In his third bid for the White House, former President Donald Trump is once again at a financial disadvantage against his Democratic opponent.
Trump’s ensuing legal problems, which could cost him hundreds of millions of dollars, are only helping to further drain his coffers in the 2024 rematch against President Joe Biden.
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Biden vastly outraised Trump in 2020 before winning the election, as did former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 2020, Biden raised more than $1 billion, the first campaign to do so in U.S. history, according to Open Secrets, while Trump’s campaign raised $774 million.
Biden is once again massively outraising Trump. The Biden campaign had more than $71 million cash on hand in February, double the Trump campaign’s $33.5 million cash on hand.
During a background call with reporters Thursday, a Trump campaign adviser claimed that the campaign “will never be able to match dollar for dollar what the Democrats and their billion-dollar donor buddies do.”
Combined with the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committees, Biden had $155 million in campaign reserves. In contrast, Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee, and affiliated PACs had $74 million cash on hand.
However, financial advantage is not an automatic guarantee of electoral success.
In 2016 Clinton outspent Trump by a 2-to-1 margin. Despite Clinton’s campaign, joint Democratic Party committees, and affiliated super PACs raising more than $1.2 billion during the election cycle, while Trump and his supporters raised $600 million, the former secretary of state lost.
“Trump does not need spending parity to win,” said GOP consultant Matt Mackowiak. “But he needs to raise enough money that he can run sophisticated campaigns in the six to eight battleground states that are going to decide the Electoral College.”
The 2024 election is expected to be a close race where Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina will be the deciding factor in which candidate wins.
Adding to the financial disadvantage is that Trump has been forced to spend millions of dollars on legal fees.
Trump’s allies, including the Save America PAC and Make America Great Again PAC, have already spent more than $50 million since 2023 as he defends himself against 88 criminal indictments across four cases.
A New York civil appeals court reduced Trump’s civil fraud judgment to $175 million on Monday and granted him a 10-day grace period to pony up the money after Trump had been ordered to pay a $464 million civil fraud trial judgment from February.
Jason Roe, a Republican strategist who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns, told the Washington Examiner that Trump has advantages to overcoming a financial deficit.
“Spending in the presidential race really has diminishing returns,” Roe said. “Trump has so much earned media and he gets his message out through social media. I think a lot of the traditional campaign spending in his case is not as important as it would be for a mere mortal.”
Though Roe echoed concerns some Republicans have about Trump’s ability to use the RNC to help pay legal bills. The former president effectively installed Michael Whatley, the former chairman of the North Carolina GOP, as RNC chairman and daughter-in-law Lara as co-chairperson earlier this month.
“I have also heard from major donors and people who advise major donors that there is a lack of confidence right now with the RNC money going to campaigns and not legal bills,” Roe said. “I think the RNC has got to do something to reassure donors that their dollars will be spent on the campaign.”
Yet, the Trump campaign isn’t completely giving up on raising as much money as possible.
Trump is set to host a Palm Beach, Florida, fundraiser hosted by hedge fund founder John Paulson in April that will bring in $33 million after Biden’s $26 million fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall in New York City this week held in conjunction with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
The former president’s allies are pushing back against the narrative that Trump could lose due to Biden’s financial lead.
“Joe Biden secured his nomination on January 1, but he’s underwater in national polls and just now — after three months — staffing up key battleground states. In contrast, the Trump campaign, after shattering records in primary and caucus wins in both turnout and margin across the country, has locked up the nomination in one of the fastest timelines in modern day political history,” said Chris LaCivita, Trump campaign senior adviser.
“With an operation fueled by hundreds of thousands of small-dollar donors and energized supporters, and without sharing our strategy with Democrats through the media, we have the message, the operation, and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5,” LaCivita added.
Longtime Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) offered Trump blunt advice on how to defeat Biden on Thursday. “I’m glad you are ahead in the polls. In order to win, [please] run your campaign from this day [forward] as if you are behind,” he wrote on X.
Steve Hilding, a Republican strategist and vice president of political consulting firm McShane, claimed that the fundraising gap will continue to close as the election moves closer to November. He cited the fundraising next month as one example of the Trump campaign increasing its efforts to pull money into its coffer.
Hilding cautioned that Biden’s advantage may not prove to be useful.
“The Biden campaign and the DNC might be raising more money. You see the president coming out and saying that they want to make plays in states like Florida and North Carolina and looking to expand past their 2020 map,” he said. “I think the Biden campaign is ultimately going to waste a lot of these resources not on their most targeted states.”
Mackowiak, the GOP consultant, blamed the legal cases on Democratic attempts to block Trump from another four years in the White House, as have many Republican leaders who have spoken to the Washington Examiner.
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“The reason you know that’s empirically true is their absolute insistence that these trials occur before the election,” he said. “If it was truly about quote-unquote holding him accountable or serving justice, then the artificial deadline of the election would be irrelevant. So really they’re saying the quiet part out loud by admitting the only way for justice to be served is for these things to be resolved before the election.”
Hilding added that Democrats were “trying to make President Trump personally as broke as possible and to make his campaign as broke as possible.”
