Donald Trump again leaves open door to third-party bid

Donald Trump is again declining to rule out launching an independent bid for the White House, a decision that Trump says he has not yet made but one that could scramble the November election.

“I want to run as a Republican. I will beat Hillary Clinton,” he told Fox’s Chris Wallace in an interview set to air Sunday morning on “Fox News Sunday.” Excerpts of the interview were released Friday night.

But when pressed to definitively say he would not consider it, Trump added, “I’m gonna have to see how I was treated. It’s very simple.”

Trump has waffled throughout the campaign about whether he would actually run a third-party campaign should he be denied the Republican nomination or, as he puts it, be treated “unfairly” by the Republican National Committee. In September, he signed a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee for president — whoever that may be — but backed off that promise at a CNN town hall event on Tuesday. Trump’s two remaining challengers, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, also distanced themselves from that promise.

Though he has led national polls soon after he announced his bid and has won a majority of the contests so far, it is unknown if Trump will reach the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. He has frequently floated the idea of bolting the party should the GOP establishment somehow deny him a nomination that he believes he has rightly earned.

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