Before Donald Trump was indicted (again!) on Tuesday, presidential super PACs released their financial reports for the first half of the year, with a surprising result: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ affiliated PAC dominated the field, raising $130 million. The reports also had additional bad news for Trump. His joint fundraising committee—the official campaign and leadership PAC—garnered nearly $54 million, much of it from his individual small-dollar cult members.
The big problem for Trump is that he burned through $57 million in the past six months by paying for legal costs, an amount significantly higher than his campaign has raised. A second super PAC supporting him, Make America Great Again Inc., had an even higher burn rate. It raised $14.6 million and spent $25.6 million. A significant chunk of that, $12 million, was reported as a “refund” to Trump’s Save America leadership PAC, the entity paying most of the legal bills.
The upshot is that Trump is burning through money faster than he can raise it. That main campaign committee, Save America, started 2022 with $105 million banked and now has $4 million left. It transferred $60 million to the MAGA PAC for television ads, but now has to claw that money back to pay the lawyers.
Not all of the money is going to Trump’s legal defense, however. Melania Trump’s stylist netted $108,000 from Save America PAC for “strategy consulting.” At least Melania will be well-dressed and impeccably styled should she decide to appear in court with her husband.
That puts Trump in a bind. He wants to drag the various cases against him out for as long as possible so he can keep raising money off of his being “persecuted” by Democrats. But the longer this goes on, the more it costs—and his committees can’t raise enough to pay for both the lawyers and Melania’s wardrobe. He clearly wants to have the indictments hanging over him for as long as possible because they generate the dough, and if this gets pushed into next year when he has the Republican nomination, he’s in less jeopardy because he’s the nominee.
But his donors seem less motivated by his legal plight, and he’s seeing diminishing returns on his indictments. A consultant for the California Republican Party picked up on this trend, noting a massive drop-off in small-dollar donations from Trump’s first indictment in the Stormy Daniels cover-up compared to his classified documents theft case
That could be a result of donor fatigue. It might be too much for even his most hardcore supporters, even though they unanimously reject the idea that he has committed any serious crimes. Maybe the racist MAGA base is worked up about a Black man, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, prosecuting Trump.
But maybe the drop-off in small-dollar donors is a reflection of the perceived seriousness of the charges. Maybe the hardcore Trump base is less excited about opening up their wallets to help defend him against charges of stealing classified documents. Covering up an adulterous affair is a far less serious matter, after all. The fallout from the Jan. 6 indictments should give us a good idea which it is.
In the meantime, Trump has to center his entire campaign on his multiple indictments, with little money available for traditional campaigning. None of his primary opponents seem to be in a position to exploit that weakness, but none of the supposed top tier have been ready to really take him on.
Joan McCarter
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