WASHINGTON – The former president who attempted a coup raised less than $5 million in the last month of 2022 for his 2024 campaign – barely more than he spent in one day selling photos he took of himself.
The Save America Trump Joint Fundraising Committee reported raising $4,951,463 in the last two days of November and all of December in a filing Wednesday night with the Federal Election Commission.
Perhaps more relevant to the dominant figure in the party, a HuffPost analysis of transfers to the committee from WinRed, the Republican small-dollar fundraising platform, showed that Trump raised only $2.4 million in the week after the November 15 announcement.
The next week saw $2 million, and it took dwindled to $1.2 million in the week after that.
“It’s time to be poor,” said a prominent Republican consultant familiar with the Trump operation who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He announced at the right time of the depression in fundraising for the whole party.”
The $2.4 million figure is also less than the $2.8 million it collected that week after the FBI searched the Mar-a-Lago social club in Palm Beach, Florida, for classified documents seized for defying a federal subpoena. He raised $3.2 million in the week after announcing the creation of a “leadership committee” Save America in a speech in Florida just five weeks after the failed coup of January 6, 2021, to remain in power despite losing the 2020 elections.
In contrast, Trump sold $4.5 million worth of “NFTs” featuring his own face superimposed onto race car drivers, cowboys, astronauts and more, in one single day in December. It’s unclear how much Trump personally received from the sale, but the scheme — touted by Trump as a “major announcement” — has been criticized by his own supporters.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump has raised more than $20 million in the last three months of 2022, which proves “he is an unstoppable force that continues to dominate politics.”
“The campaign made its second operation at the national level and in the initial states since it was announced,” he said. “The President will wage an aggressive and fully funded campaign to take our country back from Joe Biden and the Democrats who seek to destroy our country.”
But a weak post announcement by people who believe they can win the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 without serious opposition will now fuel a challenge, predict Republicans from across the party spectrum.
“It’s a bad sign,” said Tyler Bowyer, an RNC member from Arizona who was among the leaders of the movement to push out Ronna McDaniel’s seat at the winter meeting last week. “But fundraising is very difficult right now because there are so many uncertainties.”
David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida, said Trump’s numbers send a message. “He’s probably going to lose big. Fundraising is a proven metric that there’s a market for his candidacy,” he said.
David Kochel, a longtime Iowa consultant, agrees. “I’m not sure what can be explained other than a lack of enthusiasm. When DeSantis came in, he was going to make $5 million like child’s play,” he said.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida who won re-election in a landslide and is expected to announce his presidential candidacy after the Florida legislative session ends in May, entered 2023 with $70 million in political committees.
These figures are comparable to the money available to Trump in various committees. The campaign enters 2023 with $3 million in the bank and another $3.8 million available in fundraising committees. A pro-Trump SuperPAC run by his former employees and pollsters has $54 million.
Save America, Trump’s PAC, has $18.3 million for 2023, although as a declared candidate, the money cannot be used for its own election activities, although it can pay for things like criminal defense lawyers. Indeed, Trump spent $2.9 million on legal fees through the committee last month, including $491,365 for a lawyer who, along with Trump, was recently fined $1 million for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
And through his own campaign committee, Trump has shown that he is once again willing to use donor dollars to enrich himself, as he did in his previous two campaigns. The Trump campaign paid Mar-a-Lago, where he held his announcement speech, $67,865 for catering and room rentals, according to the FEC filing. Profits from the members-only club flow directly to your bank account.