Manafort: Comments about Trump playing a ‘part’ taken out of context

by Rebecca Savransky - 04/24/16 9:24 AM ET

Donald Trump’s convention manager, Paul Manafort, on Sunday said his comments that the Republican front-runner is playing a “part” and will start to pivot toward a more presidential persona were taken out of context.

“I was talking about rallies versus some other setting,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

{mosads}”In the context of that room, that’s what was said and that’s what was understood.”

Manafort told members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) at the party’s spring meeting in Hollywood, Fla., that Trump “gets it.”

“The part that he’s been playing is now evolving into the part that you’ve been expecting. The negatives will come down, the image is going to change, but ‘Crooked Hillary’ is still going to be ‘Crooked Hillary,’ ” Manafort added, referring to Trump’s moniker for Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.

“On the campaign setting, you’re seeing the real Donald Trump in campaign mode talking to people who believe in his candidacy,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Manafort said RNC members at the closed-door meeting wanted to know if Trump was going to be giving speeches on policies and doing campaign events in different settings.

“And that was the context I was talking about,” he said.

“We were evolving the campaign, not the candidate and the settings were going to start changing.”

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