Election live updates: Trump says he is prepared to spend his own money on campaign if necessary

Trump on Tuesday confirmed a report that he is considering spending some of his own money on his reelection bid even as his campaign insisted that it would have enough cash to compete in the final stretch of the race against Biden.

“If I have to, I would,” Trump said when asked by a reporter whether he was prepared to spend his own money. “Whatever it takes, we have to win.”

Trump made his comments shortly before boarding Air Force One en route to events in Florida and North Carolina. Shortly after getting on the plane, Trump tweeted that he doubts he will need to spend his own money but reiterated that he will do so if necessary.

Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that Trump has discussed spending as much as $100 million of his own money on his campaign if necessary. Trump personally contributed $66 million to his 2016 campaign, but it would be unprecedented for an incumbent president to help fund his reelection bid.

As Trump was speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews, his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, said in a conference call that he is confident that the campaign has the resources to compete and that he is carefully managing the budget.

“We’re very comfortable and confident in where we’re spending and how much we’re spending and how much we’re going to have down the stretch,” Stepien said.

Multiple reports over the weekend said the Trump campaign is facing a cash crunch after spending heavily in the early stages of the race.

Last week, Biden’s campaign said it raised $364.5 million in August along with the national party and affiliated fundraising committees, a record-breaking monthly fundraising haul. Trump and the Republican National Committee have yet to release their fundraising numbers for August.

Stepien argued that money does not determine who wins presidential elections.

“If money was the only factor determining winners and losers in politics, Jeb Bush would’ve been the nominee in 2016, and we’d have a second President Clinton right now in the Oval Office,” he said, referring to the former governor of Florida whom Trump bested in the Republican primaries and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in the general election.

“We are now carefully managing the budget,” Stepien said. “I consider it to be among the — if not the — most important tasks for any campaign manager. Creating or re-creating the budget was the first thing that I did upon becoming the campaign manager, and it’s something that we as a team manage every single day.”

Stepien said Trump’s campaign will have far more money to spend in the closing weeks of the race than it did in 2016.

“It won’t be close,” he said. “It’ll be by a factor of two times or three times what we had to spend on the campaign we were a part of in 2016.”