October 21, 2020

Donald Trump’s Campaign Is Running on Fumes. He Still Hasn’t Cut the Check He Promised.

It’s not clear he even has the cash.

President Donald Trump walks to board Marine One at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020, for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., and then on to Erie, Pa. for a campaign rally. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

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Last month, after fundraising filings showed that his campaign was facing a possible cash crunch in the final weeks of the campaign, Donald Trump pledged to personally bankroll his reelection effort if money was needed.  

Well, it’s needed. And a check from Trump has yet to materialize.

Yesterday, his campaign filed its September fundraising report, and it was dismal. Trump entered October with just $63 million in cash on hand. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden reported having $177 million, nearly three times as much.

Despite raising around $1 billion with his partners in the Republican Party since 2017, Trump is struggling to attract donations in the homestretch. In September, when his fundraising should have been reaching a crescendo, he pulled in just $81 million. Adjusted for inflation, that’s less than what Mitt Romney’s failed 2012 presidential campaign raised in the same month. And it’s way less than the $281.6 million Biden brought in.

So, Trump is in a hole. What’s he going to do about it? Unlike in 2016, when he gave around $55 million to fund his primary campaign, he hasn’t provided a dime of his own money to the campaign yet this election cycle. Despite the promise he made in September and reports that he planned to fund his campaign to the tune of $100 million, he’s not likely to contribute much at this point, if for no other reason than he probably can’t afford to.

Many of Trump’s hotel and golf businesses were posting declining revenues before the pandemic wreaked havoc on the hospitality sector. Meanwhile, his company is facing looming deadlines to refinance or repay more than $400 million in debt. Trump’s most recent financial disclosure showed that at the end of 2019 he had somewhere between $46.7 million and $156.6 million in checking or money-market accounts. In other words, without raising more cash by offloading assets, it’s not even clear that he has $100 million to loan his campaign to begin with. Even a loan of $50 million might be a heavy lift. Trump does have a stock portfolio, but according to the New York Times bombshell reporting based on his tax returns, he already liquidated a big chunk of that in 2016 to fund his primary campaign. That well is probably dry.

The Trump Organization is allegedly exploring the sale of at least one big property in Westchester County, outside of New York City, but as far as this campaign goes, it’s probably too little, too late. 

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about whether Trump planned to throw a financial lifeline to his campaign.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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