Trump, Allies Amass Huge Campaign War Chest

And new campaign finance disclosures over the weekend showed that President Trump has raised $26 million through his joint fundraising committee in the second half of last year, and another $8 million directly into his leadership PAC. And the Trump-aligned MAGA-incorporated SuperPAC, well, it ended June 25 with more than $300 million on hand. Joining us to discuss the president's war chest and its goals for the midterms is Angie Wong. She's a Republican strategist as well as a political columnist. Great to see you, Angie. Good morning. How is Trump's campaign war chest? How does that signal a change from previous second-term presidents going into the midterms? Good morning, Kerry. Yes, this is great, great news. You know, having a very full war chest is exactly what we need to kind of break the spell of what happens during midterms with presidents. Usually traditionally and historically, the president usually loses at least the House or the Senate. And that's what, you know, the timeline has said. But I think President Trump is going to do everything he possibly can to make sure that he has a full four-year presidency where there are no hiccups in the House or with the Senate and that, you know, the Republicans control all three branches. So for him to now shore up the money for $26 million in 2025, the last two quarters, plus already he had $400 million in the bank cash on hand, that's going to be significant because right now Democrats, they're actually in the negative. They still owe $17 million from Kamala Harris's run for the U.S. presidency. And also they didn't really raise that much in the last two quarters. We're hearing that the DNC only has $14 million cash on hand, according to FEC reports. This is not great news for Democrats, especially since there's going to be a record number of House retirements this year, 45 seats. 45 seats of retirement, which means that the next Congress is going to have the largest freshman class. And Angie, just to put things in context a bit, President Trump has courted and entertained many of the top tech CEOs in the White House. It seems like, you know, where they have heavily supported Democrats, they might be neutral or what have you in the midterms, hard to say. But, you know, there's so much money on the Democrat side as well. Are you saying that it will be hard for them to make up the difference? Or do you expect, you know, the people that typically support Democratic causes to come out in sort of a rushed manner going into the midterms so that they can fight fire with fire? Yeah, what I've noticed with a lot of the kind of tech titans is that they kind of straddle both worlds, right? They do. They they they donate to Democrats, but they also donate to Republicans. And right now, Democrats are not having a winning message, certainly not in the media. They don't seem to have clear leadership. The party, quite frankly, seems pretty split. It's fractioned off between the far left and kind of the moderate left. And I think Democrats are looking at that. Sorry, tech titans are looking at that going, well, you know, maybe I should have a footprint in something outside of Silicon Valley. Maybe I should go to Florida and Texas, which is what we're seeing the migration of. So I think they are kind of straddling both worlds. They're probably going to donate to both. But here's what Elon Musk says. He says he's going to finance the midterm elections for Republicans. That is a huge win because we know that money buys these races. And they really do, because you have to buy so much media in order to get the messaging out and to get the voters out. And this is going to be great, especially towards the last few weeks, months leading up to Election Day, because that's when you really need the emergency funds to do the last minute push to make sure that you get over the finish line. And if you look at President Trump's successful presidential run, as well as Zora Mandani's very successful campaign to win the New York City mayoral race, the tactics are different. But I presume that the overall strategies remain the same. What do you expect from Trump supporting the congressional election races going into the midterms, which really is going to be kicking off? If it hasn't already, it's going to be kicking off quite soon. What tactically is different and what do they need to do to win? Well, Zora Mandani ran a really, really interesting race. We're still dissecting it. It was a very smart social media race. His social media team read the algorithms every single day and made sure that whenever he spoke publicly, the candidate, he used those keywords just so that they would go viral. He knew exactly what he was doing. We're starting now to see a lot of local candidates emulate the same kind of SEO structure. That's really important. Also, what Zoran did really well was that he went into high rise buildings, something that Republicans still need to do. They don't know how to go into the urban areas. They know how to doorknock on individual houses. But we really do need to start looking at kind of like the densely urban areas to now go into, because our messaging is right. Our policy is right. But getting into the spaces where moderates, independents and Democrats live, that's something that we need to kind of hone in on. Now, I see Trump's strategy as doing both. He is going to do the traditional campaigning, which is his rallies that he's kicked off in recent weeks, as well as a lot of the kind of technology driven campaigning that I love to see more and more of. I think that is something that we need to get a better grasp of, because, again, as I said, our messaging, most Americans agree with common sense. That's what we're pushing out. We just need to make sure that everyone hears it, not just Republicans, not just the right. And I think that's going to be the major challenge of 2026. Well, we're already covering it. I know it's just going to continue to heat up. Really appreciate your analysis this morning and good to see you, Angie Wong. Nice to see you.