At the risk of sounding like a broken record, things have not been going well for Donald Trump's presidential campaign lately.
In the wake of an FEC filing that shows his campaign is basically a giant con job, despair-laden Republicans have started talking on the record about Trump's campaign finance woes -- including the head of a pro-Trump super PAC.
Ed Rollins, the top strategist for Great America PAC, tells The Washington Post that Trump's dire fundraising problems have left him "staring into the abyss," and he says the purported billionaire will need to take drastic action to improve soon.
"He can either start writing checks and selling some buildings and golf courses or get on the phones and talk to donors," Rollins bluntly says. "Big donors just don’t want to give money unless they have the opportunity to talk to the candidate, hear what your positions are. There’s just been a failure from start-to-finish on the fundraising side."
Of course, asking donors for big bucks gets trickier once they realize that so much of Trump's campaign spending is being dedicated to paying off his own businesses and buying "Make America Great Again" hats instead of building critical campaign infrastructure.
Not to mention, as the Post reports, Trump has shown no willingness to work the phones and grease the palms of big GOP donors.
"No donors that I deal with — and I deal with national Jewish and women donors — none of them has gotten a phone call. None. Not one," veteran GOP fundraising consultant Lisa Spies tells the Post. "To raise money, you have to ask for money. It’s that simple. Whether you ask for it by mail, whether you do phone calls, whether you do events, whether you have one-on-one meetings, you have to ask."
