Conway attempted to commune with Blitzer: “I know them all, I respect them all.” So Blitzer pleaded with Conway: “He shouldn’t be doing that. I mean, can you talk to him? And say to him, ‘Mr. Trump, we only have a few days left, these are hardworking young journalists, they deserve to have some security,’ if you will, because some of those Trump supporters out there, they get pretty nasty with what they’re screaming at these young people.” Conway said she’d carry the message along to Trump.

Whether or not Blitzer’s appeal made it to Trump, it’s clear that it failed to curb the candidate’s insistence upon singling out reporters at his rallies. Wednesday, at a rally in Florida, Trump used a long-repeated slam against the media for allegedly not panning the cameras to capture the entire, enormous crowds at his events. “It’s too bad those cameras aren’t turning around to see this incredible group of people with thousands more outside. Isn’t it too bad? They don’t do it. But you know, if Hillary speaks and there’s 30 people in line, they say, ‘Oh, the crowd is massive.’… We have massive crowds, there’s something happening and they’re not reporting it, Katy. You’re not reporting it, Katy. But there’s something happening, Katy. There’s something happening, Katy.”

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“Katy,” here, is doubtless Katy Tur, the NBC News reporter who has been with Trump on the campaign trail from the beginning — and with whom Trump has had an ugly and inexplicable fascination. Twitter turned up a great deal of support for the correspondent under the hashtag #ImwithTur:

“This is part of Donald Trump’s strategy, is to go after the media and say that we’re not being honest. That enables his supporters to look the other way if the polls are not in Donald Trump’s favor,” said Tur this afternoon on MSNBC. She noted that there’s a “pool camera” dedicated to staying on Trump himself at all times so that it captures “everything the candidate says.” That’s a shared feed among networks. Individual networks, however, have cameras that do indeed show the crowds. “This is part of his shtick…and going after reporters is part of it as well. It’s not just me; it happened to Carl Cameron at Fox the other day. But it does make the crowd very angry and it does concern a lot of folks about the safety of journalists.”

This afternoon, Blitzer again welcomed Conway onto his show, reminding her that she promised to bring this up with the candidate. What happened in that discussion? “The conversation was very productive, and I’ve also talked to NBC News today,” responded Conway. “So look, we want fair coverage, and we want everybody to be safe at our rallies. I don’t appreciate a lot of the threats I get either, from people who, I guess, are worried that we may actually win this thing…He’s not asking people to be mean to her. He’s not asking people to do anything, God forbid. He basically calls out some people in the media once in a while to please show our crowds.” Pressed on the practice of singling out journalists, Conway said she encourages people at rallies to be “civil.”