Trump: If GOP Doesn’t Support Me, Fine, ‘I Have A Lot Of Cash’

Frustrated by flagging donations and criticism from GOP leaders on Capitol Hill, Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he “may go a different route” in funding his general election campaign if need be.

“I need support from the Republicans,” Trump said on “Fox and Friends,” noting that some in the party, including Republican National Committee officials, have “been terrific.”

“But it would be nice to have full support from people that are in office, I mean full verbal support,” he said. “Now with all that being said I may go a different route if those things don’t happen.”

Trump said that he raised $12 million at RNC fundraising events in the Southwest over the weekend—proof, he said, that he can come up with the money he needs to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton on his own.

“I can just spend my own money,” he said, likening the strategy to the one he used in the primaries. “I have a lot of cash. So I can do like I did with the others, just spend money on myself and go happily along and I think I’d win that way. There are many people who think I’d do better that way by being a little bit of the insurgent, the outsider and you know not working along. But I want to work along because the RNC has been terrific, Reince Priebus has been terrific and it’s all coming together.”

Federal Election Commission reports released Monday show Clinton dominating fundraising efforts, pulling in $26.4 million last month compared to Trump’s $3.1 million in that same period. The former secretary of state’s $42.5 million war chest vastly exceeded the $1.29 million in cash that the real estate mogul’s campaign reported having on hand.

Trump told the “Fox and Friends” co-hosts that he wanted to keep his campaign “lean,” noting he’d spent very little on advertising in the primaries. He allowed that the dismissal of his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, on Monday was a sign that his campaign was “going a different way,” however.

The presumptive GOP nominee also blamed the media for making too much of a rough few weeks in which his poll numbers sank and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) called his comments about a federal judge’s “Mexican” heritage the “textbook definition” of racism.

“I’ve gotten the worst three weeks of publicity I’ve ever had in my life,” said Trump. “Really the press is hammering me really unfairly in many cases, not in all cases, but in many cases just hammering me. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”