Reince Priebus reportedly advised Donald Trump to drop out of the race after leaked audio tape

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last updated 8 December 2016

Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman picked by President-elect Donald Trump to be White House chief of staff, once reportedly tried to talk Trump out of seeing his campaign through to Election Day. Citing "a person briefed on the conversation," New York's Gabriel Sherman reported Thursday that Priebus told Trump he should drop out of the race after the Access Hollywood tape of Trump making lewd comments about women was leaked in early October.

Priebus reportedly said that if Trump did not cut his losses then, he would "go down with a worse election loss than Barry Goldwater's." In the 1964 presidential election, the Republican presidential candidate lost to then-Democratic candidate Lyndon B. Johnson, winning just 52 electoral votes while Johnson won 486.

As we all know now, Priebus ended up being dead wrong about Trump's prospects. Trump, unlike Goldwater, won 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 232. While Priebus' nomination as chief of staff would indicate both he and Trump have moved past the incident, Sherman reported that not everyone on Trump's team has. Some, Sherman wrote, are "dismayed by Priebus' influence because they question the Washington insider's loyalty to the president-elect."