Not including outside groups, the two campaigns have combined to spend more than $300 million so far in this election cycle. It’s a crossover vendor from Trump’s real estate organization.
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Instead, about half of the campaign’s $18.5 million in spending was vacuumed up by Giles-Parscale, a web design and marketing firm new to national politics, Federal Election Commission filings show.
The campaign paid a Texas-based web design and marketing firm, Giles-Parscale, $8.4m in July, about twice as much as it made over the previous year. Over the same period, the Trump campaign had raised slightly over $91 million and spent just over $71 million.
Some Trump’s consultants are also well-paid.
“Hillary Clinton is banking on her friend Terry McAuliffe on getting thousands of violent felons to the voting booths in effort to cancel out the votes of both law enforcement and crime victims”, Trump said as the audience booed.
In what amounted to measured remarks on Saturday, Trump, reading from a teleprompter for his fourth straight day, jabbed Clinton for, among other things, her use of a private email server while at the State Department.
As with the nominees, the Democratic National Committee outraised the Republican National Committee.
A third group backing the GOP presidential nominee appears to be doing better since it received the campaign’s blessing last month.
In addition to being ahead of Trump in polls in pivotal states, Clinton has maintained a staff of about 700 for months, opened up offices across the country and already spent $67 million on general election ads. Slim-Fast founder Daniel Abraham also contributed $3 million, bringing his total contribution to $6 million.
As of the end of July, the Clinton campaign reported to the Federal Election Committee that it had raised nearly $275 million and spent over $230 million.
Trump made his first ad buy a few days ago, for almost $5 million in commercials to air across Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. His campaign said that that it raised $64 million with the RNC through online donations and direct mail in July, ostensibly mostly small contributions that would be directed to his committee, rather than the party.
The largest contributor to the increase in Trump outgoings in July was an $18.5m spend on Giles-Parscale, a web design and marketing firm new to USA politics, the AP reported.
At the end of July, the campaign paid $100,000 to Cambridge Analytica, a deep-dive data firm that did business with GOP opponent Ted Cruz.
An anti-Clinton PAC, Defeat Crooked Hillay PAC, got $2 million more from Bob Mercer, a reclusive hedge-funder close to Trump’s new campaign leadership.
As controversy grows over the level of the former reality star’s personal wealth and tax outgoings, a New York Times investigation has shown that Trump’s firms are at least $650m in debt. The sum was roughly equal to how much Trump’s campaign paid him as manager.
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At the time of the latest payment, Lewandowski was already on the payroll of CNN, where he is a political contributor. She took credit – and then blame- for writing Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention that included similar lines from Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
