Reince Priebus spent much of the call trying to defuse what he described as a series of false “rumors” from the weekend that the committee would be shifting its focus to down-ballot races. | AP Priebus promises RNC still stands with Trump Reince Priebus says the committee went dark all weekend to let the nominee explain himself.

With Donald Trump’s campaign in a historic free fall, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus declared Monday that the party is standing behind its presidential nominee.

“First of all, I want to make it very clear that the RNC is in full coordination with the Trump campaign, and we have a great relationship with them. If there’s any takeaway from this call, that’s the takeaway,” Priebus told RNC members during an emergency conference call, which POLITICO obtained a recording of.


“Nothing has changed in regard with our relationship and we remain very much involved and together in all levels of making these decisions with how to run this operation across this country.”

“Everything is on course,” Priebus said. “I want you to understand that.”

The call came amid mounting questions about whether the Republican Party was preparing to abandon Trump amid revelations that he had once bragged about sexually assaulting women. On Monday morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he would no longer defend Trump and would instead focus on protecting the majority in his congressional chamber. The announcement represented an extraordinary break as the highest-ranking elected Republican said he was no longer standing with the Republican nominee.

Priebus spent much of the 14-minute call trying to defuse what he described as a series of false “rumors” from the weekend that the committee would be shifting its focus to down-ballot races. He dismissed talk that staffers had left the RNC and the Trump campaign, and said there had been no discussion of finding a new nominee — something he described as impractical.

“There’d been obviously in the last 24 hours, the last 36 hours, a lot of false rumors that we didn’t want to engage in before the debate last night, which was very important,” he said. “So here we are.”

Since the release of the bombshell 2005 tape, many RNC officials expressed frustration about not being able to get answers from the committee. Some of them said they spent the weekend trying to get in touch with RNC leaders but received “radio silence.”

One party chair, Robert Graham of Arizona, offered a sharp criticism of the RNC on Monday — pointing specifically to the committee’s decision to temporarily halt over the weekend production of some political mail boosting Trump.

“Leadership is more than stopping political mail, not campaigning for someone or making statements condemning a person’s comments made nearly a dozen years before,” said Graham, who is expected to wage a campaign to be the next RNC chairman. “Leadership is making the tough decisions, digging in and sacrificing for beliefs and ideas greater than one person.”

During the call, Priebus said he and Trump campaign officials had reached the conclusion that they wanted to let Trump explain the video without any “cross-talk,” which could have obscured the apology he planned to deliver during the debate. The chairman said Trump had demonstrated contrition on Sunday evening in St. Louis, delivering an apology that was “heartfelt.”

“I am happy that Donald apologized a few different times about it. He apologized to the American people, he apologized to his family,” he said. “He was embarrassed, he was ashamed. And honestly, I can tell you it was very heartfelt because I’ve seen it one on one with him over the weekend. And it wasn’t something that wasn’t just said at the debate. It’s something that he feels, as Gov. [Mike] Pence says, in his heart.”

Priebus promised to update RNC members with another conference call in around a week. He ended the call without taking questions.

