2020 U.S. Election: How Trump Invested $ 1 Billion and Lost His Campaign Cash Advantage

US President Donald Trump’s sprawling political operation has raised more than $ 1 billion (NZ $ 1.5 billion) since he took the White House in 2017 and set many of them on fire.

Trump bought a $ 10 million Super Bowl ad when he didn’t have a rival yet. He took advantage of his political organization to cover exorbitant legal fees related to his impeachment. The aides made eye-catching displays of their newfound wealth, including a fleet of luxury vehicles purchased by Brad Parscale, their former campaign manager.

Meanwhile, a network of limited liability companies hid more than $ 356 million in disclosure expenses, records show.

Now, just two weeks before the election, some campaign aides privately acknowledge that they face tough spending decisions at a time when Democratic candidate Joe Biden has inundated the airwaves with advertising. That has put Trump in the position of having to do more of his signature rallies as a surrogate during the coronavirus pandemic, while relying on an unproven theory that he can generate supporters who are infrequent voters at historic levels.

“They spent their money on unnecessary overheads, on the lifestyle of the rich and famous by campaign staff, and on advertisements,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican consultant who advised John McCain and Jeb Bush and is an outspoken Trump. critical. “You could literally have 10 flamethrower monkeys chasing the money, and they wouldn’t have burned it so stupidly.”

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For Trump, it is a familiar, if not welcome, position. In 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton grossly outraged him, but still managed a victory from behind. This time, however, he was betting on a huge cash advantage to negatively define Biden and defend his own record.

Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien insisted money was not an issue. “We have more than enough air coverage, almost three times more than in 2016,” he told reporters on Monday (local time).

Biden, Stepien added, was “putting it all on TV” as he avoided most door knocks due to the pandemic, while Trump has roughly 2,000 field workers across the country knocking on doors and making calls for his campaign. .

“Where we have states that are going around, it could go either way,” Trump told campaign employees Monday, “I have the ability to go to those states and demonstrate. Biden has no ability. I’m going to a rally, we have 25,000 people. He goes to a rally and has four people. “

However, the ad spending figures paint a grim picture.

While a half-dozen pro-Trump outside groups are coming to the president’s aid, Biden and his Democratic allies are on track to spend $ 142 million on ads in the final days of the campaign, outperforming Republicans by more than 2 years. 1., according to data from ad tracking firm CMAG / Kantar.

On Monday, the firm Medium Buying reported that Trump was canceling the purchase of ads in Wisconsin; Minnesota, which Trump hoped to change; and Ohio, which elected Trump in 2016 but now appears to be close competition.

It’s a turnaround from May, when the Biden campaign was short on money and Parscale eerily compared the Trump campaign to a “Death Star” that was about to “start pushing FIRE for the first time.”

Their ad campaign over the next three months cost more than $ 176 million, but did little to dent Biden’s leadership in public opinion polls.

Trump is now in a position that is virtually unthinkable for a sitting president, said Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks advertising spending.

“Advertising, obviously, is not everything. But we think that ads matter a couple of percentage points in a presidential race. And it’s just not a good sign for the Trump campaign, ”Ridout said.

A review of Trump’s campaign spending, as well as the Republican National Committee, reveals some of the wasteful spending.

Since 2017, more than $ 39 million have been paid to companies controlled by Parscale, who was ousted as a campaign manager over the summer. An additional $ 319.4 million was paid to American Made Media Consultants, a Delaware limited liability company, whose owners are not publicly disclosed.

Campaigns often reveal in mandatory disclosures who their primary vendors are. But by sending money to Parscale companies, as well as American Made Media Consultants, Trump met the basic disclosure requirements without detailing the final recipients.

Other questionable Trump and RNC expenditures included in campaign finance disclosures:

• Almost $ 100,000 spent on copies of Donald Trump Jr.’s book. Fired, which helped propel him to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.
• More than $ 7.4 million spent on Trump-branded properties since 2017.

• At least $ 35.9 million spent on Trump merchandise.

• US $ 39 million in legal and “compliance” fees. In addition to leveraging the RNC and his campaign to pay legal costs during his impeachment process, Trump has also relied on his political operation to cover the legal costs of some aides.
• At least US $ 15.1 million spent on the Republican National Convention. The event was supposed to be in Charlotte, North Carolina, but Trump moved it to Jacksonville, Florida, after a dispute with the Democratic governor of North Carolina over coronavirus security measures. The Florida event was eventually canceled, with a primarily online convention in place. The revelations show that the RNC still spent $ 1 million at the Ritz Carlton Amelia Island, near Jacksonville.

• $ 912,000 spent on ads that ran on the personal Facebook pages of Parscale and Trump’s spokeswoman Katrina Pierson.

• A $ 250,000 ad during Game 7 of the 2019 World Series, which came after viewers booed Trump when he attended Game 5.

• At least $ 218,000 for Trump’s surrogates to travel aboard private jets provided by campaign donors.

• $ 1.6 million worth of television ads in the Washington, DC media market, an overwhelmingly Democratic area where Trump has little chance of winning but is a regular television viewer.

There are signs that Trump’s grassroots fundraising operation has also slowed. Once a driving force, the campaign now spends around 77 cents for every dollar it raises, usually through online ads that ask followers to contribute a few dollars.

Between July and September, it cost the campaign $ 181 million to raise $ 235 million through such small contributions. That’s a sizable break from the beginning of the year, when it raised hundreds of millions while spending much less.

Some of Trump’s wealthy supporters are also exploring their options.

Republican mega donor Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, recently donated $ 75 million to Preserve America, a new pro-Trump super-political action committee that is not controlled by Trump World political agents.

One of the reasons the group was founded in August is because there is deep mistrust among some Republican donors that existing pro-Trump organizations would spend the money wisely, according to a Republican strategist with direct knowledge of the matter. The strategist spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive discussions with donors.

Dan Eberhart, who has donated more than $ 190,000 to Trump’s election efforts, said that many Republican donors are now focused on keeping control of the Senate in Republican hands, not on Trump’s chances of victory.

“The majority in the Senate is the most important target right now,” he said. “It is the bulwark against so many bad policies that the Democrats want to do.”