WASHINGTON — President Trump’s re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee said Monday they had raised $212 million in the first three months of 2020, a signal that despite a global pandemic that has put a halt on high-dollar fund-raising events, Mr. Trump’s operation has continued to raise money at a brisk clip.
The campaign and committee said they had raised more than $63 million in March, a month that saw much of the country retreat into quarantine as part of a nationwide effort to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, and had a combined $240 million in cash on hand. The two groups also said they had raised more than $677 million in total over the re-election cycle, noting that was $270 million more than President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign had raised at the same point in the 2012 campaign cycle.
“Trump and the R.N.C. are on track to have $400 million cash on hand by July 4, an incredibly strong financial position in this political environment,” said Scott W. Reed, a senior political strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The strong quarter for a campaign that has been well-funded from the start served as the latest reminder of the cash advantage that the incumbent president has over former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee. Mr. Biden faces the same headwinds as Mr. Trump when it comes to raising money from big donors at in-person events, but has a huge cash gap he needs to close.
Mr. Biden, who had planned to begin consolidating the party’s big donors behind his campaign just as the virus shut down much of the economy, has not yet released his first quarter fund-raising numbers. But a spokesman said he raised $33 million in the first half of March.
Over the past month, the Trump campaign has had to pull down big-dollar, in-person fund-raising events because of the coronavirus. But it has soldiered forward with its small-donor fund-raising gimmicks, hawking “Keep America Great” hats signed by the president and an Easter sale on merchandise in email solicitations that make little to no mention of the global pandemic.
Some national polls show that trust in Mr. Trump’s leadership through the current health and economic crisis is falling, even among groups that will be critical to his re-election chances, like older voters who supported him in 2016. But Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign manager, credited the crisis with the sustained financial support. “Americans can see President Trump leading this nation through a serious crisis and they are responding with their continued enthusiastic support for his re-election,” he said in a statement.
Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the R.N.C., said it was “clear that voters are responding to his bold leadership.”