Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Democratic Party outraised President Trump and the Republicans for the second straight month in June, announcing a record haul of $141 million on Wednesday night only hours after Mr. Trump’s campaign had trumpeted his own $131 million total.
Both of the presidential candidates’ hauls represented huge spikes from May, when Mr. Biden raised $80.8 million and Mr. Trump $74 million.
The totals were impressive in different ways. For Mr. Biden, the huge sum represented a reversal after he had struggled with fund-raising for much of the primary campaign, as well as a signal that the party’s donors, big and small, have united behind him. For Mr. Trump, it showed the durability of his financial supporters, who delivered his strongest month yet despite a turbulent June and polling showing him trailing Mr. Biden badly.
The Trump campaign had celebrated its $131 million haul earlier on Wednesday evening, with Brad Parscale, the campaign manager, writing on Twitter, “Americans voting with their wallets, supporting the president.”
Then the Biden campaign announced its larger monthly fund-raising sum.
“There’s real, grass-roots energy for Joe,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, wrote on Twitter, adding that 68 percent of the donors were new to the campaign and 2.6 million people had signed up to be on Mr. Biden’s email list.
Still, the Trump campaign said that it now had $295 million in the bank, a formidable financial advantage entering the summer months, and that it had raised nearly $950 million over the last two years. Mr. Biden’s campaign did not disclose its cash-on-hand total.
Mr. Trump spent aggressively as well. The figures released by his campaign show that he spent about $100 million in June.
For the president, June began with the nationwide protests in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. It included the forceful and widely criticized clearing of peaceful protesters outside the White House for a photo op; the release of a scalding book by Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton; the ousting of the United State attorney for the Southern District of New York; Mr. Trump’s first rally since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the country, in Tulsa, Okla., which failed to fill the arena; and a series of tweets from the president, including one over the weekend that was later deleted in which a supporter shouted “white power,” that renewed accusations of racism.\
Coronavirus cases also began to rise in states that had reopened their economies more fully, including across the South and the Sun Belt.
None of that slowed the flow of money. Nor did multiple national polls showing Mr. Trump trailing by double digits, including a New York Times/Siena College survey that had Mr. Biden at 50 percent and Mr. Trump at 36 percent.
Mr. Trump’s campaign said it had set a single-day record for online fund-raising on his birthday, June 14, collecting $14 million. The full $131 million sum came as Mr. Trump held only two fund-raising events for the month.
The Trump campaign did not break down how much of the money was raised online or came from large donations — his joint committee with the R.N.C. can receive checks of more than $500,000 — but it said the outpouring was “largely fueled by the robust digital, mail and online donor base” of the president.
The total is more than Mr. Trump and the R.N.C. ever raised in a single month in 2016.
In recent days, Mr. Trump’s campaign reserved about $95 million in television ads for the fall, beginning after Labor Day in half a dozen states: Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He also began buying airtime in Michigan on Wednesday.
Fund-raising figures are not required to be publicly released until mid-July. Mr. Trump’s campaign released its numbers on July 1 in what appeared to be a political show of force, and hours later, Mr. Biden’s team one-upped him.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/us/politics/trump-fundraising-2020.html
