Trump says war chest has more than $122m cash on hand after huge 2021 haul

Former president has been stingy with support for MAGA candidate, raising likelihood of 2024 run

Former President Donald Trump continued a massive fundraising blitz through the end of 2021 and now has more than $122m cash on hand, his political team announced on Monday.

The ex-president remains in control of a fundraising juggernaut with more than 1.6 million individual donations, 98 per cent of which were under $200. The haul is on par with numbers his team was seeing during his two presidential campaigns, and shows little sign of slowing down ahead of either the 2022 midterms or the 2024 presidential race, when Mr Trump is thought to be considering a third bid for the presidency.

“President Donald J Trump has built a political organization that continues to capture and define the future of the Republican Party. From the massive and unprecedented Save America Rallies, to these record-breaking fundraising numbers, there is no question that the MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN (MAGA!) wave is set to crash across the Midterms and carry forward all the way through 2024,” said Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Mr Trump.

The combination of significant fundraising in the second half of 2021 — more than $51m — and the impressive cash-on-hand total suggests that Mr Trump is continuing to save his money for a future personal campaign effort rather than using it to bankroll the campaigns of various loyalists in their bids for power around the country.

Numerous Trump-aligned candidates in a slew of races have appealed to Mr Trump for his support as they challenge both Democrats and establishment Republicans not aligned with the former president. Notable examples include Harriet Hageman, a Republican running to oust Rep Liz Cheney in Wyoming, as well as several candidates including Josh Mandel in the Ohio Senate race.

That could obviously change in the months ahead as Republicans try to retake the House and Senate in the midterm elections and the former president seeks to reassert his status as kingmaker in the GOP, but as of yet there’s little sign of Mr Trump making large expenditures to further any candidates other than himself.

For comparison, Mr Trump now has roughly double the available cash on hand of either of the major US political parties. The Democratic Party announced in December that it had raised around $157m in total throughout 2021, and had $65m available cash in the bank. The GOP raised slightly more, ending the year with $158m in total fundraising for the year but just $56m in the bank.

DNC chairman Jaime Harrison complained about critics of his tenure as party leader in tweets touting his party’s fundraising haul on Saturday, writing that “[o]nly in DC … can you break a fundraising record & have folks complain it isn't enough,” a somewhat-ironic statement given that NBC News reported that same day that his decision to spend much of his time in his home state of South Carolina is “a major point of consternation for the White House”.

Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican Party, said in her own statement to Fox News that the GOP’s slight advantage in fundraising showed that the GOP was “building the infrastructure to take back the House and Senate in 2022”.