As you can see, the news of the day is Donald Trump’s firing of war-time campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Lewandowski never actually functioned as a campaign manager – more like what the modern campaign calls a body man or traveling press secretary. In recent months, Paul Manafort has, supposedly, been filling that role. So it’s not clear what effect his dismissal will have other than signaling to worried Republicans some desire for change and steadying Trump himself with an act of demonstrative dominance.
My real interest is in a different question: where’s the money?
In honor of today’s FEC filing implosion, I thought it was a good moment to reup this piece from three weeks ago: “Top 10 Reasons to Doubt Trump Is Even a Billionaire.”
I confess even I’m surprised at what the overnight FEC filings revealed about the Trump campaign. Posting the ‘Trump is Broke‘ column yesterday made me feel at least a touch exposed since I figured he’d add (either from his own money or fundraising) at least some additional funds to the paltry $2.4 million cash on hand in his previous filing. Appears not. Now on top of that it’s revealed that he’s been using his presidential campaign to funnel millions of dollars back into his own businesses. The new filing shows the campaign had only $1.3 million in cash on hand at the beginning of this month, in comparison to $42 million on hand for the Hillary campaign.
Aside from being stone broke, I want to note another problem Trump has made for himself.
This is amazing. And it must be terrifying for any Republicans who were hoping that the firing of Corey Lewandowski presaged the debut of a new saner Trump. Faced with a Clinton campaign that has over $40 million in cash on hand and his own campaign that’s barely solvent with just over $1 million, Trump tells Norah O’Donnell that the money Clinton has raised is “blood money.”
Donald Trump tonight sent out what he describes as “the first fundraising email I have ever sent on behalf of my campaign.” And he’s going to make sure it’s historic by “by personally matching every dollar that comes in WITHIN THE NEXT 48 HOURS, up to $2 million!”
You got that right, Trump is willing to put as much as $2 million of his own money into his campaign (though no word whether this is a contribution or a loan). Email after the jump.
The guy who used to be charged with winning Senate seats for Republicans looks at Trump’s funding numbers and tells our reporters: “My sense is that it is like an epic disaster that is going to get worse.”
An NYC real estate professional graphically describes the MO Trump is known for the Manhattan real estate world. Basically explains the whole campaign.
TPM hiring an ad salesperson. If you’re interested, see the full listing after the jump. If you know someone who might be, please send the link on to them.
I don’t know if you heard Donald Trump’s anti-Hillary speech this morning. It was filled with a slew of demonstrable falsehoods about Hillary and this very overheated argument about Hillary being responsible for the deaths of thousands and using the State Department as her own “private hedge fund.” A reader wrote in this afternoon to ask for help understanding what Trump was even trying to say with that remark. I didn’t get a chance to respond to her yet. But the gist I think is that there’s no there there to understand. The point is that Hillary’s a crook, uses any position in government as a way to enrich herself and is just generally awful. Tossing in “hedge fund” is nothing more than Trump’s permanent need to act out dominance politics via hyperbole, even when it’s devoid of any actual meaning. And yet, once you got past the febrile Hillary bashing, the most notable thing about the speech was how relatively normal it was.