Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonTrump: Cohen only became a ‘rat’ after FBI 'broke into' office Giuliani indicates Trump Tower Moscow discussions took place up until November 2016 Hillary Clinton writes letter to 8-year-old girl who lost class president to male classmate MORE gave the closing remarks Tuesday's Professional Business Women of California conference in San Francisco, taking a moment to defend both a White House reporter and Democratic lawmaker as examples of the "indignities" facing "women who were simply doing their jobs." 
 
 "Just look at all that’s happened in the last few days to women who were simply doing their jobs," Clinton said. 
 
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 "April Ryan, a respected journalist with unrivaled integrity, was doing her job just this afternoon in the White House press room when she was patronized and cut off trying to ask a question." 
 
 Clinton was referring to an exchange between White House press secretary Sean Spicer and the veteran journalist on Tuesday in which Spicer told Ryan to "stop shaking your head" as she asked a question. 
 
 Spicer accused Ryan, a correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, for pushing an agenda with her questions. 
 
 "April, hold on, it seems like you're hell-bent on trying to make sure that whatever image you want to tell about this White House stays," he said. 
 
 Clinton also referenced Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's comment about Rep. Maxine Waters's (D-Calif.) hair, which he called a “James Brown wig." 
 
 "One of our own California congressmen Maxine Waters was taunted with a racist joke about her hair," Clinton said. "Too many women, especially women of color, have had a lifetime of practice taking precisely these kinds of indignities in stride." 
 
 "But why should we have to? And any woman who thinks this couldn’t be directed at her is living in a dream world." ||||| Campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, Obama criticises those Republicans who continue to support their candidate 
 
 Barack Obama assailed the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, on Tuesday over remarks about groping women, also criticizing Republicans who continued to support the candidate. 
 
 “You don’t have to be a husband or a father to hear what we heard just a few days ago and say that’s not right,” the president said in Greensboro, North Carolina, in his first public remarks since the release of a 2005 tape showing Trump bragging about groping and kissing women without their consent. 
 
 “You just have to be a decent human being to say that’s not right.” 
 
 Campaigning on behalf of Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, Obama said the Republican presidential nominee is unfit “for a job at 7-Eleven”, let alone the presidency. 
 
 He encouraged the crowd of nearly 8,000 to respond at the ballot box in November. 
 
 
 
 “If it makes you mad,” the president said, “then you say ‘That’s not somebody I want representing the United States of America.’ You can do something about it, North Carolina.” 
 
 “The guy says stuff nobody would find tolerable if they were applying for a job at 7-Eleven,” he added. 
 
 The president, among Clinton’s most powerful surrogates, did not reserve his criticism solely for Trump. He also mocked Republicans who rebuked Trump’s comments but continued to endorse his candidacy. 
 
 
 
 “That doesn’t make sense to me,” Obama said. “You can’t have it both ways here. You can’t repeatedly denounce what is said by someone and then say but I’m still going to endorse him to be the most powerful person on the planet and to put them in charge.” 
 
 
 
 He also expressed his disbelief at the Republicans who have expressed hope that Trump might change his ways. 
 
 “What did you think? He was going to transform himself? I mean, I’m 55 and it’s hard for me to change. I know at 70 it’s going to be harder.” 
 
 
 
 Earlier in the day, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters the president had found Trump’s boasting about his behavior toward women to be “repugnant”. 
 
 There had been a wide consensus across the political spectrum, Earnest added, that Trump’s remarks “constituted sexual assault”. 
 
 At an evening rally in Florida, Trump managed to train his fire on Clinton rather than members of his own party, whom he had spent the afternoon denouncing on Twitter. 
 
 Trump seized on the hacked emails of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, that were made public by WikiLeaks this week, accusing the Obama administration of colluding with the Democratic nominee over its investigation into her use of a private email server. 
 
 “The DoJ fed information to the Clinton campaign about the email investigation so that the campaign could be prepared to cover up for her crimes,” Trump said at a rally in Panama City, Florida on Tuesday night. “This is collusion and corruption of the highest order and is one more reason I will ask my attorney general … to appoint a special prosecutor. We have to investigate Hillary Clinton and we have to investigate the investigation.” 
 
 He called the FBI investigation into her emails – in which the agency director, James Comey, reprimanded Clinton for being “extremely careless” but ultimately recommended no charges – a “disgrace”. 
 
 The email Trump singled out involves an exchange between Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon and the DoJ concerning a lawsuit pertaining to a freedom of information request about her emails. The exchange between Fallon and the individual at the DoJ occurred two months before the FBI opened its probe into Clinton’s emails, and it pertained to information that was publicly available. 
 
 There is no evidence that the DoJ communicated with Fallon on the email investigation. 
 
 Speaking to reporters aboard Clinton’s campaign plane on Tuesday, Podesta blamed Russian intelligence officials intent on undermining the Democratic nominee. 
 
 “I’ve been involved in politics for nearly five decades,” Podesta told reporters. “This definitely is the first campaign that I’ve been involved with in which I’ve had to tangle with Russian intelligence agencies … who seem to be doing everything that they can on behalf of our opponent.” Podesta did not confirm the veracity of the leaks. 
 
 Ahead of the Florida rally, Trump lashed out at the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, who this week announced he would no longer defend Trump or campaign with him although he stopped short of formally withdrawing his support for the nominee. 
 
 “They’re not giving support – they don’t give the support that we really need – but the fact is that I think we should get support and we don’t get the support from guys like Paul Ryan,” Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday. “[Ryan] had a conference call with congressmen, with hundreds of them, and they practically rioted against him on the phone. One person stuck up for him.” 
 
 “And I don’t really want his support,” Trump added of Ryan. 
 
 O’Reilly asked Trump to elaborate on his earlier tweet in which he wrote that it was “so nice that the shackles have been taken off me”. 
 
 Trump said the shackles represented some of “establishment people, the weak and ineffective people within the party”. When O’Reilly asked if “throwing off of the shackles” meant that he would become more outspoken, Trump forcefully denied that he was outspoken. 
 
 He also denied polling that shows him losing support among women, a group he had trouble appealing to even before the release of video in which he boasted about touching women without consequence because of his fame. He has dismissed the remarks as “locker room talk”. 
 
 “Most people have heard it before, and I’ve had a lot of women come up to me and say I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard a lot worse,” Trump told O’Reilly. “If that’s what it takes to lose an election, I think that’d be pretty sad.” 
 
 With less than one month left until election day, Trump is under pressure from party leadership and his own supporters to hone his attack strategy and stick to it. His campaign has so far proved resilient despite not having a conventional fundraising structure or voter outreach plan. 
 
 During the speech in Florida’s conservative panhandle, Trump encouraged the crowd to register to vote. He noted that the voter registration deadline in Florida had been extended because of the hurricane, which interrupted the state’s final registration days. 
 
 “It’s a movement. But if we don’t win, all it is a little asterisk in history,” Trump said. “There’s never been anything like this. So go and register. Make sure you get out and vote. November 28th.” The US election is on 8 November. ||||| Speaker Paul Ryan said he will no longer "defend Trump" or campaign with him. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Ryan abandons Trump The House speaker all but conceded that Clinton will win and said he plans to campaign only for a GOP Congress. 
 
 Speaker Paul Ryan told House Republicans on a conference call Monday morning that he’s done defending Donald Trump and will focus on maintaining his party’s increasingly imperiled House majority, according to sources on the call. 
 
 The message amounted to a concession by the highest-ranking elected Republican that his nominee for president can’t win — and lawmakers should save themselves and the Republican-controlled Congress to act as a check on Hillary Clinton. 
 
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 Ryan stopped short of formally rescinding his endorsement of Trump — but just short. His move carries immense risk, and Ryan faced blowback from all sides: Trump and his surrogates warned Republican leaders they would pay a price for breaking from the nominee; some rank-and-file Republicans warned the strategy was a mistake; and immediately after the call, Clinton tweeted to her nearly 10 million followers that “Ryan is still endorsing Trump.” 
 
 Trump tweeted after the call that "Paul Ryan should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee." And a Trump supporter in the House, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, sharply criticized Republican leaders on the call for not doing enough to support Trump, sources said. 
 
 The continued fallout set off alarms among Republicans about a potential down-ballot wave that imperils not only the Senate, which Democrats are already in a strong position to win, but the until-now seemingly impenetrable House majority. At this point, the imperative for vulnerable Republicans on the ballot is simply political survival. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ryan told his members that “you all need to do what’s best for you in your district," said a source on the call, giving rank-and-file lawmakers political cover to disavow Trump. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California urged the lawmakers to take a deep breath and focus on their own races. 
 
 It was the biggest and most dramatic split between the highest-ranking Republican lawmaker on Capitol Hill and the party's presidential nominee. Ryan has pushed back repeatedly on Trump's most outrageous comments or positions, but until now, he has refused to openly break with the nominee. 
 
 Ryan and House Republicans are cognizant they could face a backlash from Trump supporters. With less than a month to go in the campaign, an open rupture between the presidential nominee and down-ballot Republicans could turn off independent voters and depress turnout among base voters, compounding their problems from the top of the ticket. 
 
 "The speaker is going to spend the next month focused entirely on protecting our congressional majorities," said AshLee Strong, Ryan's spokeswoman. 
 
 Ryan will be campaigning in 17 states and 42 cities this month, with additional events planned, said GOP sources. 
 
 The conference call came as GOP congressional leaders and rank-and-file members have grown increasingly tired of Trump's rhetoric, uneven public appearances and lewd language. On Friday, a 2005 videotape was released showing Trump making vulgar comments about women, including suggesting he could grab them against their will because he was a celebrity. The video spurred dozens of House and Senate GOP lawmakers to revoke their endorsements of Trump or say they will vote for vice presidential nominee Mike Pence. 
 
 Trump apologized for his 2005 comments, but then tried to go on the offensive during Sunday's presidential debate by repeatedly invoking accusations from women of improper sexual advances by former President Bill Clinton. Trump accused Hillary Clinton of trying to destroy the credibility of these women. 
 
 The move delighted some of the most hard-core conservatives but further alienated other Republicans, who see it as having nothing to do with beating Hillary Clinton. 
 
 Other Trump supporters on the conference call said they wouldn't or couldn't concede the presidential race to Clinton. They included Reps. Billy Long of Missouri, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Trent Franks of Arizona and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, among others. 
 
 "A lot of these guys feel like there is a moral imperative to beating Hillary Clinton," said a source on the call. 
 
 "Having [Clinton] as commander in chief is something they just can't accept," added a GOP lawmaker. "It just strikes them as appalling." 
 
 Yet National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden of Oregon and GOP strategists are warning that Trump's poll numbers are tanking, and he could drag the House and Senate Republcian majorities down with him. To Ryan, McCarthy and other party leaders, acting as a check on Clinton if she wins is a more viable option — and a far more likely outcome — than a Trump victory. 
 
 "We're in a terrible place," said a separate GOP lawmaker. "We're damned if we do [stick with Trump] and damned if we don't."
– Two women who faced slights at the hands of prominent Republicans on Tuesday were defended by Hillary Clinton, who has experience in the area. Clinton, speaking at the Professional Businesswomen of California conference, decried the "indignities" women have to put up with while "simply doing their jobs," the Hill reports. She was referring to journalist April Ryan and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters. Ryan was interrupted and told to "stop shaking your head" by Sean Spicer while asking a question at a press conference. Waters was mocked by Bill O'Reilly, who said he was unable to listen to what she was saying because of her "James Brown wig." Both women are black, and Clinton noted that the problem is especially bad for women of color. Her remarks were part of a bigger call for diversity and inclusion in Silicon Valley, according to TechCrunch.