Felony convictions helped Trump bring in $55 million more than Biden in May

Marta Biino
·2 min read
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Insights from The Washington Post, Reuters, The New Yorker, and CNN

The News

Donald Trump’s campaign, allied groups, and the Republican National Committee raised $141 million in May, outpacing President Joe Biden, the DNC, and its allied committees, which brought in $85 million. Each campaign saw big donations by billionaires to allied groups.

Trump’s advisers attributed the surge in donations registered in May as a way for donors to show loyalty to the former president after he was convicted on 34 felony counts. The campaign claimed it raised $53 million online in the 24 hours after the verdict, though the figures could not be verified, The Washington Post reported.


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Trump’s fundraising comeback could be crucial for presidential race

Sources:  The Washington Post, The New York Times

The staggering rise in Trump’s funds in May “has the potential to dramatically reshape the presidential race,” The Washington Post noted. This comeback could allow the former president to further grow his operation and air more TV ads, an area in which Biden has so far outpaced him. One Democratic strategist told The New York Times that while the surge in funds for Trump was a cause for concern for Democrats, Biden still had room to run “a really strong campaign” — though the full picture of the financial strength of each campaign will only become clear at the end of the summer, the Post added.

The Trump campaign is spending millions in legal fees

Sources:  The New Yorker, Brennan Center for Justice, CNN

The Trump campaign needed an injection of cash, given the former president was “burning through large sums” in legal bills, The New Yorker wrote. Trump has relied on money from donors to pay his way through a number of criminal and civil litigation cases, the Brennan Center for Justice wrote. More than $3.6 million spent by his Save America leadership PAC spent in May was devoted to legal expenses, CNN reported.

Biden is raising money to compete with Trump’s “social media machine”

Sources:  Reuters, Associated Press

One of the main concerns for Biden’s campaign is “Trump’s social media machine,” Reuters reported. The former president’s main reelection super PAC is raising $10 million to help him make a comeback in the vertical-video war he’s losing to the GOP, which is portraying him as “too old and out of touch” on social platforms like TikTok and Instagram. In one of the most recent examples, clips where the president appeared to freeze onstage during a fundraising event circulated online, and Trump leveraged them to claim Biden was unfit to run for re-election, the Associated Press wrote. The Biden super PAC is backed by tech veterans such as Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Reuters added.