Even as Hillary Clinton’s once-commanding lead dissipates in the polls, her advisors argue that early voting numbers show they have successfully built a “firewall” of minority voters in key swing states that Donald Trump won’t be able to get over.

In a call with reporters on Friday, campaign manager Robby Mook said the Clinton campaign remains encouraged by what it is seeing in Florida, North Carolina and Nevada in terms of who has already come out to cast their ballots. He said the campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort has shown it can “turn out our supporters early and build a lead Donald Trump is incapable of overcoming.”

The briefing came amid early reports that turnout among African Americans, a key part of the Clinton coalition, has been weak so far. But Mook countered that it has picked up in various places, and he also presented figures suggesting surging Latino turnout that could offset a downward tic in the number of blacks coming out to vote Democratic as compared with 2012.  

Backed up by pantsuit-clad dancers, Beyonce sang "Who run the world? Girls!" and declared: "I'm with her."

Queen Bey's performance followed her husband, Jay Z, and a collection of other top rappers at a get-out-the-vote concert here Friday that doubled as a high-wattage campaign event for Hillary Clinton.

Clinton quoted Jay Z, referring to him as "Jay," in tracing the civil rights movement to President Obama's election.

Donald Trump backer Rudolph W. Giuliani said former FBI agents told him in advance that the agency was launching a review of newly discovered emails possibly linked to Hillary Clinton.

“I did nothing to get it out, I had no role in it,” he said Friday in an interview on Fox News. “Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it, and I can’t even repeat the language that I heard from the former FBI agent.”

FBI Director James Comey caused an uproar when he disclosed last week that the agency was going to review a new trove of emails possibly linked to Clinton's private server.

President Obama defended FBI Director James Comey on Friday, days after criticizing the timing of his announcement that the bureau was looking into new emails that might be relevant to Hillary Clinton's use of a private server.

"Now I've said before and I'll say again, Jim Comey is a good man," Obama said in an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC. "And I do not believe that he is in any way trying to influence the election one way or another. I think he is a serious public servant who wants to do the right thing."

Earlier this week, Obama condemned Comey's decision to announce the investigation so close to the presidential election.

As polls showed a tightening race, Donald Trump’s campaign and GOP officials said on Friday that their early investment in battleground states and targeting early and absentee voters were paying dividends.

“Each battleground state is growing more and more competitive as our momentum continues to build,” said David Bossie, Trump’s deputy campaign manager, adding that Trump and running mate Mike Pence will visit 12 states over the weekend. “We know the next few days are going to be critical to make our final push to victory.”

The party has three times as many paid field organizers in battleground states as in 2012, and volunteers have knocked on millions more doors, said Chris Young, the Republican National Committee’s national field director.

Counterpoint:

Donald Trump stuck tightly to his script Friday and sought to avoid the sort of unfiltered remarks that have landed him in trouble time and again in his campaign for president.

At an airplane hangar rally in this small town between Cincinnati and Columbus, the Republican nominee vowed to restore manufacturing jobs, build up the military, stop Syrian refugees from entering the United States and wall off the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Build that wall!” his supporters chanted.

President Obama got testy with a crowd of Hillary Clinton supporters in eastern North Carolina when they began shouting at a man in the audience holding a Donald Trump sign.

Obama was speaking on a college campus in Fayetteville when the Trump supporter held up his sign, spurring Clinton supporters to shout their objections.

“Hold up! Hold up! Hold up!” the president insisted. The crowd finally calmed enough to hear his message.

Hillary Clinton made a last-minute push for votes in Michigan, saying those who helped put President Obama win the White House twice needed to elect her to continue the progress he'd made.

"Barack Obama wasn't put into the White House by one person alone. It took everybody working and organizing and, yes, voting," she said. "So really, it all comes down to you, my friends. ... Everything that has happened up until this point is on the line."

Democrats downplay talk from Republicans that Michigan is truly in play four days before the election. They say Clinton's visit helped kick off get-out-the-vote efforts in a state that lacks the early voting opportunities increasingly prevalent in much of the country.

Tim Kaine’s college roommate – an entertainment executive who lives in Pacific Palisades – spoke out about the man he shared a home with nearly four decades ago and may be the nation’s next vice president.

Spoiler alert: Aside from some mildly embarrassing tidbits about how Kaine didn’t like to clean the shared bathroom and has no fashion sense, there are no "TMZ"-worthy stories about young men living it up in Boston.

But the Facebook post by Charles Hirschhorn does shed some light on the man Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton picked to be her running mate, describing his commitment to social justice and consensus, their continued friendship and the times that Kaine has been there for Hirschhorn.

In February 2014, the Obama administration was embarrassed when a secretly recorded phone conversation between the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine and Victoria Nuland, a senior State Department official, was posted on YouTube.

The two officials could be heard privately picking who should be in the new government in Kiev, and at one point, Nuland used a four-letter word to dismiss slow-moving diplomats at the European Union.

The intercepted call, which U.S. officials traced to Russian intelligence, created friction between U.S. and EU envoys.  But its real significance is only now clear — Russia was publicly willing to use the fruits of espionage to upend U.S. foreign policy.