Donald Trump faces a ‘cash crunch’ after burning through $800MILLION in campaign funds

Donald Trump is facing a cash crunch after burning through $800 million in campaign funds including $11 million on Super Bowl adverts and $156 on planes to pulls MAGA banners.

The $1.1 billion the Republican party had raised since 2019 through to July has ‘evaporated,’ according to The New York Times, and with it a $200 million advantage over Joe Biden.  

Top Republican officials briefed on the budget have been told that the Art of the Deal author needs to reign in his spending just 56 days before Americans go to the polls.

Former campaign manager Brad Parscale, who presided over the profligacy, was replaced in July by Bill Stepien who has introduced various cost-cutting measures and scrapped planned extravagances, such as a $3 million MAGA liveried NASCAR vehicle.

GOP strategist Ed Rollins accused Parscale of spending ‘like a drunken sailor.’

‘If you spend $800 million and you’re 10 points behind (in the polls), I think you’ve got to answer the question, ‘What was the game plan?’ Rollins told the Times. 

Parscale’s tenure saw more than $350 million of the $800 million spent on fund-raising operations to find donors.

Other expenses included $4 million on hosting events at Trump family businesses; his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, donor retreats to Trump hotels and thousands spent in the steakhouse at Trump’s Washington DC hotel.

There was also $110,000 paid to Yondr, a manufacturer of magnetic pouches for cellphones which were used at fundraising soirees to prevent guests from recording Trump.

The campaign had a large team of well-paid staff working at a colossal office in the Virginia suburbs and Parscale lavished himself with a chauffeur driven car, as well as $800,000 on boosting his Facebook and Instagram profiles.

Parscale was the brains behind a $100 million TV advertising splurge ahead of the convention.

One of the most exorbitant costs was $11 million for Super Bowl commercials, more than was spent on TV in some battleground states, which matched the billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s spend on the game. 

Many of the specifics of the campaign spending are unclear, according to the Times, which said that since 2017 the RNC has routed $227 million through a limited liability company linked to senior Trump officials.

The firm, American Made Media Consultants (AMMC), has placed television and online adverts and allegedly made payments to Lara Trump, the wife of the president’s son Eric, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, former Fox News host and girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. 

Another $39 million has been paid to Parscale Strategy LLC and Giles-Parscale, run by Parscale since 2017.

Parscale told the Times that he had ‘no ownership or financial interest in AMMC and that he had ‘negotiated a contract with the family for 1 percent of digital ad spend and after becoming campaign manager took no percentage.’

He also said that his spending was ‘under the very close eye of the family’ or ‘in partnership with Ronna McDaniel (the RNC chairwoman).’

A senior White House official told the Times last month: ‘The campaign was spending all this money on silly things,’ and that ‘Brad’s businesses kept making money.’

‘He’s just milking the family, basically,’ the source claimed.

Parscale said that his spending to raise online donations had been a huge success.

‘We closed that gap,’ he said, claiming that his strategy was ‘the only reason Republicans are even close.’

The Democrats had built up a vast machinery for reaping online donations during the Barack Obama years. 

Stepien is now attempting to reign in some of the spending and he’s even elected to take a pay cut.

The number of staff allowed to travel to campaign events has been hacked down and trips of Air Force One have also been cut back.