President Donald Trump spends an inordinate amount of time replying to his critics on Twitter — he’s obsessed with it, in fact. This Tuesday, the day after a report came out from The New York Times outlining the dire financial straits that his campaign seemed to be in, Trump rushed to Twitter to try and defend his campaign. He claimed, for instance, that his campaign spent the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been dished out partly in order to counteract supposedly false reporting about the state of the Coronavirus pandemic. There is no systematic problem of false mainstream reporting about the Coronavirus. Trump added that the spending supposedly paid off, because he’s supposedly up in the polls — but that’s just not true according to any reasonable understanding of reality. He’s losing in many, many national polls.
Trump tweeted:
‘My Campaign spent a lot of money up front in order to compensate for the false reporting and Fake News concerning our handling of the China Virus. Now they see the GREAT job we have done, and we have 3 times more than we had 4 years ago – & are up in polls. Lots of $’s & ENERGY!’
My Campaign spent a lot of money up front in order to compensate for the false reporting and Fake News concerning our handling of the China Virus. Now they see the GREAT job we have done, and we have 3 times more than we had 4 years ago – & are up in polls. Lots of $’s & ENERGY!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 8, 2020
The Times originally reported that the Trump campaign and its partners in the national Republican Party have already spent more than $800 million from the $1.1 billion that they raised from the beginning of 2019 through July of this year. That’s a huge rate of spending, and it’s been buoyed by expenses like more than $350 million that went towards growing an online donor base for the GOP and more than $100 million that went towards television advertising in the time before the Republican National Convention. Notably, the Trump campaign also dished out cash like $11 million that went towards Super Bowl ads, an effort that, quite simply, seems like a pro-Trump vanity project.
On Tuesday morning, Trump also tweeted the claim that “Suburban voters are pouring into the Republican Party because of the violence in Democrat run cities and states.” It’s unclear what evidence Trump even pretends to have for this claim. In an early August survey, a full 59 percent of registered suburban voters said that they disapprove of Trump’s overall job as president. As for Trump’s broader attempt to tie Democrats to violence — Joe Biden and his allies have unequivocally condemned violence over and over again.
Suburban voters are pouring into the Republican Party because of the violence in Democrat run cities and states. If Biden gets in, this violence is “coming to the Suburbs”, and FAST. You could say goodbye to your American Dream!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 8, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response below:
