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Republican Presidential candidate businessman Donald Trump attends the Republican Presidential debate sponsored by Fox Business and the Republican National Committee at the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in Charleston, South Carolina. | Getty Trump, Priebus clash over delegate process

The Republican Party's leading candidate appears to want the nomination even if he cannot amass a majority of the requisite delegates. For the Republican Party's national chairman, on the other hand, the process is the process, and even Donald Trump is no exception.

Therein lies the conflict that threatens to tear the party asunder as the calendar marches inexorably toward the July convention in Cleveland. And as the week began, it showed no signs of abating.

"Well, I think if I'm a few short and I have, you know, 1,200 or if I have 1,100 and somebody else is at 300 or 400 or 500, which is very likely going to be the case, and if I'm a little bit short — and one of the reasons was we had so many candidates," Donald Trump said during an interview Sunday on ABC's "This Week," remarking that the race began with 17 candidates. "And it came down to, you know, finally, it's down to three, frankly. But, you know, there are so many candidates, so it's very hard to get over that number."

"It's very unfair," Trump said, noting the difficulty of amassing a majority "because of the fact that there's so many candidates and so many candidates are grabbing delegates."

Appearing on the same show, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus defended the process against Trump's complaints that his supporters would be disenfranchised if he leaves the Cleveland convention without a nomination despite going into the event with a nominal lead but short of the 1,237 of 2,472 necessary delegates.

"Well, plurality is a minority and a minority doesn’t choose for the majority," Priebus said. "So you have to have a majority of the delegates in order to be the nominee. There's nothing magical about the number. It's 50 percent plus one. So no one's disenfranchised."

Invoking his own multi-ballot election to become party chairman, Priebus noted that he won on the seventh ballot, "hardly a landslide. But I was never behind. But no one called me the winner on the second, third, fourth or fifth ballot. I had to get to a majority."

Addressing the same issue on CNN's "State of the Union," Priebus referred back decades to past instances "when someone's a little bit short," saying that in those instances, "you let the process play out. And generally if it's that close, generally that's what happens. But certainly what I would say is that the minority of delegates doesn't rule for the majority."