Fredreka Schouten

USA TODAY

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Donald Trump will have to answer questions about his conduct toward women, but said Republicans voters aren't "judging" the party's presumptive nominee on his personal life.

"There are things he's going to have to answer for," Priebus said Sunday on ABC's This Week. "But I also think there are things from many years ago."

"I don't think Donald Trump is being judged based on his personal life," Priebus added. "I think people are judging Donald Trump as to whether or not he's someone that's going to go to Washington and shake things up. That's why he's doing so well."

Republicans, including Preibus himself, have made it clear that they view former President Bill Clinton's personal conduct as fair game in the 2016 election that's shaping up as a battle between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

"He’s a public figure. He’s a former president," Priebus told BuzzFeed last year. "And they want to launch Hillary into the public eye. She deserves just as much scrutiny as anybody. And if Bill Clinton was up to things we find to be unscrupulous, I think that people ought to know about it.”

On Sunday, Priebus sought to blame Clinton and her allies for raising concerns about Trump's behavior. "It's when people live in glass houses and throw stones is when people get into trouble," he said. "It's a classic Clinton operation. Now, suddenly these things are coming out."

Priebus' comments came on the heels of a New York Times story, describing Trump's "unsettling workplace conduct" toward women. Times journalists spent weeks interviewing more than 50 women who worked for or with Trump over the past four decades, and the story unearthed complaints of unwelcome romantic advances and streams of inappropriate comments about women's bodies from the real-estate magnate.

NYT: Donald Trump repeatedly crossed the line with women

Trump, already contending with fresh news that he often used pseudonyms to pose as his own spokesman in the 1990s, took to Twitter on Sunday to complain about the Times.

He called the story a "lame hit piece" and accused the paper of refusing to use the stories of women he told the newspaper he had helped. In a later tweet, he said the paper needs to "write the real story on the Clintons and women."

New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro countered that "we did interview and quote women his office suggested."

Paul Manafort, a key Trump aide, told CNN on Sunday that Bill Clinton's past conduct with women is a valid issue in Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House.

"She's talking about breaking the ceiling for women," Manafort said, "and yet she was an enabler and made the victims of those dalliances into a real bad situation."