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Former President Donald Trump's campaign is seeking to outraise President Joe Biden next week, aiming to take in $33 million to top a new single-event fundraising record set by Biden on Thursday with $25 million, said a person familiar with the Trump event who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
Assuming that Trump succeeds in raking in the jaw-dropping sum, the glitzy event offers Trump an opportunity to shift the narrative following months of negative headlines that have focused on his dwindling political cash hauls and his use of tens of millions of dollars in donations to pay legal fees from a myriad of court cases he faces.
Throughout his career in business and politics, Trump has a well-established reputation for inflating, or understating, his cash position — depending on need. His political committees, too, have relied on accounting gimmicks, including the recent clawback of an over $50 million donation — used to seed a pro-Trump super PAC, it was later refunded to help pay his mounting legal bills.
The haul would showcase Trump’s newfound ability to rake in massive checks now that he is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. Effectively controlling the RNC, Trump and his political operation can take advantage of the far higher contribution limits that apply to party committees. While candidates alone can accept a maximum donation of $3,300, under a new joint fundraising agreement between his campaign and the RNC, a single donor could stroke a check for just over $800,000.
But even though the event is slated to give his campaign a massive infusion of cash, it doesn’t alter the fact that Trump still faces considerable financial headwinds.
His main campaign account and the Save America PAC, which has paid many of his legal bills, reported raising a combined $15.9 million in February and ended the month with more than $37 million on hand, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission last week. Democrats, meanwhile, had $155 million on hand.
And while Trump can now collect massive sums in conjunction with the RNC, the fine print of a fundraising invitation for the event shows that Save America — the committee that has been paying his legal bills — will be given a cut of the money before the RNC.
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Adriana Gomez Licon contributed to this report from Miami.