Morning Joe stunned by depths of Trump campaign cash problems: 'They didn't have money?'

Donald Trump is having the same money troubles heading into the 2024 election that some of his allies believe cost him re-election four years ago.

MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire stunned "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough with a revelation about the depths of his fundraising issues, with that cash crunch forcing the cancellation of a campaign rally and keeping the former president holed up at Mar-a-Lago as president Joe Biden steps up his attacks.

"The president himself has gotten far more aggressive in taking it to Trump," Lemire reported. "His new favorite joke Joe Biden has been trotting out is he talks about the efforts to relief student loan [and] a man approaches him on the street and says, 'I need all this money,' and Biden says, 'Well, sorry, Donald, I can't help you.' We've seen a rapid response grow, and they're taking chances every opportunity they get... The first mission of the State of the Union was to reassure nervous Democrats, to show them, look, the president is up for the job – he can deliver a strong performance. Clearly, that happened."

"A lot of the whispers that Biden should step aside, that's vanished," Lemire added. "There's much more confidence in the party that he is up for this fight. Then they thought, well, let's accompany that with a two-week blitz of campaign travel. He's been to basically every swing state while Donald Trump, to Joe's point, held one event. They had to pull down another, one scheduled for Arizona. They had to cancel it because they didn't have the money to pay for it. That is a concern for Trump world. The Biden team has a massive cash advantage."

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Scarborough stopped him at that point to clarify his reporting.

"Jonathan, did you just say Donald Trump -- you have reporting that Donald Trump had to cancel an event, the only event he's had, would have had on his own in a long time, they didn't have the money to run the event?" Scarborough asked.

Lemire confirmed that information, saying he had learned the event was canceled before it was even publicized.

"It was an event that was not publicized yet," Lemire said. "It hadn't been officially announced, but they were planning an Arizona event they had to pull down because they couldn't afford it. They didn't want to use their resources there. It was not that it had been advertised yet, but, still, this was something they wanted to do and couldn't. They didn't because they decided to use resources elsewhere."

Scarborough expressed astonishment.

"Have you ever heard of a political campaign that didn't have the money to run political rallies?" he said.

Lemire said some of the ex-president's allies blame money problems for his loss in 2020, when his campaign was unable to run TV ads in the crucial final weeks.

"Let's recall, there are some in the Trump world that feel like -- let's remember, Trump had a cash disadvantage in 2020, as well, and had to go dark for a few weeks that fall," Lemire said. "They had to pull down advertising. They think that was one of the differences of why they lost. They had to go dark for a stretch in September and early October while Biden and his team were advertising nonstop. That is going to happen again this time around. It is very clear that the Democrats are going to have a major fundraising advantage. In fact, President Biden is appearing in New York City later this week with former presidents Obama and Clinton in what they hope will be the biggest single fundraiser to date, padding that advantage."

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