Fox News: Trump campaign threw millions of dollars 'into a wood chipper'

Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt on Tuesday called the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by Donald Trump’s reelection campaign “jaw-dropping.”

Stirewalt said that news that Trump had squandered $800 million of the $1.1 billion in donations the campaign has accumulated was akin to putting the money “into this wood chipper.”

The New York Times detailed on Monday the extent to which Trump’s expenditures over the last three years have led to his campaign losing the money advantage it had over Vice President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

The Times said Trump campaign insiders are forecasting “a cash crunch with less than 60 days until the election.” The paper reported that the Trump campaign lavishly spent on staffers, office space, and legal fees, as well as $11 million on Super Bowl ads that were a “vanity splurge” for Trump.

In one instance, the campaign reportedly spent nearly $110,000 on pouches for storing cellphones during fundraisers so donors wouldn’t secretly record and leak Trump’s comments. The campaign also paid for a car and driver for then-campaign manager Brad Parscale, whose expenditures are currently under review.

Parscale was removed from his position in July and replaced with Bill Stepien after Trump’s failed campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

From the Sep. 8 edition of Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom”:

TRACE GALLAGHER: The New York Times reporting that there’s a bit of a cash crunch with the Trump campaign right now, saying the campaign has spent about $800 million of the $1.1 billion war chest.

 

I want to put up these advertising numbers from the last two weeks in August, where the Biden campaign spent $35.9 million versus the Trump campaign spending $4.8 million.

 

And this quote from GOP strategist and Fox News contributor Ed Rollins, who says, quoting here, “If you spend $800 million and you’re 10 points behind, I think you’ve got to answer the question, ‘What was the game plan?’ I think a lot of money was spent when voters were not paying attention.”

 

What do you make of all this, Chris?

 

CHRIS STIREWALT: Not even Jeb Bush could have wasted this much money. It was a profound – I believe the phrase is “enough money to burn a wet elephant.”

 

And it’s been amazing to see. They spent money they never should have, they paid all these salaries, they do all of this stuff, and it’s been like a wood chipper, where you have all of these small – Donald Trump revolutionized Republican fundraising because he gets so many small-dollar donations but then he puts them into this wood chipper, or he was. Brad Parscale was his previous campaign chairman, he has a new campaign manager in Bill Stepien who I think is following more traditional guidelines for how to run a campaign.

 

But the hundreds of millions of dollars that they burned through from these small-dollar donors is just, it’s jaw-dropping.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.