Photo

As Donald J. Trump, who leads his two Republican opponents in both votes and delegates, begins preparing his campaign for a general election, he told voters in Connecticut on Saturday that they should not expect him to start “toning it down.”

Mr. Trump’s message at two stops in Connecticut — first in Waterbury, and later in Bridgeport — seemed to contradict the closed-door pitch his newly installed campaign chief, Paul Manafort, brought to the Republican National Committee’s spring meeting in Florida on Thursday.

There, in a slide show, Mr. Manafort assured members that Mr. Trump was “evolving” and simply playing a part with his incendiary style of campaigning, which has helped drive him to the front of the race but has caused party leaders to worry that Republicans will be punished in November.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump seemed to view Mr. Manafort’s presentation slightly differently.

“Paul was down in Florida and he said, ‘You know, Donald might be changing a little bit over a period of time and he — maybe he’ll tone it down, maybe he won’t, but who knows what happens?’ ” Mr. Trump told a crowd in Waterbury, before rejecting this notion.

“I sort of don’t like toning it down,” he said. “Isn’t it nice that I’m not one of these teleprompter guys?”

Later, in Bridgeport, Mr. Trump again addressed Mr. Manafort’s comments, which have prompted some charges of duplicity from Mr. Trump’s rivals.

“He says, ‘Donald Trump knows, he’s really smart, and he will be different when he’s in private,’ ” Mr. Trump said. “Everybody is!”

But he acknowledged that he understood the calls, including from his wife, Melania, and his oldest daughter, Ivanka, for him to be “more presidential.”

“I started thinking, and I said I can, you know being presidential is easy, much easier than what I have to do,” Mr. Trump said, before quickly adding that, as a colorful entertainer-turned-politician, he might risk boring his audiences if he pivots too much toward general-election propriety.

“Here, I have to rant and rave,” he said. “I have to keep you people going. Otherwise you’ll fall asleep on me.”