Trump’s Financial Struggles: Legal Battles and Funding Shortages
How do you win elections? The obvious answer is public support, by getting more votes than your rival. But public support is not cheap. Yo need a lot of money to campaign, canvas, and win. So it’s not juThe Decline of Small Donors: Implications for Trump’s Fundraising Strategy
popular candidate who wins. It’s also the better funded one. And why are we talking about this now? Because Donald Trump could be short of money. He’s facing multiple legal challenges. One of them is putting the squeeze on him.
Trump was accused of inflating the value of his assets. A New York court has found him guilty. He was asked, in fact, Trump was asked, to cuff up $355,000,000. If you add the interest to that, it’s $464,000,000. Now, Donald Trump has two options. A, he can pay the amount in full, which means case closed, or B, he can get an insurance company to guarantee the payment.
Trump would then be free to appeal the verdict. Naturally, he likes option B. Trump wants insurance companies to cover his payment. Just one problem, though. None of them will. Trump’s lawyers have approached 30 companies. All of them have refused. And why is that? Well, these companies want collateral. Think of it as a backup.
A collateral can be any sort of asset, maybe cash reserves or stock or properties. If Donald Trump appeals and loses, these companies will take that collateral. Just one problem. In this case, they don’t want real estate as collateral.
They want cash or stocks. And looks like Trump does not have enough of it. His net worth is around $2.6 billion. Out of this, around 400 million is in liquid assets. But the insurers want more than 500 million as collateral.
You can imagine how Trump is reacting to all of this. He’s calling it a witch hunt. Donald Trump says the bond amount is unconstitutional and unamerican. We’ll have to wait and see what he does next. But our story goes beyond this case. It’s about the money needed to win elections
In 2004, George Bush raised around $345,000,000 for his campaign. In 2008, Barack Obama raised $750,000,000. In 2012, he raised $1.1 billion. In 2006, Trump also raised $1 billion. And in 2020, Biden did the same. So the takeaway is pretty clear. If you want to become America’s president, you better have $1 billion in the bank. Now we come to the present election cycle, Biden versus Trump, who holds the funding edge? Right now,
the president is miles ahead. Biden’s team has won $30 million in the bank. That’s cash ready to spend. How much does Trump have? Around $33 million. As president, Biden has a natural advantage. Every incumbent gets more money than his rival. Trump also did it in 2020. But this time around, there are two major problems. One is the legal bills. Trump is battling some 88 legal cases, so his lawyer’s bill is huge. He spent $50 million on it last year
The second problem is small donors. These are people who give less than $200. Such small donors are abandoning Donald Trump. In 2019, they gave him $72 million at 72 million in one year. But in 2023, that number fell by 62%. And that’s bad news for him, of course, because Trump is a disruptive candidate. Corporate America has always been wary of him. So small donors are his strength. If they abandon him, it could be trouble. Which is why Trump is hunting for money.
He met Elon Musk recently. I’m guessing campaign funding was discussed in that meeting. But either way, one thing is quite clear. If you don’t have money, you cannot win America. Whether it’s taking out TV ads or attack campaigns or jetting around one of the largest countries in the world, you need money for that. Of course, there is some good news. Until now, republican money was being split into many camps. Nikki Haley was.