Presidential races

Report: RNC chairman warned Trump to change campaign

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus reportedly told Donald Trump last week that if he didn’t change the direction of his presidential campaign, the party would instead focus more on down-ballot races, Time reported.

{mosads}Priebus told the nominee during a phone call that internal party polls show his campaign is going in the wrong direction, GOP officials told the magazine.

The RNC chairman reportedly told Trump that he would have been better off staying at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida since the Republican National Convention last month.

But Trump said during an interview with Time that the interaction never happened.

“He never said that. We never had a conversation about that,” Trump said in a Tuesday interview with Time.

“We do very well together. We never had that conversation. Doesn’t exist. And by the way, Reince Priebus is a terrific guy. He never said that. It was never stated. Why would they state that when I’m raising millions of dollars for them?”

Time later ran a correction to its story, saying that it had mischaracterized conversations between Priebus and Trump and that the RNC chair had expressed concerns but not explicitly warned of a funding shift. 

Trump has sparked a string of controversies over the past few weeks. He faced backlash after attacking the family of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004, and after initially declining to endorse Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for reelection.

Support for the GOP nominee has also been dropping since the Democratic convention last month, which produced a polling bump for that party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton.

Time reported that Priebus told Trump his title is not chairman of the Trump campaign but rather chairman of the RNC. He said he would do what was best for the party.

Priebus also told Trump to stay on message and warned him that he doesn’t have much time left to improve his polling numbers, the magazine reported.

Updated at 8:52 p.m.

Tags Donald Trump Hillary Clinton John McCain Paul Ryan

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