Contenders in both parties crisscrossed the Midwestern state seeking an edge ahead of Tuesday's primaries, none more actively than Trump, who's had a rough week and faces a likely struggle against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the state, who has passed Trump in recent Wisconsin polls.

The Republican race is overshadowed by a persistent effort by Trump's rivals in the campaign and the party to force the nomination fight into the July convention — and by his equivocations on whether he will be loyal to the Republican Party or bolt for an independent candidacy if he feels mistreated.

Trump began the afternoon with a rally in the Milwaukee suburb of Racine, where he defended a series of controversial comments in recent days on NATO, abortion and his remark that Japan and South Korea should perhaps be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.

"This politics is a tough business," said Trump. "Because you can say things one way and the press will criticize you horribly. You say it another way and the press will criticize you horribly."

Off the stage, in a more reflective moment, Trump expressed regret that he had retweeted an unflattering photo of rival Ted Cruz's wife, Heidi, paired with a glamorous photo of his own wife, Melania, a former model, as part of a bitter feud between the two men.

"Yeah, it was a mistake," he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. "If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have sent it."

Cruz sought favor in North Dakota, which is not holding a primary or caucuses in the 2016 Republican race. He addressed Republicans at a state convention that is selecting delegates who will go to the national convention unbound to any of the presidential candidates.

Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich sent supporters on their behalf to make the case that they should be backed by North Dakota's delegates at the Cleveland convention in July.

The Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has grown increasingly bitter, too, though it has not matched the Republcan contest for raw hostility. Their attention will quickly turn to an even more consequential contest, in New York on April 19, where the Democratic front-runner dearly hopes to avoid an upset in the state she served as senator. Sanders, who was born in Brooklyn, can claim New York as his home state.

Sanders urged rally-goers to come out in droves Tuesday.

"Here is the political reality," he told a young and pumped-up crowd of thousands on the University of Wisconsin's Eau Claire campus. "If there is a large voter turnout, if working people, many of whom have given up on the political process, if young people come, perhaps for the first time ... we will win on Tuesday."

Clinton sought to draw a contrast with Sanders by emphasizing her Democratic bonafides. Before hundreds gathered in a hotel ballroom in Eau Claire later Saturday, the former secretary of state stressed that she has been "a proud Democrat all my adult life and I think that's kind of important if we're selecting somebody to be a Democratic nominee of the Democratic Party."

That was a swipe at Sanders, a longtime independent senator from Vermont who is expected to make a strong showing in Wisconsin.

Among Trump's biggest recent missteps have been his recent comments on abortion, which have managed to unite both abortion rights activists and opponents in their criticism.

During a taping of "Face The Nation" on Friday, Trump said he believed that, when it comes to abortion: "The laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way." His spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, quickly issued a clarification that Trump meant that laws won't change until he's president and appoints judges who can interpret them differently.

It was the second time in days that he'd stepped in hot water over the issue. On Wednesday, he'd said women should be punished for getting abortions if they're ever banned — a position the notoriously unapologetic campaign quickly reversed.

Trump's comments raised concerns in the Republican Party about whether his unpopularity with women as measured in preference polling would make him unelectable in a general election match-up against Clinton.

In an apparent effort to address that concern, Trump said his wife will be campaigning with him Monday. His daughter Ivanka, who just had a baby, will also be returning to campaign with him in another week or so, he said.

Trump responded at length to criticism from both of his rivals as well as from President Barack Obama over his call to consider allowing South Korea and Japan to acquire nuclear weapons — a position the president said betrayed an ignorance of foreign policy and the world.

"Now I didn't say anything about letting Japan nuke," Trump said. "But I did say, perhaps if we can't do the right deal, we'll have to let them take care of themselves."

Trump said, "if that means they'll have to someday get nuclear weapons, in all fairness folks, I know the way life works, eventually they're going to probably want to do it anyway." And he later claimed that his much-panned assertion that NATO was irrelevant was suddenly being embraced by people who had "studied the organization for 30 years." (**)

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