Trump to Rake in $43 Million at Fundraiser, Dwarfing Biden’s Record $26 Million Haul

By Janice Hisle and Austin Alonzo

Thanks to one big fundraiser in Palm Beach, Florida, former President Donald Trump’s campaign will emerge $43 million richer this weekend, an event host confirmed to The Epoch Times on April 4.

“The response to our fundraising efforts has been overwhelming, and we’ve raised over $43 million so far,” said billionaire John Paulson in an email that a spokeswoman sent. “There is massive support amongst a broad spectrum of donors.”

The amount secured for the April 6 “Inaugural Leadership Dinner” is 65 percent higher than the record-breaking $26 million that his Democrat opponent, President Joe Biden, raked in from a star-studded event in the Big Apple last week. At the time, President Biden’s campaign said no other political fundraiser in history had generated so much money.

The two opposing candidates’ big fundraising events represent an accelerating infusion of campaign cash into their respective camps as the 2024 presidential race shifts into high gear. The men are expected to face off in the Nov. 5 general election.

Last month, the Democrat incumbent and the Republican former president each secured enough delegates to become their party’s presumed presidential nominee. The delegates will vote at the parties’ nominating conventions this summer.

The two candidates first went head-to-head in 2020, during the most expensive federal campaign in history. Spending on the presidential race exceeded $6 billion, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan research group that tracks money in U.S. politics.

Fundraising and political spending continues to grow in importance in U.S. elections. According to advertising monitoring firm AdImpact, the 2024 election cycle is projected to be the most expensive of all time. More than $10.2 billion will likely be spent on political advertisements by the end of this year.

When news of the private Trump soiree first broke late last month, Mr. Paulson had stated that donations had topped $33 million. On Thursday, neither his spokeswoman nor the Trump campaign would say what factors may have boosted the haul by $10 million in roughly two weeks since then.

Some of the wealthiest Republican donors are continuing to back President Trump even as he faces multiple civil and criminal court cases, including a New York “hush money” trial slated to begin April 15.

An invitation to the Palm Beach event, which The Epoch Times obtained, showed that former Republican presidential hopefuls would be present, along with President Trump. Those include Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

The invitation listed the event hosts as Mr. Paulson and Alina de Almeida. She is a social media nutrition guru who, according to the New York Post, is Mr. Paulson’s girlfriend; that report also indicated that the couple would host the fundraising dinner at their $110-million home.

By itself, the Palm Beach event will raise an amount equivalent to about 70 percent of the total $65.6 million that the Republican National Committee (RNC) and President Trump’s reelection committee pulled in last month.

Co-chairs listed on the Trump fundraising invitation include Robert Bigelow, head of Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace; Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald LP; Robert Mercer, former co-leader of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies; Phil Ruffin, owner of Las Vegas’s Treasure Island and Circus Circus hotel-casinos; and Wynn Resorts Ltd. founder Steve Wynn, who served as the RNC’s finance chair from 2017 to 2018.

As of March 6, all 2024 presidential candidates, including those who have dropped out, had raised $483 million; the amount that came from “outside groups supporting their campaigns” totaled $539 million, Open Secrets said, based on Federal Election Commission data

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who suspended his presidential bid in January, led the field with a total haul exceeding $200 million. In second place was President Biden’s $189 million, outpacing President Trump’s total by about $10 million, according to Open Secrets.

As of last week, President Biden’s campaign asserted that President Trump was “scrambling to raise cash as he lags behind President Biden in fundraising.

The Biden-Harris campaign trumpeted that the New York event would raise “$5 million more than the Trump campaign raised in all of February and more than the RNC reported raising all year.”

With big-name headliners, the fundraiser at New York’s Radio City Music Hall was sold out. About 5,000 attended in person, and thousands more watched online, the Biden campaign said in an email about the March 28 event.

Two former presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, joined President Biden along with multiple music artists and other celebrities. The event was held the same day that President Trump went to New York to pay his respects to a fallen New York police officer, Jonathan Diller.

President Biden did not attend the wake. But White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre extended President Biden’s condolences and said, “the president has stood with law enforcement his entire career.”

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