Trump's broke-ass campaign is relying on the Republican National Committee to do the actual work of electing him president. With the Bush and Romney money sitting on the sidelines, the RNC is not sitting on nearly enough cash to do the job:
As for his campaign, the last FEC report said he had $2.4 million in his account, and $44 million in debt. That debt, by the way, is to one Donald J. Trump, which is proof he’s not even self-funding the red-hats-and-tweeting phase of the campaign. The RNC had about $17 million on hand and $4 million in debt. They’re only about $970 million dollars short of the combined Romney/RNC/SuperPAC total for 2012.
Trump is rich, but most of his money isn't liquid—it’s tied up in stuff. The one thing he could do is borrow against his assets to self-fund but if he doesn't win, he's in hock to his bankers. Rest assured, they're gonna want to see the real books. Folks, that means leaks.
The RNC has hit GOP donors with daily Trump email appeals since he clinched the nomination, but their silence on the return on that fundraising a message in itself.
It’s not coming from the RNC, either. They simply don’t have the money to do it, and never will. Part of the reason Preibus rolled over so quickly was the thought Trump would stroke a massive check to the RNC, when Trump never intended to do so. I can imagine the Titanic sinking sensation in the pit of Reince’s stomach when stories hit this weekend that Trump’s campaign was broke. Even though Trump has farmed out all the voter contact, data and research operations of a normal campaign to the RNC, a national campaign (outside of the media buys) is going to cost at minimum $250 million dollars. This is for the invisible operational underpinnings of voter contact, data, targeting, legal compliance, field staff, headquarters, and so on, and the RNC has no path to raise that money independently.
And that leaves us with Trump-backed SuperPACs.
There will be some consultants who will obviously get in on the graft, but where are they going to get the kind of dough that it takes to win? From billionaires. But billionaires aren't going to save Trump out of the kindness of their hearts. He's going to have to go crawling on his hands and knees ... and that means goodbye to all his bullshit about trade, tax increases, and rounding up immigrants.
Quite a pickle.
