There has been a great deal of speculation about GOP front-runner Donald Trump launching an independent campaign, but Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Wednesday that he was never worried about that happening.
"I never lost any sleep over it," Priebus told
CNN's "New Day," responding to Trump's comments during Tuesday night's GOP debate that he respects the party and will stay on the ticket as a Republican.
"The truth is, it's extremely difficult," said Priebus about people who launch third-party campaigns. "Once you start running on ballots as a Republican or Democrat, it's very, very difficult in this country to then change your mind and reverse course, because most states have what they call loser laws which means once you're on the ballot in one party, you can't switch."
Also, said Priebus, when the candidates gave him their pledge to stay on the GOP ticket, he never doubted any of them.
"I never doubted that any of these folks would reverse course," he told CNN. "I trusted the people that were on the stage and I always knew that they would adhere to the pledge."
Meanwhile, he said, the RNC is interacting with all of the campaigns and knows what's going on, both by telephone and in person.
"I was never worried about it, and so it was one of those narratives out there that percolates every once in a while that we deal with, but it doesn't mean that we're actually sitting around biting our fingernails concerned that something like that will actually happen," said Priebus.
Meanwhile, he said the party's leadership will reevaluate whether to keep undercard debates going on, but still, when "you have 5 million, 6 million people watching the first debate, it's sort of hard to make the case that it's not something that's very valuable for our party and these candidates obviously deserve an opportunity to make their case."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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