It’s a pitiful cash haul far ahead of even more dismal and pitiful cash hauls of the other GOP candidates. These are Senate / gubernatorial race fundraising numbers. Money isn’t everything, but it sure helps a lot, and giving a huge advantage to the Democrats off the bat is not a winning strategy. The nominee must raise much more money than this to compete with the Democrats for the general election...and the general election race does not start in September - it is much earlier...and races can be lost over the summer if your opponent is allowed to define themselves and you, and the issues, before you even get into the game.
Speaking of “cash hauls”:
“SBF Used Customer Funds To Donate To Democrats Through “Straw Donor” Scheme, Former FTX Engineer Testifies”
From the article:
“One of Sam Bankman-Fried’s colleagues and former FTX Engineering Chief, Nishad Singh, testified on Monday that the FTX head used money from his Alameda Research hedge fund to make political donations even after learning it owed $13 billion to customers of FTX.
Put simply, Bankman-Fried was using customer funds to make political donations to Democrats, according to the testimony.
Singh said that when he found out about the shortfall, he confront SBF in an hour long conversation in September 2022, according to Yahoo Finance. In that conversation, SBF told him that he was going to raise more cash and cut expenses.
However, Singh then said that in the interim, “he continued to receive transfers from Alameda and allow Bankman-Fried associates to use the money to donate to U.S. Democratic candidates”.
According to the report, Singh called it a “straw donor” scheme.”