‘The numbers right now aren’t good.’
Why Trump is fundraising more than ever.
FOR YEARS, DONALD TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN STAFF struggled to get him to make donor calls and take fundraising seriously.
But that was before Trump faced an incumbent president and a primary opponent who was outraising him. It was before he was hit with nearly $540 million in civil fines against him and his family business in two New York cases. And it was before his political committee shelled out about $50 million in legal bills stemming from those civil cases (as well as the four criminal indictments he faces).
Now Trump is wooing contributors more than ever, sources tell The Bulwark. They say Trump is making fundraising a priority by:
Hosting more traditional events and making donor calls. Trump has two fundraisers this week at Mar-a-Lago, had two there last week, and raised $6 million on the day New York Justice Arthur Engoron slapped the Trump Organization with a record fraud fine. His campaign pulled in another $6 million from a South Carolina fundraiser days before he beat Nikki Haley in her home state’s presidential primary. Former Democratic Congresswoman and 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is headlining a March 7 Mar-a-Lago fundraiser as well for Trump.
Quietly raising money for the Republican National Committee’s “nominee fund,” which he can’t yet access because he’s not yet the presidential nominee, much to his annoyance. At the same time, he’s also pulling in millions more to the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. super PAC.
Beefing up his online and digital fundraising staff. They have an emphasis on raising more small-dollar donors online, who are still the financial lifeblood of his campaign. And 10 cents of every dollar raised online goes to his Save America committee, which finances nearly all his legal bills. Small-dollar donors have been decreasing for Trump, according to a CNBC report that found some contributors have complained about overbilling.
Trump’s legal issues have impacted his money picture in multiple ways: (1) They made some big donors nervous about giving to him, depriving him of money he otherwise would have had sooner. (2) They led some big donors to give to Haley instead, thereby prolonging her campaign. (3) They armed Trump critics with the argument that he wants the RNC to pay his legal bills. (4) The big financial judgments against him have made cash more scarce for Trump—which in turn make it harder to fill gaps by self-funding (which Trump has always been loath to do and hasn’t done this cycle).
“He’s much more engaged than I’ve ever seen him at this, and that’s because he has to be,” said one Republican familiar with the campaign’s finances. “The numbers right now aren’t good, but we should raise a billion dollars or $900 million at this pace now. We’ll have enough.”
The Republican, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations with Trump, was with the former president at the February 16 Mar-a-Lago fundraiser after Justice Engoron’s fine and said Trump “was clearly peeved. He knew it was happening. The number was clearly a lot. But he was strangely in a good mood. You or I would be in therapy if something like that happened to us, but Trump compartmentalizes and the business stuff doesn’t matter as much. What matters is becoming president. He thinks he’s going to win. And he believes that if he wins, all this other stuff gets taken care of.”
Trump has reported having enough cash and assets to pay off the fines, and he briefly fumed to others that he viewed the rulings against him as a way to take all of his easier-to-get money.
“That’s how much cash I have. They’re trying to take my cash away,” Trump told one.
Trump’s need to focus on fundraising came into sharp focus last week when his campaign reported raising $8.8 million, spending $11.4 million and ending with $30.5 million in the bank in January, during the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. By contrast, President Biden banked nearly $56 million, raised nearly $6.9 million more than Trump, and spent about $5.8 million less than Trump.
The disparities between the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee are stark as well. The DNC pulled in $5.8 million more than the RNC, spent $3.5 million more, and ended the month with $15.4 million more in the bank.
The DNC is also under Biden’s control; the RNC isn’t (yet) under Trump’s.
But Trump forced the pending resignation of RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, who announced Monday she plans to step down on March 8 when the RNC’s voting members meet. They’re likely to install Trump’s picks: North Carolina’s Michael Whatley as chair and Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair. Trump wants co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita to take over the role of chief operations officer.
Last Thursday, Lara Trump told reporters that Republican voters would “absolutely” support financing Trump’s legal bills. She didn’t explicitly say that the RNC would pay for them, but NBC reported she said it, leading Haley’s campaign to accuse her of it saying it as well.
In response, LaCivita told reporters on Saturday that the RNC would not pay for Trump’s lawyers.
“No,” he said when asked directly about it. Asked again to clarify, an exasperated LaCivita said, “fucking no.”
RNC member Henry Barbour of Mississippi, who supports Haley, said he wants to make sure LaCivita and the Trump campaign make good on their word, so this weekend he floated a draft resolution for the RNC to vote on on March 8 that says “the Republican National Committee will not pay the legal bills of any of our candidates for any federal or state office, but will focus our spending on efforts directly related to the 2024 election cycle.”
“Part of the thinking is to get them on the record [over the legal bills]. It’s in the RNC’s interest,” Barbour told The Bulwark. He’s also sponsoring another resolution calling on the RNC to remain neutral during the primary “until a nominee is clearly determined by reaching 1,215 delegates.” The Trump campaign projects he’ll hit that threshold by mid-March.
Barbour acknowledges that neither resolution is likely to pass. To introduce the measures, Barbour needs to win the backing of two RNC members from 10 states or territories, and he doesn’t yet have that on the 168-member panel.
Still, Barbour said, “it’s important to have this discussion.”
Another RNC member, John Wahl of Alabama, said Trump’s support is so strong on the committee that the resolutions probably wouldn’t pass if they won the support of 20 members for introduction. But, he said, “the few folks who aren’t with Trump are nervous” about Lara Trump’s comments concerning Trump’s legal bills and how her sole focus was on ensuring a Trump victory.
So far, Trump has been able to finance his legal bills through his Save America committee, which has spent an average of almost $3.9 million every month since January 2023, according to Federal Election Commission reports. Last month, Save America spent $2.9 million on legal bills and reported incurring an additional $1.8 million in new debts for legal fees. To cover the costs, Save America has been raising money online from small donors and it has been receiving regular cash infusion refunds from the MAGA Inc. super PAC, which had been given $42 million by Save America last year. If that sounds confusing . . . it is.
“MAGA Inc. can only refund [for legal expenses] what Save America gave it, so it’s got around $12.75M remaining before that avenue gets closed off,” Rob Pyers, a campaign finance expert, told The Bulwark. “Trump has about two or three months of runway before the MAGA, Inc. refund-well goes dry and Save America needs to find another funding source to pay his lawyers.”
Other than that, Pyers said, his main takeaways from the most recent finance reports “are that the DNC / Biden advantage is about what I’d expect for an incumbent/party in power [and] the RNC needs to start raising a ton of money quickly.”
Which puts more pressure on Trump to put away his pride and dial for dollars.
“It used to be impossible to get him to do that. He loved the imagery of being self-funded but he really didn’t self-fund,” said one Republican involved in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. “The bulk of his fundraising is small and medium-sized donors online. That’s partly because he’s not the toast of the financial elite. And he never will be.”
Trump is more likely to make the calls if he knows it will yield a max-out donation for his campaign ($6,600) and even bigger checks for his super PAC, Save America, or the RNC nominee fund.
In contrast to his prior campaigns, Trump now has a staff that both stays in regular contact with big donors—including those who have yet to give to him, like billionaire Ken Griffin—and follows up after calls to make sure the checks are (figuratively) mailed and (literally) cashed.
“It’s no longer amateur hour at the Trump campaign,” said one confidant. “And that means the candidate needs to be a pro about fundraising.”
When we step back. All this money just highlights our decadence. High priced coffee is one thing. But spending more on a campaign then half the world's GDP is stark (a good portion that goes to pay a criminals bills for gaming the very system a flag is flown for is painful to watch).
So, basically, America's oligarchs need to decide whom they're gonna support - the public servant Biden or the self-serving Trump.