Key Takeaways:
- Trump’s prior campaigns heavily relied on contributions from small donors.
- Recent FEC filings reveal financial strain for both the RNC and Trump’s 2024 campaign.
- Some of the country’s wealthiest CEOs are beginning to support him.
A handful of influential billionaires and tech moguls has increasingly aligned with former President Donald Trump as campaign filings show he’s struggling for cash.
Newly released campaign-finance reports confirm that Trump continues to lag President Joe Biden in amassing donations ahead of the November election. Trump’s decision to rely on his allied groups to help cover his mounting legal fees has exacerbated the overarching deficit.
Biden’s campaign ended February with more than double the amount Trump’s campaign had available, $71 million compared with the former president’s $33.5 million. At the same time, Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, spent another $5.6 million last month on legal fees. The outfit even received a cash infusion from a pro-Trump super PAC to help.
The former president needs to close this gap soon. It doesn’t help matters that the Republican National Committee, which will now work alongside Trump’s campaign, is separately getting outraised by the Democratic National Committee. It’s difficult to say for certain what the overall cash on hand is for pro-Trump PACs and groups, as super PACs weren’t included in the totals posted Wednesday night. That being said, there’s an undercurrent of concern beneath Trump’s own outreach to the billionaires.
While Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk previously stated he wouldn’t donate money “to either candidate for US President” in 2024, he solidified his political alignment in a recent post, expressing concern that “America is doomed” if a “red wave” voting phenomenon doesn’t occur. Musk personally met with the former president earlier in March, according to The New York Times.
Some of the wealthiest individuals globally, such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, have used social media platforms to voice dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s policies. Other billionaires have openly praised Trump. Silicon Valley investor Chamath Palihapitiya, for instance, recently remarked on his podcast that “so much of the work that happened in that administration turned out to have been right.”
While Musk is not a major donor, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is. Ellison contributed over $30 million to Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina before his unsuccessful presidential run. Ellison has reportedly dined with Trump multiple times.
Until now, Trump has primarily relied on his small-donor network. Many politicians struggle to build and maintain a large enough donor base to sustain a campaign, especially for a presidential run. However, thanks to Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United, Trump can sidestep these challenges by securing significant contributions from billionaires for pro-Trump super PACs.
Nevertheless, this outreach may come at a cost. In 2015, Trump leveraged his personal wealth as a means to avoid the trade-offs common in politics. While he ultimately spent relatively little of his own money, his small-donor operation allowed him to maintain distance from big-money backers. However, some megadonors, such as the Koch brothers, openly avoided him. Trump did accept support from super PACs amid a wave of attack ads. Yet, his current outreach efforts are perceived by some as more problematic than ever.
Ahead of a major fundraiser involving an Anheuser-Busch lobbyist, Trump encouraged his loyal followers to reconsider their boycott of the beer giant, which reportedly incurred billions in losses due to a conservative-led boycott, as Politico reported. Additionally, while Trump initially supported banning the popular social media app TikTok, he reversed his stance after meeting with Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, who holds a 15% stake in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company based in Beijing. Trump denies discussing TikTok with Yass.