Donald Trump has nearly wiped out President Biden’s once-huge victory, thanks to a tidal wave of fundraising following the first criminal conviction of a former or sitting president Fundraising Benefits Contest again in the 2024 elections.
In May, for the second month in a row, the former president and the Republican National Committee raised far more money than Biden and the Democratic National Committee. And the president’s massive cash advantage over Trump is now gone.
The Biden campaign’s monthslong lead on cash helped his team press Trump on the airwaves and build an impressive ground game operation compared to the Trump campaign’s more frugal foundation.
But Trump’s fundraising His surge in popularity since clinching the Republican nomination in early March, and pleading guilty to 34 felony counts at his trial in New York City, now allows him to match Biden in the ad war and potentially build a massive ground campaign.
Biden has a lot of money to raise in May, but he’s far behind Trump
Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower on Thursday, May 30, 2024, after being found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. (Felipe Ramales for Fox News Digital)
Whereas Biden’s campaign While the Trump campaign has spent more than $65 million to fill the airwaves with ads supporting the president’s re-election, the Trump campaign has yet to begin buying general election ads, according to AdImpact, a leading national ad tracking firm.
But Biden’s ad war advantage could soon be challenged. Make America Great Again (MAGA) Inc., the top super PAC supporting the former president, has announced a $100 million ad campaign this summer. The group’s announcement comes on the heels of a staggering $50 million contribution from conservative banking heir Timothy Mellon.
As for the ground fight, the Biden campaign announced Thursday that it had reached out to 200 campaign offices and 1,000 staffers in key battleground states that will decide the 2024 reelection.
“With just four months until the election, Donald Trump cannot match our battleground infrastructure even if he wants to,” Dan Cunnillon, the Biden campaign’s battleground states director, said in a statement.
Kanninen argued that “while the Trump team is doing its best to portray the lack of infrastructure as ‘strategic,’ the fact of the matter is that Donald Trump can’t buy back lost time — and can’t win an invisible campaign.”
President Biden’s reelection campaign slammed MSNBC and CNN for ignoring a “Black Voters for Biden-Harris” rally in Philadelphia on Wednesday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Senior Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller hit back, pointing to polls in key battleground states that show Trump with a slight lead.
Miller claimed, “Biden needs 1,000 votes in states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, because he is losing to President Trump in all of these states!”
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Trump’s campaign says it and the RNC have offices in key swing states, but declined to give specific numbers. The campaign reiterated that its paid staff and volunteer operations are “growing daily.”
But over the past few months, Trump’s campaign has emphasized that it is building a “leaner” operation than it did in 2020, when the then-White House incumbent ran for re-election. It plans to operate with fewer offices and staff, and is also outsourcing to some extent, as it relies on allied groups to bolster its ground game.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, walks to the podium at a campaign event in Racine, Wisconsin, Tuesday, June 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps) (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)
“Trump will certainly need to do something to match the infrastructure that Biden has built,” Greg Moore, regional director for Americans for Prosperity, a powerful conservative advocacy organization, told Fox News.
But Moore, a longtime veteran of the group’s grassroots outreach and grassroots efforts, said there’s “still a great opportunity for the Trump team to start to develop that infrastructure and focus on building a true, authentic, grassroots strategy.”
Pointing to the Trump campaign, Moore argued that “there’s no doubt that there’s a lot of energy among supporters. The level of enthusiasm among Trump’s supporters is higher than the level of enthusiasm among Biden’s supporters, which means that even though the number of staff increases is tilted toward Biden, actually recruiting authentic volunteers is an area where Trump should have an advantage.”
