GOP chair: Republican rebellion against Trump is dead

(Image credit: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

last updated 18 July 2016

In an interview with The Associated Press published early Saturday, Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus said the GOP has come to accept Donald Trump as its leader, which would put the party in the fifth and final stage of grief.

"There is no other candidate," Priebus said. "That was one of the problems that this 'Never Trump' issue had last night. Who is the other candidate? What VP nominees are you vetting? We're voting next week — on Tuesday or Wednesday. What money are you raising? Where is this person?" Any attempts at rebellion, he concluded, are "over."

Priebus also defended Trump against charges that his promised pivot into statesmanship for the general election has yet to materialize. Trump's pick of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate plus increased focus on fundraising and campaign hires "should tell you a lot about his pivot to the general," Priebus said. "This is a person that has never run for public office. It just takes longer to move into that mode."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.