George Frey / Getty Images

In a new interview, Mitt Romney says that he criticized Donald Trump’s 2005 comments about women last week because they were “so over the line” that they demanded an answer.

“I felt that I had to say something again to simply point out to the women of America, and to the men of America,” Romney said in a podcast interview with Ashcroft in America posted on Friday, “that we're better than that and that this does not represent the quality or character of our country.”

In the interview, Romney talks at length about the 2012 Republican primary, the general election against President Obama ("It was not until election night that we recognized we were not going to win”), why he believes Republican voters nominated Trump, what the future holds for Republican Party as an institution, and how he thinks it’s likely that Hillary Clinton will win, but he doesn’t think “it's impossible that Donald Trump wins,” saying he has a 25% chance.

"We're conflicted as a people right now,” he said. “To a certain degree, we feel patriotism, pride in our country, [and] hope for the future. We're family-oriented, God-fearing, hardworking people. On the other hand, there's a growing stream of anger and resentment, defeatism, victimhood, and a lot of people are sort of torn in both ways. We have our better angels and our darker angels, if you will.”

That anger dictates the choice nominee, according to Romney, who outlined a pretty specific vision of what Trump represents in the party:

The voters chose a person who is on the populist spectrum, who is more isolationist both in foreign policy and economic policy than has been the party's tradition. I think that stems from the fact that people are angry about the lack of progress on issues they care about. They watch TV and listen to radio and hear a lot of people saying it could better, [asking] why can't the politicians get these done. They're angry about the people that they've elected in the past — the establishment, if you will. This resentment towards those who are more successful, resentment towards politicians, resentment towards the elite and media led the voters to chose someone who was willing to fly in the face of the leaders of the country.

But what that means for the party is less clear in his view — and what the aftermath of Trump’s potential defeat will look like, arguing that the party may need a sort of once-in-a-generation leader to bridge the gulf between the populists and the more traditional Republicans:

It's hard for me to gauge what would happen if Mr. Trump were to lose. I think it's more likely he'll lose than not. If he were to win, I think my party would be particularly troubled between those who were strong supporters of Mr. Trump and a smaller number at that stage who would be wanting to go in a different direction. But if he were to lose, then I think there are going to be many, many people who still carry his banner — a banner, if you will, of anger, resentment, wanting dramatic change, different policies on immigration and trade than we have typically adopted as a party versus those who are the traditional, more mainstream Republicans. Whether they can come back together again or not is a darn good question. I happen to think that for that to happen requires a person of unusual skill: a Churchill, an Eisenhower, an individual who's able to step forward, a Reagan, who's able to step forward and bring people together.

He is not, however, optimistic that this will happen soon.

“I don't know that we will see that person in 2020 or in the months leading up to that,” he said. “But absent that kind of leadership, I think it will be very difficult for the Humpty Dumpty to be put back together again."

Sara D. Davis / Getty Images

GREENSBORO, North Carolina — Prominent Republican women in Washington are expressing outrage at the way Donald Trump brazenly brushed off allegations of sexual assault by mocking his accusers’ looks.

"If Trump's goal was to help Hillary win and undermine the foundation of the Republican Party, it's hard to think of what he'd be doing differently," said Sarah Isgur Flores, former deputy campaign manager for Carly Fiorina.

“No woman needs Donald Trump’s assessment of their beauty and worth,” said Mindy Finn, a GOP strategist and Evan McMullin’s running mate. She added, “If [Trump] is not discredited, in a full-throated way, by every Republican with credibility, it will send the party into a tailspin for decades.”

In recent days, a growing number of women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct over a period spanning decades. Some of the women have cited his denial that he had ever groped a woman during Sunday’s debate as the impetus for their coming forward now.

At a rally here Friday afternoon, Trump dismissed the stories as “horrible lies” told by “sick” people — and appeared to suggest that some of the women weren’t good-looking enough to warrant his attention.

Referring to a former People magazine writer who claims Trump forced himself on her 11 years ago, the candidate said, “She’s a liar, she is a liar … check out her Facebook page, you’ll understand.” At another point, he lashed out at an accuser who appeared on CNN Thursday night. “When you looked at that horrible woman last night, you said, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think so.’”

Trump mocked the women’s claims, and a couple times made apparent groping gestures in an attempt to cast their stories as comically absurd.

“They have no witnesses, there’s nobody around. … Some are doing it for probably a little fame,” Trump said.

Katie Packer, who served as Mitt Romney’s deputy campaign manager in 2012 and has been a sharp critic of Trump, responded to Trump’s attacks on the accusers’ attractiveness with barbed sarcasm. “I’m sure that 90% of the women in America will breathe a sigh of relief to know that you can’t be sexually assaulted unless you look like a supermodel.”

She attributed the nominee’s behavior to that of a “predator who has been trapped … lashing out at those who have cornered him.” Trump, she said, “gets his rocks off on controlling and intimidating women who have less power than him.”

Ann Coulter, the right-wing provocateur who has emerged as one of Trump's most vocal defenders, deflected when asked by BuzzFeed News about his response to his accusers.

"Should Trump stay on the issues? Yeah, sure, if only the media would allow him to," Coulter said. "As for any fainting over Trump's 'potty talk,' I await Michelle Obama's apology to the American people for saying that Jay Z and Beyoncé are role models for little girls."

Even before the recent accusations against Trump surfaced, his candidacy had been devastating to the GOP’s standing with women voters. Instead of narrowing the gender gap that helped sink Romney in 2012, his nomination has sent right-leaning, college-educated suburban women fleeing from the party in droves.

Elise Jordan, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Rand Paul, said Trump’s response will only deepen those voters’ mistrust.

“Trump’s behavior this week is as consistently terrible as it’s always been,” she said. “What’s different is that he’s reinforcing the worst of his character at the very moment he needs to reassure wavering supporters and undecided voters of his stability.”

But it isn’t just swing voters being driven away by Trump’s antics.

On Fox News Friday afternoon, Dana Perino tore into high-profile conservatives defending Trump, like Ben Carson and Jeff Sessions. "You know who you are," she said, prompting some of her co-hosts to joke that her mic might get cut.

"Yeah," Perino snapped, "because women should be seen and not heard, apparently. After 20 years of defending these guys, [I'm] done."

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images

LOS ANGELES — The image of Michelle Obama flashed on-screen in the studio. She looks sick to her stomach in the video, disgusted and angry. “I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted.”

She cannot believe, she says in a clip already shared by millions, that “a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.”

The screen cut back to the set, where Ellen DeGeneres, host of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, then began to gently press her guest, Hillary Clinton, for a reaction to the first lady’s emotional rebuke of Donald Trump and the allegations against him.

“So, I mean, she’s very emotional about this,” DeGeneres said. “I mean, it’s disturbing.”

“It is,” the candidate replied.

DeGeneres tried again. “So…”

“Well, the speech that she gave, I think, put into words what so many people are feeling,” Clinton finally said, touching briefly on Trump’s way of speaking about women before shifting back into a more general attack on the Republican nominee. “It’s not just what Trump has said about women, as terrible as that has been.”

As women have stepped forward late this week with stories of unwanted advances, Clinton strictly avoided the substance of the allegations facing Trump. At her Ellen taping here in Los Angeles, and at a pair of fundraisers in San Francisco and Seattle, the words “sexual assault” did not come from the candidate’s mouth. Most often, Clinton addressed the situation in passing, urging voters to watch the first lady’s remarks online, but offering none of the same outrage that made the speech light up the internet on Thursday.

“If you haven't seen it, I hope you will see Michelle Obama’s speech today in New Hampshire. Once again, she not only made a compelling and strong case about the stakes in the election, but about who we are as Americans,” Clinton told a group of volunteers on Thursday morning in San Francisco, not mentioning the women who had come out with new claims of sexual assault against Trump this week.

At a fundraiser later that day, Clinton inched closer to mentioning the charges — “the disturbing stories just keep coming” — but then changed course, reverting to a joke.

“There’s hardly any part of America that he has not targeted. Now, it makes you want to turn off the news. It makes you want to unplug the internet. Or just look at cat GIFs,” she said to laughter from the crowd of donors. “Believe me, I get it — in the last few weeks, I’ve watched a lot of cats do a lot of weird and interesting things.”

By Friday, two more accusers joined a growing list, and Clinton’s approach to the topic was still the same.

The candidate’s distant posture toward the news unraveling Trump’s campaign is tangled up in the ugly and fraught 25-day homestretch to Election Day. To start, aides have said, Clinton is reticent to step in the way of Trump as he does damage to his own campaign. (On Friday, he attacked the women accusing him of sexual assault, calling them liars and unattractive.) But complicating matters further is the fact that Trump has made the women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct a centerpiece of what he and his advisers are calling a “scorched-earth” strategy in the final weeks of the race.

Sexual assault is one of the major policy topics Clinton has addressed over the course of her campaign, releasing a plan to address campus sexual assault in September of 2015 — but the issue itself is one she rarely discusses on the trail. A tweet posted last year, in which the candidate said that every survivor has “the right to be believed,” has at times been thrown back at Clinton by trolls and critics.

For months, Clinton has handled Trump’s focus on her husband by simply dismissing it. “He can run his campaign however he likes,” she likes to say.

Still, the seriousness of the claims against Trump may require Clinton to engage with the subject in more specific terms.

On Friday, asked if Clinton planned to address the allegations “directly,” Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign’s communications director, only pointed to the last debate.

“I think she addressed it pretty clearly and directly to Donald Trump’s face on the debate stage. And you should expect that she’ll continue to do that,” she said, speaking to the candidate’s traveling press corps on the flight to Seattle.

A reporter cut in: The debate was days before the new allegations came out.

“I think,” Palmieri said, “you should expect to see her do it.”

Donald Trump in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Monday.

Dominick Reuter / AFP / Getty Images

So what is it actually like to be a reporter in a place where an authoritarian ruler seeks to destroy the media, and rallies his supporters against it?

That remains a fairly remote scenario in the United States, with its strong courts and tradition of journalistic independence. But it’s closer than it has been in a while — perhaps since the oddly forgotten period in which Richard Nixon sicced the CIA on the scoopmonger Jack Anderson in the early 1970s. (Read Mark Feldstein’s book on this if you want to be shocked.) It’s close enough that the Committee to Protect Journalists warned on Thursday that “a Trump presidency would represent a threat to press freedom in the United States.”

Nobody is watching Trump’s war on the media — from chants denouncing CNN to legal letters to the Times — with more interest than the brave reporters already working under tough conditions in authoritarian countries. We asked several of them — from Venezuela to the Philippines to the former Soviet Union — about what it's like to cover leaders who openly threaten to throw enemies in jail. And the answers we got were, well, pretty alarming.

“Get ready for anything,” the Azeri journalist Khadija Ismayilova told us in a recent interview. “Things you don’t imagine — sex tapes. Being kidnapped in the streets and getting beaten.”

Ismayilova spent much of the last two years in jail for her exposés of President Ilham Aliyev and his family. The press is almost an automatic target under autocratic rulers, she said, because the traditions of neutral, fair journalism — the idea that you can avoid taking a side — are no shield.

“The first thing autocrats target is free press,” she said. “You’re going to be a target and you will probably have to be a side of the story ... just because you are telling the truth, just because you are doing your job.”

The Azeri journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who spent much of the last two years in jail.

Aziz Karimov / AP

Reporters have another role, too, she said, recalling the story of a colleague who was kidnapped, beaten, and then released and ordered to write about his experience.

The press, that is to say, becomes "a tool for intimidation of the population,” she said.

Ismayilova’s warning seemed so alarming, alarmist even, that we were not sure whether or not to write it up when she was first interviewed in September.

But as with so many things Donald Trump, however, you just have to wait a few days for your peg. On Monday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump offered this salvo on what he’ll do with the media if elected: "We have to take it away from these dishonest characters.” It was a line fully in keeping with the only truly memorable moment of Sunday night’s debate: his growled threat to jail his political opponent — a fairly common practice outside stable democracies.

Trump has lived and died through the media — through his rise, his humiliating fall, and his revival as a television star. He obsesses about television hosts and magazine writers, and his recent collapse came through an Access Hollywood outtake. He once dreamed of building something called Television City on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Vanity Fair reported that he may start a TV network if he loses.

And if he wins? Well, journalists who have covered the rise of similar figures abroad assume he will target the media. The best-known modern case, of course, is Russia in the early 2000s, where Putin moved heavily against privately owned television networks, and where critical journalists like Paul Klebnikov — and, later, Anna Politkovskaya — wound up dead. But in a contemporary world shaped by media, the trend is global.

“I think Donald Trump looks like Chavez,” said Xabier Coscojuela, the editor-in-chief of the Venezuelan newspaper Tal Cual. “Hugo Chavez a few days [after] taking power began his confrontation with the media. At first he attacked the media owners and tried to rely on journalists, but as [he] found out journalists were losing sympathy, [he] made them target of attacks. He is requiring us to tell the truth, the clear truth.”

Like many of the reporters we spoke to, Coscojuela said he doubted Trump would be able to wield the kind of power over the media that Chavez or Putin took.

“I doubt that can be imposed on society and the American media as did Chavez in Venezuela. I think the US institutions are much stronger than the Venezuelan and [can] prevent Trump [from reaching the] levels that Chavez [did],” he said in an email.

“It cannot be the same in America because in America you have institutions — for Americans the idea of an independent media is very important,” said Tikhon Dzyadko, a Russian opposition journalist who now lives in the US and works for the independent RTVi. “For Russians, since the first term of Vladimir Putin, the government was successfully trying to explain for the citizens that you don’t need independent media.”

Of course, the reason authoritarians target the media is precisely to whittle away at the checks on other institutions. In Russia, a campaign against the media preceded the neutering of the country’s Parliament and business leadership.

And Dzyadko, too, said he anticipated that Trump would destabilize the relationship between the White House and the press.

“When I look at how he behaves toward the media — ban the Washington Post, unbend the Washington Post — he is unpredictable, and if he becomes president of the United States I think things like we experienced in Russia for the journalists are impossible, but you just don’t know what to expect from him — for example you cannot be sure that if he becomes president he will ban some news outlets from [the] White House. The main problem with him is that you cannot be ready for anything because he can do whatever he wants without any reason.”

And even as US media outlets have wrestled with the reality that to cover Trump fairly is, at times, to call him a liar, reporters abroad say that the concept of neutrality is the hardest to maintain under authoritarian regimes.

“More than ever, I am always thinking about a phrase that has become popular in Venezuela these days: In situations of injustice, if you choose to be in neutral, that means that you are choosing the side of the oppressor which has more power to hurt,” said Tamoa Calzadilla, a Venezuelan investigative reporter who was forced to resign after reporting on police brutality and now lives in Miami.

At the other end of the spectrum from Putin and Chavez is former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media figure who used his properties to dominate the conversation, but under whom opposition media thrived.

“The anti-Berlusconi press has thrived in his years, not because he was magnanimous, but because Italy is a free country with the greatest freedom of speech,” said Christian Rocca, the editor of the Italian magazine IL, who added that Trump reminds him more of Beppe Grillo, the former comedian turned populist politician. “Berlusconi was a joyous liar. Grillo and Trump are leaders of the post-factual politics, which is very difficult to deal with. How do you cover someone who actually denies the thing he has just said? Do you have spare time to fact-check them? Can you really take them seriously? I really can't. But I'm scared.”

You never really know the strength of institutions until they’ve been tested, and some observers are more worried than others about what can be “undone” by what the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer recently described as a “demagogue feeding a vengeful populism.”

There is, however, one upside from contemplating an autocratic American government, Ismayilova said.

“There will be a lot of stories still — maybe it’s the cynical positive side of living in autocracy — but there is a lot of corruption all the time and there are a lot of stories to cover.”

Evan Vucci / AP Photo

Donald Trump on Saturday called for a drug test to be administered to him and Hillary Clinton before their next debate, implying his rival had used drugs during their last face-off on Sunday.

At a rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Trump likened himself and Clinton to athletes, then claimed that when Clinton said she was spending this weekend preparing for their third and final debate on Wednesday night, she was getting "pumped up."

“She's getting pumped up, you understand.” Trump said.

“Athletes, they make them take a drug test, right? I think we should take a drug test prior to the debate. I think we should. Why don't we do that? We should take a drug test,” he continued.

He said that at the beginning of the Sunday's town hall debate in St. Louis, Clinton “was all pumped up,” but appeared to lose energy by the end.

“She could barely reach her car,” he said, alluding to her almost fainting from pneumonia on Sept. 11.

Here’s his full comments on Saturday:

"I think she's actually getting pumped up. She's getting pumped up, you understand. In fact we're going to be talking about that in a few minutes. She's getting pumped up for Wednesday night. Let's see. You know. I don't know. We're like athletes. I beat 17 senators, governors, all these people. Hillary beat Bernie, although it looks like Bernie got a little bit of a bad deal, based on WikiLeaks, right? But we're like athletes, right? Athletes, they make them take a drug test, right? I think we should take a drug test prior to the debate. I think we should. Why don't we do that? We should take a drug test. Because I don't know what's going on with her, but at the beginning of her last debate she was all pumped up at the beginning and at the end it was like, uh, take me down. She could barely reach her car. So I think we should take a drug test. Anyway, I'm willing to do it.

Paula Johnson, left.

Katie Baker / BuzzFeed News

Paula Johnson, who carried a “Women for Trump” sign during the rally, told BuzzFeed News she still had concerns over Clinton's health.

“We need to see how sick she really is. She’s not fit to be president," Johnson said.

Clad in a “Hillary for Prison” t-shirt, David Lavita told BuzzFeed News that he supported Trump’s drug test suggestion.

“Sure it’s a good idea,” he said. “She’s doing something. Her husband doesn’t look too good either.”

Another rally attendant was confused.

“I really got lost on that,” said Debbie, who declined to give her last name. “I thought people thought he was the one on drugs.”

Discussions about both candidates’ health have been topics of their campaigns in the past few months.

Concerns around Clinton’s health mounted when she was diagnosed with pneumonia in September. Prior to that, Trump had made various statements criticizing her stamina and claiming that she was unfit to run the country.

Meanwhile, people have questioned the validity of Trump’s physical report, conducted and written by his doctor, Harold Bornstein. Trump recently went over the results of his physical on an episode of The Dr. Oz Show.

BuzzFeed News has reached out to the Trump and Clinton campaigns.

Darren Hauck / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul Ryan pushed back against Donald Trump’s claims that the election is being rigged through a spokesperson on Saturday.

“Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity,” Ryan’s press secretary AshLee Strong said in an email to BuzzFeed News when asked about Trump’s claims.

Over the course of the chaotic past week since the explosive tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault was leaked, Trump has grown ever more conspiratorial, saying repeatedly in campaign appearances that the election is being “rigged” as part of a globalist conspiracy against him aimed at helping Hillary Clinton.

“This election is being rigged by the media pushing false and unsubstantiated charges, and outright lies, in order to elect Crooked Hillary!” Trump tweeted on Saturday.

Trump’s surrogates are beginning to repeat this line as well, with Sen. Jeff Sessions — a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — telling a crowd in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, “They are attempting to rig this election."

Trump’s calling the legitimacy of the election into question could have real consequences. Part of the peaceful transition of power that characterizes American elections is the fact that the losers concede that they lost and accept that the voters chose the other candidate. Trump’s signaling that he might not do this has set off alarm bells among many observers.

Trump has also encouraged his supporters to monitor polling places to look for incidents of voter fraud. Some of his supporters told the Boston Globe this week that they intend to do just that, with one making explicit that he will target minorities.

The Republican National Committee has so far not said anything about Trump’s claims of a rigged election. RNC chief strategist Sean Spicer did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign, when asked if Trump will concede the election if he loses, also did not respond.

Filippo Monteforte / AFP / Getty Images

Hillary Clinton told bankers she embarked on a global "apology tour" after WikiLeaks published secret US diplomatic cables in 2010, causing male world leaders to cry.

She made the comments at a Goldman Sachs summit in Arizona on Oct. 29, 2013 while being interviewed by the bank's CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. The transcript of the speech was among emails belonging to her campaign chairman John Podesta that were released by WikiLeaks on Saturday afternoon.

“Let's say, hypothetically, that one country was eavesdropping on another country," Blankfein said to Clinton, before asking what she would then do to repair relations.

Clinton responded by saying she embarked on a global "apology tour" following the 2010 release of the cables, in which American diplomats wrote unflattering assessments of world leaders, including some allies.

In one section of the exchange, Clinton said some male leaders even cried to her, apparently putting on an Italian accent as she spoke that caused Blankfein to call her "Silvio."

Here's the transcript:

MR. BLANKFEIN: Right.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Okay. I was Secretary of State when WikiLeaks happened. You remember that whole debacle. So out come hundreds of thousands of documents. And I have to go on an apology tour. And I had a jacket made like a rock star tour. The Clinton Apology Tour. I had to go and apologize to anybody who was in any way characterized in any of the cables in any way that might be considered less than flattering. And it was painful. Leaders who shall remain nameless, who were characterized as vain, egotistical, power hungry --

MR. BLANKFEIN: Proved it.

SECRETARY CLINTON: -- corrupt. And we knew they were. This was not fiction. And I had to go and say, you know, our ambassadors, they get carried away, they want to all be literary people. They go off on tangents. What can I say. I had grown men cry. I mean, literally. I am a friend of America, and you say these things about me.

MR. BLANKFEIN: That's an Italian accent.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Have a sense of humor.

MR. BLANKFEIN: And so you said, Silvio.

(Laughter.)

In the leaked cables, Berlusconi was described as being "feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader." His "penchant for partying hard" had also had adverse effects on his health, according to one assessment from the then-US ambassador to Italy. Diplomats also had suspicions Berlusconi was "profiting personally and handsomely" from secret deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Clinton's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wikileaks Posts Over 2,000 Emails From Clinton’s Campaign Chairman

Podesta: “Reasonable” Assumption That Trump Orbit Knew About Hacked Emails

A dance reenactment of a terror attack before Trump took the stage at the Republican Hindu Coalition.

Via youtube.com

EDISON, New Jersey — This was the lightest, most normal, political event Donald Trump has led in days: a cheerful, policy-focused, speech full of garden-variety pandering ("I am a big fan of Hindu and I am a big fan of India. Big big fan"), and cheers from a friendly crowd mostly here for the Bollywood music and dance.

Trump appealed to Indian-Americans first on the basis of what he described as shared enemies.

"We will stand shoulder to shoulder with India in sharing intelligence and keeping our people safe mutually," he said, before blaming his opponent for some of it. "This is so important in the age of ISIS, the barbaric threat Hillary Clinton has unleashed on the entire world."

The host of the event, Republican Hindu Coalition chairman Shalli Kumar, had introduced Trump with the promise that he would "help Indians obtain green cards faster."

Dominick Reuter / AFP / Getty Images

Trump then stuck to a prepared speech mixing his standard promises to cut regulation and clamp down on trade and immigration with praise for India's nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, and to their shared promise to cut bureaucracy.

The event, titled Hindus United Against Terror, was a benefit for victims of Muslim terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere in the subcontinent, and anti-Muslim sentiment wasn't hard to find. As the event warmed up, a man who said he was a convert to Hinduism was screaming at anti-Trump protesters: "If you support Muslims, you support rape culture."

And while the crowd was largely there for the spectacle of Bollywood and other Indian stars singing and dancing — which the substantial contingent of white Trump supporters in the front rows also appeared to enjoy — terrorism was also a subtext. One dance featured masked terrorists seizing two dancing couples before they were themselves gunned down by dancing police.

The event was, however, a normal political stop in another way as well: Kumar is one of Trump's relatively few major fundraisers, and his short appearance had the feel of a favor returned.

Trump's connection to the Hindu nationalists fits neatly into a top aide's vision of Trump is part of a global nationalist movement.

“Modi’s great victory was very much based on these kind of Reaganesque principles," campaign chairman Steve Bannon said in a 2014 speech. "So I think this is a global revolt."

Kena Betancur / Getty Images

But not even many of the Indian-Americans who plan to vote for Trump were quite ready to buy into the thesis, suggested by the New York Times this week, that Trump and Modi have a lot in common.

"Modi is more composed. He has good policies he doesn't brag about," said Lakshmi Bharbwaj, who said he would compare Trump, who he supports, more to the increasingly isolated Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.

"Modi is probably cleaner than Trump and he has a history of good character and ingenuity," said Ankur Dyagi, a bank worker from Pennsylvania who said he'd also vote for Trump because he's "against the establishment."

"Modi was selling tea. Trump is a super-rich guy who doesn't know what a poor man is about," said a programmer who would only give his first name, Kiran, and said he was still making up his mind about who to vote for.

But Modi sets a high bar for Indian-American Republicans, and for many of the attendees, Trump is heading in the right direction.

"Trump is 100% nationalist," said Brijash Agarwal, a New Jersey accountant. "They're both nationalists, that's enough."

Jason Connolly / AFP / Getty Images

MIAMI — Why is Donald Trump telling supporters the election is rigged?

The answer, according to Hillary Clinton's running mate, is as simple as a word: He's realized that he is, as Tim Kaine put it here in plain terms on Saturday night, "a loser."

"Donald Trump realizes he's losing, and Hillary Clinton definitely made him realize in that first debate that he was a loser," Kaine told a crowd of 150 at Miami Dade College.

“He’s blaming everybody. It’s the media’s fault, it’s the GOP’s fault — it’s everybody’s fault,” Kaine went on. “Now that he thinks he's gonna lose, he’s going around and saying, 'Oh, the whole thing’s rigged. It’s just rigged against me. Poor me!’"

The Virginia senator offered the Clinton campaign’s first extended response to Trump’s increasing claims that the election is “rigged,” and that a corrupt system is attempting to sink his campaign with the sexual misconduct allegations in recent days.

It was Kaine’s fifth trip to Florida, the crucial battleground state, where he addressed the small outdoor crowd in black Ray-Bans from the bed of a pickup truck, framed by a hand-painted Clinton-Kaine-themed graffiti backdrop. (The mural, bearing flowers and the phrases “Love Trumps Hate” and “Vote Florida,” was completed overnight by artist Felipe Lagos, along with the help of a few Clinton aides.)

The elaborate setup was the stage for a forceful and blunt response from Kaine to Trump’s new message to supporters.

"The guy’s just a bully!” Kaine exclaimed.

"And you know what happens, right? If you don’t stand up to a bully they get more like a bully. But if you stand up to them, they start to whine and they complain, and you find they’re not near as tough as they say they are and that’s what’s Donald Trump is doing now. He’s blaming everybody else. And he’s trying to say that if he loses it’s because it’s rigged.”

During the first debate, Trump said he would respect the election outcome should Clinton win. “The answer is, if she wins, I will absolutely support her.” But his warnings this week about a conspiracy to undermine the election have sharpened, spreading to surrogates and supporters alike, and in the process, have sown more anxiety into the election’s final weeks.

Kaine told voters here in Florida that Clinton must seek to win by as high a margin as possible.

"Here’s what we gotta do,” he said. "We gotta make sure that the margin that he loses by is so big and so clear and so powerful and so unmistakable, that when he stands up and says, ‘Poor me, it was was rigged against me’ — that nobody will believe him."

“That’s what we need to do."

Even as leaders of and lawyers for both major political parties denounce Donald Trump's warnings that next month's election could be "rigged," one top Republican legal group is standing by the nominee.

"History has proven that some elections have involved serious questions and it remains a possibility in 2016," Randy Evans, the chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association and a partner at the global law firm Dentons, told BuzzFeed News. "Only the rule of law performed by election workers enforced by lawyers informed by citizens decided by courts is the only sure way of making sure elections are open, fair and honest. Time will tell whether that happens in 2016."

Asked directly about Trump's comments, Evans said it was "premature to say now" whether the candidate's words are appropriate or correct.

After initial publication of this report, the executive director of the association, Michael Thielen, responded to a second request for comment from BuzzFeed News — specifically asked the second time whether he agrees with Evans' comments — writing, "RNLA is working on an official statement in response from the association. Unfortunately as this is Sunday, that statement will not be ready until Monday."

Evans' comments represent a dramatic break with much of the rest of the Republican Party — which has either criticized Trump's comments or stayed quiet on the issue.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Saturday that he is "fully confident" in the fairness of the election, Trump's own running mate Mike Pence said on Sunday morning that "we'll respect the outcome of this election," and some leading Republican lawyers also have denounced Trump's remarks.

"Donald Trump's effort to stir up trouble at polling places and to question, without any factual foundation, the fairness of the general election is a dangerous and unprecedented attack on our democratic institutions," Robert Kelner — a partner at Covington & Burling who has represented the Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, and National Republican Senatorial Committee in the past — told BuzzFeed News.

"The only real threat to this election is the reported effort by Russian intelligence services to hack election systems, which is something that Trump himself has failed to condemn," Kelner said.

(On Saturday, BuzzFeed News reported on the group accused of being behind the targeted hack of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign, which the federal government has been directed by senior Russian officials with an aim of interfering with the US election.)

Also on Saturday, a Republican election lawyer, Chris Ashby, went on a tweetstorm that went viral — and harshly criticized this latest line of attack from the Republican candidate.

"In addition to undermining public faith & confidence in our electoral system, which is foundational to the legitimacy of our government," Ashby tweeted, "It is undermining legitimate efforts to recruit & train watchers to observe this elex to ensure that it is free, open, fair and honest."

Pence's comments Sunday morning on CBS News' Face the Nation appeared to diverge from the growing standard position of the Trump campaign on the question of the legitimacy of the upcoming election — echoed by Sen. Jeff Sessions on Saturday when he said "[t]hey are attempting to rig this election" and by Trump's Sunday afternoon tweet.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images

LAS VEGAS — On April 18, about two weeks before the end of the Republican primary, Hillary Clinton issued a grave warning to a small group of Democratic volunteers.

“It’s not just Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. What they are saying is what most of the Republican elected officials believe.”

The rebuke was one of the last that Clinton would aim at the GOP writ large. Later that spring, the Democratic nominee set out on a new and unprecedented effort to decouple Trump from the rest of his own party, casting the billionaire as “even more extreme than the rank-and-file Republican.” Clinton dedicated the summer and early fall to courting bipartisan support and building a case against Trump that had little to do with the GOP, its policies, rhetoric, or any of its candidates running in House and Senate races.

The campaign didn’t “want to link the House and Senate Republicans to Trump” or “connect Trump and the Republican Party,” according to hacked emails from May of this year between the Democratic National Committee and Clinton strategists.

Five months later, aides signaled, the message was about to change all over again.

This week, as Clinton traveled to rallies in Las Vegas and Pueblo, Colorado, her campaign strategists previewed a new push from the candidate on down-ballot Republicans. Amid an apparent breaking point within GOP — and a new opportunity for Democrats to gain seats — Clinton, aides said, would finally tie House and Senate candidates to their nominee.

The newly critical stance from Clinton’s senior officials? Republicans made their bed. Now they have to lie in it. “I would remind a lot of the people who are deserting him, they propped him up for a very long time,” campaign chairman John Podesta told reporters late Tuesday night aboard Clinton’s “Stronger Together” Boeing 737.

“They have to answer for that,” he said.

On Wednesday, on the plane ride to a rally in Las Vegas, campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri gave reporters a heads-up that Clinton would be using her speech to hit Rep. Joe Heck, the US Senate candidate in Nevada who revoked his support for Trump after the release of the 2005 video in which Trump talked about grabbing women “by the pussy” and forcibly kissing them.

But when she took the stage at Symphony Park in Las Vegas, Clinton didn’t mention Heck.

In recent days, the candidate and her aides have spoken more and more about down-ballot Democrats and the party’s chances of wresting back control of the Senate. But Clinton has yet to embrace a sharp message tying Trump to the party — one that some Democrats, including officials at the Democratic National Committee, hoped to hear from the start of the general.

The campaign’s attempt to “disaggregate” Trump from the GOP, they worried, might let the rest of Republicans on the ticket “off the hook” and undermine a message Democrats had already been trying to drive for years about an increasingly extreme Republican Party.

“I’ve heard a lot of bitching from Democratic officials and candidates in key states that the Clinton campaign’s strategy to triage the GOP establishment from Trump has been downright unhelpful,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic operative who helped lead Martin O’Malley’s presidential campaign last year.

Pollsters and strategists said Clinton’s message throughout the general election might have even helped create a consequence-free environment for Republicans. In battleground states, voters see establishment candidates like Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania as a “different kind of Republican” than Trump, according to a series of YouGov–CBS News polls. And a recent survey by USA Today and Suffolk University found that 52% of people who’ve chosen to back Clinton are “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to split the ticket when they vote next month.

One challenge with tying Trump to down-ballot Republicans: Voters don’t see candidates such as Ayotte, a well-liked and somewhat moderate lawmaker in New Hampshire, saying or doing anything in the mold of Trump, said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor for the Cook Political Report, where she tracks Senate races. “These Senate candidates and Trump are not alike,” she said. “One Republican campaign manager told me that they did a focus group and they put up a picture of their candidate and Trump, and people laughed.”

Inside the party, President Obama has been the one to make the most forceful case against Trump as a symptom of the modern GOP, arguing that Republicans may not look or sound like their party’s standard bearer, but they enabled his rise.

“The problem is not that all Republicans think the way this guy does,” he said while campaigning for Clinton in Ohio this week. “The problem is, is that they’ve been riding this tiger for a long time. They’ve been feeding their base all kinds of crazy for years, primarily for political expedience.”

“They stood by while this happened,” Obama said. “And Donald Trump, as he’s prone to do, he didn't build the building himself, but he just slapped his name on it and took credit for it.”

As Clinton aides forecast a possible return to rhetoric like Obama’s, they risk muddling the message the candidate has been driving since spring. “This is the exact opposite of what they’ve been doing,” said Colin Reed, head of the anti-Clinton research effort, America Rising, who noticed the shift after campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri first told reporters on Monday that candidates like Ayotte helped “legitimize” Trump.

“You can’t just change a message on a dime four weeks out,” Reed said.

Asked how the campaign would be able to balance a more condemnatory message with its ongoing efforts to woo Republicans and Independents turned off by Trump, including with their branded “Together for America” initiative, Palmieri simply said Clinton was “grateful” for bipartisan support but that it wouldn’t stop her from pressing the GOP in service of Democrats up and down the ballot.

During the primary, Clinton often spoke in passionate terms about helping build a “deep bench” of Democrats across the states, admitting that the party has a problem when it comes to midterm elections in particular. Bringing “as many Democrats with me to Washington as I possibly can,” she promised last year, would be central to the legacy of her presidential bid.

Clinton does campaign with down-ballot Democrats and almost always makes a point of mentioning key races in the states she visits. But for some in the party, her efforts have been lacking when it comes to hammering the other side.

Democrats have yet to see Clinton “make sure that vulnerable Republicans cannot distance themselves from the Trump trainwreck,” said Smith, the former O’Malley strategist.

One Democratic member of Congress agreed. “You gotta take what the defense gives you,” the lawmaker said, when asked if Clinton could be doing more. “If they set you up for an easy lay-up, take it.”

—Additional reporting by Kate Nocera.

Reuters / Bagus Indahono

A member of Hillary Clinton's security detail accused her of "blatantly" disregarding security and diplomatic protocols during trips abroad as secretary of state, according to newly released FBI documents.

The former State Department agent cited incidents in Indonesia and Palestine in which Clinton allegedly ignored security protocols and put the safety of those around her in danger.

The belief among State Department agents was "that Clinton disregarded security and diplomatic protocols, occasionally without regard for the safety of her staff and protection detail, in order to gain favorable press," according to an FBI interview transcript released Monday.

The FBI interviewed the former State Department agent on Sept. 2, 2015, as part of the investigation into Clinton's use of a personal email account while secretary of state.

The agent, who had since moved to the Department of Homeland Security, told FBI agents that she served in Clinton's security detail in 2009.

According to an interview transcript released by the FBI on Monday, the agent "described a ‘stark difference’ between" former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and her successor, Clinton, "with regard to obedience to security and diplomatic protocols."

"RICE observed strict adherence to State Department security and diplomatic protocols while CLINTON frequently and ‘blatantly’ disregarded them," the transcript says.

The observation was based on the agent's "own experience, and information obtained through [REDACTED] and other agents."

The redacted name may refer to a "spouse" mentioned in the interview who appears to have also served in Clinton's protective detail, as well as in Rice's.

The agent "explained that Clinton's protocol breaches were well known throughout Diplomatic Security and were 'abundant.'"

During a 2009 trip to Jakarta, Indonesia, the agent told the FBI that Clinton asked to visit an area with "security and safety challenges" for a photo opportunity involving a clean stoves initiative.

The security team advised against it "because the route could not be secured and was lined with dangerous circumstances and individuals," the interview transcript states. However, the advance team that made the recommendation was told by security management that the trip "was going to happen because 'she wanted it'," apparently referring to Clinton.

"DS agents felt this excursion into potentially hostile areas placed CLINTON, her staff, the media, and her security detail in unnecessary danger in order to conduct a photo opportunity for 'her election campaign'," the transcript states.

"DS agents felt CLINTON traveled with hand-picked media who would present her in favorable light in order to garner political support," the transcript adds. "It was also believed that Clinton disregarded security and diplomatic protocols, occasionally without regard for the safety of her staff and protection detail, in order to gain favorable press."

The State Department agent also described another incident in which, while traveling in an armored vehicle in Palestine, Clinton "ordered the limousine driver, believed to be [REDACTED] to open the window while in 'occupied territory,' referring to a dangerous area of the West Bank."

At first, the driver declined Clinton's request, the agent said, but "repeated demands by CLINTON forced him to open his window despite the danger to himself and the occupants."

The agent also accused Clinton of breaching protocol by riding in the armored limousine and arriving at events abroad with her chief of staff, Huma Abedin, instead of the local ambassador.

"This frequently resulted in complaints by ambassadors who were insulted and embarrassed by this breach of protocol," the transcript states.

The agent also said she believed "Abedin herself was often responsible for overriding security and diplomatic protocols" on Clinton's behalf.

The agent told FBI interviewers that Clinton's alleged breaches were "often communicated" back to the State Department through official cables.

The agent said that Clinton's treatment of State Department agents "was so contemptuous that many of them sought reassignment or employment elsewhere," and that it became "difficult to find senior agents willing to work for her."

Another former State Department agent also told the FBI in 2015 that Clinton's tenure “brought about significant changes to established security and diplomatic protocols owing to dissimilar management styles and attitudes” between her and Rice, although he had no information regarding security violations or handling of classified information.

Clinton's presidential campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.

Joe Skipper / Reuters

In her first interview since the release of a 2005 video that captured her husband bragging about making unwanted sexual advances on women, Melania Trump defended her husband and said Monday she believed the GOP candidate had
been egged on.

The video of Donald Trump making vulgar comments about women, recorded on a bus that was taking him and former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush to the set of Days of Our Lives, has been a major problem for his presidential campaign.

In an interview she gave to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Melania Trump also referred to her husband's comments as locker room banter and likened them to "two teenage boys" talking about women.

"Sometimes I say I have two boys at home," she said. "I have my young son and I have my husband. I know how some men talk and that's how I saw it."

She also said she was surprised by the audio of her husband because that was not the man she knows.

“And as you can see from the tape, the cameras were not on. It was only a mic. And I wonder if they even knew that the mic was on,” she said. “Because they were kind of — ah — boy talk. And he was led on. Like egg on from the host to say uh dirty and bad stuff.”

Cooper asked she believed Billy Bush had egged her husband on, to which she said “yes.”

The video, posted by the Washington Post, talked about a failed attempt to have sex with a married woman.

Trump then later says, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful, I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

“Grab them by the pussy,” Trump adds. “You can do anything.”

Since the release of the video, multiple women have come forward and accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct.

Melania Trump said the accounts of the women were false and part of a bigger conspiracy by the media and Hillary Clinton campaign to destroy his candidacy.

"People come out saying lies and not true stuff," Melania Trump said. "It was left wing media, you could see that the way it comes out everything is organized...they want to influence American people how to vote and they influence the wrong way."

In a preview of an interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, Melania Trump also said it was fair for her husband’s campaign to bring up accusations made against Bill Clinton to attack Hillary Clinton.

“Well, if they bring up my past, why not?” Melania said. “They’re asking for it. They started. They started from the — from the beginning of the campaign putting my — my picture from modeling days. That was my modeling days and I’m proud what I did. I worked very hard.”

Melania backed up on her statements on a Fox and Friends interview, which aired Tuesday morning.

"My husband is kind. He’s a gentleman. He cares about people. He cares about women," she said.

She again asserted that men like Billy Bush and Howard Stern instigate her husband to say inappropriate things.

"I know those people. They hook him on. They try to get from him some unappropriate [sic] and dirty language," she said.

When asked what advice she would give her husband ahead of the third and final presidential debate Wednesday, Melania said, "Be himself. Keep it calm, cool, focused. To talk about issues that American people want to hear about."

Richard Vogel / AP

LAS VEGAS — A wall is going up outside the Trump International Las Vegas hotel Wednesday morning.

The Culinary Union, long a Donald Trump antagonist in Las Vegas, is going to "build" a wall of taco trucks outside Trump's hotel, just a couple miles from UNLV, site of the final presidential debate.

The groups aim to have at least five taco trucks outside the hotel, in addition to a banner in the style of a wall that participants will be able to sign.

"We’re reminding Mr. Trump that immigrant workers here and across the country will be watching the debate and voting in November," said Yvanna Cancela, the political director for the majority Latino and predominantly immigrant union.

The Culinary Union has held nearly 10 rallies outside Trump's hotel since workers voted to unionize and won last December. They argue that Trump is illegally refusing to bargain with them.

The union will be joined by American Bridge, Latino Victory Project, PLAN Action, iAmerica Action, Center for Community Change Action, For Our Future, and 50 immigrant advocacy activists from Los Angeles and feature speakers like Democrat Ruben Kihuen, who is running to represent the 4th Congressional District in the House.

"We're protesting Donald Trump's hotel here in Vegas, where a majority of workers voted to unionize, and shamefully Trump has failed to sit down at the table with them," Kihuen told BuzzFeed News. "As he has demonized Hispanics, women, veterans, and the disabled, we will send him and those who supported him like my opponent Congressman Cresent Hardy a message that we're here and we vote."

"Everyone coming together is really about sending a message that we reject Trump and the politics of hate," said iAmerica president Rocio Saenz, who said she believes the Latino and AAPI communities will come out strongly to repudiate Trump and elect champions in November.

The Culinary Union and other groups have also worked to naturalize immigrants who want to vote against Trump in November, including some of his hotel workers.

Taco trucks, featuring perennially sky-high approval ratings, were dragged into the 2016 race by a Hispanic Trump surrogate who argued on MSNBC that Latino culture is very dominant, warning that eventually there would be taco trucks on every corner.

The Trump campaign said they welcome the tasty barrier.

"I never, EVER turn down a chance to eat some good tacos so I say 'thanks' for setting up shop right outside!" said senior adviser and Hispanic outreach director A.J. Delgado.

Tasos Katopodis / AFP / Getty Images

GREEN BAY, Wis. — As thunderclouds gathered over the convention center where Donald Trump staged a rally on Monday, his supporters worried about a "rigged election" wrecking his election chances.

"It is rigged, they can change the voting machines," Jim Sievert, an insurance business owner told BuzzFeed News from the floor of the Trump rally at the Ki Convention Center. "Early voting, they can change the votes."

His concerns echoed other Trump supporters' views at the event, who voiced outrage as well over news stories about Trump's past treatment of women, which they saw as unfair and tilting the election.

Turnout at the rally was less than hoped for by Trump supporters, with 3,002 people attending the campaign event, according to a Green Bay Police Department count — about 500 people less than the rally hall held. They cheered for Trump, who in his stump speech offered a full throated defense of his calls to halt immigration, bulwark defense spending and cut taxes.

Trump himself warned that "voter fraud is real" and claimed that 1.8 million dead people's votes will be counted in the Nov. 8 election. "People who died 10 years ago are still voting," Trump said. "They aren't going to be voting for me."

The Republican presidential nominee has previously called on his voters to monitor polling places during the election, as have his big name backers, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani.

"I think the mainstream media is rigging it," Diane Gravel of Racine told BuzzFeed News. "They’re pushing everything for Hillary."

Protesters outside the Trump rally Monday in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

BuzzFeed News

At the rally, supporters issued a half-dozen cheers criticizing news coverage of the Trump campaign, condemning CNN, and chanting "tell the truth," several times.

"They’re not honest," Gravel said. "It's not media like we had back in Nixon’s day when they reported the truth — now it’s all lies."

Despite suffering in recent polls, Trump also predicted hidden support would see him elected anyway, citing surprise wins in states like Wisconsin during the Republican primaries. "Maybe people don't like to admit they are going to vote for Trump," he said. "That's okay, we'll take [their votes] any way we can get it."

Despite suspicions voiced by Trump supporters about absentee voting playing a role in a rigged election, the candidate called for them to use absentee ballots to vote.

Real estate saleswoman Kathy Schumann, 49 from Appleton, attended the rally with her 12-year-old daughter Chloe. She agreed with Gravel that news reports are unfairly tilting the election, "because the media doesn’t report honestly and fairly."

Despite this, Schumann doesn't believe there's any recourse for Trump supporters if Clinton wins.

"I honestly don’t know," she said. "I mean I’m terrified if she wins because I feel like we’re all in a lot of trouble, but there’s really no way of proving it because she’s gotten away with stuff for so long, it’s like we’re puppets on a string."

If Trump loses, there will also be tremendous anger directed at elected Republicans who didn't support him, a retired software engineer said.

"Where is [Sen.] Ron Johnson? Where is [Gov.] Scott Walker, at this rally? They should be here," said Mark Culverhouse of Spring Green.

"If I don't win, it will be the greatest waste of money ever," Trump said at the end of Monday's rally. He predicted victory, despite the polls, pausing to find the words. "We are going to ... make America great again."

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo

President Barack Obama advised Donald Trump on Tuesday to stop whining about voter fraud ahead of the elections.

Trump has urged his supporters to monitor certain areas on election day to prevent what he believes could be a rigged election.

“I have ever seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before the votes take place,” Obama said, during a press conference in the Rose Garden with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

“Every expert, regardless of political party, regardless of ideology, conservative or liberal, who has ever examined these issues in serious ways will tell you instances of significant voter fraud are not to be found,” Obama said.

He also said that it would be irresponsible to propagate the notion that in a state like Florida, for example — which has a both a Republican governor and Republican appointees facilitating elections there — Trump could lose because of “those people you have to watch out for.”

Obama added that Trump’s behavior “doesn’t really show the leadership and toughness you’d want out of a president.

“You start whining before the game’s even over?” Obama asked.

“If, whenever things are going bad for you and you lose, you start blaming somebody else? You don’t have what it takes to do this job.”

Obama again emphasized that “there is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s election, in part because they’re so decentralized.”

He added that no such evidence exists that questionable voting practices have occurred in the past.

youtube.com

Trump Supporters Fear A “Rigged” Election As Candidate Doubles Down On Claims

Donald Trump’s Allegations Of Rigged Election Are “Irresponsible” Says Ohio Secretary Of State

John Locher / AP

LAS VEGAS — Telemundo, the Spanish-language giant with rising ratings, is transitioning its #YoDecido (I Decide) voter registration campaign to mobilize Latino voters with the election just weeks away.

Telemundo told BuzzFeed News they directly registered over 12,300 voters through 54 registration drives and its online voter registration tool. As part of Hispanic Heritage Month partnerships with Voto Latino and Mi Familia Vota, the network said it helped both organizations register 100,000 and 71,204 voters, respectively.

The registration effort was one of several undertaken by major Latino groups or networks — something overwhelmingly likely to benefit Democrats, as Donald Trump continues to alienate Hispanic voters.

The network now moves to the next stage — PSAs on Telemundo national network and across affiliate stations featuring talent like María Celeste Arrarás and José Díaz-Balart, digital efforts with Carlos Ponce and Yarel Ramos, as well as reggaeton stars Gente de Zona and Grammy-winning La Santa Cecilia.

With Latino youth comprising 44% of eligible Hispanic voters, the network also held a "Millennial Vote Challenge" in partnership with Miami Dade College for the Millennial Innovation M conference in September to challenge young people to reinvent youth outreach and incorporate new approaches in the final weeks of the campaign.

On election day the network will also follow telenovela star Ximena Duque, chronicling her first time voting and she will be a guest host on Telemundo shows Un Nuevo Dia and featured in segments on Al Rojo Vivo and Noticiero Telemundo.

Ricardo Arduengo / AP

There are two realities in Central Florida.

Three thousand Puerto Ricans leave the island every day, already US citizens and able to register to vote in Florida, where many end up.

And most of those Puerto Ricans will vote for Hillary Clinton.

From there, however, everything gets a bit dicier. In a state where the smallest margins matter — and demographic trends now may represent significant electoral changes in the future — just how many Puerto Ricans will actually vote remains unclear. Like the young Cubans decoupling from the Republican Party and the retirees flooding into The Villages, Puerto Ricans represent one of the biggest changes to Florida’s political landscape, something that could change not just this election but the next few.

And that’s where the fighting begins, about what Puerto Ricans really want (how important is statehood?) and whether the Clinton campaign really has reached out to these voters in a robust way.

The campaign insists it has not slept on Puerto Rican outreach in Central Florida, pointing to island-style "caravanas" — loud, musical processions that are a hallmark of Puerto Rican retail politics — which it held throughout the state on Sept. 24 in South Orlando and Kissimmee targeting majority Puerto Rican neighborhoods. Processions ended with block parties at lechoneras, Puerto Rican restaurants, where campaign organizers awaited. They’ve worked with the owners of Lechonera Jibarito restaurants and Melao Bakeries to register voters during high-traffic hours. They’ve descended on Spanish-language concerts, and food and art events, along the I-4 corridor, particularly in Osceola County, where more recent arrivals, who need voter education if the campaign wants to get them to vote, reside.

It isn’t that Clinton won’t win Puerto Rican voters, who tend to lean Democratic anyway. An October Latino Decisions poll showed that Trump, who is toxic with many Latino voters, is struggling mightily with Puerto Ricans, losing the group 74% to 17% to Hillary Clinton. Democratic strategist Steve Schale told BuzzFeed News he has seen private polling conducted before the recent weeks of bad news for Trump that pegged his deficit at 70% to 15% in Orange County. It’s just that she needs most of them to vote, as many of the state’s older white voters strongly support Trump.

In 2004, George W. Bush and John Kerry battled to a tie in Orange County, but just four years later, Obama won by 80,000 votes fueled by major Puerto Rican growth. There are now 1 million Puerto Ricans in the state, soon to eclipse Cubans as Florida's largest Latino demographic bloc.

The state’s three biggest Puerto Rican counties — Orange, Osceola, and Seminole — moved very heavily from a 22,000 net vote advantage for Bush to a 100,000 advantage in Obama's two wins, according to Schale, who was Obama’s state director in 2008. But while the change was impressive, Schale said 2014 turnout in Orange and Osceola counties were two of the lowest in the state, underscoring turnout’s role for Clinton.

Matt Barreto, a principal at Latino Decisions who joined the Clinton campaign as a consultant during the primary and is walled off from his firm's work during the election, said their research shows Clinton is viewed positively by Puerto Ricans partly because she supports efforts to restructure the island's debt.

"Meanwhile, Trump's position against helping Puerto Rico with its debt crisis is completely hypocritical," he said. "Puerto Rican voters are very frustrated that Trump has declared bankruptcy multiple times himself yet he turned his back on helping the island come find a solution to restructure their own debt."

One operative with extensive campaign experience in Florida said Clinton has been "quiet and cautious" on statehood, a perennially tricky issue because commonwealth and statehood support are traditionally viewed as equally popular, though statehood has gained some ground in polls in recent years. The operative argued that "in Florida, it’s not a 50/50 thing."

That criticism also needs to be put in context, because economic issues are a top concern for newly arriving Puerto Ricans, said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Pew Hispanic, who noted that according to Census Bureau data, finding a job and reuniting with family are often the top two issues why Puerto Ricans come to the mainland.

"It could very well be that it doesn’t matter much what’s happening on the island, what’s more important and close to mind is finding a job," he said.

Christina Marie Hernandez, who served as the Florida Hispanic vote director for Obama in 2012, sees a connection between the struggles of new arrivals and Puerto Rico policy. She noted that Kissimmee has a huge homelessness crisis, which includes newly arrived Puerto Ricans. Those who do have a place to stay have to make due with cramped quarters — entire families might pay $20 a day to house seven people in one room.

"It’s not an easy sell," Hernandez said. "Their priorities are elsewhere, like securing a home, car or a job and you have to show how all of those things are connected."

Regardless, José Calderón, president of the Hispanic Federation, a well-established presence in Florida Latino outreach, said that while "pocketbook" issues are of course a quality of life priority, "nobody wants to leave their home, they leave because they have no other choice," so "of course they’re thinking about the island."

During the primary, Clinton ventured to San Juan, Puerto Rico for a roundtable to address the island's health care crisis, where she showed deft knowledge of the island's limited Medicare coverage and other issues, and has said if voters on the island call for statehood she would support them.

"I've heard some activists say they wish activity were earlier and more intense," said Federico de Jesús, Obama's 2008 Hispanic media director, who also spent time at the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration. "A lot have taken matters into their own hands but I think it can’t hurt that Hillary talks more about these issues."

Multiple Puerto Rican activists who spoke to BuzzFeed News also said they’ve been concerned by the lack of Puerto Ricans in campaign leadership, nationally and on the ground in Central Florida. (A campaign source acknowledged there have been internal conversations about the issue.)

But if that’s been a concern, there’s also the concurrent rise in local Puerto Rican candidates for Congress (State Sen. Darren Soto), state senate (State Rep. Victor Torres), and state house (State Rep. John Cortes, Amy Mercado, and Robert Asencio). Soto, who would be the long-awaited first Puerto Rican congressman from Florida, is a particular priority for Democrats.

(The Clinton campaign is working closely with these campaigns through the Democratic coordinated campaign, it said.)

Barreto, with the campaign, said that academic research has consistently shown that Puerto Rican identity is the "highest of the Latino groups," which means they have a high affinity for the island, pride over its success, and heartache over its struggles.

"They don’t have the luxury of having their own country, they’re not fully a state," he said. "They have this weird in between colonial status and as a result their identity is even more important."

Supporters at a Donald Trump campaign rally at the Norris-Penrose Event Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Oct. 18.

Jason Connolly / AFP / Getty Images

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — Ask women who plan to vote for Donald Trump about his wife, Melania Trump, and they'll list off glowing qualities: "elegant," "supportive," "composed," "strong." But they may also add a caveat.

"She's gorgeous," offered Mattie Van Deusen, a 26-year-old Denver resident who attended Trump's Tuesday afternoon rally in Colorado Springs. "But I don't know a lot about her."

"I don't know all that much about her," echoed Janet Miller of Colorado Springs. "But I'll take Melania over Bill [Clinton] any day."

"I don't really know her," said April Manke, 33, also of Colorado Springs, who wore a Women for Trump pin on her sweater. Does she want to hear more from Melania? "Absolutely. They could utilize her a little more. It wouldn't hurt them."

For as much as she has achieved first-name-only recognition — "Melania Moments" has become a recurring segment on Saturday Night Live — the Slovenia-born 46-year-old ex-model has not played a significant role in her husband's campaign, apart from famously plagiarizing Michelle Obama in her speech at the Republican National Convention. But on Monday night, the eve of the Colorado rally, the Trump campaign appeared to try to “utilize her a little more,” granting CNN's Anderson Cooper a sit-down with Melania — her first since Trump's 2005 hot-mic comments to Billy Bush surfaced.

Melania Trump and Anderson Cooper

CNN / Via cnn.com

In the interview, Melania said she is "not an attention-seeker" and that she has a "great marriage and strong relationship" marked by independence. "I'm very confident, and I live my life. I take care of myself, and our son, and my husband. I'm doing great," she said.

But the interview's most notable moment came when Melania defended her husband's 2005 comments as "boy talk," adding that he was "egged on from the host to say dirty and bad stuff."

"Sometimes I say I have two boys at home — I have my young son and I have my husband," Melania said.

At his Tuesday afternoon rally, Trump veered away from the ongoing allegations of sexual misconduct against him and stuck mostly to his campaign issues, rousing the crowd with lines like "drain the swamp in Washington, DC," and vowing to rebuild the military and take care of veterans, pleasing residents of a region that's home to five military centers. But Trump did briefly mention Melania's interview, in the context of the "dishonest media" who've "attacked my wonderful family."

"You all saw Melania last night," Trump said. "That she even has to do that is a shame."

Across the board, women who identified themselves as Trump supporters at Tuesday's rally told BuzzFeed News they admired Melania's responses to the tape, which they said have been simultaneously condemning and supportive.

On Melania's "boy talk" observation, Van Deusen — who wore a T-shirt with an illustration of former President Bill Clinton and the word "Rape" in the style of Shepard Fairey's President Obama "Hope" image — said she could "relate” to it.

Mattie Van Deusen of Denver

Jessica Testa

“I like to hang out with guys. I have a potty mouth. I'm not saying men should speak that way, but I don't think it's sexual assault,” she said. “People say stuff in private. I know a lot of guys who say messed-up stuff like that."

Stephanie Sandoval, a supporter from Colorado Springs, said she also could relate: "Us girls get together and talk, and we know the boys do the same. We've known that since we were 15. Any real girl knows that."

But non-Trump supporters at Tuesday's rally had different takes. Kristine Huesman, an undecided voter, called Melania's defense of Trump "bullshit," saying "it's not fair to make Billy Bush a scapegoat."

"[Trump] was 59 years old. He was an adult man,” said Taryn Shockey, a Gary Johnson supporter and a student at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

"He's strong enough not to be egged on," said Sarah Haertl, a 44-year-old from Lakewood, Colorado, who supports Hillary Clinton but brought her 14-year-old daughter to Trump's rally to educate her about elections. Still, Haertl called Melania's attempt at defending Trump on CNN "a pretty good stab."

"Melania came across as very polished. I don't understand why they don't put her on the trail more. She helps soften him," Haertl said. "An immigrant could be first lady — that's a great story. She might be a better role model than her husband. She's one of the best things his campaign has going for it."

Many Trump supporters agreed with Haertl's call for more Melania.

"I'd frankly like to see more of her at his events," said Sheryl, a Colorado Springs resident who declined to give her last name. "Our country needs strong families and strong couples — [the campaign] could make use of that more often."

Stephanie Sandoval of Colorado Springs

Jessica Testa

Sandoval compared Melania's image to that of Princess Diana. "She's what every girl wants to be: popular, beautiful, smart, well-off, and a good person." Sharon Raehling, a Trump supporter from Littleton, called Melania "well-spoken" with "a lot of charisma," the "best character analysis of Donald Trump that we have," and "totally for America."

But other women supporters said they're not terribly interested in Melania and don't need her to be a public figure like Michelle Obama, whose speeches often draw as much attention as her husband's — and sometimes more.

"We don't see [Melania] on the trail because she wants to be a mother first," said Cindy Schneider of Colorado Springs. "I think that's great. He's strong enough by himself."

And some said they felt it was important for Melania to maintain a more private life, for her own well-being. Lisa Low of Colorado Springs said she’s “had a need to pray for Melania since the beginning because I knew she was going to be attacked for being a model.”

"I think they're keeping her safe — keeping her out of harm's way," Sandoval echoed. Clinton's campaign "would tear her down and eat her up," Rahling said.

In her Monday night interview, Melania herself said the media has been "mean" to her. It wasn’t the first time she's criticized the press; in April, when GQ published a story about Melania's past, she borrowed from her husband's vocabulary, blasting the "dishonest media and their disingenuous reporting." More recently, she threatened legal action against People after a writer for the magazine said Donald Trump sexually assaulted her at the candidate’s Mar-a-Lago club. Melania's legal threat centered on an exchange the writer said she later had with Melania on the street in front of Trump Tower.

But in the face of the "dishonest media," Melania said Monday night, she was still "very strong," challenging the vision of some of her husband’s supporters as needing protection.

“People, they don’t really know me," Melania told Cooper. "People think and talk about me like, ‘Oh, Melania, oh, poor Melania.’ Don't feel sorry for me. Don't feel sorry for me. I can handle everything."

Brennan Linsley / AP

GRAND JUNCTION, Colorado — The scene outside Donald Trump’s afternoon rally here Tuesday was more reminiscent of the opening scene of John Waters’ classic tale about a traveling cannibal freak show Multiple Maniacs than the end of a campaign rally in 2016.

Thousands of solidly conservative, Christian Republicans were streaming out of the West Star Aviation hanger, where Trump had just wrapped up his last campaign stop before his final debate with Hillary Clinton in Las Vegas.

There were the usual hustlers on the sidewalks, their card tables displaying Hillary for Prison buttons, MAGA hats, and T-shirts comparing the relative sucking skills of Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

Past the skirmish line of souvenir sellers, in a makeshift parking lot set up across the street, music blared from a tent decked out in ghoulish posters of undead politicians. “Tales of Free Crap” promised a poster bearing the zombified visage of Bernie Sanders, complete with socialist beret, while a second, in a nod to John Carpenter’s film about politics, media control, and class warfare, showed an alien version of Clinton, warning “She Lives We Sleep!”

Outside, the carnival barker, decked out in his white straw hat and seersucker jacket, his face painted like a skull, paced back and forth, kicking up dirt as he eyed the crowd. “Step right up! Enter the Hillary House of Horrors, you dirty 1 percenters!” he yelled at the crowd, pointing his obligatory cane at a hesitant family.

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John Stanton / BuzzFeed News

“And don’t forget to go next door when you’re done,” he reminds them as they approach, waving his cane dramatically at the adjacent stall of T-shirts and buttons. A father nods absent-mindedly, leading his sons into the tent to marvel at the Wack-A-Ho display, featuring Trump wielding a hammer at replicas of Clinton’s head.

The sideshow attraction’s chief barker and designer, David Brown, came up with the idea a year ago. A St. Louis-based lawyer and self described “propagandist,” he’s attended 85 political rallies this year, mostly selling merchandise. He hopes to take the horror show to two dozen more rallies before the election is over.

“You made me smell shit! Where’s my button?!” a woman yells, laughing at Brown, whose boast of including Smell-O-Vision is, apparently, quite real.

Brown glances her direction, directing her toward his table of wares. Like Waters’ family of cannibals conning the squares, Brown and company have turned the public’s desire for blood sport and cruelty to their own ends.

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John Stanton / BuzzFeed News

This isn’t Brown’s first tour of duty on the campaign circuit. Over the last seven presidential campaigns, he has plied politically themed wares to the crowds candidates draw. But this year, “I figured I’d do something with a satirical political statement.”

Brown also set up a Super PAC, American Horror Show PAC, and a website — hillaryshouseofhorrors.com — featuring artwork from the sideshow and, of course, a link to a shop.

Brown has even grabbed the attention of Trump's favorite conspiracy site Infowars, who earlier this month very seriously reported the appearance of the side show.

He’s done his job well. With Halloween fast approaching, it’s an apt metaphor for an election featuring a pop-culture nightmare and a resurrected political dynasty from the 1990s battling for the immortal soul of a country recoiling in horror.

Brown said he isn’t a Republican or a Democrat. “I’m not anything. I’m me,” he said, leaning in close. “There’s a big illusion of choice in this country Whether it’s insurance companies or politicians or the kind of potato chips you eat. It’s all an illusion of choice,” he explained, a sly smile on his face.

LINK: Melania Remains A Mystery — For Better Or Worse, Say Trump Supporters