President Donald Trump is putting out the word that he is considering spending as much as $100 million of his own fortune on his reelection effort as campaign officials try to buck up key supporters and donors amid daunting polling numbers and other bad news. Trump said Tuesday that he’s prepared to use his own money and spend “whatever it takes” to win a second term in the White House, but he sidestepped just how much of his own cash he’s willing to invest. “If I have to, I would,” Trump said of spending his own money. Speaking to reporters before departing for the battleground states of Florida and North Carolina, he added, “We have much more money than we had last time going into the last two months. But if we needed any more, I’d put it up.” Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor, said that two senior campaign officials told him in recent days that Trump was considering a personal investment in the campaign of as much as $100 million. Eberhart said the campaign is trying to create “a little excitement” among top donors and prominent supporters as polls have shown Trump consistently trailing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden nationally and in some battleground states. Trump also is grappling with the political fallout from the mounting number of coronavirus deaths and the pandemic’s economic toll. Trump spent more than $60 million of his own money on his 2016 run for the White House. This time, he began raising campaign funds almost immediately after his inauguration and built an enormous war chest early on that advisers believed put him at a distinct advantage over the Democratic nominee. Eberhart said he was skeptical that Trump will spend $100 million of his own money and questioned whether money was significantly hampering the president’s campaign. Bloomberg News was first to report that Trump was weighing the significant personal investment in the campaign. “He didn’t do it before, why would he do it now?” Eberhart said. He added, “This is about telling supporters: Don’t pay attention to the polls. Don’t pay attention to the media. We’re going to win this thing.” Eberhart said that if Trump follows through with spending his own money it would put pressure on the GOP’s biggest financial backers to step up. “When the president is thinking of writing a check of that size to his campaign, you have to imagine that top donors are feeling the pressure to kick in more than they already have,” Eberhart said. Trump’s reelection effort, including the Republican National Committee, has spent more than $800 million so far, while Biden and the Democratic National Committee have spent about $414 million through July, according to campaign spending reports. The Trump campaign has not released its fundraising totals from August, a significant delay that raises questions coming on the heels of the Biden team announcing an eye-popping $364 million take for the month. In the days following the last month’s Republican Nation Convention, Trump made the unusual move of pulling most of his advertising from TV, ceding the airwaves to Biden. During August, Biden doubled what Trump spent on ads, dropping about $80 million in states that include battlegrounds such as Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to data from the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG. […]
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