Trump’s Big Challenge: Raising $1 Billion to Defeat the Clintons

From Rob Garver writing at the Financial Times:

The big news out of the 2016 presidential campaign this morning is that Donald Trump, having spent the last nine months insisting (somewhat questionably) that he has self-funded his own campaign, is now preparing to tie himself into the fundraising apparatus of the Republican National Committee.

This is not, by itself, big news. The amount of money spent in the general election will be an order of magnitude larger than the tens of millions Trump spent on his primary run, and few people believed Trump would pony up $1 billion or more — despite his constant claims about his own personal wealth — to compete in the contest.

But Trump’s move to co-opt the RNC’s existing infrastructure — a move that RNC chair Reince Priebus has repeatedly said that the system is specifically designed to allow once a nominee is chosen — does raise at least three very big questions about the road forward for Trump and the GOP as a whole.

Read the rest of the story at the Financial Times.