WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump on Sunday intensified his claims that the presidential campaign is "rigged" against him, sowing doubts about the integrity of the country's democratic process even as his own running mate and other Republican leaders sought to assure voters they viewed the election as legitimate.
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"The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary -- but also at many polling places -- SAD," Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
Trump made his claim just hours after his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, had tried to play down the Republican nominee's questions about the fairness of the election. Pence said on NBC's Meet the Press that he and Trump "will absolutely accept the result of the election."
"But the American people are tired of the obvious bias in the national media," Pence added. "That's where the sense of a rigged election goes here."
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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump's most prominent supporters, agreed that Trump was referring to media bias.
"He's not talking about the fact that it's going to be rigged at the polls," Giuliani said on CNN's State of the Union. "What he's talking about is that 80 percent to 85 percent of the media is against him."
Trump backer and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on ABC's This Week that a blog post by author Barry Casselman had "the best description" of the election: "He said this is a coup d'etat. He said 14 million citizens and private ballots picked Donald Trump; 20 TV executives have decided to destroy him."
"I think that, without the unending one-sided assault of the news media, Trump would be beating Hillary by 15 points," Gingrich added.
Emails overshadowed
Several of Trump's claims -- such as the one Saturday that Hillary Clinton was on drugs at the most recent debate and his call for drug testing before the next -- overshadowed the release over the weekend of more emails hacked from accounts of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Some showed the campaign worrying whether Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., might endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, in the Democratic Party's primary, and wrestling with how to respond to revelations about Clinton's private email use. The emails also show aides lining up materials to respond to fresh accusations from a woman who accused Bill Clinton of raping her decades ago. The former president denied the accusation, which was never adjudicated by a criminal court.
Other hacked emails released Sunday by WikiLeaks show Hillary Clinton's aides fretting over how to respond to backlash from the gay, bisexual and transgender community after Clinton lauded Nancy Reagan for starting a "national conversation" about AIDS in the 1980s. Activists blame President Ronald Reagan for what they view as a devastatingly slow response to the AIDS crisis.
Clinton immediately tweeted an apology after her initial remarks in March. But her aides felt that was insufficient and agreed to release a more detailed response.
"I don't want this to fester," wrote Dominic Lowell, the Clinton campaign's outreach director for the gay, bisexual and transgender community.
An initial draft of Clinton's statement began, "I made a mistake." The opening line was changed to "I said something inaccurate," though the phrase "I made a mistake, plain and simple" was added later.
Another hacked email by a Clinton aide, released by WikiLeaks last week, suggested that Catholicism is more "socially acceptable" for conservatives than evangelicalism.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine -- a lifelong Catholic -- says Clinton saw his religion as "a real asset." On This Week, Kaine said the two discussed their faith at length before Clinton asked Kaine to join her on the Democratic ticket.
He said: "In terms of what Hillary Clinton, who's running for president, thinks about Catholics, and the value more broadly of having a faith background, I can tell you she views it as a plus, just as she views her own Methodism as a plus."
Kaine said Russia was trying to influence the Nov. 8 election through the hacked emails. The U.S. government has blamed the Russian government for hacking into the computer systems of Democratic groups and leaking information.
"Hillary and I stand up for the integrity of our elections," Kaine said on This Week. "Hillary and I stand against Russian efforts to meddle in an American election."
Breaking with Trump, Pence agreed that Russia was likely behind the hacking of Democratic Party emails.
"Well, I think there's more and more evidence that implicates Russia. And there should be serious consequences," Pence said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that Russia has no influence on the U.S. vote. Putin suggested the accusations are hypocritical, given Russia's experience seeing American authorities "spying on everyone and eavesdropping on everyone," he said.
Putin also expressed hope that Russia's ties with the U.S. will improve after the presidential election, regardless of who wins.
"If our partners in the United States intend to work with us, we will," Putin said after meeting with leaders of Brazil, China, India and South Africa in the Indian state of Goa. "I hope that when the debate is over, this difficult period in the United States' internal political life is over, there'll be a chance to restore relations between Russia and the U.S."
But in another speech published by WikiLeaks, Clinton raised the idea that Washington could be its own worst enemy when it came to leaks.
Addressing Goldman Sachs, which paid her about $225,000 per speech, Clinton said in 2013 that if the best chance of success in Syria's civil war was to act secretly inside that country, she had no problem doing that. Clinton had advocated secretly arming the Syrian opposition and moving forcefully to counter the Russians.
Acknowledging that her audience already knew her stance because of news coverage, Clinton added, "we used to be much better at this than we are now."
"Now, you know, everybody can't help themselves," she said, adding that officials go out to "tell their friendly reporters and somebody else: 'Look what we're doing, and I want credit for it.'"
Media and emails
Trump's allies said the media had not paid enough attention to the hacked WikiLeaks emails, focusing more on the sexual-assault accusations against Trump.
"I believe Donald Trump," said Giuliani, a former prosecutor. "I don't know about the nine women. I haven't studied the case. I'm a lawyer. I would have to study each case to tell you about. I'm not going to engage in Clinton-type conduct and attack them. I'm just telling you that I believe he's telling the truth."
Trump has been criticized for suggesting that he could not have sexually assaulted several of the women because they were not attractive enough.
"I wouldn't say anything to disparage any woman who believes they've had an experience like this," Pence said. "But Donald Trump's made it clear that these allegations are categorically false."
Gingrich also said Trump's comment about his accusers' looks was "just dumb."
"I don't defend him when he wanders off; I've told him over and over," Gingrich said. "You know, presidents have to be disciplined, and in that sense Hillary is probably better trained to be president, just because she's the most corrupt person to ever get the nomination of a major party."
Giuliani and other Trump allies said Democratic Party corruption included cheating in elections.
"They leave dead people on the rolls, and then they pay people to vote those dead people four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times," Giuliani said. He added, "Dead people generally vote for Democrats."
When asked whether Republicans also cheated, Giuliani said they did not -- "they don't control inner cities the way Democrats do."
Trump this month urged his supporters at a rally in Pennsylvania to monitor polling places for fraud.
"You've got to go out, and you've got to get your friends, and you've got to get everybody you know, and you've got to watch the polling booths because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas," Trump said.
Giuliani agreed that fraud would be an issue in Pennsylvania.
"Do you want me to tell [you] that the election in Philadelphia and Chicago is going to be fair? I would have to be a moron to say that," he said. "I would have to dis-learn everything I've learned in 40 years."
Gingrich also singled out Philadelphia as a hotbed of cheating: "To suggest that ... you don't have theft in Philadelphia is to deny reality."
The charges were enough to prompt House Speaker Paul Ryan, who just last week vowed to remove himself entirely from the presidential campaign, to issue a statement.
"Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity," said Ryan's spokesman, AshLee Strong.
Jon Husted, secretary of state of Ohio, said it was "wrong and engaging in irresponsible rhetoric" for any candidate to question the integrity of elections without evidence. Husted, who is a Republican, said he would have no reason to hesitate in certifying the results of the election.
"We have made it easy to vote and hard to cheat," Husted said in an interview Sunday. "We are going to run a good, clean election in Ohio, like we always do."
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Martin of The New York Times; Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News; Jose A. DelReal of The Washington Post; and by Laurie Kellman, Jill Colvin and staff writers of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/17/2016