NY Times Offers Deep Dive on Trump Campaign’s Reckless Spending, Lost Financial Edge as It Trails in Polls
Photo credit: Saul Loeb, AFP via Getty Images.
The Trump re-election campaign, which once boasted of its financial prowess by comparing itself to the Death Star, has, in fact, been wracked by wasteful spending and bizarre fundraising decisions as it been surpassed by the Democrats and fallen behind in the poll.s
According to the New York Times, the recent demotion of former campaign manager Brad Parscale was indicative of larger, systemic problems within the organization that have left it at risk of falling short of money as the 2020 election enters the home stretch. Nearly $40 million of the campaign’s money went right back into two firms that Parscale stood up right after Trump’s election.
“Mr. Trump’s financial supremacy has evaporated,” the Times reports, noting that the Joe Biden campaign just set a monthly record in August with a monster haul of $365 million in donations (the Trump camp has not released its August figures yet). And, by the start of July, his campaign and the DNC had all but erased the Trump/RNC’s cash-on-hand advantage. “Of the $1.1 billon his campaign and the party raised from the beginning of 2019 through July, more than $800 million has already been spent. Now some people inside the campaign are forecasting what was once unthinkable: a cash crunch with less than 60 days until the election.”
Over the weekend, the Trump campaign announced that it was temporarily stopping its TV ads in Arizona for up to a month, until early voting starts. That comes after it also suspended its TV campaign in Michigan, another key battleground state, earlier this summer after Parscale’s demotion.
The story goes into detail about the profligate spending and highly questionable expenses, some of them made years before the presidential election was underway: a staff car and driver for Parscale, nearly a million more spent on boosting Parscale’s Facebook and Instagram pages, $30 million to produce MAGA hats and other campaign swag, and $11 million on ads at this past year’s Super Bowl. That last expense, the Times points out, totaled more than the campaign has spent through July on TV advertising in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, four key swing states.
The campaign’s spendthrift style has even attracted attention — and critics — within GOP circles.
“If you spend $800 million and you’re 10 points behind, I think you’ve got to answer the question ‘What was the game plan?’” said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist who runs a small pro-Trump super PAC, and who accused Mr. Parscale of spending “like a drunken sailor.”
In addition, the Trump campaign has had unprecedented, eight-figure expenses in terms of legal costs, totaling $21 million to pay for fighting the many legal battles to shield their candidate’s taxes and other business dealings, as well as the costs of hiring outside counsel and advisers for the impeachment trial.
