Trump’s June total is certainly a big shift upward from May, when his campaign raised just more than $3 million from donors and the RNC brought in about an additional $11 million.
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In a statement, Trump’s campaign said $26 million went to the campaign, with the more than $25 million balance going to the RNC and other Republican groups. The campaign said 94% of donors to this effort gave less than $200.
There are two ways to interpret Trump’s behavior in this case (and the dozens of similar incidents since his campaign kicked off a year ago.) Either he’s feigning ignorance at the socio-political impact of the terrible things he says, retweets, and shares, or he’s truly that ignorant.
Trump loaned his campaign at least $46 million through the end of May, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Trump, who for months had boasted about self-financing his primary campaign and accused his rivals of being beholden to special interests, reversed himself earlier this spring after securing delegates to claim the nomination.
Later Wednesday afternoon, Trump appealed to his Twitter followers for donations, tweeting, “To all of my twitter followers, please contribute whatever you can to the campaign”.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton widened her lead over likely Republican nominee Donald Trump to 13 percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.
Reached Wednesday night about Trump’s latest tweet, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, was baffled. Bernie Sanders, for example, also criticized the financial crowd but developed a sophisticated digital program that brought in millions of dollars each month.
News outlets struggled to make sense of the numbers, offering varying analyses without one clear conclusion on what Trump’s statement means about his June fundraising haul. By comparison, Hillary Clinton raised more than $28 million in May alone.
The campaign touted what it called “impressive totals” from June’s aggressive fundraising efforts, boosted by a flurry of fundraising emails.
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“The campaign expects the success to continue throughout the summer with broad support on small dollar contributions via email solicitation from passionate supporters”, the campaign said.
