Former and potentially future President Donald Trump outraised President Joe Biden for the month of May, as Federal Election Commission filings from late Thursday show. There's been plenty of chatter over social media, and CNN's headline sounded the alarm, noting, "Trump outraises Biden again and erodes president’s financial edge."
Such a point is reiterated throughout the article, especially since Trump outraised Biden in April as well:
Former President Donald Trump and his political operation outraised President Joe Biden for the second month in a row in May, as a flood of donations after Trump’s criminal conviction quickly eroded the financial advantage Biden held for much of the campaign cycle.
Biden and the Democrats raised $85 million in May, his campaign said in a statement, a figure that is well short of the staggering $141 million that Trump and his political operation said it collected last month, fueled by tens of millions of dollars collected in the immediate aftermath of his May 30 conviction in a New York criminal case for falsifying business records.
Biden’s campaign said Thursday that his committees entered June with a massive $212 million cash stockpile. The Trump campaign has not yet disclosed cash-on-hand figures for all of its committees.
Campaigns don’t have to do so until next month, but Federal Election Commission filings late Thursday offered a partial picture, showing Trump’s main committee with more than $116.5 million in cash reserves at May 31 while Biden’s main campaign account held $91.6 million — a stark reversal of fortune from just a month earlier, when Biden had a $35 million cash edge.
May 30 brought us Trump's conviction in the hush money "trial" from New York City. As a result, Trump raised a record-breaking amount of money, and the donation page even crashed for a time. The Trump campaign announced the Friday morning after the verdict that it had raised $34.8 million. By Friday night, it was $52.8 million raised.
The subject of POLITICO's Friday morning Playbook addressed "Trump's shocking cash comeback," though considering how the conviction energized Trump's fellow Republicans--elected officials and everyday Americans alike--perhaps it's not all that "shocking."
"And the topline is that after an enormous wave of donations triggered by his criminal conviction in New York, DONALD TRUMP has nearly erased President JOE BIDEN’s much-ballyhooed cash advantage, as Jessica Piper and Madison Fernandez report this morning," Playbook pointed out, with original emphasis.
That POLITICO article from early Friday morning contains subheaders such as how "Biden was counting on a cash advantage. Trump wiped it out" and how "Down-ballot Republicans pick up the pace." On that note, the report mentions that "both House Democrats’ and House Republicans’ campaign arms said they set new May fundraising records. And for the first time this year, the National Republican Congressional Committee outraised its Democratic counterpart."
Playbook also referenced a headline from The Washington Post, which reads, "Trump’s convictions fueled donation surge that could reshape contest." We see the same alarm bells mentioned here as well [Emphasis added]:
Donors channeled tens of millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee immediately following his May 30 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, all but erasing the massive fundraising advantage that President Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee once held.
Biden and his allied groups have raised more money than Trump and his allies have over the course of the general-election contest. But the surge in post-conviction donations to Trump’s effort — captured in part in May reports filed to the Federal Election Commission on Thursday — has the potential to dramatically reshape the presidential race.
...
The Trump-allied super PAC MAGA Inc. — which has been the main vehicle for pro-Trump advertising on the airwaves — took in an eye-popping $50 million donation from transportation executive Timothy Mellon a day after Trump’s conviction, giving the former president’s allies ample resources to drive his message at a moment when he is leading Biden in many battleground state polls.
Those convictions could indeed "reshape" the contest. Democrats hellbent on coming after Trump by weaponizing and politicizing the justice system to get Trump and hang the label of "convicted criminal" on him would have nobody to blame but themselves.
Many polls show in individual states and at the national level that the conviction won't play much of a factor in who voters will support come November, though again, Republicans look to be energized with their voter enthusiasm and their donations.