Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin thought he could use a placeholder name as his running mate in applications to appear on state presidential ballots.

Now, McMullin, running as a conservative alternative to Donald Trump, is stuck with “Nathan Johnson” as a vice presidential candidate on the ballots in eight of the nine states in which he qualifies.

That has Twitter users wondering, who is Nathan Johnson?

Donald Trump is standing by a tweet he wrote in which he blamed thousands of sexual assaults in the military on men and women serving together.

“Well, it is a correct tweet. There are many people that think that’s absolutely correct,” Trump said when asked at a town hall forum by moderator Matt Lauer on Wednesday night about a tweet he posted in 2013.

Three years ago, Trump tweeted: “26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”

Under a Donald Trump administration, there could be at least one way for people here illegally to avoid deportation: Join the military.

Asked whether plans to join the armed forces might provide a path to legal residence, the Republican presidential nominee said it was likely.

"I could see myself working that out, absolutely," he said Wednesday in New York at the "Commander in Chief Forum" hosted by NBC. "Military is a very special thing.

A newly released email exchange between former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell shed light on how much advice he gave her about how to balance the desire for timely communication with security concerns. 

The exchange is from Jan. 23, 2009, as Clinton took office. As Clinton has come under fire during her presidential campaign for using a personal server to conduct government business, Powell has said that he hadn't discussed the matter until a year after Clinton's tenure began.

The newly public email shows Clinton asked him for advice, saying she'd heard he used a BlackBerry "but no one 'fesses up to knowing how you used it!" 

Donald Trump pointed to the resignation earlier Wednesday of a high-ranking Mexican official as proof that his trip to Mexico last week was a success. 

“If you look at what happened, look at the aftermath today, the people who arranged the trip in Mexico have been forced out of government,” Trump said in a commander-in-chief forum hosted by NBC News in New York. “That’s how well we did, and that’s how well we’re going to do have to do.”

Trump was referring to the resignation of Finance Minister Luis Videgaray, who reportedly lobbied hard to invite Trump to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto last week. Trump did not explain why the departure of Videgaray, long considered Peña Nieto's closest advisor, constituted a success for his campaign. 

Pressed during a prime-time town hall about why her email scandal did not disqualify her to be commander in chief, Hillary Clinton pushed back on Wednesday, saying that while she made a mistake in using a private server to conduct government business, her actions did not compromise national security.

“The real question is the handling of classified material,” she said, adding that she had experience dealing with such sensitive matters because of her time on the Senate Armed Services Committee and as secretary of State. “Classified material has a header which says, 'Top secret, secret, confidential.' Nothing — and I will repeat this, and this is verified in the report by the DOJ — none of the emails sent or received by me had such a header.”

That is true, but FBI documents released Friday said that email contained the notation (c), standing for confidential. Clinton told investigators that she thought it might reference “paragraphs marked in alphabetical order.”

She regrets her support for the invasion of Iraq, but it's an issue that continues to dog Hillary Clinton's campaign. 

At the outset of a forum Wednesday on national security and veterans issues, Clinton was pressed about her 2002 vote in favor of sending troops into Iraq.

"The decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake, and I have said that my voting to give President Bush that authority was, from my perspective, my mistake," she said. 

Hillary Clinton immediately turned to her experience in government and her temperament as she argued during Wednesday's prime-time town hall on military issues that she is most qualified to be the nation’s commander in chief.

Asked by moderator Matt Lauer the most important quality for the leader of the nation’s armed forces, Clinton replied: “Steadiness. An absolute rock steadiness mixed with strength to be able to make the hard decisions. I’ve had the unique experience watching and working with several presidents, and these are not easy decisions because if they were, they wouldn’t get to the president in the first place.”

Clinton repeated an experience she frequently describes on the campaign trail: being in the Situation Room as secretary of State while the raid that killed Osama bin Laden unfolded.

Donald Trump spoke for about 20 minutes in front of some of the people who know him best, New Yorkers noshing pasta and hand-carved turkey in a hotel ballroom near Times Square.

Trump, down an average of nearly 20 points in the polls here, sounded as if he had it in the bag. 

“We are going to play so hard and win,” he said.

Polls have Donald Trump losing New York state by an average of nearly 20 percentage points. And yes, it's about as solidly blue as you can get.

But don't tell that to the couple hundred members of the state's Conservative Party who were mingling over beer, wine and hand-carved turkey Wednesday night in a Marriott Marquis hotel ballroom near Times Square.

The party was set to give Trump its endorsement Wednesday night. And the candidate, who has been criticized for spending his scarce time in states that are considered uncompetitive, planned to show up, just before a live network television candidates' forum being filmed nearby at NBC.