Don’t believe Donald Trump’s promises to pay for his 2020 campaign

There are good reasons to be skeptical of this boasting. Mainly because Trump has said it before and, well, he hasn’t entirely.

In the wake of a New York Times article Monday who reported: “Of the $ 1.1 billion his campaign and the party raised from early 2019 through July, more than $ 800 million has already been spent,” Trump said in a tweetstorm aimed at challenging the report.

“Due to the Chinese virus, my campaign, which raised a lot of money, was forced to spend to counter the false information about how we handled it (China Ban, etc.),” he said. he tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “We have done, and are doing, a GREAT job, and we have a lot of money left, much more than in 2016. As I did in the 2016 primaries, if more money is needed, which I doubt it goes up! “

Just before heading to Florida on Tuesday, Trump told reporters about the same thing. “If we needed more, I would put it on personally like I did in the primaries last time,” he said. “In the 2016 primaries, I put in a lot of money. If I have to, I will do it here, but we don’t have to because we have double and maybe even triple what we had many years ago. “

This is a claim that deserves further investigation!

There is no doubt that Trump has placed his wealth and willingness to spend it at the center of his 2016 campaign for the Republican nomination.

“By self-financing my campaign, I am not controlled by my donors, special interests or lobbyists”, he posted on Facebook in September 2015. “I only work for the people of the United States!” Throughout the primary campaign, Trump consistently argued that he was providing all the money his campaign needed, freeing him from the “swamp” that sucked up so many of his Republican opponents.

At a rally in Iowa on February 1 he said this:

“You often know you see these really stupid deals. And you will say it’s stupid. It doesn’t make sense. But when you think, it makes sense because these politicians represent interests, let it be a country or company, where doing stupid business only makes sense for that politician and for that company or country. … I fund my own campaign myself. It’s my money. “

Even then, this statement was not true. Yes, Trump was giving personal money to the campaign. But he also collected money from individuals: Lots of money!

As PolitiFact noted in early 2016: “Trump’s campaign grossed around $ 19.4 million at the end of 2015. Trump himself contributed nearly $ 13 million. Most of the rest comes from individual contributions, which federal law caps at $ 2,700 per candidate per election. ” In May 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Trump had raised $ 48 million, with about a quarter of that money coming from individual contributors.

All in all, Trump ended up loaning over $ 46 million of his own money in his fight to win the Republican nomination. Under pressure from donors who were reluctant to donate to Trump’s election effort for fear that he would use their contributions to pay off his own campaign loans with their money, the billionaire businessman announced at the end of June 2016 that he would renounce these campaign loans. (The vast majority of those funds appeared to come from Trump’s decision around the same time liquidate its equity portfolio.)

“After self-funding his primary elections, Mr. Trump and the campaign mounted an exceptional fundraising operation, which in recent days has been inundated with contributions for the Republican Party,” read a campaign statement issued at the time. . (Reminder: he did not self-finance his main campaign.)

Although he told anyone who wanted to listen to him that he would self-fund both the primary election (he didn’t) and the general election, Trump began to renege on that latest promise days after he got it. informally the nomination of the party. “I will make a decision fairly quickly on this subject”, he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe in May 2016. “I mean, do I want to sell some buildings and pay for myself? I don’t know if I want to do it necessarily, but I really won’t ask for money for myself, I will ask for money for the party. “

It turns out not! Trump ended up spending a total of $ 66 million of his own money in 2016, which means barely $ 20 million came out of his pocket during the election fight against Hillary Clinton. Trump raised a total of $ 339 million in the general election, meaning his total personal investment was around 6% of the total money he brought in during the fall campaign

How much, you ask, did Trump spend on Trump-owned businesses during the campaign? About $ 12 million, according to New York Times calculations. Here is the key element of their report on this subject:

“Figures from the last few weeks of the campaign … showed Mr. Trump paid his own businesses nearly $ 12 million in the election – reimbursement for flights, hotel stays, meals and services for him and his staff, such as office space in the tower he owns on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. His preferred mode of transportation – his private plane – accounted for the largest share of the money. revenue in Trump entities, $ 8.7 million. “

Who, well, yeah.

See. There are no question that Trump drew from his own pocket in 2016. And that he is a billionaire – although there is considerable debate on how many billions it is worth.

But there is also no doubt that Trump did NOT use his bragging to a) fully self-fund his primary or general election campaign in 2016 or b) spend “over $ 100 million on the campaign and I’m ready. to go much higher than that ” as he told CNN’s Dana Bash in October 2016.

Which brings me to this Bloomberg News headline on Tuesday morning: “Trump is weighing up to $ 100 million of his money in the race.“

Seems familiar?

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Don’t believe Donald Trump’s promises to pay for his 2020 campaign

Bridget Becker

Fisheries Management

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Don’t believe Donald Trump’s promises to pay for his 2020 campaign

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