On Tuesday, The Daily Beast reported that President Donald Trump's campaign is badly lagging Joe Biden's in cash on hand — and that much of his financial problems stem from excessive spending on things that have nothing directly to do with his re-election.
"The president and the Republican National Committee currently have $325 million cash on hand, compared to the $466 million Biden and the Democratic National Committee enjoy," reported Lachlan Markay. "With the map of battleground states is expanding, that means that dollars must be spent wisely. And buried in the Trump campaign’s latest FEC report are other expenditures that suggest the president’s personal proclivities — from over-the-top displays of grandeur to his incessant feuds with the media — are having a literal cost."
One of the examples of bungled campaign spending, said the report, was the half a million dollars spent on fireworks at the White House RNC extravaganza.
"That display was indisputably ostentatious — a seemingly never ending stream of lights that culminated in the words 'Trump' and '2020' bedazzling the sky above the Washington Monument," said the report. "But the price tag — $477,000 — made the company behind the show, Grucci Inc., the campaign’s ninth largest vendor of the entire month. The campaign paid more to the Long Island-based fireworks company in August than it spent on legal bills for its top firm, Jones Day, or its top pollster, Fabrizio Lee & Associates. It was well more than half of the $762,826.08 the campaign spent on its entire payroll."
According to the report, this disparity also comes as the two campaigns have divergent strategies for building a voter outreach operation going forward.
"Biden’s team has largely opted against in-person canvassing and campaign events, instead steering resources towards advertising and remote voter contacts such as peer-to-peer text messaging," said the report. "The Trump campaign, in contrast, has built a robust ground game. And Trump continues to jet around the country to his signature large-scale rallies, events that come with new challenges — and expenses — in the midst of a deadly viral pandemic."