On The O'Reilly Factor Monday evening, guest Karl Rove refused to tell guest host Eric Bolling that the Republican establishment would do everything in its power to avoid a brokered convention.
"If Donald Trump has a plurality of delegates, but not a majority," Bolling asked, "will you get behind the guy?"
"The rules in the party have always said that the nominee of the Republican Party is chosen by a majority of the delegates at the convention," he said.
"That is the rule that Donald Trump will have to live with. We've had six Republican nominees who were not the leaders on the first ballot, and we may for the first time since 1940 see that happen again this year."
Bolling later asked about the Rules Committee meeting to supposedly change the rules about delegate distribution, but Rove insisted that any such changes were minor, and were in no way motivated by Trump's success in the primaries to date.
The rule in question, he said, was about how many states needed to support a candidate before his or her surrogate would be allowed to make a nominating speech, and it was motivated by Ron Paul's inability to have his surrogate's speech televised at the last convention. "There is no enthusiasm about changing substantive rules that will be applied at this convention," he added.
"Karl, you and I both know that there have been meetings between high-level Republicans and the RNC in Washington DC talking about 'how can the rules be changed so the establishment can get the candidate they want,'" Bolling replied.
Rove characterized Bolling's questions as unsubstantiated "paranoia," noting "that's not what the stories that I read said."
Watch the entire exchange below via Fox News.
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