Trump’s fundraising has massively overtaken Biden’s. What he does with the cash matters more

Former president Donald Trump blew out President Joe Biden in fundraising in May. According to campaign filings, Biden and the Democratic National Committee raised only $85 million in May, while Trump and the Republican National Committee raised $141 million.

Finding the reason for Trump’s cash advantage is not hard: On the second-to-last day of May, a jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of a conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election. The day after the conviction, Trump’s campaign reported that it had raised $34.8 million in just 24 hours. Staffers said that 485,000 people had contributed to the campaign; 29.7 percent of the donors were first time contributors to WinRed, the GOP’s preferred fundraising platform.

This is the second consecutive month that Trump has outraised Biden. April marked the first time, he and the Republican Party raised $76 million to Biden’s $51 million.

Needless to say, this is an alarm bell for Biden. Despite the fact that the president has regularly lagged behind in the polls, he could always lean on the fact that he raised more money than Trump — until now. That fundraising advantage also comes ahead of the all-important debate next week in Atlanta.

That being said, Biden held a blockbuster fundraiser with Barack Obama and Jimmy Kimmel earlier this month. There’s reason to believe he will make his advantage back.

Unfortunately, much the aura around that fundraiser faded when afterward, the Biden team had to spend time putting out fires about a “cheap fake” video of Biden supposedly freezing up that circulated around the internet. The president can raise all the cash he likes, but it means very little if videos edited to make him look like