected of a crime. Period.”

On Thursday, Trump suggested stop-and-frisk strategy — the policy employed by New York City police and later ruled unconstitutional by a district judge before being appealed — would help establish law and order in more cities.

"Stop-and-frisk worked,” said Trump. "They're proactive, and if they see a person possibly with a gun or they think they have a gun, they will see the person and they'll look and they'll take the gun away. They'll stop, they'll frisk and they'll take the gun away, and they won't have anything to shoot with."

Later, he said he was asked specifically about Chicago, where he’d establish "strong law and order.” The policy was a staple of the NYPD, stop and question people they suspected to have a weapon or drugs. The practice focused mostly on black and Latino New Yorkers.

At the same time, in an interview with the Guardian, an Ohio county chair for the Trump campaign said there was no racism before Obama, that Black Lives Matter movement is "a stupid waste of time" and if you are black and not successful “it’s your own fault. “You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to," the woman said. "You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”

Miller’s comments, McMullin said, are part of a pattern of statements that reflect some Trump supporters harbor prejudice. He said Trump’s supporters need to reject some of the rhetoric coming from the candidate, as well. “These are just flat out racist statements.”

He also called out the Republican Party for not being more critical of Trump in light of the tone of his campaign.

“The Republican Party fancies itself [as the party of Lincoln], but where is the party of Lincoln today? I don’t see it.”

McMullin, who said he’s been in situations in which he’s had to decide whether to use lethal force, said he watched the video of a police officer shoot and kill a black man in Tulsa five times.

“I don’t understand why lethal force was needed at that moment,” he said. "What I saw there says to me that what happened deserves a lot of scrutiny, to put it mildly."

He said he supports “common sense” policies that require officers to exhaust nonlethal means before the application of lethal force, touting their ability to keep officers safe.

“In general, we need to be better about de-escalation, frankly on both sides. But when you’re the law enforcement officer you’re the leader and you’ve got to take charge in the situation and lead the de-escalation.”

Anonymous / AP

Former college basketball coach Bobby Knight said on Thursday that he's been trying to get Donald Trump to settle down.

Knight, who once famously threw a chair onto the court in the middle of the game in anger, was asked by host Dom Giordano on 1210 WPHT Philadelphia radio whether the fact that he was advising Trump to moderate himself meant that Trump was "pretty far out there."

Knight replied, “Yeah, but that’s what I’m working on right now. I get a
kick out of it. From my mother to people that I’ve known in my lifetime,
they’ve tried to settle me down a little bit. Now I’m trying to do the same
thing to my man Trump. Because there’s nobody even close to being as prepared
for this job as he is."

Knight, who spent much of his career coaching the Indiana Hoosiers and endorsed Trump before this year's Indiana Republican primary, also said in the interview that Trump "probably talks too much."

“Sure, he probably talks too much sometimes or he gets too upset sometimes, but so did I," Knight said. "But what he brings to the table no one else has. Trump is not national, he’s international. He’s known all over the world. He has established businesses all over and he has given jobs to thousands and thousands of people all over the world with these businesses that he has put together.”

Knight also criticized the phenomenon, led by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, of professional athletes kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism in America, saying that he "wouldn't tolerate that approach on my team."

"Everybody has an opportunity in America," he said. "I don’t care if guys whine and complain about this or that. You know, no country affords its inhabitants the opportunities that the USA gives to its people. And that kind of thing really bothers me. Were I a coach, an owner or whatever, I wouldn’t tolerate that approach on my team.”

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — A Clinton campaign call with Latino supporters took on new seriousness Thursday regarding the support of young voters and state of Spanish-language advertising, reflecting concerns with tightening poll numbers in the campaign's final weeks.

"I've had concerns for a while," said one participant on the call who speaks with donors. "It feels like it’s a little late to be coming now with this stuff but hopefully they’ve course corrected."

What's coming is a new Spanish-language ad push announced on the call. That announcement follows skittish Democrats chastising the campaign in a Washington Post report for starting a concerted advertising campaign later than President Obama did in his 2012 race.

"We will have more to say soon, but the campaign will continue to advertise on Spanish TV and radio, as well as targeting Latino households through TV in English until election day," a Clinton aide told BuzzFeed News.

The same call participant said the Latino calls usually have a cheery tenor, with pre-planned and pumped-up speakers from key states giving the rundown on good news on the ground, before turning it back over to the campaign.

This one was different.

A portion of the call was dedicated to the challenge of juicing support from "millennials," with multiple speakers bringing the bloc of voters up.

Leopoldo Martinez, with Latino Victory, addressed the issue of young Latino support, talking about his organization's recent efforts to register voters at the concerts of Mexican rock band Maná, as well as the musical endorsement of Mexican ranchera legend Vicente Fernandez.

"They're saying she’s leading more with Latinos than Obama was but she should be way up when we have a Trump out there," a separate participant on the call told BuzzFeed News.

Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist who was also on the campaign call, said the call reflected where the campaign is currently "whether those articles came out or not," referencing recent reports of lagging enthusiasm among young voters and the Spanish-language advertising.

She said supporters on the call and campaign officials have their ear to the ground and understand what they’re hearing from voters, their internal polling, what their strengths are and where they need to shore things up.

"Millennials is clearly an issue across the board for Hillary," Cardona said. "Latinos in general have always been an issue across the board for any Democratic candidate."

But she also sought to tamp down concern, recalling that in 2012 the narrative was that Obama faced enthusiasm issues from young voters, black voters, and Latino voters, too.

The Clinton campaign has focused much of its energy on the Latino vote around young voters because Hispanics are disproportionately younger than other groups. They've created an SMS text messaging program with hundreds of thousands of Latinos receiving updates from the campaign, English-language ads aimed at Hispanics, and put Latino vote directors in states the Obama campaign did not have in 2012 like in Ohio.

"One of the things we lose sight of is that Obama didn’t have a primary opponent," Cardona said, referencing concerns that Clinton has been slow to Spanish-language ads. "Hillary did — they didn’t have the luxury to focus 100% on a general election campaign until after the convention, frankly, whereas Obama could run a general election campaign in March."

"Now they need to go full-bore on Spanish-language television, full saturation, but I don’t think they’re too late," she said.

Clinton officials on the call asked supporters to use their social media accounts to go to bat for Clinton, and Martinez from Latino Victory said surrogates who go on Spanish-language networks should pushback against negativity.

Campaign staffers also asked Latino supporters to consider volunteering for get out the vote efforts in states like Iowa, Florida, and Virginia. Sara Valenzuela, the campaign's Latino outreach director, said it was the last national call for her because she was joining the team in Florida for GOTV efforts.

One participant on the call said support from Puerto Ricans in Florida will be strong, Cubans are always tough for Democrats, but the key will be to maximize support from other Hispanics like Venezuelans, Colombians, and Mexicans.

But there was no doubt that even among fervent Clinton supporters, there was anxiety about her position with Hispanics.

"Why is it so close? Why is Trump taking a lead in Ohio?" one participant said to BuzzFeed News after the call.

"They don’t seem to have it together," another said. "The message from the campaign is 'worry, but don’t panic.'"

Gary Segura, a consultant from polling firm Latino Decisions who joined the campaign and is walled off from his organization during the election, sought to calm supporters on the call using publicly available data. He said that compared to this point in the 2012 race, Clinton is in a stronger position with Hispanic voters than Obama was, and made a rosy prediction.

Clinton, he said, will enjoy "record Latino support not seen since Jack Kennedy."

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Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday defended his father's position on banning refugees from countries where there is known to be terrorism, citing Europe — where he claims migrants rape children daily — as a dangerous example.

Trump Jr. was being interviewed on Facebook Live by a reporter for Salt Lake City's local CBS affiliate when he made the allegation after being asked what he would say to citizens of Utah who were worried his father's rhetoric on refugees.

"I think its an important thing, but I think we also have to be able to vet people who are coming in to our country," Trump Jr. said, emphasizing the need for common sense policies.

"If you look at what’s happened in Europe as it relates to the migrant flows, you know, and you’re hearing about young children being raped daily, and you’re looking at countries that were very good and peaceful countries, the statistics are going through the roof in terms of those kind of attacks—we just have to be intelligent with what we’re doing," he continued.

Trump Jr.'s comment comes after his tweet on Monday comparing refugees to skittles. Additionally, on Tuesday, he retweeted a Breitbart story titled: "Europe's Rape Epidemic: Western Women Will Be Sacrificed At The Alter Of Mass Migration"

Steve Marcus / Reuters

The son of Republican Rep. Joe Heck made several sharply racist and sexist comments and upvoted inflammatory memes on Reddit, according to a BuzzFeed News review of his account.

Rep. Heck, who is running for US Senate in Nevada, issued an apology on Thursday after BuzzFeed News notified his campaign of his son's actions. His son, Joseph Heck III, who goes by Joey, also apologized, and said he was entering counseling. Joey Heck's comments have since been removed from the website.

In 2013, BuzzFeed News previously reported on Joey Heck's online comments, including saying in a tweet that President Obama was only good at "spear chucking and rock skipping." Rep. Heck issued an apology for his son's tweets at the time. Joey Heck is now 19 and in college.

In his statement, Joey Heck wrote that his parents "raised me to be responsible and respectful and to love my neighbor."

"I’ve let my family down and failed to show a proper level of respect for others," his statement said. "As a 15-year-old, it was easy to get caught up in and manipulated by social media. As an 19-year-old, I have no excuse. I know better. This is my mistake. I own it and I sincerely regret it. I am truly sorry."

The Heck family, in a statement to BuzzFeed News, said, "While it is difficult to convey the magnitude of our disappointment in our son Joey’s behavior as well as our concern by the content of his social media account, our love for him does not waver. Our family accepts his apology and fully supports his decision to seek counseling. We will stand by Joey as he works through these issues as any parent would do, and his sisters are fully committed to provide support and guidance."

The comments and upvotes on Reddit include graphic language.

Using the username Joeyj424, Joey Heck posted inflammatory and misogynistic comments on Reddit during the past year. As recently as two months ago, a message (called "flair" by Reddit users) appeared next to his username on all his comments that said, "I wish Hillary would violate me as much as she did federal law."

Joey Heck also commented more than once on the rape allegations against Bill Cosby. In one post a year ago, he commented on a photo comparing the comedian, accused by dozens of women of sexual assault and by some of drugging them, to champion boxers. He wrote, "Up there with the best of them, good for you Billy". In another comment on a New York Magazine article cover that featured 35 women who accused Cosby of assaulting them, "Number 9 didn't even need the drugs her eyes are already all sorts of fucked up."

Heck's son also upvoted, or endorsed, a number of racist and anti-Semitic pictures and memes. Reddit's algorithm uses upvotes to determine what gets promoted on the site. One image he upvoted was a racist depiction of a group of black children with the caption, "God made the little niggers, He made them in the night, He made them in a hurry, and forgot to make them white!"

He also upvoted a meme of a white person with a disability in a wheelchair, which read, "Just another retard who thinks hes a nigger I hate when white kids throw up gang signs". In another picture he upvoted, a penguin is shown in front of an oven expressing happiness that "my jews are almost done!"

A year ago, Joey Heck commented on a picture of a sex toy in a basket of children's toys, saying, "I'm deeply ashamed of you for this. You're a failure as a father. 3 years old and that's all she can take?"

In a number of comments, Heck's son refers to people with disabilities by the slur "potatoes." He called a woman who appeared in a video with her autistic son a "Hot ass potato farmer."

And in a comment on a meme of a dancing black child wearing a diaper, with the words, "Guess Who's Getting Confederate Flag Shirts," Joey Heck posted, "Great, what's next? Giving them food too? Greedy bastards". In another comment, Heck wrote that he was "impressed" by a meme of a Muslim man being sodomized by a pig.

Here's the full statement from the Heck family:

While it is difficult to convey the magnitude of our disappointment in our son Joey’s behavior as well as our concern by the content of his social media account, our love for him does not waver. Our family accepts his apology and fully supports his decision to seek counseling. We will stand by Joey as he works through these issues as any parent would do, and his sisters are fully committed to provide support and guidance.

Our family in no way condones this behavior, though we do take comfort in his apology and decision to seek professional counseling.

We ask that you allow our family privacy along with prayers to help our son through this process and very difficult time.

Here's the full statement from Joey Heck:

Recently, a few social media posts and responses have been linked to me by national media. I would like to publicly apologize to you and my family for my poor judgment and bad decisions. My parents raised me to be responsible and respectful and to love my neighbor. However, my behavior on social media has gone against everything I was taught, and I am ashamed of that. My family deserves better.

I’ve let my family down and failed to show a proper level of respect for others. As a 15-year-old, it was easy to get caught up in and manipulated by social media.. As an 19-year-old, I have no excuse. I know better. This is my mistake. I own it and I sincerely regret it. I am truly sorry.

It is difficult to be a child of someone in politics, but my family and friends were there for me when I’ve heard negative things about my father, or sometimes even myself. But to be the cause of so much pain for them is inexcusable. I’ve have chosen to go to counseling to help me work through these issues.

WASHINGTON — Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, running to replace Sen. Harry Reid in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country, said it was "offensive" to suggest she isn't Mexican enough because she doesn't speak Spanish.

Cortez Masto was responding to her opponent's former political director, who is also Mexican-American and who had made a sarcastic remark about how Mexican she is. The former aide, Tom McCallister, asked in another tweet: "quick question does @CatherineForNV speak Spanish?"

Cortez Masto told BuzzFeed News the tweets were "offensive" and sought to tie them to her opponent.

"First of all, I think it’s offensive, not just offensive to me, but to the many Mexican-Americans particularly in the state of Nevada who have worked so hard and provided so many contributions," she said.

McAllister is the former political director for Rep. Joe Heck; McAllister left the campaign in June. Cortez Masto argued that the tweet showed who Heck "truly is and that he's not willing to stand for the community because he supports Trump."

The Heck campaign said McCallister does not speak for the campaign.

And she took aim at the idea that she isn't Mexican enough because she doesn't speak Spanish.

"I think its absolutely ridiculous — if that was the litmus test for whether or not you’re Mexican-American then Gov. Sandoval would be thrown into that," she said of the popular Republican governor in Nevada.

A recent Latino Decisions poll showed that Cortez Masto isn't well-known among Latino voters, like other Democrats running for U.S. Senate. The Real Clear Politics polling average calls the race a toss-up, with Heck up four points.

But Cortez Masto clearly believes tying her opponent to Trump and leaning into her background will help her begin to change that. "My grandparents and my father would be very surprised to learn that I am not Mexican-American," she said.

“They hate white people because white people are successful and they are not,” US Rep. Robert Pittenger said in a television interview. He later apologized.

US Rep. Robert Pittenger told BBC TV on Thursday that protesters in Charlotte, North Carolina, "hate white people because white people are successful and they are not."

Pittenger, a Republican, has represented North Carolina's 9th Congressional District, which includes outer portions of Charlotte and some of the city's northern and eastern suburbs, since 2013. His comments come after two days of violent protests in Charlotte following the officer-involved death of Keith Lamont Scott.

When asked what protesters' grievances were on a BBC TV news program, Pittenger said: “The grievance in their minds – the animus, the anger – they hate white people because white people are successful and they’re not.”

"It is a welfare state," he said. "We have spent trillions of dollars on welfare, and we’ve put people in bondage, so they can’t be all they’re capable of being."

Pittenger apologized later Thursday in a statement after politicians and others took to social media to condemn the comments.

“What is taking place in my hometown right now breaks my heart,” he said in a statement issued by his office to the News & Observer. “My anguish led me to respond to a reporter’s question in a way that I regret. The answer doesn’t reflect who I am. I was quoting statements made by angry protesters last night on national TV.

"My intent was to discuss the lack of economic mobility for African Americans because of failed policies. I apologize to those I offended and hope that we can bring peace and calm to Charlotte.”

He also tweeted a response, saying "My answer to BBC doesn't reflect who I am." Pittenger said again that he was quoting statements made by protesters on TV.

LINK: 15 Powerful Photos From The Protests In Charlotte

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump talks with customers during a visit to Geno's Steaks Thursday in Philadelphia.

Evan Vucci / AP

CHESTER TOWNSHIP, PA — Donald Trump didn't mention his support for a national stop-and-frisk policy during a campaign rally Thursday, sticking instead to his support of police and the need for law and order as part of his pitch to black and Latino voters.

A day earlier at a town hall event in Ohio, Trump endorsed the practice as a way to reduce violence, particularly in black communities, telling a voter: "I would do stop-and-frisk. I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well, and you have to be proactive.”

But at least one federal judge has declared the practice unconstitutional, and studies have shown that not only do stop-and-frisk tactics disproportionately target black and Latino communities, they are not a particularly useful crime deterrent.

Still, Trump has made it a center piece of his law and order pitch to voters, going so far as to tell Fox and Friends that police in Chicago should use it to take guns away from suspected criminals.

While supporters at Trump’s rally on Thursday were at least somewhat supportive of his stop-and-frisk plan, most had reservations and acknowledged that it raises grave constitutional concerns.

Mike Gaudiuso, called stop-and-frisk "a double-edged sword."

"If you don’t stop and frisk, you might accidentally overlook somebody, and if you do, it raises all these constitutional rights complaints,” which he said are legitimate.

Still, the 48-year-old structural designer said “sometimes, harsh situations mean you have solutions that aren’t popular.”

Erik Verniere, a teacher in Newark who immigrated to the United States from Denmark 12 years ago, took a similar stance on stop-and-frisk.

“In Europe during certain times and certain areas, we had something similar to stop and frisk. And I understand that the constitutional question about it. I’m not a complete supporter of it," he said. "From a constitutional perspective, can you just stop and frisk? No. But I can see in certain areas and certain areas, like when there’s riots and so forth, I think it’s justifiable. Because sometimes you have to be realistic."

But any misgivings he may have about stop-and-frisk aren’t going to keep him from voting for Trump.

Trump's speech was also relatively heavy on policy proposals, with mention of education reform, energy production, ending trade deals he deems unfair, and more general regulatory reform.

"A lot of people ask me, how can somebody like you, who’s from Denmark, vote for somebody like Donald Trump? The establishment with Hillary Clinton and the Bushes, I see them as the same thing. And they’re going to sell out this country … I don’t want to see what happened in Europe happen here in the United States,” he said, pointing to refugee asylum policies as one of his chief concerns.

Verniere’s distrust of the “establishment” and it’s support of less stringent immigration standards than those proposed by Trump is what led him to ultimately decide to vote the Republican nominee.

“You know when I actually decided to vote for Trump? When George Bush senior said he was, you know, going to vote for Hillary. Because I just don’t trust the establishment Republican Party,” Verniere said.

Other Trump supporters, however, were much more skeptical of the plan, if the not the candidate.

“I live in the hood. Everybody has a piece, it’s ridiculous,” said Alan Shuman, a 76-year-old retired house painter from South Philadelphia.

And while he stressed that “I’m all for police, I’m all for blue lives matter,” he said he isn’t comfortable with giving them the kind of unchecked authority Trump is proposing.

"Stop-and-frisk, I don’t think that’s cool," he said. "if they’re wearing cameras and have a good reason, then fine. But they shouldn’t have carte blanche to do whatever they want.”

Shuman argued police already routinely abuse their authority — and would likely do so under stop-and-frisk.

“I know a lot of cops, and a lot of them were bullies in high school … they’re like pit bulls. You don’t want them out there unleashed," he said.

Still, like many here, Shuman said people “have to listen to the police. If they tell you to stop, you stop. You don’t run away.”

His solution to police brutality?

“They’ve got [body] cameras for people now, too. So, wear one, and if they give you shit, sue ‘em.”

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Last summer, when Donald Trump began his rise to the nomination, Hillary Clinton responded by pointing a finger squarely and firmly at the Republican Party.

Trump might sound extreme, she said, “but if you look at everyone else’s policies, they’re pretty much the same.” He might make “hateful comments,” she said, “but how many others disagree with him?”

Later that year, when Trump proposed his ban on Muslims, Clinton responded again by implicating the rest of the Republican Party. “Their language may be more veiled than Trump’s,” she said, “but their ideas are not so different.”

And the following spring, when Trump solidified his lead in the primary, Clinton yet again faulted the modern Republican Party. “Donald Trump didn’t come out of nowhere,” she said. “What the Republicans have sown with their extremist tactics, they are now reaping with [his] candidacy.”

So when Trump secured the nomination just a few weeks later in May, officials at the Democratic Party expected to hear more of the same from their own candidate, turning the new GOP standard-bearer into a sweeping indictment of the Republican Party, the Republican platform, and every Republican running for the House and Senate.

What Clinton did instead was vastly different.

That month, the candidate and her team of aides in Brooklyn set out on a new approach, outlined for the Democratic National Committee in an internal email that landed in the communications shop as something of a shock. “They want to make Trump look even more extreme than the rank-and-file Republican member of Congress,” the DNC’s deputy communications director wrote on the night of May 13, summarizing a conversation earlier that evening with Clinton’s rapid response director, Zac Petkanas. “He doesn’t want to link the House and Senate Republicans to Trump,” the message read.

The bottom line?

“The campaign does not want to connect Trump and the Republican Party.”

The email, made public along with 20,000 others on WikiLeaks as part of a massive cyberattack on the DNC this summer, is one of about two dozen exchanges that reveal a running tension this spring over the campaign’s decision to “disaggregate” Trump from the Republican Party. The strategic shift made back in May didn’t just drive a wedge between Clinton’s team and the officials tasked with coordinating the party across the states. It fundamentally upended the way Democrats talk about Republicans.

“I think that’s crazy” was the reply from the DNC’s communications director, Luis Miranda, whose emails make up more than half of those on WikiLeaks. (Miranda and other top officials at the DNC, including the chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, later stepped down in the wake of the hack.) “Insane,” he wrote again a few hours later, concerned that campaign's approach might let down-ballot Republicans off the hook.

Months later, Clinton's strategy is unrecognizable from the first year of her campaign. She doesn't tie Trump to the rest of the Republican Party. She doesn’t talk about Republican extremism or Republican rhetoric or Republican ideology. She has made the race almost exclusively about Donald Trump, his temperament, his qualifications, his character, and his fitness to serve, leaving the rest of the Democratic Party to adjust to a general election that has little to do with traditional partisan policy or politics.

The result, with less than 50 days until Election Day, is a Democratic nominee who praises establishment Republicans, makes forceful appeals for bipartisan support, and only rarely addresses Trump as President Obama might have John McCain or Mitt Romney in 2008 or 2012, strictly avoiding attacks on Republicans writ large.

It’s a message that requires great discipline from a candidate who once made a starkly different case, appearing at times to delight in attacking Republican policy. (At one rally in Rhode Island before the end of the primary, Clinton memorably nodded along in approval when the crowd booed one of her lines stating that Trump and his competitor Ted Cruz were peddling “the same snake oil” as the rest of Republicans.)

When she recently deviated from her general election approach, describing “half” of Trump's supporters as “deplorables” — a remark that cast millions of Republicans as racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic — Clinton quickly apologized for the broad characterization. “I regret saying ‘half,’” she said. (The retraction notably did nothing to back away from what she again described as Trump’s “deplorable” behavior.)

On the trail, Clinton doesn't engage much in the economic and social debates that typically animate both parties in a presidential election. (In May, on at least two occasions, WikiLeaks emails show, Clinton’s team asked the DNC to stay “out of policy” when it came to framing Trump — once around his May 12 meeting with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and a second time in relation to infrastructure messaging.)

Clinton's stump speech from the primary — a laundry list of policy proposals, capped off with a reminder that “everything I've just said, the Republicans disagree with” — gave way this summer to highly specific and often personal portraits of Trump, his record, and his credentials. A stray comment last month to a crowd in St. Petersburg, Florida — that his tax plan would “basically just repackage trickle-down economics” — is perhaps the closest she’s come since the spring to identifying Trump with mainstream GOP policy.

Instead, as Clinton presents it now, this election is about “values.” (“Consider our plans and the values behind them,” the candidate tells voters.) And she means values in the most basic sense of the word — touchstones of decency and fairness that, against Trump, have suddenly become (big-D) Democratic slogans. Her speeches cast the GOP nominee as a threat to “big-heartedness,” “tolerance” — the belief that “no one’s worthless, no one's less-than.” Her tagline on the trail is the simple idea that “love trumps hate.” Her running mate describes the race as “near existential” — a choice about “fidelity to our values.” And her field offices across the country are decorated more often with words like “kindness” than anything overtly partisan. (Next to “Hillary for President” and “Yaaas Hillary” posters on the wall in Nashua, New Hampshire, one sign simply reads, “Be Respectful.”)

Earlier this month, delivering a speech about the hallmark Republican theme of American exceptionalism, Clinton admitted that such topics should normally be “above politics.” But, she told the crowd at the American Legion, “this is not a normal election.”

“The debates are not the normal disagreements between Republicans and Democrats.”

Through the month of May, the party’s adjustment to Clinton’s new normal did not come quickly, easily, or without some resistance inside the Democratic apparatus in Washington tasked with races at the state and local levels and presented with the opportunity of a historically unpopular Republican nominee. The internal DNC emails on WikiLeaks offer an unvarnished glimpse at a campaign and party operation out of sync at times on messaging objectives that in any other election year might be routine.

In one early instance, the hacked emails show, both offices separately drew up plans for the highly anticipated May 12 Paul Ryan–Donald Trump summit on Capitol Hill. The day of the meeting, Miranda, the DNC communications director, and Petkanas, the Clinton rapid response director, discovered that they had prepared contradictory talking points.

To Clinton, the meeting with Ryan, an occasional Trump critic, showcased the distance between establishment Republicans and an alienating nominee. The DNC, meanwhile, had already instructed the Democratic state parties to say the opposite: that Ryan may not like Trump, but they share “the same divisive agenda” and “same old Republican playbook.” (They even designed posters: “Reject the Trump-Ryan Agenda.”)

“This is unfortunate messaging,” Petkanas wrote to Miranda, forwarding one of the state party press releases highlighting Trump and Ryan’s shared policy positions.

Miranda, at this point, had yet to receive the email about decoupling Trump from the GOP. (That came a day later.) He replied, asking for “better clarity,” then added flatly: “Because the idea that we would prop up Paul Ryan as a model isn’t going to work.”

Petkanas wrote back, frustrated. He referenced a call from the day before — “a whole back and forth on this exact subject” — where, he said, they had “specifically talked about how we don’t want to tie them together just yet or talk about the Ryan-Trump agenda.”

“That's what you agreed to do on the 1:30 p.m. call yesterday. That's what I informed our campaign that you would be doing,” Petkanas said, prompting no further reply.

Through the end of May, the plan to “disaggregate” Trump, as it was described in one lengthy email, remained a source of frustration for Miranda, the campaign’s go-between on messaging at the DNC. In the same email, subject-lined “Problem with HFA [Hillary For America],” he argued that the campaign’s frame — that “Trump is much worse than regular Republicans” — would give down-ballot GOP candidates an “easy out” and put every Democrat not named Clinton at a possible disadvantage. (“It might be a good strategy ONLY for Clinton,” Miranda wrote.) Worse, he added, the strategy would put the party “at odds” with the its own broader message against Republicanism.

As Miranda put it to one colleague, Democrats had been building the case for years against an increasingly extreme GOP, drawing a line from the rise of hardline tea party figures to the fights over affirmative action, immigration, and same-sex marriage of the early- and mid-2000s, to as far back as Richard Nixon’s so-called Southern Strategy in the 1960s, Miranda said. His point was the same one Clinton used to make before the end of the primaries: that Republicans “made their bed and now they’re lying in it,” as Miranda said in the email. “Democrats couldn’t dump the approach,” he wrote, citing congressional leaders like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who had been making the case he had in mind. “It’s worse than turning an aircraft carrier. We would lose 3/4 of the fleet.”

Reached Thursday, Miranda declined to comment on the emails or Clinton’s strategy.

Since May, Democratic officials working on races up and down the ticket said in recent interviews, any initial hurdles have been overcome inside the party: Clinton, they said, can hold up Republicans who have rejected Trump, while House and Senate Democrats put the pressure on those who haven’t, including such candidates in closely watched races as Sen. Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and Rep. Barbara Comstock in Virginia.

The messaging marked a subtle but significant shift for down-ballot Democrats, many of whom used to blast out releases about “the party of Trump,” casting the Republicans as a reflection of the same GOP that produced their nominee. In the general election, Democrats now ask why Republicans haven’t backed away from him altogether, arguing that candidates have chosen “party over country” — a message that better fits the Clinton framework, distancing Trump from the rest of the Republicans up for election.

The strategies are distinct, said one Democratic operative working on 2016 races, but “not contradictory.” Since May, a second Democratic operative said, the party has developed an understanding that “different entities can do different things.”

Still, the message has disadvantages for Democrats.

Senate Republicans have been able to distance themselves from Trump to their benefit: In New Hampshire, 78% of voters see Ayotte, a first-term senator who rarely mentions her party’s nominee on the campaign trail, as a “different kind of Republican” than Trump, according to a CBS News-YouGov poll of battleground states last month.

Two other vulnerable GOP incumbent candidates, Sens. Pat Toomey and Richard Burr, have seen a similar dynamic among voters in their respective home states, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. In Ohio, 20% of likely Clinton voters said in another recent poll that they will also vote for incumbent Republican Sen. Rob Portman over the Democrat.

And despite Clinton’s lengthy list of policy proposals (clocking in at 113,000 words on the campaign’s website), her message has become closely associated with an anti-Trump position.

This month, even as her aides have promised that Clinton will make a more “positive” and “aspirational” case on the trail, as communications director Jennifer Palmieri put it to reporters last week, Clinton still spends much of her time drawing contrasts. The candidate’s new “Stronger Together” speeches — an ongoing series unveiled by Palmieri as an effort to highlight “the values that motivate” Clinton, moving “beyond just Donald Trump” — still name or invoke the GOP nominee, and in some cases do so at length.

The strategy is one the candidate and her aides committed to back in May, and still continue to drive daily on the trail and from headquarters. If one theme runs through many of this spring’s hacked DNC emails relating to message, it is that the Clinton campaign has shaped the party's approach in matters large and small, dictating broad changes, slight tweaks, setting the course for Democrats in the general election.

Trump’s foreign policy views? “It’s not that he's in over his head,” Petkanas told DNC officials in late April. “It’s that he's advocating for some very dangerous policies that undermine our national interest and our security.”

Trump’s business record? “We have found that calling him a failed businessman is ineffective," deputy communications director Christina Reynolds wrote in May. “Aiming more at the angle that he got rich at the expense of the little guy, etc., is much more believable and effective.”

And Trump, period? When party officials started referring to him as “Dangerous Donald,” Clinton’s team quickly vetoed the idea. “We are very worried that Dangerous Donald sounds too much like him — it’s Lyin’ Ted or Corrupt Hillary,” Reynolds wrote in a message to the communications team, “which undermines the broader point.”

After the fact, emails show, DNC officials still disagreed with the decision. But as with other complaints about Clinton’s strategy, this one had no bearing on the outcome.

“Cool,” Miranda wrote back, “We’ll tweak it.”

Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images

Donald Trump has, in recent weeks, called Hillary Clinton a "bigot" who only sees black people as votes, and blamed Democrats and their policies for harming the black community.

Five years ago, however, he told Sean Hannity during a radio interview that Bill and Hillary Clinton had done "so much" the black community.

Trump made the comments in the 2011interview when discussing those who have called him a racist, drawing a comparison to Bill Clinton being called a racist in the 2008 primary.

"If you remember back, they were calling that of Bill Clinton," Trump said, "and I was with Bill Clinton, and I have never seen him so angry. He's actually a member of one of my clubs and plays at one of my clubs."

"He was so upset and angry," continued Trump. "He has his office in Harlem. Whether you like them, or don't like them, they have done so much for the African Americans and they called them racists. And I've never seen him so angry about anything."

BuzzFeed News flagged the interview from an archive of Trump's Twitter feed. Media Matters for America, which archives old episodes of Hannity's radio show, provided BuzzFeed News with the audio.

In August, Trump said, "Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes." At recent rallies, Trump has told minority voters they have nothing to lose by voting for him.

"You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose," Trump said in late August.

Mike Segar / Reuters

Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley says Republican nominee Donald Trump advocates for policies last seen in Nazi Germany.

In an interview uploaded this week with Adelaide, Australia Fiveaa 1395am, the former Democratic presidential candidate said Trump is "a pretty radical detour down the path of fascism the likes of which I never though I'd see in my lifetime in our country."

"The thing that would make us most vulnerable to greater terror attacks, also vulnerable to giving up our own freedoms, would be to have a person of Donald Trump's limited brainpower in office who would advocate for things that we last saw in Nazi Germany," O'Malley said.

"Identification cards for people that identify their religion, that would be bad for our safety, that would be bad for our freedoms," he continued. "And it would only play into the narrative that ISIS uses to recruit radicalized young people into their ranks to strike at the United States."

Mark Kauzlarich / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Two months after withholding his endorsement from Donald Trump at the Republican convention, Ted Cruz announced on his Facebook page on Friday that he is endorsing Trump.

"After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump," Cruz wrote.

Cruz specifically cited the inclusion of Sen. Mike Lee on a list of potential Supreme Court picks put out by the Trump campaign as a reason he is now supporting Trump.

"A year ago, I pledged to endorse the Republican nominee, and I am honoring that commitment," Cruz wrote, although he had said in July that the pledge was "abrogated" because of Trump's attacks on his family.

A source with direct knowledge of the situation had told BuzzFeed News earlier on Friday that Cruz would announce some kind of support of Trump sometime on Friday or Saturday.

One of Cruz's top endorsers in Iowa, radio host Steve Deace, tweeted earlier on Friday that "I hope I'm wrong, but I think a man I admire will today make the worst political miscalculation I've ever witnessed."

Cruz, who was the last man standing against Trump in the primaries, has been one of the longest-lasting holdouts among top Republican officials to refuse to endorse his party's nominee. Cruz was under pressure to do so at the convention in Cleveland, but refused, instead encouraging the audience to "vote your conscience" in November and offering a broad defense of conservatism.

The backlash to Cruz's speech was swift and severe. The day after, Cruz had a contentious visit with members of the Texas delegation to the convention, many of whom were angry with his choice. That day, Cruz said that he wouldn't be a "servile puppy dog" and endorse Trump. Soon afterwards, Republican donors Bob and Rebekah Mercer, who had been among Cruz's biggest backers during the primary, publicly rebuked Cruz, saying they were "profoundly disappointed." (The Mercers have thrown their support behind Trump.) And in the time since, Cruz's favorability numbers have taken a hit in Texas, where he is up for re-election for his Senate seat in 2018 and where he might be challenged in a primary by Rep. Michael McCaul.

During the primary, Trump attacked Cruz's wife and father, and Cruz eventually called Trump a "pathological liar" and "amoral."

Not every member of Cruz's inner circle appeared aware of the move on Friday, and there has been disagreement within his top ranks about the endorsement. One person who worked on Cruz's campaign, when asked if the endorsement was coming on Friday, responded, "I certainly hope not." The source said among those close to Cruz, not everyone is on board with the decision.

Cruz's former communications director Rick Tyler told BuzzFeed News he was "profoundly disappointed" in the endorsement and said he was taking the Cruz sticker off his car. Asked if he still considers himself a Cruz supporter, he said "I"m going to see what's going to happen."

Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe has said since the convention speech that the door to an endorsement was still open, and hinted that an endorsement could come soon at an event on Thursday, saying Cruz thinks about endorsing Trump "every day."

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who was the president of a Mercer-backed pro-Cruz super PAC during the primaries, told BuzzFeed News she had been in touch with Roe in the process of obtaining Cruz's endorsement.

A spokesperson for Cruz did not immediately return a request for comment.

Mary Altaffer / AP

President Obama on Friday vetoed a congressional bill that would allow families of 9/11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia over its alleged role in the terror attacks.

In his veto message, Obama said that while "I recognize that there is nothing that could ever erase the grief the 9/11 families have endured," the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) would undermine the US' counter terrorism efforts and ability to seek justice.

JASTA, Obama added, "does not contribute to these goals, does not enhance the safety of Americans from terrorist attacks, and undermines core US interests."

Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, center

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

His move, which was anticipated, now sets the stage for what could be his first veto override in his eight years in office, with lawmakers in both chambers working in recent days on how and when to schedule a vote.

The bill, which was passed in the Senate in May, cleared the House two days before the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

A veto override requires a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, which would mean a significant number of Obama's own party would have to vote against him.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, told the New York Times that voting against Obama wouldn't be easy, but he planned to do so on principle.

Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

"Breaking with him is something I feel is absolutely necessary to give these families their day in court," he said.

A key issue with JASTA is that it would authorize US courts to hear cases against foreign states for injuries or death resulting from an act of international terrorism.

The Obama administration contends that would reduce the states’ scope of foreign sovereign immunity and could open up US companies and personnel to legal action for conducting official government work overseas.

"JASTA threatens to create complications in our relationships with even our closest partners. If JASTA were enacted, courts could potentially consider even minimal allegations accusing US allies or partners of complicity in a particular terrorist attack in the United States to be to open the door to litigation and wide-ranging discovery against a foreign country — for example, the country where an individual who later committed a terrorist act traveled from or became radicalized," Obama argued in his veto message.

Read Obama's veto message here:

The best of the worst.

For months, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump said terrible things about each other.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Cruz even refused to endorse Trump at the convention.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

People booed.

Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images

Anyway, that's over now. Cruz packed it in and endorsed Trump on Friday.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

View Entire List ›

Mike Nelson / AFP / Getty Images

Gennifer Flowers, the former model who had an extramarital affair with Bill Clinton in the 1980s, says she'll accept an invitation from Donald Trump to sit in the front row of Monday's presidential debate, according to an assistant.

The prospect of Flowers attending the debate was raised on Saturday when Trump tweeted that he would put her in the audience, if billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban sat in the front row.

"If dopey Mark Cuban of failed Benefactor fame wants to sit in the front row, perhaps I will put Jennifer Flowers right alongside of him!" Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon.

An assistant to Flowers told BuzzFeed News in the past she had declined such invitations, not wanting to be a "sideshow," but said she would forward the invite to Flowers.

In an email to BuzzFeed News, Judy Stell, her personal assistant then confirmed she would be attending.

"Ms. Flowers has agreed to join Donald at the debate," she said.

A Trump campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News if the invite was official.

Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri commented, "Hillary Clinton plans on using the debate to discuss the issues that make a difference in people's lives. It’s not surprising that Donald Trump has chosen a different path."

A Clinton official speaking with BuzzFeed News said Trump's reaction showed he was easily provoked which would undermine attempts to show he was presidential at the debate.

The co-chair of the nonpartisan commission that operates the debates said on Saturday that Cuban will not actually be sitting in the front row. But he will attend the debate, continuing his ongoing feud, which dates back about a decade, with Trump. Just this summer, Cuban questioned whether Trump is really a billionaire and criticized Trump as a liar.

Flowers confirmed the news in on her public Facebook linked from her website.

"Hi Donald Trump... I'm in your corner. Of course I will see u at the debate !!," Flowers wrote on Facebook.