Donald Trump warned Thursday that if he leaves the Republican presidential race, the new voters he has helped bring to the polls would not stick with the GOP.
“If I get out, all those people are going. They’re all going with me,” Trump told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” by phone on Thursday.
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Trump did not explicitly say he was thinking of leaving the party. When asked if he was thinking of an independent run, Trump said, “Do I want to? No.”
Trump added that he still leads by a significant margin, but at the same time argued that, “I’m not being treated the right way.” Trump has said for months that his pledge not to leave the party is conditional on how the Republican Party treats him.
But Trump said regardless of whether he leaves on his own or loses the nomination, the GOP would lose the “millions” of people he claims he helped bring to the polls. “Whether I ran as an independent or not, those people will never go out and vote,” he said.
Trump made the remarks in response to questions about 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s upcoming speech on the state of the 2016 race. Excerpts of Romney’s speech indicate he will call Trump a “phony” and a “fraud” on Thursday.
Trump responded by insulting Romney on Twitter and calling Romney a “disaster” on MSNBC.
“He’s a man who, as you know, begged me, and I mean begged me, for my endorsement four years ago,” Trump said. “He failed at his campaign, it was a horribly run campaign, Republicans didn’t even go out to vote. He was a disaster. The last month, month-and-a-half, he wasn’t on television. It was almost like he was lost, and he ran one of the worst campaigns… in presidential history.”
WATCH – @realDonaldTrump on GOP: If I get out, all those people are going. They’re all going with me. https://t.co/GHyYgGlIxh
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) March 3, 2016
Trump argued that Romney lost a winnable race, and said people should pay attention to Trump’s campaign, which he said is drawing millions of new voters out to the polls.
“The biggest story in all of politics isn’t so much what’s going on with Mitt Romney, it’s the fact that the Republicans are gaining millions and millions of people because of me,” Trump said.
“This is a huge story and it’s really the big story,” he added. “Now they focus on Romney, who’s just trying to stay relevant, but the biggest story out there by the people that understand it is the fact that the Republican Party is gaining millions and millions of people.”
Trump is scheduled to appear on Thursday night’s debate stage in Detroit.
