Tuesday’s attempt to stop the bleeding — which came in the form of a lengthy, lawyerly statement — followed a phone call from Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus imploring Trump to walk the comments back, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation. And it followed several days of pleas from campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who counseled Trump to eschew attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel.

But those pleas fell on deaf ears as Trump opted to double down instead…

For several days, Manafort and his allies had urged Trump to stop attacking Curiel and to respond to questions about the Trump University lawsuit by going on offense, highlighting Bill Clinton’s ties to the for-profit Laureate Education and the grants the company received from Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

According to three sources inside the campaign, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski argued against changing course. But both Lewandowski and Manafort on Tuesday night dismissed all suggestions that they were divided on this issue.