OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
For months, former President Donald Trump lagged behind his likely 2024 opponent, President Joe Biden, and Democrats, but over the past several weeks, the financial imbalance has eroded significantly.
Despite facing concerns about his age and backlash from the Israel-Hamas conflict, Biden and the Democratic National Committee continued to outpace their Republican counterparts in fundraising by millions of dollars. While Donald Trump led Biden in national and key swing state polls, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Trump campaign grappled with financial struggles, The Daily Caller noted.
However, over the past two months, the RNC and Trump campaign have begun to chip away at the cash advantage Biden once held. With Trump’s camp consistently announcing record-breaking fundraising numbers, one of Biden’s few apparent advantages in a closely contested election could diminish, strategists told the outlet.
“Democrats will keep up. It’s not going to be a blowout, money-wise, but they expected Trump to lose the ability to raise money by charging him with these over-the-top prosecutions,” Mark R. Weaver, a GOP strategist, told the Caller. “They didn’t realize that the liquid they were throwing on the fire was not water, but gasoline,” he added.
Today, the Trump campaign announced a record-shattering small-dollar fundraising haul following the sham Biden Trial verdict totaling $34.8 million – nearly double the biggest day ever recorded for the Trump campaign on the WinRed platform.
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) May 31, 2024
Trump’s fundraising efforts started after the GOP primary ended. In April, the RNC and the campaign raised $76 million, which was about $25 million more than Biden and the DNC raised. It was the first time this election cycle that the Trump campaign surpassed their competitors in monthly fundraising.
In the month before, the Biden campaign and the DNC raised $90 million, while Trump and the RNC raised $65.6 million. In total, Trump’s campaign had $93.1 million cash on hand, while Biden’s team had $192 million at the end of March.
May has proven to be a significant month for the Trump campaign, which saw a surge in donations following a Manhattan jury’s conviction of Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The influx of supporters caused the campaign’s donation site to crash, and within 24 hours of the verdict, it raised $54.8 million. By the end of the month, the campaign reported total donations of approximately $141 million. Details on the fundraising totals for both campaigns in May are still pending, as FEC filings have not yet been released, the Caller noted.
The increase in fundraising coincides with the merger of the Trump campaign and the RNC. In the spring, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and allied operative Michael Whatley became co-chairs of the party organization. Key Trump campaign officials also joined the RNC in various roles.
“This was a much-needed shot in the arm, and although I anticipate Biden and the entire Democratic apparatus having more money, just like they’ve had going back to 2016, Trump needs enough to make sure that they can run the kind of ground game and turnout effort that he needs to win,” Scott Jennings, a longtime Republican adviser in Kentucky and veteran of several campaigns, told the Caller.
Jennings mentioned that a significant portion of Trump’s support comes from mid- and low-propensity voters and unregistered Americans, who are less likely to turn out on election day.
“When I think about what Trump would do with a massive cash infusion, my mind immediately goes to, oh, he’s going to put this into a ground game to ensure that these mid- to low-propensity voters actually come out. And if he’s able to do that and jack up the turnout among that audience, he’s going to win,” he added.
Weaver said that the Democrat-led legal cases against Trump are going to have the opposite effect of what the Biden campaign and allies had hoped for.
“It looked as though [Trump] might get beat in the primaries by Ron DeSantis or someone else, but then the Biden White House and its allies started bringing bogus and over-the-top charges against Donald Trump, and it angered a lot of people in the middle who see America as a place where the rule of law and due process matter,” Weaver said.
“Biden and his minions thought that they were politically drowning Donald Trump. But what they’re really doing is lifting the tide of his support in such a way that the Biden campaign will start to fall behind in the fundraising game,” Weaver noted further.
