'We are outgunned': MAGA enters panic mode as Biden crushes Trump in fundraising
By all accounts, the 2024 election is shaping up into a close race, but there's currently one way the two main campaigns are miles apart: fundraising. President Joe Biden is lapping former President Donald Trump in campaign cash — and Trump loyalists are beginning to sweat about it.
According to Newsweek, "Biden raised nearly $127 million to compete against Trump by the end of February, with about $71 million cash on hand, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) data."
By contrast, "Trump had raised only about $99 million in the period, with about $33.5 million in cash on hand, according to FEC data."
Part of Biden's fundraising windfall came from a wave of small-dollar donations kicked off by enthusiasm about Biden's State of the Union Address.
And it might be about to get even worse for Trump, because Biden pulled in $25 million at a star-studded New York City fundraiser last month, featuring appearances by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Meanwhile, Trump — who on top of financing his campaign has to pay for hundreds of millions in combined legal judgments from multiple civil cases and attorneys' fees for his upcoming criminal trials, is reportedly facing a crisis of "donor fatigue" as his own supporters are getting less willing to open their pocketbooks.
Recent reporting indicated that billionaire investor Jeffrey Yass might be planning an infusion into Trump's campaign, but an investigation by The Daily Beast suggests that may not be true after all.
Trump's most ardent footsoldiers are starting to notice the situation — and worry, Newsweek reported.
"Tonight will be the largest fundraiser in political history — $25,000,000 in hard money raised in a single evening for Biden," wrote Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk on X. "This is more raised in one night than Trump raised the entire month of February. Democrats are beginning to fine-tune their messaging, and they have a standing army of 5,000+ full-time organizers on the ground in the key states.
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"We are outgunned and will be outspent. The polls are tightening. Time to get to work. The country is at stake."
Fox News' Brian Kilmeade agreed, recently saying on air, "They're going to outraise Republicans. I think that goes without saying, especially when the president's got to diverge some of his fees for courts. And there's no doubt about it, he's a one-man army. And he's going against, really, three presidents."
The funding crisis goes deeper than Trump. The entire Republican Party is struggling to come up with the money to run a 2024 campaign.
The Republican National Committee, which just saw its leadership replaced with a crop of Trump loyalists, reported its worst fundraising year in a decade in 2023, with just $11 million cash on hand now, and worse, a third of the money they have raised this year is legally restricted to non-campaign uses.
Meanwhile, as of last year, multiple state Republican Parties were struggling with finances amid leadership infighting.