Donald Trump endures another tough day: He dismissed his campaign manager and fell far short in the latest measure in the money race.
- Trump’s campaign ended last month with $1.2 million in cash
- Compare that with Hillary Clinton’s $42 million
- Trump says manager Corey Lewandowski will no longer be part of the campaign
- As Trump considers a running mate, the position poses a political risk
- Joe Biden warns that Trump seems to be trying to radicalize all Muslims
- Man says he tried to grab a gun at a rally to kill Trump
Trump loans his campaign more money as fundraising trickles
Donald Trump raised a dismal $3.1 million last month -- and spent well over twice that -- and loaned his campaign more money to keep it afloat, according to financial reports filed late Monday.
Trump’s campaign ended May with $1.2 million in cash on hand, compared with $42 million for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Including allied super PACs that have filed their fundraising reports, Trump’s effort had just short of $2 million in cash while Clinton’s side had $94 million. Several competing super PACs are vying to be fundraising vehicles for Trump, not all of which have filed yet.
During the primaries, Trump said repeatedly that he was self-funding his campaign -- although that was never completely true. But he has said that he does not intend to self-fund for the general election, meaning that he will have to vastly step up his fundraising if he is to keep pace.
Trump has held a number of fundraising events in recent weeks, but so far, major donors have been scarce.
By contrast, Clinton had her best fundraising month yet in May, her campaign’s filing with the Federal Election Commission showed. The filings came on a day when Trump’s campaign churned with the sudden dismissal of its combative manager, Corey Lewandowski.
Republicans are increasingly concerned about Trump’s operation, and big-money GOP donors have shown reluctance to give heavily to Trump’s campaign. Monday’s filing may not generate much confidence.
Not only did Trump not make good on his promise to retire a $43-million loan he made to his campaign, he upped it by $2.1 million to $45.3 million.
Trump has called that money a “gift” to the American people. But with it still in the books as a loan, donors may continue to worry that money they give would ultimately go to repay a candidate who claims to be a billionaire.
The money was needed, it appears, to run a campaign that has been spending more than it is taking in. Trump’s campaign spent $6.7 million during the month.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign haul: $28 million in May
Hillary Clinton headed into the general election campaign in a strong financial position, campaign filings showed Monday.
The former secretary of State’s campaign raised more than $28 million in May to head into June with $42.5 million in the bank, it revealed in a filing with the Federal Election Commission.
Most of the funds raised in May, $19.6 million, were allocated to the primary campaign and can be spent through the Democratic convention in late July. $9 million was raised in May in contributions of $200 or less, the campaign said.
Clinton raised another $782,052 in general election contributions, with another $8.9 million in funds raised through the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee with the Democratic National Committee that benefits state Democratic party organizations.
Clinton’s campaign spent more than $16.7 million in May as she sought to fend off Bernie Sanders in primaries in Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, as well as investments ahead of California’s primary earlier in June.
“We’re starting the general election in strong financial shape thanks to the support of more than 1.3 million people and strategic investments that helped us conserve our resources,” Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said in a statement.
Trump’s campaign had not filed its monthly spending report, which was due by midnight Monday. His campaign ended April with just $2.4 million cash on hand.
The Republican National Committee raised $13 million in May, and had $20 million on hand at the end of the month, the Associated Press reported. That’s just a third of the $60 million it had banked at the same point in 2012.
Ahead of gun control vote, Clinton campaign texts supporters urging them to call senators
The text was followed by an email from Hillary Clinton’s campaign with the subject line, “Stand up to the NRA before tonight’s vote.”
The message, signed by the candidate, criticizes Republican members of Congress for blocking gun control - “including reforms that are patently obvious.”
Clinton lauds Sen. Chris Murphy for mounting the talking filibuster that led to Monday’s vote, and asks supporters, “Stand with Senator Murphy and the Senate Democrats by adding your name today.”
The call to action resembles many similar pushes from Barack Obama’s campaign arm to push issues over the years, and is a tactic Clinton has not frequently used.
Donald Trump splits with campaign manager
Donald Trump, whose rocky start to the general election has prompted dire concern among Republicans, separated from his campaign manager Monday.
Corey Lewandowski, 42, who had no previous experience running a presidential campaign, has been credited with orchestrating Trump’s unlikely rise during the primary season. But he has also been a controversial figure, notably facing a battery charge against a reporter, which prosecutors in Florida declined to pursue.
“Corey Lewandowski will no longer be working with the campaign,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in a statement, first reported by the New York Times. “The campaign is grateful to Corey for his hard work and dedication and we wish him the best.”
Anti-Trump group launches fundraising efforts ahead of convention
An anti-Donald Trump movement has detailed plans to raise funds for its growing effort to stop the GOP presumptive nominee ahead of or at the Republican National Convention.
Those unhappy with the Trump candidacy formed the “Free the Delegates” movement to try to block him at the convention next month. One of the group’s goals is to change GOP rules so that delegates to the convention can vote for the candidate of their choosing, rather than being tied to states’ primary or caucus results.
“As we carefully consider not only the presidential nominee but the rules of the convention, the platform of the Republican Party and the-vice presidential nominee, remember that this is true reality TV – it is not entertainment,” said Regina Thomson, co-founder of the group, in a conference call reported by the Washington Post.
Trump has called such efforts “totally illegal” and against what “millions of people” voted for in the primaries and caucuses. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus continues to stand by the current rules of the RNC — delegates remain tied to those voting results.
The group’s organizers deny accusations that they work for any of Trump’s former opponents, though their supporters include a founder of a super PAC that backed Ted Cruz.
Donald Trump insists he didn’t really mean clubgoers who were drinking should have had guns in Orlando
Donald Trump jumped on Twitter on Monday in an apparent effort to soothe top officials at the National Rifle Assn. who said some of his statements after the Orlando, Fla., nightclub shooting were too radical.
The presumptive GOP nominee said last week that had clubgoers carried firearms, they could have gunned down Omar Mateen, who shot to death 49 people in the deadliest shooting massacre in modern U.S. history.
“If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here ... and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes ‘boom, boom,’ you know, that would have been a beautiful sight, folks,” Trump said at a rally in Houston.
He backtracked after top NRA officials said they vigorously disagreed with Trump’s stance.
“When I said that if, within the Orlando club, you had some people with guns, I was obviously talking about additional guards or employees,” Trump tweeted.
A poll last week showed that 61% of Americans want tighter gun control following the shooting, and a survivor told CNN that more guns would have caused more chaos.
“It would have been more of a disaster,” Samuel Maldonado said Monday on CNN’s “New Day.” “... I don’t think it would have been a good idea.”
Play the race to 270 votes
A presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the White House. Most states predictably vote red or blue, but a small handful swing either way and make up the main election battlegrounds. What does it take to win the presidency?
Ticket to the White House or political oblivion? The challenge for Donald Trump as he seeks a running mate
So who wants to be the apprentice?
“Who do you like?” Donald Trump recently quizzed supporters at a Tampa, Fla., rally, cupping a hand to his ear as they suggested vice presidential running mates.
“Newt!”... “Sessions!”… “Condi Rice!” came the cries, referring — respectively — to former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush’s national security advisor and secretary of State.
Loud, undisciplined and often uncouth, the presumptive Republican nominee is a presidential candidate like no other, and whoever joins his ticket will be tested in ways no understudy ever has been.
The line of eager prospects typically winds from the U.S. Capitol across the country — through statehouses, governor’s mansions, city halls — and back again.
Not this time.
Joe Biden to target Donald Trump on foreign policy
Vice President Joe Biden will step into the campaign fray Monday with a foreign policy address that casts Donald Trump’s approach to the world as antithetical to American values.
Biden’s address to the Center for a New American Security opens as a defense of the Obama administration’s foreign policy record, one that has “positioned the United States at the forefront of tremendous opportunity,” he will say, according to advance excerpts.
But Biden will also target the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, even if not by name, arguing that by turning inward, or seeking “sound-bite solutions in a world defined by complexity,” the U.S. could “squander all of our hard-earned progress.”
“I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s capacity to lead our world to a more peaceful and prosperous future. But our leadership does not spring from some inherent American magic — it never has,” he plans to say.