Trump and the Republicans are having big money problems

Donald Trump isn’t raising the kind of cash he needs to put up a fight against Joe Biden in his 2024 election rematch and it's a problem Republicans are starting to worry about. Here’s what we know about Trump’s money problems. 

The former president isn’t just suffering from personal financial problems as his criminal cases work their way through the courts but also some pretty big political ones as Biden continues to outraise Trump by tens of millions of dollars. 

According to data from the Federal Election Commission reported by Newsweek, Biden raised about $127 million dollars for his campaign against Trump and had $71 million in cash on hand by the end of February, which is quite a lot. 

Trump, on the other hand, reportedly only raised $99 million dollars in the same period and had a paltry $33.5 million in cash on hand to compete with Biden’s enormous war chest. But why do these numbers matter to both campaigns?

Money is important in politics and the more cash you have on hand the easier it is to get your message out to the people who can make a difference, which is why campaigns for president always spend a lot of money on the swing states

"There's only so much you can do without paying for some sort of advertising, whether it's TV, radio, print, the internet,” Northwestern University’s Michael Kang told NPR in November 2023. “All of those things require money and they're very expensive.”

Money is also spent on paying pollsters, hiring campaign staff, and printing yard signs, Kang added, all of which are the minor details of a major national campaign effort that requires a lot of money to fund. Biden is winning that fight at the moment. 

Both Biden and Trump have secured enough delegates to be the respective presidential nominee choice for their parties, which means they will face off in November barring any black swan event—and campaign cash could be the deciding factor. 

As of April 3rd, the RealClearPolitics polling average put Trump ahead of Biden by less than one point with 46.6% of the vote against Biden’s 45.8%. This means Biden’s ability to raise more cash could come into play and shift the election. 

Moreover, Biden is showing no signs of slowing down his fundraising and increased his lead over Trump by $25 million in just one day following a glitzy event in New York City with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at Radio City Hall. 

“The numbers don’t lie: today’s event is a massive show of force and a true reflection of the momentum to reelect the Biden-Harris ticket,” explained Biden’s campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg according to Bloomberg News.

The amount Biden raised concerned conservative commentators like Charlie Kirk, who wrote on social media just before the glitzy event kicked off that it would be the largest political fundraiser in history and raise more than Trump had in all of February. 

“Democrats are beginning to fine tune their messaging, and they have a standing army of 5,000+ full-time organizers on the ground in the key states,” Kirk explained. “We are outgunned and will be outspent. The polls are tightening. Time to get to work. The country is at stake.”

Kirk’s assessment of the situation wasn't wrong. Biden’s campaign is working to organize in several key states according to ABC News, which spoke with Biden’s campaign and found out it has opened over 100 coordinated offices in several battleground states. 

Biden lost North Carolina in 2020 but the state now has ten field offices while Wisconsin has seen forty-four offices opened and Michigan has seen twenty. All of this effort takes money, something Biden has a lot more of than Trump at the moment. 

"We're ramping up campaign headquarters and field offices, hiring staff all across the country," Biden told donors during his New York event. "And before Trump and MAGA Republicans haven't even opened one office."

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