2020 Race: Donald Trump to spend ‘whatever it takes’ on campaign
Donald Trump’s vow to spend his own money to get re-elected comes as his campaign faces a cash crisis but polls tighten.
Donald Trump has vowed to spend “whatever it takes” of his own money to get re-elected as new polls show him pulling almost level with Joe Biden in the crucial battleground state of Florida.
Mr Trump’s vow to spend his own money on his election campaign came after reports that his campaign is facing a cash crisis just two months out from the election compared to the Biden campaign.
“If I have to I would,” Mr Trump said when asked if he would help fund his own campaign. “Whatever it takes, we have to win. This is the most important election in the history of our country.”
Mr Trump said his campaign was lower on cash because it needed to spend money early on to combat “disinformation” by the Democrats on the coronavirus pandemic.
But he said his campaign still had more money than at this time in the 2016 campaign when he personally contributed $US66 million to the coffers.
His comments came amid good news for the Trump campaign with a series of polls showing that the president has made up ground against his opponent in the vital swing state of Florida.
A new NBC-Marist poll shows both Mr Trump and Mr Biden deadlocked on 48 per cent each. The president leads Mr Biden among white voters (56-41 per cent), men (58-38 per cent), Latinos (50 to 46) and white voters without college degree (63-35 per cent).
Mr Biden leads among Women (57-40 per cent) and black voters (83-11 per cent) and is level with Mr Trump with older voters.
The poll is one of several that has cut Mr Biden’s lead in Florida from a peak of 8.4 points on July 25 to only 1.4 points now according to the RealClear Politics poll average.
In his 2016 contest with Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump won Florida by just over one per cent and the state, with a hefty 29 electoral college votes, is considered a must-win for the president if he is to get re-elected.
To keep his momentum in the state, Mr Trump visited Florida Wednesday (AEST) to highlight his environmental credentials to voters, signing an order to expand the moratorium on oil drilling off the Florida coast.
“My home, this is my home,” Mr Trump told the crowd after having changed his permanent residence from New York to Florida last year.
Mr Biden is expanding his travel schedule dramatically as the campaign heats up and will visit the battleground states of Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania this week.
In contrast to Mr Trump’s shortage of campaign cash, the Biden campaign raised a record $US365 million in August and has embarked on an expensive ad blitz across the swing states.
But the president’s campaign manager Bill Stepien said he was confident that the Trump campaign would still have more than sufficient money to fund a strong election campaign.
“It’ll be by a factor of two times or three times what we had to spend on the campaign we were a part of in 2016,” he said.
“If money was the only factor determining winners and losers in politics, Jeb Bush would’ve been the nominee in 2016, and we’d have a second President Clinton right now in the Oval Office.’
The Trump campaign has already spent more than $US800 million of the $US1.1 billion the party raised from the start of 2019 until the end of July this year.
“Like I did in the 2016 Primaries, if more money is needed which I doubt it will be, I will put it up!,’ Mr Trump tweeted.
(Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia)
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