Vice President Joe Biden seemed to almost sympathize with Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence on Friday.
"It's awful tough being Donald Trump's running mate," Biden said while stumping for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania.
Biden said the Indiana governor spent Monday's vice presidential debate denying things Trump has said in front of multiple television cameras.
"I can't imagine having to do what he had to do for Trump," Biden said of Pence.
Wading into a racially-charged case from his past, Donald Trump indicated that the "Central Park Five" were guilty, despite being officially exonerated by DNA evidence decades after a notorious 1989 rape case.
"They admitted they were guilty," Trump said to CNN in a statement. "The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same."
The five men were convicted as teenagers after implicating each other under intense questioning over a brutal sexual assault on a jogger that dominated the tabloids. Defenders said they were coerced into confessing and all five were later cleared by DNA evidence and a separate confession in 2002 from another criminal who took credit for the assault. New York paid them $41 million in a settlement in 2014 over their ordeal.
Trump took out a full-page ad at the time of the crime calling for New York to reinstate the death penalty in response. The case was notable for its racial politics: Four of the Central Park Five were black and one was Latino while the victim was a white banker.
The Trump campaign is cutting about $1.5 million worth of TV ads in battleground states for next week (Oct. 11-17), according to NBC's ad-tracking partner Advertising Analytics.
These cuts appear to be coming in smaller media markets (with the Trump campaign perhaps focused on the bigger ones).
The cuts:
Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin announced Mindy Finn as his running mate Thursday.
The Houston, Texas native has a resume that includes stints in both the public and private section, having worked for both former President George W. Bush and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as well as Google and Twitter.
According to the announcement, the mother of two most recently worked as founder as president of Empowered Women, "a bi-partisan organization that gives voice to a bold, new generation of American women in civil life."
Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott on Thursday evening said the state will not extend an October 11 voter registration deadline.
"I'm not going to extend it," Scott said at a news conference on the storm. "Everybody has had plenty of time to register. I don't intend to make any changes."
Speaking to NBC News' Andrea Mitchell earlier Thursday, Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Robby Mook had said they hoped Scott would move the deadline.
"We'll get back to campaigning when it is appropriate," Mook said. "Our hope would be that a little bit more time will be given for people who were expecting to be able to get registered before the election."
Scott currently serves as national chairman of pro-Trump Super PAC Rebuilding America Now.
Meanwhile, South Carolina officials extended their voter registration deadline to October 11.
Hillary Clinton told Extra's AJ Calloway that she thought the "Saturday Night Live" spoof of her first debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump was "perfect."
"When Kate McKinnon came out with the walker I thought I was going to fall off my chair," Clinton said.
How did the Democratic nominee feel about Alec Baldwin's take on Trump? "He was amazing. It looks like he had been almost shadowing Trump! I mean his look, his scowling, his staring down and muttering his responses. It was perfect!," she told Extra.
Last October, Clinton appeared alongside McKinnon on "SNL" for the sketch "Bar Talk." Asked if she'd consider returning to the show, Clinton quipped that her schedule is pretty full for the next month or so, "but I'm always up for standing around in a bar."
Despite alluding to Bill Clinton's infidelity during the first presidential debate, Donald Trump said he will not bring up the former president's past during their second showdown on Sunday.
"I want to win this election on my policies for the future, not on Bill Clinton's past," Trump told Page Six. "Jobs, trade, ending illegal immigration, veteran care, and strengthening our military is what I really want to be talking about."
Trump's campaign confirmed the quote to NBC News' Ali Vitali.
During the first debate, the Republican presidential nominee said he refrained from saying "something extremely rough" to Hillary Clinton because daughter Chelsea Clinton was in the audience.
Hillary Clinton's campaign purchased and then suspended ads on the Weather Channel in Florida markets that would have run as the potentially devastating storm hit the Sunshine State.
The Clinton campaign purchased $63,000 on the channel in Ft. Myers, Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, Panama City, Tallahassee, and West Palm Beach from Oct. 6 to 10, according to ad-spending data from Advertising Analytics.
The ads would likely have gotten plenty of eyeballs as Floridians prepare for Hurricane Matthew, a Category 4 storm that is expected to hit the state on Friday. But it also opened the Democratic nominee's campaign up for criticism for airing political ads during what could be a deadly storm.
"Earlier in the week we made changes to our TV ad reservations across hundreds of stations in several battleground states including Florida," Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson said. "Less than 1 percent of those changes included the Weather Channel. We have requested that stations in Florida delay any of those ads on the Weather Channel until after the storm passes."
The campaign also has added Weather Channel-specific buys in Pennsylvania ($27,000) and New Hampshire ($18,000) during this same timeframe, according to ad-tracking data. Politico first reported Clinton's Florida buy.
As Hurricane Matthew barreled toward the Florida coast, a lone security guard was protecting Donald Trump's prized possession — the Mar-A-Lago club on Palm Beach.
"Everybody's left the island, but I'll be here," the guard, who declined to give his name, told NBC News. "I'm volunteering." Most of the swanky club's staffers and guests cleared out on Wednesday, he said.
Mar-A-Lago just may be the safest place to be on Florida's east coast. Completed in 1927, the ornate mansion-turned-club is anchored to the coral reef on which it is built and many of its walls are 3-feet-thick.
It has withstood several hurricanes, including one in September 1928 packing 145 mph winds which made landfall in nearby West Palm Beach and wound up destroying more than 1,700 homes and killing some 2,500 people, according to the Palm Beach Daily News.
House Speaker Paul Ryan will appear at a Wisconsin campaign event Saturday that also will also feature GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Both men will attend a Republican Party fundraising event in Wisconsin's 1st congressional district. Governor Scott Walker and Sen. Ron Johnson - who is up for re-election - will also appear.
This is the first campaign event the two men are appearing at together this cycle.
A Ryan spokesman says that the Trump campaign had expressed interest in campaigning with the House Speaker and accepted Ryan's offer to appear at the Wisconsin event.
Ryan, who attends and headlines the event almost every year, clashed with Trump this summer by withholding an endorsement for the real estate mogul for weeks after Trump clinched the nomination. Trump also initially resisted backing Ryan against a longshot primary opponent, although he ultimately backed his party's Speaker.
