Donald Trump’s campaign is broke. B-R-O-K-E.
Okay, if you or I had the amount of money Trump’s campaign had on hand at the end of May, we would probably feel pretty good about it. But for a presidential campaign, Trump’s financial situation is more like a second-tier primary candidate than a major party nominee. Trump had less than $1.3 million cash on hand, having raised just $3.1 million and loaned his campaign $2.2 million—but since he says he’s not self-funding his general election effort, the fundraising is going to have to pick up in a big way. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, raised $28 million and had $42 million cash on hand.
How bad is it?
Even the defunct campaigns of Ted Cruz and Ben Carson had more cash on hand than Trump’s.
In fact, several House members running for reelection have more cash on hand than Trump’s campaign. Peter King (R-N.Y.) had $3 million, Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) reported $2.2 million, Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) each reported about $1.8 million, and Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) had $1.4 million.
The campaign isn’t exactly a lean mean operation making the best possible use of money to win, either—it spent more than four times as much on hats as on data management. But never fear, Republicans, because Trump's response to these numbers was that “I understand money far better than anybody.” Case closed. Of course, that’s also coming from the same guy who claimed this last month:
Since Trump has said he won’t self-fund his general election campaign, does that mean he no longer stands “100% behind everything we do”? Or is he standing behind it morally but can’t afford to continue standing behind it financially? Either way, Trump is going to have to swallow his pride and go begging to the Republican donors who have stayed far, far away from him so far.
Tuesday, Jun 21, 2016 · 2:20:36 PM +00:00
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Laura Clawson
Okaayyyy, maybe Trump will do a little self-funding in order to derail all these stories about his terrible situation and raise some money. According to a fundraising email, Trump is “personally matching every dollar that comes in WITHIN THE NEXT 48 HOURS, up to $2 million!”
Among other hilarious things here, it’s super funny that he’s making this big push, and giving himself 48 hours to raise $2 million online. Someone hasn’t been investing in list-building and now he’s paying the price in low fundraising expectations.