United States President Donald Trump is putting out the word that he is considering spending as much as US$100 million ($150m) of his own fortune on his re-election effort.
Campaign officials are trying to buck up key supporters and donors amid daunting polling numbers and other bad news.
Trump said today that he's prepared to use his own money and spend "whatever it takes" to win a second term in the White House, but he sidestepped just how much of his own cash he's willing to invest.
"If I have to, I would," Trump said of spending his own money.
Speaking to reporters before departing for the battleground states of Florida and North Carolina, he added, "We have much more money than we had last time going into the last two months. But if we needed any more, I'd put it up."
In a break from the past, @politico decided more than two years ago to assemble a team of political reporters with deep roots in key states and regions — Fla., Pa., the Midwest (Ill., Mich., Minn.), Calif., NC and New England. Why does this matter? 1/11https://t.co/ZBR2aBa9UZ
— Carrie Budoff Brown (@cbudoffbrown) September 8, 2020
Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor, said that two senior campaign officials told him in recent days that Trump was considering a personal investment in the campaign of as much as US$100m.
Eberhart said the campaign is trying to create "a little excitement" among top donors and prominent supporters as polls have shown Trump consistently trailing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden nationally and in some battleground states.
Trump also is grappling with the political fallout from the mounting number of coronavirus deaths and the pandemic's economic toll.
Russia is spreading disinformation regarding former Vice President Joe Biden’s mental health, according to a DHS bulletin obtained by ABC News. https://t.co/KaT9tKGyfX
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) September 8, 2020
Trump spent more than US$60m of his own money on his 2016 run for the White House.
This time, he began raising campaign funds almost immediately after his inauguration and built an enormous war chest early on that advisers believed put him at a distinct advantage over the Democratic nominee.
Eberhart said he was sceptical that Trump will spend US$100m of his own money and questioned whether money was significantly hampering the President's campaign. Bloomberg News was first to report that Trump was weighing the significant personal investment in the campaign.
In recent polls, Biden has substantially made up ground on the economy, going from several points or more down to tied or within a point of Trump in polls released last week. https://t.co/BisaEsSz3s
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) September 8, 2020
"He didn't do it before, why would he do it now?" Eberhart said. He added, "This is about telling supporters: Don't pay attention to the polls. Don't pay attention to the media. We're going to win this thing."
Eberhart said that if Trump follows through with spending his own money it would put pressure on the GOP's biggest financial backers to step up.
"When the President is thinking of writing a check of that size to his campaign, you have to imagine that top donors are feeling the pressure to kick in more than they already have," Eberhart said.
Biden is probably leading in the Clinton states + PA-MI-WI-AZ-NE-2 (290 electoral votes), though perhaps not by a lot. Trump is probably 50-50 or maybe even a little better in all of the remaining states. This election is not a done deal.
— Kyle Kondik (@kkondik) September 8, 2020
Trump's re-election effort, including the Republican National Committee, has spent more than US$800m so far, while Biden and the Democratic National Committee have spent about US$414m through July, according to campaign spending reports.
The Trump campaign has not released its fundraising totals from August, a significant delay that raises questions coming on the heels of the Biden team announcing an eye-popping US$364m take for the month.
In the days following the last month's Republican Nation Convention, Trump made the unusual move of pulling most of his advertising from TV, ceding the airwaves to Biden.
Michael Cohen says Trump praised Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign because he assumed he would lose and wanted to make sure he could borrow money from Russian sources for his real estate empire.https://t.co/4HSmcNJ2GH
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 8, 2020
During August, Biden doubled what Trump spent on ads, dropping about US$80m in states that include battlegrounds such as Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to data from the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG.
Democrats are hardly counting Trump out.
Biden's spending "doesn't mean in any shape or form that it's over," said former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, a longtime Biden friend.
The President's campaign has reserved US$140m for TV ads before the election, according to data compiled by the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG. And last week, a new super PAC — Preserve America — launched with plans to spend nearly US$30m on television and digital advertising in battleground states to bolster Trump.
It’s pretty simple. Biden leads by 7 in the polling averages. Accounting for uncontested races, Dems won the midterms by 7. Trump approval has been pretty much a flat line for 3.5 years. We don’t need to make this more complicated than it is.
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) September 8, 2020
Trump was forced to give up his signature big stadium rallies because of the coronavirus pandemic. But he's used the spoils of incumbency to his advantage, calling frequent news conferences to lash out against Biden and make his case for a second term.
During official White House events, he's also made a habit of layering in digs at Biden and touting his successes — making his commentary about government business and campaigning indistinguishable.
Bill Stepien, Trump's campaign manager, was pressed by reporters on a campaign conference call about the possible cash shortfall experienced by the President's team.
"If money was the only factor determining winners and losers in politics," he said, "then Jeb Bush would have been the nominee in 2016 and we'd have a second President Clinton."
As 2020 heats up, we looked back at how the Democratic Party gained seats in the House in 2018. Using our American Trends Panel, we found that the gains came from many places -- 2016 nonvoters, better turnout and greater party loyalty among Clinton votershttps://t.co/LxMkMGYV1r
— pollcat (@pollcat) September 8, 2020
Stepien acknowledged that he was "carefully managing the budget." He echoed the President in saying that the Trump campaign, which was outspent in 2016, has more resources to use between now and election day than it did four years ago.
He also pointed to the campaign's early expenditures as paying off, particularly on field staff in battleground states and said that Biden could not replicate that in the little time left until Election Day.
Stepien also said the team's advertising would be "nimble," and include a TV spree in early voting states as well an urban radio campaign in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida that would contrast Trump's record for Black voters with Biden's, a move aimed just as much at suburban white listeners.
We got a Biden +5, a Biden +3 and a Biden +0 poll in Florida today. The average is about Biden +2-3, only a hair tighter than yesterday's trend there. Model should update in a few hours https://t.co/O6Lknvo6Kp
— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) September 8, 2020
Trump also took to Twitter today to play down concerns about having enough money to compete in the home stretch of the campaign, underscoring he has "much more" money on hand than he did at this point in the campaign in 2016.
Still, Trump added in his comments to reporters that he was prepared to spend his own cash to help his cause.
"Whatever it takes," said Trump. "We have to win."
- AP
Iran has vowed to respond, claiming its enriched uranium wasn’t destroyed.