title:  ‘Self-Funded’ No Longer – Trump Now Needs Those Huge, Strings-Attached Donations
text: Donald Trump has supposedly been self-funding his campaign (sort of), and he loves bragging about how he s not beholden to anybody because he s not taking the big donations that inevitably come with conditions attached. That all may be coming to an end for him now. One of his top advisers, Paul Manafort, spoke to Senate Republicans about the state of his campaign s finances, and admitted there isn t enough money to mount a serious challenge to Hillary Clinton going into this summer s conventions.Oh, the horror. What happened to all that money Trump claimed he had? Supposedly he s worth $10 billion. Oh, that s right, most of that isn t actual cash, and he s been loaning what cash he does have to the campaign. Now the campaign owes him tens of millions of dollars and is finding itself broke anyway.Without campaign money, Trump will have trouble running television ads during June and most of July because he won t have access to any of the RNC s funds until he s officially accepted their nomination. He can t do that until the convention near the end of July. What a crying shame.Trump supposedly already has a fundraising agreement with the RNC, and some of his allies are worried that the RNC is going to take advantage of him if he ends up trailing Hillary going into the fall. The RNC could decide to use those funds to help other Republican candidates win their races, and leave Trump in the dust. Trump supposedly fully supports something like that, but with his history of crying foul whenever the RNC doesn t do exactly what he thinks they ought to do (no matter what he s said out loud), who knows how he ll actually react if he loses the general election.He might have to (gasp!) start taking donations, and courting more of the GOP s major donors. He has a fundraising goal of $1 billion before November, but that will be exceptionally difficult if some of these donors don t get on board with him. So far, only nine of the GOP s top 50 donors have committed to donating money to Trump. The campaign is confident more donors will fall in line, though.Any donations at all, though, will make him beholden to them, which will give the lie to his insistence that he ll remain on the side of the little guy once he s in office. So much for his being the  everyman  candidate. Pardon us while we snicker at his plight.Featured image by Spencer Platt/Getty Images