Donald Trump brushed off his low campaign finance numbers this morning by telling NBC he “may be better off winning it the opposite way than the more traditional way.”
Hillary Clinton’s campaign went into June with $42,461,785.99 cash on hand, according to her end-of-May Federal Election Commission filing released Monday.
Trump reported $1,289,507.76 cash on hand at the beginning of June in his FEC filing. In his campaign’s end-of-April report, he had $2,408,641.95 cash on hand.
Trump and PACs supporting him have reserved $700,000 in TV ad buys from now until Election Day. Clinton and her supporters have bought $117 million in ad screen time.
“Let me just tell you this. I understand money better than anybody. I understand it far better than Hillary and I’m way up on the economy when it comes to questions on the economy,” Trump said in a phone interview on the Today show. “But we have a party that — I mean, I’m having more difficulty, frankly, with some of the people in the party than with the Democrats because they’re just — they don’t want to come on.”
“They will probably eventually come on,” he added. “Honestly, if they don’t, it’s just fine. I can win it either way.”
The Republican National Committee filing reports just over $3 million raised in May jointly with Trump’s victory committee. Trump told NBC that he raised $12 million last weekend.
“I’ve raised a lot of money. But you also have to have some help from the party. But I’ve raised a lot of money. We raised $12 million this weekend. I was in Texas, I was in Arizona, I was in Las Vegas. We raised a lot of money this weekend. I made like four or five stops and I’m raising that money for the party,” he said.
“If it gets to a point, what I’ll do is just do what I did in the primaries. I spent $55 million of my own money to win the primaries. Fifty-five. Now, you know, that’s a lot of money, I mean, by even any standard. I may do that again in the general election… I have a lot of cash and I may do it again in the general election. But it would be nice to have some help from the party.”
There was no comment yet from the RNC on the FEC reports.
Trump told Fox News on Monday night that he’ll announce his vice presidential pick at the Republican National Convention next month.
“I have to say this because I have a couple of people have said they have decided that they didn’t want to be. They were never asked. I have people that want to be chosen so badly you have no idea. I mean, so badly,” he said.
“You always have to start with somebody who is going to be a great president in case something happens. But I want somebody that I can rely on for their judgment. Hillary Clinton has poor judgment. I hope she picks a vice presidential candidate with good. But hopefully it won’t matter because she will lose. But I want somebody with great judgment,” Trump elaborated. “I also want somebody that most likely will be in the world of politics because I have all of the business experience that I had tremendous business leaders in terms of getting legislation.”
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