Democrat Hillary Clinton criticized Donald Trump at a press conference Thursday, calling the Republican nominee's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin "unpatriotic and insulting" and saying his comments about seizing foreign oil were absurd. Photo: AP 
 
 KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Hillary Clinton’s campaign, heavy on attacks against Donald Trump, has concluded that it hasn’t done enough to telegraph a positive message, and plans a series of speeches aimed at defining her vision for the presidency. 
 
 On Friday, the Democratic presidential candidate will convene a “working session” on national security with a bipartisan group of experts. Later this month, the campaign plans speeches on building an “inclusive economy,” and on children and families. A third speech on national service will... ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201609/3046/1155968404_5118345926001_5118336792001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Trump on RT: Johnson shouldn't debate; Russian election interference 'probably unlikely' 
 
 In an interview on a state-funded Russian television network, Donald Trump said Thursday that he doesn’t want to see third-party candidates in the upcoming presidential debates, and that he believes Russian interference in American elections was "probably unlikely," 
 
 Speaking with Larry King on RT (Russia Today), the Republican nominee suggested that claims of Russian interference are likely coming from across the aisle. 
 
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 "I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows, but I think it’s pretty unlikely," he said. 
 
 Trump went on to condemn any foreign influence in the U.S. election, deeming any such action "inappropriate." 
 
 "I hope that if they are doing something, I hope that somebody’s going to be able to find out that they can end it because that would not be appropriate at all," the Republican nominee said. 
 
 Trump was heavily criticized for repeatedly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin as a superior leader to President Barack Obama -- “He does have an 82 percent approval rating” -- in Wednesday evening's “commander-in-chief forum” broadcast on NBC. Hillary Clinton has accused Russia of actively trying to elect Trump. 
 
 A Trump campaign spokesperson later said that the Republican candidate expected the interview with King to be appear on his podcast, not RT. 
 
 In a wide-ranging interview, Trump went on to say that he didn't see Libertarian Gary Johnson and other third-party candidates as a “factor” in the election. 
 
 Asked about Johnson’s inability to recall the city of Aleppo when asked about the Syrian civil war, Trump said he didn’t think it would have much impact on the candidate, and even less so on the general election. 
 
 “I don’t know that it will hurt him that much frankly. Maybe it’ll hurt him a little bit,” the Republican nominee said. “I think he’ll scoot down.” 
 
 Trump, who has lately seen a slight uptick in polling despite an increasingly dire electoral map, forecasted that Johnson and another general election candidate – presumably Jill Stein, who is polling fourth nationally – would slowly fade away. 
 
 “They seem to be going down, the other two, they seem to be going down a little bit,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.” 
 
 King asked Trump directly if he would like to see Johnson on the debate stage, a prospect the New York mogul quickly shot down. 
 
 “No, I’d rather be Hillary and myself because we’re the only two with a chance of winning,” he said. 
 
 Current standards require candidates to be polling at or above 15 percent nationally to qualify for presidential debates. Johnson has long hovered above 10 percent without consistently crossing the needed threshold. ||||| On Sept. 7, during a town hall event hosted by MSNBC, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated he would have "a good relationship" with Russian president Vladimir Putin. It wasn't the first time he's been friendly towards him. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post) 
 
 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized U.S. foreign policy and the American political press corps Thursday during an interview on RT America, a state-owned Russian television network. 
 
 In a wide-ranging interview that aired Thursday evening, Trump spoke with journalist Larry King about the presidential race, American intervention in Iraq and the Middle East, and the potential intrusion by Russian hackers into Democratic Party databases. RT, which airs in several countries in English and Russian, is funded by the Russian government; though it characterizes itself as independent, the network has been regularly accused of pro-Kremlin bias. 
 
 The interview came as Trump faced sustained criticism for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he has regularly done on the campaign trail — to the discomfort of many members of his own party, who have distanced themselves from the comments. 
 
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 During an NBC presidential forum Wednesday evening, Trump went further in his praise and said that Putin has been a better leader than President Obama: “Certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader,” Trump said. 
 
 Asked during the RT America interview what has surprised him most about the political process, Trump unloaded on the American press. 
 
 “Well, I think the dishonesty of the media. The media has been unbelievably dishonest,” Trump responded. “I mean they’ll take a statement that you make which is perfect and they’ll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it or do something with it.” 
 
 “And all of a sudden it doesn’t look as good as it did when you actually said it. But there’s tremendous dishonesty with the media. Not all of it, obviously, but tremendous dishonesty,” he said. 
 
 The Trump campaign recently lifted a ban on various news outlets, including The Washington Post, which he accused of bias in its coverage. 
 
 Trump also dismissed accusations that he doesn’t have a firm grasp of military issues or a plan to combat the Islamic State. He said he has a “very distinct plan” and knocked foreign policy under Obama, Hillary Clinton, and former president George W. Bush. 
 
 “Hillary Clinton with her policies and Barack Obama — you know, look, we should have never gone into Iraq. Period. We should have never gone in. But once we went in, Larry, we shouldn’t have gotten out the way we got out. And the way they got out really caused ISIS, if you think about it. We got out in such a horrible, foolish fashion, instead of leaving some troops behind.” 
 
 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her Republican opponent Donald Trump answered questions on national security and foreign policy Sept. 7 during a "commander-in-chief forum" on NBC News. (Video: NBC News/Photos: Melina Mara/Post, Mike Segar/Reuters) 
 
 When King asked Trump if he believed reports that Russian hackers may have targeted Democratic Party databases as part of an effort to influence the American presidential election, Trump said he did not believe that to be the case. 
 
 “I think it’s probably unlikely. I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows? But I think that it’s pretty unlikely,” he said. “I hope that if they are doing something I hope that somebody’s going to be able to find out so they can end it, because that would not be appropriate.” 
 
 King also asked Trump about Putin’s assertion that the hack was a “public service,” even as he claimed the Russian government was not involved. 
 
 “I don’t have any opinion on it. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know who hacked. I’m not sure. You tell me. Who hacked? Who did the hacking?” Trump said. 
 
 Trump’s critics have regularly insinuated that he is overly cozy with pro-Russian interests. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, came under fire last month after he was named in a Ukrainian corruption investigation that tied him to a pro-Kremlin political party. Manafort, who has since resigned from the campaign, denied all such connections. 
 
 Before that, Trump was widely condemned in July when, in an off-handed remark, he called on the Russian government to intervene in the election by releasing thousands of Clinton’s private emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a press conference at one of his South Florida resorts. He added later, “They probably have them. I’d like to have them released.” 
 
 Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn — one of Trump's closest advisers — received payment to deliver a speech at an RT party last year, where he sat next to Putin. In an interview with The Washington Post last month, he said that he saw no distinction between RT and news outlets like CNN or MSNBC. 
 
 Trump came under fire within minutes of the interview airing. Veteran GOP strategist John Weaver, a vocal anti-Trump Republican, expressed incredulity on social media. 
 
 “Condemning the free, 1st amendment protected American media on Russian owned @RT_com is outrageous, even by the lowest of Trump standards,” Weaver said in one tweet. 
 
 “I’m just stunned at the insanity of the campaign staff to even consider, allow a @RT_com interview, given the Russian ties already,” Weaver wrote in another tweet. 
 
 The Trump campaign played down the interview Thursday evening, explaining that they did not realize it would be broadcast on RT. 
 
 "Mr. Trump recorded a short interview with Larry King for his podcast as a favor to Mr. King. What Larry King does with the interview content is up to him; we have nothing to do with it," a Trump spokesperson told The Post. ||||| Returning to education, Mr. Trump echoed a common Republican refrain about the importance of school choice, saying students should be able to attend a magnet school, a charter school, or a public or a private school. 
 
 Mr. Trump’s previous comments on education had been scant and were usually tossed off: American schools were no better than those in a developing country, he has said, and Common Core standards are a “disaster.” 
 
 On Thursday, adding a bit of policy meat to this rhetorical skeleton, Mr. Trump said the $20 billion in grants for poor students would come from existing federal spending. 
 
 Rather than sending federal education dollars to schools, as the existing system does, Mr. Trump proposed giving block grants to states, which would have the option of letting the dollars follow students to whichever school they choose, including a charter, private or online school. 
 
 Funding schools this way, known in education circles as portability, is popular with Republicans as a way to broaden school choice. More choice, reformers believe, introduces competition to the marketplace of schools and raises student learning. 
 
 Critics fear that portability, which Congress rejected in its latest overhaul of the nation’s chief education law last year, will bleed dollars from traditional public schools. Critics also oppose channeling taxpayer money to private religious schools and schools run for profit — like the charter Mr. Trump visited. 
 
 Mr. Trump did not explain where in the federal budget he would find the $20 billion. In the past, he has threatened to eliminate or drastically cut the Education Department. He has also criticized the Obama administration for using federal education spending to force states to adopt its policies. But Mr. Trump proposed something similar. “Distribution of this grant will favor states that have private school choice and charter laws,” he said. ||||| 
 
 Melania Trump, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 18. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post) 
 
 It was late July when voters last heard from the potential first lady of the United States. Melania Trump delivered her speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and then later stood with her husband, balloons dropping, waving to the crowd in what is starting to feel like a premature farewell to the campaign trail. 
 
 Since then, she has not spoken publicly and has largely vanished from view, leaving a trail of questions and voids in her personal biography. 
 
 It was only Wednesday night — after a seven-week absence — that Melania Trump appeared at a campaign event, sitting in the audience as her husband addressed a national security forum. 
 
 Melania Trump’s speech at the GOP convention in Cleveland is drawing comparisons to Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. Here’s a side-by-side look at both. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) 
 
 Her long silence followed the fiasco over her convention speech, parts of which turned out to have been plagiarized. Then she took her website down after revelations that there was no record she had obtained a college degree, as her site had claimed. And while the issue of illegal immigration is central to her husband’s platform, neither Melania Trump nor the Trump campaign has produced documentation to prove how the Slovenian immigrant got a visa to work in the United States or how she obtained her green card in 2001. Melania Trump has said she has been “at all times in full compliance” with immigration laws; Donald Trump has said his wife is “so documented.” 
 
 Even as the campaign declines to fill in details of her life story, Melania Trump has deployed an attorney to beat back news reports probing her past. Last week, the former fashion model filed a libel suit against a blogger and a British newspaper for reports, since retracted, suggesting that she once worked as an escort. 
 
 Otherwise, the woman who could oversee a White House staff and command a global platform on behalf of the United States has said almost nothing. A news conference at which her husband promised to address immigration questions has yet to happen. And there is no sign that Melania Trump will play a significant role in the final stretch of her husband’s campaign — a striking departure from tradition in which candidates’ spouses serve as key surrogates in the effort to turn out voters. 
 
 The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did it respond to specific questions about her past, or her future involvement in the campaign. 
 
 In many ways, Melania Trump’s approach to campaigning is in keeping with a paradoxical pattern in her life — one in which she has both sought the spotlight and recoiled from its glare. The 46-year-old has been comfortable with public exposure on her own terms, posing nude at times and once even talking on Howard Stern’s radio show about her sex life with Donald Trump. And yet, as a model and as a political spouse, she has also remained private to the point of reclusiveness. 
 
 Her official Twitter account — once a stream of Manhattan sunrises, Dover sole lunches at the Ralph Lauren Polo Club, and Melania lounging on a piano, a beach or a private jet — has become a series of statements pushing back against what is being written about her. 
 
 “Not a lot of people know me,” she told The Washington Post in an interview in April. “Only I know my story, and I see people who want to have maybe five, 15 minutes of fame, and they say, ‘Oh, I met her for five minutes.’ . . . I read a lot of stories, and they are not correct stories.” 
 
 Several people who have known Melania over the years say she has often been a solitary figure, cultivating few close friendships outside of her immediate family as she moved from the concrete apartment blocks of the former Yugoslavia in the late 1980s to Trump’s gold-leafed penthouse in Manhattan in the late 1990s. 
 
 She left Slovenia as communism crumbled, joining a wave of young Eastern European women headed for Milan and Paris. It was a startling change for many young women who grew up in small and rural areas, according to people who worked in fashion. 
 
 “It was like, ‘Wow!’ It was a chance to go out with a guy with a Porsche,” said Vincenzo Di Sarli, an Italian working in the international fashion business. “Many of them got married with these guys.” 
 
 Melania, born Melanija Knavs, began calling herself Melania Knauss as she started her modeling career. She kept trying to make a name for herself, albeit with limited success at first, according to people familiar with her career at the time. 
 
 Bernarda Jeklin, who ran a Slovenian women’s magazine, met Melania when she was 22 and entered the magazine’s Face of the Year contest. Jeklin said Melania did not stand out in the crowd of so many promising models. 
 
 “She was really quite anonymous,” said Jeklin. “She was very, very introverted. She didn’t talk to other competitors. She preferred to be in her own world.” 
 
 Melania placed as a runner-up, which helped her get more work when she returned to Milan. For several years, she modeled for catalogues and walked runways in Paris and other European capitals. During that time, she also met a wealthy Italian businessman, Paolo Zampolli, who said he saw enough potential in Melania to invite her to join a modeling agency he was financing in New York. Zampolli said he arranged Melania’s work visa and she said she moved to New York in 1996. 
 
 By then, she was 26 and stood out from other recruits, who were typically 18- or 19-year-olds dressed in jeans and T-shirts, according to others who worked at Zampolli’s Metropolitan agency. By contrast, Melania showed up at the agency already polished, always dressed exquisitely and expensively and carrying herself with a certain remove. 
 
 Michele August, a former booking agent for Metropolitan, said that she was a “very kind, gentle soul” and was “nothing but professional.” Still, August said, it was difficult to rebook her because she was “kind of icy looking, not approachable.” 
 
 “She was sexy, she wasn’t high fashion,” August said. “You didn’t book her for Vogue. She was more commercial lingerie.” 
 
 The 1990s nightlife of New York models was full of parties and invitations to nightclub openings where booze, cocaine and wealthy men were plentiful. According to August and others who worked at Metropolitan at the time, Melania was ambitious about making a name for herself but largely stayed away from the party scene. Her roommate from those days said that Melania often just stayed home. 
 
 “She would come out in her bathrobe and her glasses and slippers and watch ‘Friends,’ ” said Matthew Atanian, a photographer who shared a Union Square apartment with her in Manhattan. “She kept pretty quiet and to herself,” he added. He also said she talked by phone to her mother and sister in Slovenia every day. 
 
 An exception came in 1998, when she attended a Fashion Week event hosted by Zampolli — and met Donald Trump. 
 
 The same year, when she was 28, Melania made another leap into the spotlight by holding her own news conference in Paris. Journalists from Slovenia were flown in for free for the day to meet her, according to two of the journalists who made the trip. 
 
 The journalists said they had never heard of Melania Knauss before, but Dusan Nograsek, one of the journalists at that meeting, recalls her describing herself as one of the world’s top 50 international models. 
 
 “It was very unusual for models to do such a thing,” said Nograsek, who, along with others, wrote about Melania. “She was beautiful, likable, nice, natural. She acted as if she’d be standing on the red carpet in no time.” 
 
 At the same time, Melania’s association with Trump was leading to higher-profile assignments, including the January 2000 cover of British GQ, where she famously posed nude on a fur rug in a photo shoot on Trump’s plane. She was in the 2000 swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, and when she married Trump in 2005, she was photographed wearing a $200,000 gown on the coveted cover of Vogue. 
 
 The transition to political wife was clearly not easy. 
 
 
 
 Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as his wife, Melania Trump, right, and his daughter Ivanka Trump, left, stand on stage during a South Carolina primary election night rally in Spartanburg, S.C., on Feb. 20. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg) 
 
 Earlier this year, Melania Trump had seemed willing to give campaigning a try — and got good reviews. In February, she surprised people when she took the microphone at a primary victory party in South Carolina and told cheering supporters in her accented English that her husband “will be the best president.” 
 
 She went on MSNBC and CNN and addressed a crowd in Milwaukee after Donald Trump heralded the “exciting” presence of his wife on the campaign trail, saying, “She’s never done this before.” 
 
 At the same time, she seemed reluctant, telling The Post in April, “I am not part of the campaign” and that her 10-year-old son, Barron, was her main priority. 
 
 Recently, Melania Trump’s absence has become conspicuous enough to spawn such Twitter hashtags as #WhereisMelania and #FreeMelania as people tried to figure out where she was and how she was doing. 
 
 On Wednesday night, she finally appeared, sitting in the crowd at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York as her husband spoke at an NBC forum. Television viewers could only catch glimpses of her as cameras panned across the audience. 
 
 1 of 14 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × The most memorable moments from the Republican and Democratic conventions View Photos From a tender moment between President Obama and Hillary Clinton to Trump’s flashy entrance, here’s a look at top moments from the conventions. Caption From a tender moment between President Obama and Hillary Clinton to Trump’s flashy entrance, here’s a look at top moments from the conventions. Democratic National Convention President Obama embraces presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia after endorsing her and imploring the public to “reject fear, to summon what’s best in us.” Melina Mara/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 Rosalind S. Helderman, Alice Crites and Nejc Trusnovec contributed to this report. ||||| Donald Trump Donald TrumpOvernight Energy: GOP vows to fight new methane rule Clinton, whiskey and George Washington: You won’t believe what they have in common Assad labels Trump ‘natural ally’ to fight terror MORE on Thursday delivered an extended defense of his opposition to the war in Iraq, charging that rival Hillary Clinton Hillary Rodham ClintonDNC charter requires chairman be full time Clinton, whiskey and George Washington: You won’t believe what they have in common Katie Pavlich: Post-defeat, Dems veer left MORE is lying about him initially backing the invasion. 
 
 The Republican nominee has hammered Clinton for voting in 2002 to authorize the war, citing it as evidence that she lacks the judgment to lead the nation’s armed forces. 
 
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 Clinton has acknowledged her Iraq vote was a mistake and says that as president she will only use military force as a last resort. 
 
 But at a veterans forum on Wednesday night, Clinton said Trump’s position on the war, at the time, was no different from hers. She said that Trump initially supported the invasion but has since flip-flopped. 
 
 Trump has been a fierce critic of the war for years, but Democrats are raising questions about when his opposition began. 
 
 Delivering a speech on education in Cleveland, the billionaire businessman on Thursday accused the media of misrepresenting his position. 
 
 “Iraq is one of the biggest differences in this race,” Trump said. “I opposed going in and I did oppose it, despite the media saying no, yes, no, I opposed going in and I opposed the reckless way Hillary Clinton took us out, along with President Obama, letting ISIS fill that big terrible void.” 
 
 Trump said he did an interview with Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto three months before the war started, in which he said then-President George W. Bush should be focused on the economy instead of engaging in foreign wars. 
 
 The Republican said he gave another interview in March of 2003, just days after the conflict started, in which he was quoted as calling the war “a mess,” though he did not say which outlet printed that interview. 
 
 “If I had been in Congress at the time I would have cast a vote in opposition,” Trump said. “For years I’ve been a critic of these kinds of reckless, foreign invasions and interventions that have been a hallmark of trigger-happy Hillary and her failed career.” 
 
 Trump read a long passage from an Esquire article from 2004 in which he condemned the war at length. The magazine has since added a note to its article saying the interview took place after the war began and is not evidence that Trump opposed the conflict from the start. 
 
 Democrats are pointing to a 2002 interview Trump conducted with Howard Stern, in which the radio shock jock asked Trump if he supported the Iraq invasion. 
 
 “Yeah, I guess so,” Trump responded. “I wish the first time it was done correctly.” 
 
 Trump has backed away from those remarks, saying that at the time he was merely a private businessman and hadn’t given the matter much thought. 
 
 “I had no access to briefings or the intelligence surveys that she did,” Trump said on Thursday, referencing Clinton's background as senator. “I didn’t have access to anything that she did, and frankly nobody cared too much what I said, I don’t know why I was even asked the question.” 
 
 “But in Iraq my judgment was right and hers, with all of this great information and all of this intelligence information, was wrong,” Trump added. 
 
 Liberal opposition research groups on Thursday circulated several interviews Trump conducted in 2003 that they say cast doubt on claims he always opposed the war. 
 
 In the Cavuto interview that Trump cited, he also said: “It’s sort like either do it or don’t do it.” 
 
 And in a March 2003 interview with Cavuto, in which he was asked about the war’s impact on the economy, Trump responded: “It looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint.” 
 
 Later that year Trump called the toppling of Saddam Hussein “a huge day for this country.” 
 
 But as the war dragged on, Trump’s criticism of the war escalated. 
 
 “Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we're in,” he said in the Esquire interview. “I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the country? C'mon.” 
 
 “What was the purpose of this whole thing?” he continued. “Hundreds and hundreds of young people killed. And what about the people coming back with no arms and legs? Not to mention the other side. All those Iraqi kids who've been blown to pieces. And it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing!” 
 
 The Clinton campaign is seeking to raise questions about Trump’s position on Iraq because it is one of the lynchpins of his argument that she lacks judgment to be commander in chief. 
 
 “My opponent was for the war in Iraq,” the former secretary of State said on Wednesday night at the military-focused forum. “He said he wasn’t ― you can go back and look at the record.” 
 
 Trump is furious over the allegations and says the media is helping her muddy the waters. 
 
 “I see the lies last night that Donald Trump was always in favor of the war in Iraq, and that’s why I have to do this, because the media is so dishonest, so terribly dishonest,” Trump said. 
 
 “I just had to set the record straight because there’s so much lying going on.”
– Donald Trump didn't do much to distance himself from the Kremlin Thursday night with an interview aired on the Russia-funded RT America network. The candidate told host Larry King that it was "probably unlikely" that Moscow is interfering in US elections and that claims that it is are probably coming from the Democrats, Politico reports. He also slammed the "unbelievably dishonest" American media and discussed third-party candidates, saying they appear to be fading away and he doesn't want to see Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson on the debate stage. In other coverage: Trump was strongly criticized for speaking to a network widely seen as having a strong pro-Russia bias, with GOP strategist John Weaver calling it "insanity," the Washington Post reports. The Trump campaign said it thought the interview would appear on Larry King's podcast, not on RT. The Hill reports that during a speech in Cleveland Thursday, Trump insisted that Hillary Clinton was lying when she said he was for the Iraq war before he was against it. "If I had been in Congress at the time I would have cast a vote in opposition," he said. "For years I've been a critic of these kinds of reckless foreign invasions and interventions that have been a hallmark of trigger-happy Hillary and her failed career." The Washington Post looks at somebody who has been missing from the campaign trail since late July: Melania Trump. The possible first lady was in the audience for Trump's appearance at a military forum on Wednesday, but she hasn't spoken publicly since what turned out to be a partly plagiarized speech at the Republican National Convention and isn't expected to play a major role in the campaign's final weeks. The New York Times examines the education plan Trump unveiled in Cleveland Thursday. He promised $20 billion in federal funds to help poor students attend the schools of their choice, though it's not clear where he plans to find the $20 billion. The Wall Street Journal reports that Clinton's campaign has decided to try to send out a more positive message about her vision for America instead of focusing on attacking Trump. The candidate spoke about her faith to the National Baptist Convention in Kansas City, Mo., on Thursday, saying doing so "doesn't always come naturally to a Midwestern Methodist."