Donald Trump has styled himself as an unconventional candidate running an unconventional campaign – and it turns out he’s running an unconventional fundraising operation, as well.
Case in point: among the would-be bundlers for the one-time reality TV star, now presumptive GOP presidential nominee, is Nick Loeb, the Onion Crunch entrepreneur and film producer perhaps best known for being actress Sofia Vergara’s ex-fiance.
“Everyone in America is excited about Donald Trump. ...Everyone I've spoken to has been extremely positive,” Loeb said Thursday from London, but then allowed that, as he has been traveling overseas for the past couple of months, he hasn’t had the opportunity to speak to that many people yet. “I’ll be more active after the convention.”
And that, in a nutshell, perfectly illustrates Trump's money woes.
One Republican fundraising bundler privately told the Huffington Post that he was dismayed by the lack of activity. Typically at this point in an election, with the nomination locked up but before the summer convention, donors are flooded with invitations to upcoming finance events. This, he said, is not currently happening.
A report in Politico detailed tension between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, with both sides mistrusting the other despite a joint fundraising agreement. A fundraiser in Atlanta Wednesday that was to have brought in $1 million may have brought in only a fraction of that, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Some longtime donors to the party have publicly denounced Trump and said they will not help the self-described billionaire, while even one campaign source conceded privately that raising money for Trump was not easy because donors assume that he can simply cover the cost himself.
Trump, who claims a net worth of over $10 billion, did self-fund his primary campaign, lending himself $44 million through the end of April. All but $250,000 of that total will become an irrevocable contribution after Trump formally becomes the nominee in July.
His own financial disclosure shows he doesn’t have the cash and liquid assets he would need to pay for the much more expensive general election campaign. Trump has said he would have to sell a building or two to do that. But he has also said he doesn’t think he would need the $1 billion that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party are almost certain to raise.
“I just don’t think I need nearly as much money as other people need because I get so much publicity. I get so many invitations to be on television. I get so many interviews, if I want them,” Trump told Bloomberg Politics last week.
Loeb, meanwhile, said he wasn’t aware of any fundraising problems. He said he raised about $200,000 for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign during the Republican primary and doesn’t anticipate any difficulty once he has some time to devote to the task. In fact, he said, he recently started working on setting up a fundraiser in New Orleans in August while on his overseas trip. “I made one phone call and got a $5 million commitment,” he said.
Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.