Donald Trump’s attempt to calm the firestorm over his racially based attacks on the judge overseeing Trump University lawsuits did not include an apology but offered clear evidence that the presumptive GOP nominee now recognizes the damage the controversy has done to his campaign.

Tuesday’s attempt to stop the bleeding — which came in the form of a lengthy, lawyerly statement — followed a phone call from Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus imploring Trump to walk the comments back, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation. And it followed several days of pleas from campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who counseled Trump to eschew attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel.


But those pleas fell on deaf ears as Trump opted to double down instead.

Trump, who just Monday had implored surrogates to reject a staffer’s advice to duck questions about the judge and to continue defending his comments, shifted course only after the call with Priebus, who has played a central role in trying to broker a stronger relationship between Trump and the party establishment.

But just as Trump's charged comments could weaken his campaign, they're only adding to the pressure on Priebus — he is already hearing calls from some arguing that Trump's racially based attacks are reason enough to justify the extreme measure of passing a rule to unbind delegates on the first ballot at the RNC convention next month.

The RNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The statement that Trump’s campaign sent out Tuesday afternoon provided an extensive defense of Trump’s bias claims and a vow not to comment further on the case or the judge. And it was clearly an effort to quell intensifying criticism from Republicans of all stripes, almost uniformly troubled by the inherent racism of the comments and the candidate’s seeming inability to pivot to a more presidential bearing as the general election begins.

“It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage. I am friends with and employ thousands of people of Mexican and Hispanic descent,” Trump said in the statement, while also asserting that it’s fair for him to question whether Curiel has a conflict of interest because of his Mexican roots and Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Due to what I believe are unfair and mistaken rulings in this case and the Judge’s reported associations with certain professional organizations, questions were raised regarding the Obama appointed Judge’s impartiality. It is a fair question. I hope it is not the case,” Trump said.

This controversy has swirled around Trump’s campaign for nearly two weeks, ever since Trump first went out of his way to criticize Curiel during a May 27 rally in San Diego, where he first referred to the judge as “a Mexican” in arguing that he was biased against him. Curiel was born in Indiana to Mexican parents.

The ensuing days of news coverage, as Trump himself stubbornly pressed on with and expanded upon that argument and left prominent Republicans to recoil in horror, have unraveled whatever party unity he’d managed to loosely knot together in the weeks since becoming the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk on Tuesday rescinded his endorsement of Trump, saying the Curiel comments in the context of past remarks have made it impossible for him to support the likely nominee. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who’d appeared open to working with Trump after a phone call softened his Never Trump stance, has been urging other Republicans to follow suit. And House Speaker Paul Ryan, who finally endorsed Trump last week, saw his press rollout of the new GOP policy agenda Tuesday overshadowed by questions about Trump’s comments, which he strongly criticized as being the “textbook definition of a racist comment.”

For several days, Manafort and his allies had urged Trump to stop attacking Curiel and to respond to questions about the Trump University lawsuit by going on offense, highlighting Bill Clinton’s ties to the for-profit Laureate Education and the grants the company received from Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

According to three sources inside the campaign, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski argued against changing course. But both Lewandowski and Manafort on Tuesday night dismissed all suggestions that they were divided on this issue.

“For anyone to insinuate that Paul and I are on different pages, that is totally inaccurate," Lewandowski said.

Even after the call from Priebus, Trump offered no apology as he continued pressing his case — through in a less strident tone — in the statement on Tuesday.

“The American justice system relies on fair and impartial judges. All judges should be held to that standard,” Trump said. “I do not feel that one’s heritage makes them incapable of being impartial, but, based on the rulings that I have received in the Trump University civil case, I feel justified in questioning whether I am receiving a fair trial.”

Ben Schreckinger contributed to this report.

UPDATE: This story has been updated with a comment from Trump's campaign manager.

