(WASHINGTON) — Just two months ago, when former President Donald Trump had just begun raising money with the Republican Party as its new presumptive nominee, his team was trailing President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party by nearly $100 million in campaign cash on hand. Now Trump has rapidly outpaced Biden in fundraising.
This new surge in the Trump campaign’s fundraising effectively closes the money edge Biden’s campaign had boasted earlier this election cycle as the competitive November general election looms. The Trump fundraising boost gives him plenty of fresh cash to potentially spend on advertising after next week’s debate.
The Biden campaign on Thursday announced that the campaign and the Democratic National Committee’s joint fundraising operation raised $85 million in May — significantly less than the whopping $141 million total the Trump campaign claimed it raised the same month.
The Trump campaign and the Republican Party’s joint fundraising committee have now outraised the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party two months in a row. Major Republican donors that had been sitting on the sidelines earlier this year are now rallying behind Trump; small-dollar donors are fired up after the former president’s conviction in his hush-money trial.
Full fundraising figures won’t be available until both sides’ joint fundraising committees file their quarterly reports next month, but Trump appears to have caught up on or is at least close to catching up on Biden’s cash on hand. The Trump campaign and the RNC are reporting a combined cash-on-hand of more than $172 million compared to the just under $157 million in cash-on-hand the Biden campaign reported.
The Biden campaign announced that their total cash-on-hand including joint fundraising committees is $212 million, but the Trump campaign has yet to voluntarily announce a comparative number — which will be released next month.
Trump’s latest fundraising boost comes on the heels of his guilty verdict in his New York criminal trial, which was a major fundraising boon for Trump’s campaign. The Trump campaign claimed that his team raised a massive $53 million from online fundraising in just 24 hours after he was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Both the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign have been holding multiple ritzy high-dollar fundraisers with tickets going up to $840,000, Trump in particular kicking off his joint fundraising with the Republican Party in April with a Palm Beach fundraiser that raked in $50 million just in one night.
Despite the trial schedule that confined Trump into a Manhattan courtroom most days of the week earlier this year, Trump criss-crossed the country on days off the trial courting wealthy donors in Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, Florida and New York — even attending a Manhattan fundraiser the day his guilty verdict dropped.
Trump ramped up fundraising even more once the trial ended, bringing in $27 million from a West Coast fundraising swing earlier this month, while Biden too raised more than $30 million from his star-studded Los Angeles fundraiser last weekend, joined by former President Barack Obama, Julia Roberts and George Clooney.
Both the campaigns also recently had dueling fundraisers in London with surrogates and former ambassadors, courting wealthy Americans abroad.
Meanwhile, pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again also outpaced pro-Biden super PAC Future Forward PAC last month, the pro-Trump group raising $68 million in May, including a whopping $50 million donation from major Trump ally Timothy Mellon. The pro-Biden group raised $39 million last month, including a $19 million donation from Michael Bloomberg.
Trump’s big hauls over the past couple of months reflect an influx of cash from previously untapped big Republican donors that had either turned away from Trump or had been sitting on the sidelines during the primary season. They finally returned to Trump after he became the party’s last-standing presidential candidate — raising the question of whether Trump will be able to continue to expand his donor base.
Regardless, the cash flow has helped Trump gear up for the general election after coming out of the primary and is expected to boost the former president ahead of critical moments in the coming months including the upcoming first presidential debate in Atlanta as well as the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention.
“We are moved by the outpouring of support for President Donald J. Trump,” Trump Campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote in a statement earlier this month when they announced the May fundraising figures. “The American people saw right through Crooked Joe Biden’s rigged trial, and sent Biden and Democrats a powerful message – the REAL verdict will come on November 5th.”
The Biden campaign claims its battleground infrastructure is making up for the slower fundraising, saying Trump is doing little to expand his voter base in battleground states.
“For months, the Biden-Harris campaign has been on the ground talking to the voters who will decide this election, and Donald Trump’s been nowhere to be found,” Biden-Harris 2024 Battleground States Director Dan Kanninen wrote in a statement. “Now, with just over four months until the election, Donald Trump couldn’t match our battleground infrastructure if he tried. While Trump’s team is desperately trying to spin their lack of infrastructure as ‘strategic,’ the bottom line is that Donald Trump cannot buy back the time he has lost — and invisible campaigns don’t win.”
“In an election sure to be decided by tens of thousands of voters, Team Trump is doing little to nothing to expand their base or court the battleground voters who will decide this election,” Kanninen continued.
Travis Scott is making light of his recent arrest for intoxication and trespassing, all while being charitable. Now being sold on his website are $35 T-shirts with a picture of his mugshot over the words “It’s Miami,” which is what he told police after he admitted he’d been drinking alcohol. Five dollars from each sale will benefit his Cactus Jack Foundation.
A$AP Rocky‘s fourth studio album, Don’t Be Dumb, finally has a release date: Aug. 30. He is said to have announced the date after teasing clips toward the end of the AWGE “American Sabotage” show during Paris Fashion Week. Links to presave the album and shop for merch from the American Sabotage collection were shared.
Snoop Dogg is praising Kendrick Lamar for uniting people at his Pop Out concert Wednesday. “Sending a big shout-out to K. Dot and all the homies from the West that stood together unified, organized in peace [and] love,” Snoop said. “That was fun to watch. Beautiful to see all my peoples come together… K. Dot, you are the King of the West. That’s the kind of s*** kings do, we unite.”
Many have noticed Sean “Diddy” Combs has wiped his Instagram clean amid the sexual assault allegations against him. His posts on the social platform X are still up, with a pinned statement from December 2023 in which he claimed people tried to “assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy.”
Cheers to another New Music Friday! Here’s some of the latest to hit the culture:
Kehlani‘s Crash is out now, featuring 13 tracks she thought would be great to tour. “A crash, in any form, is the peak height of the moment,” she says of her new project. It finds her “at my most free, most fun, most loud, most fueled, so far.”
Ice Spice drew comparisons to Nicki Minaj when she posted a teaser of “Phat Butt,” but now the song is out with a new video. “Rap b**** on the pop chart/ toasting b****** like pop tarts,” she raps. “Fat butt and a back tatt /and I been bad like Mike Jack.”
6lack reflects on his journey as a man and in the music industry on his new single, “FTRG” (F*** The Rap Game)”. It was released alongside a music video that “brings to life the many sentiments at play in this song.”
GloRilla‘s “TGIF” is finally here. Among the most memorable lyrics is “It’s 7pm Friday, it’s 95 degrees…I ain’t got no n**** and no n**** ain’t got me,” which is already viral on TikTok.
The new song and video from Jaden, “Roses,” is “about young love and healing.” He says it’s “a Therapy Session set to the key of Bb Major and at the tempo of 165 Bpm.”
Rema teams with fellow Nigerian Shalipoppi for “Benin Boys,” a tribute to their native Benin City. The video captures the city’s landmarks.
Capella Grey wants fans to Vibe Responsibly, according to his debut album, which was three years in the making. It features Caribbean, R&B and New York vibes.
It’s been three years since fans heard from G-Eazy, but he’s back with Freak Show, featuring “Love You Forever,” a song dedicated to his late mother, Suzanne Olmsted.
If there are two things Saweetie is known for outside of her music and beauty, it’s her food concoctions and business acumen. Both are displayed in her latest venture, a partnership with The Boiling Crab and Postmates. Per the deal, she’s bringing a variety of seafood feasts inspired by her food combos to her fans. The Hot Mess, The Bigger Hot Mess and The Biggest Hot Mess — all of which include snow crab, shrimp, corn, andouille sausage and fries — are now available at The Boiling Crab through July 7, with Postmates exclusively delivering from participating locations.
Speaking to People, Saweetie says she got her food concoctions, which include oysters in honey barbecue sauce, from her father.
“Honestly, I get a lot of the concoctions from my dad because, as a young dad, he would make me spreads,” Saweetie says. “He would make me these cool ‘Scooby-Doo’ sandwiches with a whole bunch of chips, fries, however he wanted to make it.”
“But I’ve always just had a love for concoctions and for tasting new foods. I’m a really big foodie,” she adds. It’s why she was open to the collab: It’s something she already enjoys doing.
“At this point in my career, I’m not doing things for financial benefit. I’m doing things out of passion,” Saweetie says. “It’s always a special moment when you’re able to do business with people who you share a common interest [with]; in this case, it’s seafood.”
“The fact that it’s dropping the day of Cancer season, and I’m a Cancer (my sign is a crab), it just feels so aligned and so in sync with everything that’s going on for me right now,” she tells People, “especially with just having new music out.”
When Moneybagg Yo was working on his Speak Now album, his goal was to “deliver a body of work for my day-one fanbase who been rocking with me since Federal 3x.”
The album features melodic tunes like “Drunk Off U” with Chris Brown and the Morgan Wallen-assisted “Whiskey Whiskey,” but Moneybagg says he’d been experimenting with his singing voice long before he collaborated with either artist.
“I got 80 of those type of songs before even Chris [Brown] got on it,” he tells Billboard. “I was experimenting and playing with the craft and the talent. It came out good and I put Chris on it. I got one called ‘I Feel It,’ and the Morgan Wallen situation.”
Of the Morgan collab, he says it was two to three years in the making, adding it came together because Morgan’s a fan of his work.
“He’s actually a big fan of me. We been locked in for like two or three years,” the rapper says. “We had the song when we first locked in off the rip. I had it for like a year and a half, or two years, and he’s been on me about putting it out. … The perfect time is now.”
Bagg notes that he’s in the part of his career where he’s “really about enjoying what I’m doing and expanding at the same time” because he feels he has “nothing else to prove.”
“I got all these plaques, I got success,” he says. “Just basically coming off a two-year break. I’m just letting them know I really do this. Don’t play.”
There are some songs that are best untouched, and Monica once thought “The Boy Is Mine” was one of them. That is, until she heard the remixAriana Grande and producer Max Martin had put together.
“I’ve always said that the song should not be touched, right? And I said that because I felt that it did not need to be redone in the idea of, let’s say, actually doing it the exact way that it was,” Monica explains to ET. “But Ariana and [producer] Max Martin — as soon as I heard this version, I fell in love with it.”
Working and speaking with Ariana, Monica says, also helped in bringing the collaboration to fruition.
“Everything has been directly from her chest and, for me, authenticity, humility, all of those things are key,” Monica says. She adds that it was Ariana’s enthusiasm that ultimately convinced her to do the song.
Ariana’s “The Boy Is Mine (Remix)” is now out, also featuring one-half of the original hit, Brandy. Though the two had put rumors of a feud to rest during their Verzuz battle in 2020, Monica says the new collab further helped heal their relationship, which had briefly given in to the chatter of a beef and became real.
“The process of the new collaboration did a lot of closing the gaps…,” Monica said. “It made it a lot easier just to talk,” she continued, adding she and Brandy have talked more recently than they have in “the last two decades.”
The singer didn’t rule out a future Brandy/Monica collab, saying, “There is a chance, there is for sure.”
Until then, her wish is for fans to “have fun to this record because it is really the rebirth of ‘The Boy Is Mine’ in such a special way.”
