So much for Donald Trump, the biz whiz. Just like Trump ran his businesses into the ground enough times to declare multiple bankruptcies, he managed to burn through $1 billion raised since he took office in 2017, limping into the final month of the campaign with a delightfully meager $63.1 million that surely won't even cover the costs for the rest of his campaign.
"Yikes," tweeted Rufus Gifford, a deputy campaign manager for Joe Biden and former Obama fundraising chief. "Remember when Trump said he would fund his own campaign if he needed to? Well.... He needs to," Gifford added.
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No wonder the Trump campaign announced a final ad buy this week in coordination with the Republican National Committee of just $55 million split between 11 states. Don't be surprised if they wind up yanking ads from some of those states at the last minute.
Also, it's about to get a lot hotter inside Trump's campaign as consultants and aides realize that check likely isn't in the mail and never will be. What was Trump's word for that? Oh yeah—suckers. At least, they can commiserate with all the high-dollar GOP donors who pushed tens of thousands or even millions to Trump's campaign and allied committees/PACs only to watch him pay his legal fees and subsidize the rise of Trump Jr.'s hot read Triggered to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden's campaign has been a vision of efficiency. Here's a side by side, according to Times reporter Shane Goldmacher:
- Biden ended September with $177 million cash on hand
- Trump had $63 million in cash, minus $1.36 million in debts
- Biden plus party committees had $432 million in total ending September
- Trump plus committees had $251 million in total
- Biden's joint ventures with the Democratic Party spent $82.4 million to raise $457 million in July, August, and September
- Trump's joint committees with the RNC spent $190.8 million to raise $355.2 million in the same period
So Biden and the DNC spent less than half what Trump and the RNC did while raising fully $100 million more. Put another way, Biden spent about 18 cents for every $1 raised while Trump spent 54 cents for every $1 raised. More recently, fundraising seems to have gotten even harder, with the AP reporting that Trump’s grassroots fundraising operation is spending 77 cents for every dollar raised.
The Trump campaign's financial situation was so dire that Trump ditched the campaign trail Sunday to attend a hastily arranged fundraiser in California. Bet those donors feel pretty great about every penny spent. Who knows, maybe they all left with complimentary copies of Triggered.