Up to now, The Donald has not had to spend just an awful lot, maybe the cost of getting around, and renting various venues for his rallies. But as far as publicity, he has had no end of sometimes fawning, sometimes vitriolic coverage in the press, and you just cannot BUY that kind of exposure. “All publicity is good publicity”, or something like that, certainly The Donald has not lacked for name recognition.
And he has been able to capitalize even on bad publicity, turning it around on the people who tried to malign or bluff their way into showing up The Donald for being some kind of fake. Those who have attacked him in the past have learned to their chagrin that somehow, The Donald’s numbers go UP, while they come off looking like the loser and bad guy.
His secret lies in attacking Political Correctness, and this is scoring points for him everywhere, as he points out obvious home truths time after time, defying this paralysis of analysis, and just blasting on through to make the confounding into the understandable.
I agree with your post 16 but I also believe that the time is fast approaching when he also must spend.