Donald Trump had not forgiven more than $40 million in loans to his presidential campaign after assuring Republicans that he had no plans to use campaign contributions to pay himself back.
The New York businessman, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, financed his winning-primary campaign with $43.5 million in loans from his personal fortune.
Trump has decided to finance his general election campaign with campaign contributions in order to compete with the $1 billion, or more that presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and her allies are expected to raise.
To encourage Republican donors to open their wallets and put to rest their fears that he would use their contributions to repay his personal loans to his primary campaign, Trump announced that he would convert those loans to irrevocable donations.
“I have absolutely no intention of paying myself back for the nearly $50 million I have loaned to the campaign. This money is a contribution made in order to ‘Make America Great Again,'” Trump said in May in a statement he provided to NBC News.
But in his Federal Election Commission report for May, the $43.5 million still stood as a loan legally capable of being paid back with the money he started raising last month in concert with the Republican National Committee, through a joint fundraisng committee called Trump Victory. Indeed, Trump loaned his campaign another $2.2 million.
Trump’s fundraising is expected to look better in late July, when his June report must be filed with the FEC. But his May report was awful: just $3.1 million raised and $1.2 million in cash on hand as of May 31. Those figures, and Trump’s failure to convert his loans to contributions, could set off alarm bells among GOP donors and bundlers.
By comparison, Mitt Romney raised $23 million in May of 2012, after clinching the GOP nomination late the previous month.
