The Biden campaign has struggled to reap donations in the aftermath of President Biden’s dismal debate against former President Donald Trump, according to a report.
Contributions from large donors alone could be down by more than half this month and are lower across the spectrum, according to NBC News.
“It’s already disastrous,” a source close to the re-election effort told the outlet about the state of fundraising for the Biden campaign.
“The money has absolutely shut off,” another person close to the campaign said.
The Biden campaign initially touted $14 million in funds raised on debate day and the morning after the 81-year-old president’s June 27 showdown with Trump, noting that it saw its single best hour of fundraising since Biden announced his run for re-election last April between 11 p.m. and midnight after the debate.
The campaign’s post-debate fundraising boon quickly dried up, with one source telling NBC News that donors were left with a “negative” impression after a recent fundraising call with the president.
“The call seemed so contrived to people; I don’t think they buy it,” the person said.
Adding to the fundraising difficulties is the uncertainty over whether Biden will remain in the race as he faces calls to end his re-election effort.
What to know about the fallout from President Biden’s debate performance:
- President Biden’s poor performance in the first 2024 presidential debate has left even some Democrats unsure of his fitness for office and future as the party’s candidate.
- Former President Barack Obama admitted that Biden had a “bad” debate, while his rival former President Donald Trump suggested that he was in a “trance” and “choked.”
- Biden told a crowd at a North Carolina rally the day after the debate that he doesn’t “debate as well as I used to” — but insisted that he can still “do this job.”
- The New York Times editorial board called on the president to serve the country by dropping out of the race. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a similar editorial a day later.
- Biden gathered with his family at Camp David to assess the campaign’s future, with his son Hunter reportedly pushing for him to stay in the race. Family members questioned whether the president’s top advisers should be fired after the disastrous debate.
- In a pre-taped interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, Biden claimed that his “bad episode” at the debate was the result of a cold and not any cognitive issues.
- Biden has rejected calls for him to step down from fellow Democrats, insisting to Stephanopoulos that he is the most qualified to win the election. At a Wisconsin rally, he declared that he is “running and going to win again.”
“You can’t reach out to someone, because someone could say, ‘Geez, I didn’t know, he has dementia,’” one of Biden’s top bundlers told the outlet.
The report on the campaign’s fundraising woes comes just a day shy of the “two-week grace period” that donors reportedly gave the president in the wake of his poor debate performance.
Donors expected a slide in Biden’s polling numbers post-debate, but further decline after two weeks would become problematic and difficult for donors to stomach, a source privy to a call with top campaign contributors on told The Post earlier this month.
Oscar-winning actor George Clooney, who helped raise some $30 million for the president less than a month ago, called on Biden to end his campaign for re-election in a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday, arguing that the octogenarian incumbent “cannot win” against Trump.
The Biden campaign did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
A spokesperson for the campaign told NBC News that its report of fundraising being down was “not accurate.”