Joe Biden's Fundraising is Blowing Donald Trump Out of the Water

Joe Biden is outperforming Donald Trump in terms of fundraising, eight months before the general election.

Last week, a Biden and Trump rematch was confirmed after the two politicians both passed the nomination threshold, having won multiple presidential primaries.

It was hardly a surprise. It is customary for an incumbent President to run again should he wish to and so, in the background, the Democrat has amassed $155 million in cash on hand so far, ready to use against his Republican rival.

Indeed, the president raised $53 million alone last month. While Trump's February figures have not yet been released, by the end of January his two fundraising committees had $36.6 million in cash in hand and they spent more than they raised.

Newsweek contacted representatives for Trump and Biden by email to comment on this story.

"The enthusiasm we're picking up as we go around the country is real," Biden said in a radio interview with WNOV 860 in Wisconsin last week, as reported by ABC News. "We've raised a whole lot of money. We have 1.5 million donors, including 500,000 are brand new, they're small donors; 97 percent of the donations under $200."

"While Joe Biden and Democrats continue to put up historic grassroots fundraising numbers, Donald Trump and the RNC are in financial disarray," Jaime Harrison, leader of the Democratic National Committee, told ABC News. "Our grassroots supporters know that the stakes of this year could not be higher, and they're chipping in like our democracy is on the line — because it is."

Trump's presidential campaign also raised more than $19 million in the final quarter of 2023, a fall of more than 20 percent compared with the previous quarter, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Biden received $33 million in the fourth quarter.

It also comes as Trump faces multiple financial battles because of the costs accrued from legal battles. Earlier this month, he posted a bond of nearly $92 million in his E. Jean Carroll defamation case after Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the Republican's request to delay the enforcement of penalties.

In January, the former president was ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll, a journalist, for statements made in 2019. He said she was lying about allegations that he sexually assaulted her inside a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s. That amount includes $7.3 million in compensatory damages, $11 million for reputational repair, and $65 million in punitive damages.

Meanwhile, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in February that Trump must pay $355 million for committing fraud. The New York court held that Trump and top executives at The Trump Organization committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets to obtain more favorable terms from lenders and insurers. With interest, the full payment will be around $454 million. Trump's lawyers are appealing the verdict.

A GoFundMe page set up to pay for this fine has raised just over $1.3 million in around a month.

Trump has not explicitly stated that he would not use campaign funds to help pay the penalties handed to him in the civil cases.