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Trump will do 'whatever it takes to win', ready to spend $100M from his pocket after campaign uses up $800M

The president's inclination to spend $100M has fuelled speculation that his campaign for re-election is not in a financially healthy state

President Donald Trump on September 8 said he is not averse to spending as much as $100M from his own pocket in his re-election bid as his campaign argued that he could clinch a landslide second-term victory. The 74-year-old is all set to take on Democratic opponent Joe Biden in less than two months on November 3. 

Trump, a billionaire-turned-politician, has spoken on the idea with several people though he hasn’t made a firm commitment to any self-funding measure, Bloomberg News reported. It said while Trump had personally contributed $66M to his 2016 campaign, it would be unprecedented if he indeed uses his own money to win a second term. 

"If I have to, I would," the president told Bloomberg News. "But we don’t have to,” he added as he left Joint Base Andrews outside Washington for a campaign speech in Florida. "We needed to spend more money up front because of the pandemic and the statements being made by Democrats, which we are, again, disinformation. Whatever it takes, we have to win," Trump also said. 

The president, who has found his re-election bid challenging in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the race riots across the country, has sought advice on whether he should fund his campaign as he assessed heavy spending by his team earlier this year which has not put him ahead of Biden in the polls. Also, the former vice president’s campaign and other Democratic entities have raised more funds than Trump and his Republican allies. In July, Trump also replaced his campaign manager Brad Parscale with Bill Stepien as the poll numbers plummeted. 

Trump’s campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh, however, declined to confirm if there is any possibility of using the president’s personal money to back his campaign. "President Trump’s fundraising is breaking records and we are paying close attention to the budget, allowing us to invest twice as much from now until Election Day than we did in 2016," Murtaugh said in an email. "President Trump has also built the world’s greatest digital fundraising operation, a dominant ground game, and a third advantage Joe Biden can never match — enthusiasm."

On September 8, Trump tweeted saying his campaign had to spend “a lot of money” to take care of “false reporting” on his administration’s handling of the pandemic that has affected more than six million people in the US. Polls have shown that Trump’s popularity has received a setback in the wake of the outbreak. In his tweet, the president said: "My Campaign spent a lot of money up front in order to compensate for the false reporting and Fake News concerning our handling of the China Virus. Now they see the GREAT job we have done, and we have 3 times more than we had 4 years ago - & are up in polls. Lots of $’s & ENERGY!"

He reiterated the same in a couple of more tweets hours later, saying: "Because of the China Virus, my Campaign, which has raised a lot of money, was forced to spend in order to counter the Fake News reporting about the way we handled it (China Ban, etc.). We did, and are doing, a GREAT job, and have a lot of money left over, much more than 2016..."

The president’s re-election campaign, which includes the Republican National Committee, has spent over $800M so far, much higher than that spent ($414M) by Biden and the Democratic National Committee through July, Bloomberg News said citing financial reports. 

But the Democrats have done better in raising funds. In August, Biden and the DNC raised $365M, bettering the previous one-month record of $193M set by former president Barack Obama in 2008. Biden had cash worth $294M on hand at the end of July, which is $6M less than the president’s re-election bid, the report added. Trump and the RNC, however, were yet to release their fundraising numbers for August. They said they raised $76M during the four days of the Republican National Convention held last month. 

Trump aides have mixed reviews on him spending money

Trump’s aides, however, have given mixed reviews on the president self-funding his campaign with some saying that his re-election effort has adequate cash. One person having updates on Trump’s campaign planning said it will have twice the money it had in 2016 and new outside groups are also making a decent expenditure. 

Parscale faced criticism for spending during his tenure and according to a report in The New York Times that came out on September 7, the president’s re-election efforts confronted a "cash crunch" with not many days left for the polls. Stepien has not denied the reports about the money problems and sought to control the expenses and even volunteered to take a pay cut when he took over the role, Bloomberg cited sources familiar with the issue. It was also not clear how quickly Trump could come up with $100M to fund his campaign. His net worth went down by $300M in the past year to become $2.7B, erasing 10 percent of his fortune since he took office in 2017, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Stepien though has also added that money was not the only factor that separates the winners from losers in politics. "If money was the only factor determining winners and losers in politics, Jeb Bush would have been the nominee in 2016. And we'd have a second President Clinton right now in the Oval Office," he said. 

Meanwhile, Trump called himself a champion of the environment in Florida and announced a ban on oil drilling off the Sunshine State’s Atlantic coast.