Top Trump aide tells RNC the candidate has a 'different persona' in private

Donald Trump supporters.
(Image credit: Mark Makela/Getty Images)

A top aide to Donald Trump told a meeting of the Republican National Committee on Thursday that the Republican frontrunner has a "different persona" when he's behind closed doors, NBC News reports.

In a recording of the meeting obtained by NBC News, Paul Manafort says that when Trump is "out on the stage, when he's talking about the kinds of things he's talking about on the stump, he's projecting an image that's for that purpose." He's doing this, Manafort continued, in order to keep supporters on his side. "He gets it," Manafort said, and "the part that he's been playing is evolving into the part that now you've been expecting, but he wasn't ready for because he had to first feed the first phase."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.