President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale says he is expecting the campaign to spend at least $1 billion to get Trump reelected as the campaign cycle gets underway.
“I definitely think we’re looking at a billion-dollar operation, minimum,” Parscale said Wednesday during an interview with TV host Eric Bolling.
“Both sides, who knows how big it’s going to be,” he continued. “But I think on our side, we’re clearly on a way to raise small dollars and even bundling large dollars to go over a billion dollars.”{mosads}
Parscale has alluded in the past to high spending on the 2020 campaign, saying last month: “The odds are we’re gonna spend a billion U.S. dollars on this campaign.”
Parscale, who ran Trump’s digital operation for his 2016 campaign, said Wednesday that the 2020 team’s spending will likely reflect its past strategy in prioritizing expansion of its digital presence. He said that in 2016, the campaign spent 50 percent of its budget on digital, dwarfing past political campaigns.
“We have probably already spent $30-some million on digital already,” he said of the 2020 campaign. “We are running one of the largest prospecting campaigns in political history.”
Parscale added that much of the campaign funds will be spent on expanding Trump’s appeal in about 16 battleground states.
The president already starts his reelection bid with a large social media advantage over his Democratic rivals as he builds off existing infrastructure from 2016.
Trump leads all Democrats in terms of total interactions, drawing 10.3 million on Facebook, 19.85 million on Instagram and 31.5 million on Twitter over the past month, nearly 36 million more than his closest Democratic opponent on Twitter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
The campaign appears set to continue funneling money to its digital operations after revealing an impressive war chest earlier this month. The campaign says it raised over $30 million in the first quarter of 2019 to bring its total cash on hand to over $40 million.