Does anyone love anything as much as Donald Trump loves rallies? The former president gets to hold forth before adoring crowds who swallow absolutely anything he tells them. He’ll spew nonsense, worrying gaffes, even admit he lost in 2020, and they’ll let it all slide. He even gets to dance to songs by groups that hate his guts. They’re where he gets to be him. One would think his schedule would be packed with them; after all, he’s clinched the Republican presidential nomination for a third time, and Election Day 2024 is seven-and-a-half months away. Alas, he’s a bit short on cash.
A new report by The New York Times looks into the Trump campaign’s finances, which are quite a bit shy of his presumptive foe. Back in February, the Joe Biden campaign were sitting on a fat $130 million. Trump, meanwhile, only has $40 million, and that’s only if one throws in the bounty possessed by the Republican National Committee, which was recently taken over by his daughter-in-law Lara. Ergo, in a bit caught by Raw Story, that shortage means the number of rallies will have to be cut down.
That doesn’t mean Trump won’t be stumping for himself; he’ll just be doing a smaller version of it from the resort in which he lives. At least three nights a week he’s been welcoming wealthy visitors to private dinners at Mar-a-Lago. He doesn’t technically ask for dough; he simply tries to woo them:
Despite years of professing massive wealth and boasting of his desire to “drain the swamp,” the deeply transactional former president is leaning yet again on the cash of others, turning Mar-a-Lago into a staging ground for billionaires and others with their own agendas. One potential leverage point with the biggest G.O.P. financiers is the package of tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017. Many of those cuts expire at the end of 2025, and Mr. Biden has vowed not to extend them for the nation’s highest earners.
How’s that working out for him? So far at least two donors who have already made seven-figure “pledges” to support him have been asked to bump that up to eight-figures, i.e., $10 million or more. (Alas, Elon Musk, whom Trump reportedly begged for scratch the other week, doesn’t appear to be one of them, having sworn to not donate to any presidential candidate.)
To make matters worse, Trump keeps having to fork over fortunes due to his legal woes, including posting a $91.6 million bond for his civil case over defaming E. Jean Carroll — something he continues to do even after being found liable twice.
In the meantime, unless the allegedly wealthy and smart businessman lucks into some avalanche of cash, there’s a chance many of his supporters will have to miss out on him spouting things like how he will be a dictator if re-elected.