Trump threatens GOP with third-party run

Even if he isn’t the Republican nominee for 2016, don’t count on Donald Trump to go quietly. If the Republican National Committee does not treat him fairly during the primary season, he says, the chances he will run as a third-party candidate will “absolutely” increase.

“The RNC has not been supportive. They were always supportive when I was a contributor. I was their fair-haired boy,” he told The Hill in an interview published Thursday morning. “The RNC has been, I think, very foolish.”


Trump has led several recent national polls among Republican voters, though a recent Quinnipiac University survey this week showed him with severely negative approval ratings in the swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Virginia.

The billionaire business mogul said that “so many want me to” run as a third-party candidate if he does not win the GOP nomination.

“I’ll have to see how I’m being treated by the Republicans,” he said, adding that if “they’re not fair, that would be a factor” in deciding whether he would make a third-party run.

Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman, called Trump earlier in July asking him to dial back his tone, specifically on immigration. The RNC also issued a statement last Saturday after Trump remarked that Arizona Sen. John McCain was not a war hero, and then that he was only a war hero because he was captured.

“I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said at an event in Iowa.

“John McCain is an American hero because he served his country and sacrificed more than most can imagine. Period,” the RNC’s statement said. “There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably.”

Trump has since clarified that he does believe McCain is a good man and a war hero, though he has not explicitly apologized.