On Monday afternoon, Donald Trump set the stage for what’s looking more and more like a crushing defeat against Hillary Clinton—the kind of failure that, despite serious evidence to the contrary, he claims he's just not accustomed to. “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest,” he told the crowd at his rally in Columbus, Ohio. Trump added the line to his regular stump speech this week, in the apparent hope that, like the enduring fable that he’s a successful businessman, if he repeats it enough, people will believe him.

As Clinton gains ground in key swing states while Trump stokes feuds with the family of a fallen soldier, his own party, and even an actual baby, it may be dawning on him that success in the election, much like with Trump Steaks, might not be possible. And the GOP may be hitting its breaking point: Senior Republican officials—including an “apoplectic” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus—are reportedly scrambling for a Plan B in case Trump drops out.

So what if he does quit? Dr. Lara Brown, the director of the Political Management program at George Washington University and an expert in presidential campaigns and elections, lays out what happens next.

GQ: Can Republicans actually force out a candidate they don’t like?

Dr. Lara Brown: Well, the candidate would actually have to exit the race. But as we’ve seen oftentimes with political scandals of government officials, a lot of times you see somebody who is essentially being forced to resign. They usually say things like, "I want to spend more time with my family," but everyone in politics knows that they've been asked to leave. So can the Republicans do that? Well, if they are able to bring enough pressure upon Donald Trump, then sure. And if there is officially a vacancy in the nomination, then the party rules do provide for filling that vacancy.

So say he does drop out. What happens next? What are the GOP’s options for replacing him?

Well, it's actually pretty simple. The Republican National Committee has a rule, it's called Rule 9, and it basically authorizes and empowers the committee, which has officially 168 members*, to replace the nominee.

They would have to vote, and under that voting provision, those states and territories would have officially the same number of votes that they had in terms of delegates at the convention. And then those three people would have to decide how the votes should be cast. In other words, for whom. And if, let's say, two members wanted to vote for Cruz, and one member in the committee wanted to vote for Rubio, then they would have to divide the number of delegate votes.

So of that 168 people, it's just whoever would have the majority?

Yeah.

That's nuts that they could decide the Republican nominee after we've gone through all of this.

Well, it's not, really. Because this provision is there really for if the candidate dies. We have these provisions at all points in our presidential process.

Who can they choose from? Are there any restrictions on who's eligible?

No. That's what's so interesting... When you look at it, and you think about it logically, this is about extreme circumstances, were it to be death, or insanity**, or disability.

Is there any precedent for, not someone dying, but at this point in the election, trying to force out a major party nominee?

No. We just don't really have an occasion where a candidate was nominated and they either passed away before the election, or the nomination was withdrawn.

But we certainly have had incredibly raucous nominating conventions. Teddy Roosevelt stormed out of the Republican party with all of the delegates [in 1912], which is why the Republicans ended up nominating Taft, and Roosevelt then creates the Progressive Party, what they call the Bull Moose Party, and he runs as a third-party candidate. We've had very divisive, raucous nomination cycles, where parties have fractured and divided and created splinter parties. Strom Thurmond in 1948 did the same thing. He stormed out of the Democratic convention and created the Dixiecrats. We certainly have had all that. We have not seen a situation where a candidate, afterwards, has essentially become unavailable.