How wouild Trump fund his GE campaign?

[Likely Voter]

Trump likes to talk about how he rejects money from fatcats and he doesn't want Super PAC support. Of course as we have talked about here, he has actually given little to his campaign which also hasn't spent much, surviving on web donations and not having to spend anything on TV. It isn't clear yet if Trump can keep this up for the rest of the primary, but the bigger question should be, what about the general?

Mitt Romney raised $467M in hard money and another $167M through his Super PAC. There is no way Trump will be able to raise anywhere near that through his website. And his reliance on free media is not going to work for the general so he is going to need $ hundreds of millions. So is he going to start doing fundraisers? Will he have bundlers? Will he accept Super PAC help? And if so, doesn't that all go against his brand?   And the biggest question of all, is he going to dip into his own fortune?

I'm surprised no one has asked him about this. A candidates ability to fund a national campaign is one of the big factors in choosing a nominee. How Trump plans on running a national campaign is kind of an important issue.

[Ljube]

Once he's the nominee, he will do a cost-benefit analysis and if that proves that investing his own money will increase his chances of becoming President, he'll spend the money.

[mencken]

Once he's the nominee, he will do a cost-benefit analysis and if that proves that investing his own money will increase his chances of becoming President, he'll spend the money.

He would probably have to sell a significant portion of his real estate holdings to make his money liquid enough to spend on his campaign though.

[Adam Griffin]

Yeah, this is inherently the problem: Trump is nowhere nearly as rich as he likes to claim in terms of actual assets that he owns outright sans debt...it gets even worse when talking about how much he's worth in terms of liquid assets. The former number is no more than $500 million; the latter, it wouldn't shock me to find out, could be as little as eight digits.

Part of Trump's NPD has been of course to brag about how he's "really, really rich" and talk about how he could self-fund a campaign. Except he really can't without exhausting all of his actual net worth. He'd enter the White House at best with no actual wealth to his name.

Yet all of his supporters know that he is "really, really rich" and can self-fund his own campaign. Instead of resembling the Republican Party frontrunner's, his fundraising stats look like Martin O'Malley's. I have no reason to believe that the bulk of this discrepancy would disappear in the GE. When combining the fact that the moneyed GOP establishment will in large part not want to contribute to Trump for obvious reasons with the fact that Trump doesn't have the kind of money he claims to have and the fact that the everyday cretins won't feel the same inspiration to donate to Trump as some might to, say, Sanders, it is disastrous for the GOP.

Even a successful and popular Trump would fail to generate down-ballot success because he won't be able to afford media buys (if such a thing as a "popular Trump" is even possible). 

[SillyAmerican]

Yes. Actually, this would be a great time to have a discussion about the whole subject of campaign finances, and what that looks like going forward. I'd love to hear what Trump and others have to say about what we should do, and how we can go about creating a somewhat level playing field for serious candidates (I mean, level field for incumbents and fresh faces), once those candidates differentiate themselves. It's kind of a mess right now. If we could come up with better ways of paying for these expensive campaigns, perhaps we could even get rid of the somewhat silly party structure we operate under. (But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part...).

[Oak Hills]

I think the amount of money needed to run a general-election campaign is vastly overestimated. If one is the nominee of a major party, then one is guaranteed hours and hours of free media every day from September to November. GOTV/groundgame is obviously very important, but I don't think the vast sums of money spent on advertising actually move that many votes. Campaigns just raise and spend as much as they can to squeeze the maximum number of votes they can, even tho at some point they run into seriously diminished returns.

[Cory]

Couldn't he just accept public funding? He can even use it as a wedge to attack Clinton if she doesn't.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Couldn't he just accept public funding? He can even use it as a wedge to attack Clinton if she doesn't.

Would he be able to spend his own money?

[President Johnson]

Maybe he will ask more for small donations from private citizens.

[Oak Hills]

Couldn't he just accept public funding? He can even use it as a wedge to attack Clinton if she doesn't.

Public funding, as currently set up in the United States, only takes the form of matching funds for small donations. So, he could double his numbers with small donors, but he still would need to raise something for the government to match.

[yankeesfan]

Personally I believe that Trump will have difficulty raising money from individual donors.  He spends so much time talking about how rich he is that I find it hard to believe many people will open up their wallets for him.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Couldn't he just accept public funding? He can even use it as a wedge to attack Clinton if she doesn't.

Public funding, as currently set up in the United States, only takes the form of matching funds for small donations. So, he could double his numbers with small donors, but he still would need to raise something for the government to match.

He probably means in the general election where it's just a flat amount. Where he could, but if Hillary doesn't mean he's guaranteed to have less money, and it wouldn't be too much of an effective wedge since no one really cares about this (see McCain in 2008)