Maggie Haberman Tells CNN Trump ‘Massive Fundraising Gap’ With Biden Is Big Worry for Trump Advisers
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman told anchor Kaitlan Collins that President Joe Biden’s “massive” fundraising lead is a big concern to former President Donald Trump’s advisers.
Biden has built up a gargantuan war chest that included $130 million cash on hand as of February, versus just over $30 million for Trump. That seems to have pushed Trump into the arms of Elon Musk, as Haberman reported this week that Trump met with Musk along with a select few wealthy GOP donors.
On Wednesday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, Collins asked Haberman — whose network of Trumpworld sources gives her up-to-the-minute insights — how the cash gap is playing in Trump’s camp:
MAGGIE HABERMAN: I could see a world, where [Musk] doesn’t write a big check or any check. But that is the hope of people around Trump, is that he does ultimately give money.
COLLINS: Well, and the reason they have that hope is because, I mean, they’re trying to close that massive fundraising gap, between them and the current president, President Biden, who didn’t have to deal with weeks of a primary challenge.
And I just wonder, based on what you’ve been hearing from people, how worried they actually are, about shoring up their finances, and the ability to do that quickly.
HABERMAN: Yes, the financial disparity has been a concern for Trump’s political advisers, for many, many months, going back to, I would say, the fall, when it became clear that he was likely to be the Republican nominee, and it was clear that there was going to be a huge disparity between what Democrats were able to raise, not just the Biden campaign proper, his Super PAC, the Democratic National Committee, and then there will be other outside groups.
At the moment, Trump does not have something like that. And we have seen that President Biden has outraised him so far. So, this is a real worry. And Elon Musk is in a unique position to come close to erasing that deficit, almost singlehandedly. Outside group dollars are not the same as hard dollars that can be spent by a campaign. But they can still help a lot.
Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.
