Cheney: Donors Beware! Trump's Legal Woes Are Draining GOP Finances

As his legal troubles continue to mount, the small-dollar donors who have funded much of Trump's legal bills are starting to turn off the spigot. CNBC's Brian Schwartz reports that in 2023, Trump’s reelection campaign raised 62.5 percent less money from small-dollar donors than in 2019, the year preceding the last presidential election. When the dust settled in 2020, Trump had raised nearly half of his total cash haul—$378 million—from small-dollar donations.

But the Trump campaign's looming cash crunch doesn't end there: the Republican Party's traditional well-heeled donor class is also missing in action. Many of those donors kept Nikki Haley’s rival bid for the GOP nomination afloat. Now they’re directing more of their funds to congressional races and, in particular, the Republican effort to win back the Senate.

Trump hasn't done himself any favors by promising to "permanently" bar Haley donors from his MAGA movement. In fact, the Biden campaign clearly sees an opening there and is making a play for Haley donors.

Biden made his own fundraising pitch when Haley ended her campaign, tweeting, "You don’t have to agree with me on everything to know MAGA extremism is a threat to this country. We need everyone on board—join our campaign." The tweet included a link to the Biden-Harris campaign fundraising page.

To review, Trump may have topped out in terms of what he can raise from his MAGA loyalists, while the bougie donors who fueled Haley's campaign are still MIA on Trump's presidential bid.

Since securing the required delegates, Trump has taken over the Republican National Committee with high hopes of a cash infusion he can use to pay his legal bills. Except the RNC is broke—entering the year with just $8 million cash on hand and nearly $2 million in debt. Those are some downright dismal numbers. And despite Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump promising to pay her father-in-law's legal bills, the RNC faces the same uphill fundraising battle that Trump does.

Trump’s archenemy, former Rep. Liz Cheney, took the opportunity to send out a buyer beware missive on Monday.

"Is it just a coincidence that Donald Trump took over the RNC, fired most of its Republican staff, and installed his daughter-law as co-chair at the same time he’s become desperate for money and can’t post bond?" Cheney tweeted. "Donors better beware."

While this month's Daily Kos/Civiqs poll found that 63 percent of Republican voters are fine with the RNC paying Trump's bills, it appears many of those voters aren't personally coughing up the cash they used to.

That's a serious problem for the RNC and, perhaps, all of its associated committees, though it's possible GOP donors will shore up Senate Republicans’ finances even as they take a pass on Trump. As for House Republicans, it remains to be seen whether House Speaker Mike Johnson can keep pace with his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, who was actually a fundraising stud.

And amid these harrowing cash-strapped times for Trump, the Republican Party is convulsing its way through a nasty divorce that will require a lot of time, effort, and money to clean up before November.

That's a big messaging problem that is going to translate into a massive money problem. Even if Sephora sold enough lipstick to put on that pig, Trump wouldn’t have the cash on hand to buy it.