Former President — and current presidential hopeful — Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be pulling in as much campaign cash as he used to.
Trump, who announced his third bid for the presidency in mid-November, was only able to raise $9.5 million from the announcement until the end of the year, according to end-of-year figures obtained exclusively by NBC News.
This is a relatively slim figure for Trump, who’s known for generating record sums. He was able to raise $882 million for his failed 2020 campaign and $500 million more since through his political committees. In July 2021, Politico reported that these committees were able to raise $82 million in the first half of that year, and at the time had $102 in the bank.
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Republican operatives are putting the blame on two major factors: the timing of the former president’s announcement, and his ban on Facebook, which will soon be lifted.
Trump launched his 2024 presidential campaign on the heels of the midterm elections which saw the GOP fail to cinch a majority in the Senate — which in turn highlighted disappointing results from Trump-backed candidates like Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker.
And then there was the two-year absence from Facebook where Trump has 34 million followers. The social media giant suspended Trump’s account after he praised people for engaging in the violent attack at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Facebook’s parent company Meta has since announced that after the two-year suspension that ended on January 7, they are in the process of lifting Trump’s suspension.
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Facebook played a key role in fundraising for his 2016 campaign, when they used the platform’s microtargeting feature to reach out to and raise money from a huge number of low-dollar donors. Trump’s 2016 campaign was found to have run millions of targeted ads — about 5.9 million to be more precise, versus Hilary Clinton’s 66,000.
But the 2016 campaign is likely a lightning-never-hits-the-same-place-twice situation. Facebook later changed its rules on the number of ads an entity can run, and while Trump was still able to raise most of his campaign funding from low-dollar donors, it was not enough to secure a win the second time.
Trump faces high-dollar problems, too. Many of his megadonors have walked away after the 2022 midterm elections. Among them is private equity firm Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who said that it’s time to support a new generation of leaders, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose publications seem to be already packaging Ron DeSantis as the future of the Republican party.
Moreover, the campaign finance watchdog Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in November. They’re alleging that Trump and Save America violated the “soft money” ban by directing or transferring funds from Save America, a leadership political action committee (PAC) to the super PAC Make America Great Again, Inc.
Adding insult to injury are the numbers that Trump’s affiliated entities were able to pull in before his presidential bid announcement: they were able to raise $11.8 million from October 1 until his November 15 announcement, compared to only $9.5 million from November 15 until the end of the year.
It’s unclear if proceeds from his trading card NFTs are already included in the mix.
Information for this story was found via NBC News, the Guardian, Politico, and the sources and companies mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
