Donald Trump once promised to fund his own presidential campaign. Is the campaign instead funding Mr. Trump?
This week’s release of Federal Election Commission filings from the presidential candidates in May showed that Mr. Trump finished the month with $1.3 million in cash on hand, a pittance compared with Hillary Clinton’s $42 million in the bank and less than even the residual war chests of Mr. Trump’s vanquished primary rivals Ted Cruz and Ben Carson.
The news spawned the Twitter hashtag #TrumpSoPoor, with commenters tweeting that Mr. Trump’s campaign was so broke he could no longer afford exclamation marks (“SAD”); that his wall with Mexico would be reduced to a “get off my lawn” sign; that even his fact checks were bouncing.
But look again. In May, the campaign paid Trump-owned enterprises and family businesses $1.1 million, out of a total of $6 million in disbursements.
Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida club, received $423,000 in event fees. His restaurants received $125,000 and Trump Tower, where he lives, received $170,000 in rent for campaign offices. The campaign paid $350,000 for the use of Mr. Trump’s aircraft. A winery owned by his son Eric earned $1,300.
Mr. Trump himself was paid $3,085, for unidentified travel expenses, but in any case odd for someone who has pledged not to draw a presidential salary. The campaign also pays the salaries of some Trump employees. All in all, the numbers brought to mind his comment in 2000 that “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”
Skeptical Republican donors have stayed on the sidelines partly because they wonder whether Mr. Trump would use their contributions to pay himself back the $50 million or so he has loaned the campaign. After all, he’s got a business history of paying himself first. On Thursday, he declared in a campaign email that he had “absolutely no intention” of doing so, that the loan had been “fully extinguished,” or terminated, and that the $50 million represents a personal investment “in the future of our country.”
Of course the whole idea of “self-funding” a national campaign is fantastical, as Mr. Trump knows, and like political candidates at any level he is busily seeking other people’s money, courting big-name donors, challenging small contributors, and leaning hard on the Republican National Committee for cash and staffers.
Mr. Trump is spending the weekend in Scotland, to visit his struggling golf course ventures (and to make bizarre comments about the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union). But he invited the campaign press corps to ride along anyway. At about $10,000 a seat, they’d help pay for the plane.