Trump starts ’20 election season with $100 million
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign begins the 2020 election year with more than $100 million in the bank, campaign officials said Thursday.
Trump’s reelection organization raised $46 million in the final quarter of 2019, giving the president $102.7 million cash on hand, campaign manager Brad Parscale announced.
Among the reasons for increased giving, he said: impeachment.
“Democrats and the media have been in a sham impeachment frenzy and the President’s campaign only got bigger and stronger with our best fundraising quarter this cycle,” Parscale said in a statement. “The President’s war chest and grassroots army make his re-election campaign an unstoppable juggernaut.” Trump, who is spending the holidays at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, returns to Washington this weekend and faces the prospect of a Senate trial on the impeachment charges. House Democrats who led the impeachment inquiry accuse Trump of abusing power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Trump has denied wrongdoing and described impeachment as an effort to undercut his reelection campaign.
The election is still 10 months away, but Trump already has a third of what he spent for the entire 2016 campaign.
In winning the presidency four years ago, Trump raised $339 million and spent $322 million, according to federal election reports. The New York-based businessman who had never sought public office spent an estimated $66 million of his own money.
Trump’s fundraising outpaces any of the Democrats who are looking to succeed him, though those contributions have been split up by the more than 10 candidates seeking their party’s nomination.
Polls show the president in tight races with most of his Democratic challengers in the key states that will determine the winner of the Electoral College.
In trumpeting its haul, the Trump campaign noted in a statement that its figures “do not include funds raised by the Republican National Committee or any authorized joint fundraising committees.”