It was hardly the most dramatic moment of the showdown, but in the second presidential debate this year, Donald Trump not only boasted about all of the millions of dollars he was giving his campaign, he also challenged Hillary Clinton to follow his lead.”I’m not taking all of this big money from all of these corporations like she is doing,” Trump said, while bragging about his $100 million investment in his candidacy. The Republican added, “Why don’t you put $10 or $20 or $25 or $30 million into your campaign…. It would really be a nice sign to the American public. Why aren’t you putting some money in? You have a lot of it.”As it turns out, Clinton could’ve turned this question around on Trump. The Associated Press reported this morning:
Donald Trump has repeated it so much it’s almost part of his stump speech: He’s going to put $100 million of his own money into his campaign before Election Day. But new filings show he’s got a long way to go if he’s going to hit that mark.The Republican presidential nominee has given a mere $33,000 to his campaign this month.
To borrow a line, why aren’t you putting some money in, Donald? You have a lot of it.In fairness, the GOP nominee, a self-professed billionaire, has invested roughly $56.1 million of his own money into the campaign, but (a) that’s far short of his stated commitment; (b) most of that money was contributed during the Republican presidential primaries; and (c) roughly $9 million of that total ended up going to Trump’s family and business enterprises.And while Trump believes it would be “nice” for Clinton to spent tens of millions of her own dollars on her general-election candidacy, the AP report added that Trump’s donations to himself have “slowed to about $2 million each month” during the general election.In the first half of October — the point at which we might expect the Republican to be going all out — Trump’s financial support was just $33,000.On a related note, the New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman noted this morning that the Trump campaign’s official donation page tells prospective contributors, “Donate now and Mr. Trump will match your gift $1 for $1” [emphasis in the original].I’d be interested in hearing more about this. We know, for example, that Trump received more than $33,000 in donations in the first half of October. So did he promise, in writing, to match contributions and then fail to do so? Is that legal? If he intends to keep the promise, when exactly will the candidate cut the check?Update: Soon after I published this, Team Trump announced the candidate wired an additional $10 million this morning to his campaign account. If that’s true, it’d still leave Trump $34 million short of his stated commitment with only 11 days remaining before Election Day.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."