“I was the only one who wasn’t going to sign the pledge, and [RNC Chairman] Reince [Priebus] is going crazy because he thought I was going to run independent, and if I ran independent I promise you the Republicans would have had zero chance, OK?” he said. Laughter lit up from the audience. “The independents would beat the Republicans!”

He continued: “So Reince every day… was calling, asking me to sign the pledge. And so I said, ‘You know what, I’ll sign, but only if everyone else does.’ And so I did, and everybody else did. … The pledge was only because of me.”…

Trump also laid into Ted Cruz’s performance on Wednesday night, when the Texas senator refused to endorse him and encouraged conservatives to “vote your conscience.” Cruz expressed exasperation that even his wife, Heidi, had to be escorted from the convention hall as she was being yelled at by delegates who were angry about her husband’s speech.

“Honestly, it could have been a career-ending thing, what he did,” Trump said of Cruz. “He got booed out. His Texas delegation was expecting him to and really thought he was going to endorse. Honestly, I don’t care.”