Donald Trump forgives $50M loan to his campaign

NEW YORK, June 23 (UPI) — Donald Trump has forgiven a $50 million loan he made to his presidential campaign during the primary, his top fundraiser said in an interview Thursday.

Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s national finance chairman and a Wall Street hedge fund manager, told CNBC the presumptive Republican nominee would continue to help self-fund his campaign, while also ramping up fundraising efforts jointly with the Republican National Committee.

“[Trump] loaned $50 million to the campaign. He’s now forgiven that loan. So that is a contribution,” Mnuchin said. “[Trump] has also said he will contribute significantly more money.”

Trump began the month with a large deficit in campaign cash compared to Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump’s campaign showed $1.3 million on hand, compared to Clinton’s $42.5 million.

Munition said much of that was due to the late start Trump got in creating a fundraising apparatus for the general election, after he spent his own money during the primaries.

“We’ve really ramped up the effort this month,” Mnuchin said. “We’ve had some successful events in New York … [and] those events have raised approximately $10 million in conjunction with the RNC” in June.

Trump has created a joint campaign account with the RNC, which allows big money donors to write significantly larger checks than the $2,700 individual campaign contribution limit.

Trump raised some $19 million for that joint account, Trump Victory, since it was created in late May.

Trump has also raised $6 million in mostly small donor online contributions since sending out his first email solicitation to supporters on Tuesday, Mnuchin said. Trump pledged to match the first $2 million raised online, a sum his son, Donald Jr., said the campaign reached in just 12 hours.

Munition also said Trump does not need to match Clinton dollar for dollar in campaign fundraising because so much of his outreach comes online, where he has 20 million Twitter followers, and from free media coverage generated by his numerous television news interviews.

“[Trump] has a huge online presence with over 20 million followers. This is going to be a nontraditional campaign,” Mnuchin said. “This is going to be a campaign driven by social media and driven by free TV.”