| Trump's Running a Performance-Art Tour, Not a Presidential Campaign It's insane. The Republican party is trying to win a presidential campaign with a candidate who refuses to run a presidential campaign. The guy who bragged he was worth $10 billion let the FEC know his campaign has less than $2 million in the bank: Trump began June with just $1.3 million in cash on hand, a figure more typical for a campaign for the House of Representatives than the White House. He trailed Hillary Clinton, who raised more than $28 million in May, by more than $41 million, according to reports filed late Monday night with the Federal Election Commission. In a first for a major party nominee, Mr. Trump has suggested he will leave the crucial task of field organizing in swing states to the Republican National Committee, which typically relies on the party's nominee to help fund, direct and staff national Republican political efforts. His decision threatens to leave the party with significant shortfalls of money and manpower: On Monday, the party reported raising $13 million during May, about a third of the money it raised in May 2012, when Mitt Romney led the ticket. . . . Fund-raising efforts for Mr. Trump have been hampered by the candidate's own erratic public comments. He has repeatedly said he will pay for his own campaign even as his volunteers fan out around the country to solicit six-figure checks, confusing allies and potential donors alike. "Two days ago, he said, 'I may fund it myself,'" Mr. Rollins said. "Donors are all being cautious about what's going to happen here." Is it as simple as Trump's ego won't let him admit that his campaign needs money from someone else? Or is it that donors fear their money will end up being spent on a Trump company . . . and thus eventually make its way into Trump's pockets? He managed to shell out $6.7 million last month, including more than $1 million in payments to Trump companies or to reimburse his family for travel expenses. It's not like this question wasn't raised before . . . As Trump brags about "self-funding" his surging Republican bid, he has been lending — rather than giving — money to his campaign. That has raised the question of whether his self-funding pledge has strings attached. Would he ever raise donor money to pay himself back? Not a chance, says campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. "He is not going to repay himself," Lewandowski said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. Let's just ask Lewandowski today if . . . wait, wait, never mind. If this factoid is true, then maybe, just maybe, the Trump campaign is about to stop looking like a performance tour: Lewandowski also reassured the sometimes tight-fisted billionaire, who initially pledged to self-fund his campaign, that it wasn't necessary to invest serious money in the traditional tools of presidential campaigning, such as polling, voter files, analytics and major advertising campaigns. Instead, Lewandowski's approach was to hire a tiny staff composed mostly of allies from his past jobs and to "let Trump be Trump." As noted yesterday, now all we need is for Ivanka to say, "Dad, we need to change the candidate." Maybe television advertising in June doesn't make too much of a difference; maybe we have two candidates who are too well-known and well-defined for ads to make a difference. But as is, Trump is completely conceding the airwaves, at least during commercial breaks. The presumptive GOP nominee is being massively outspent on television airwaves: Between Tuesday and Election Day, Trump has reserved zero dollars in television advertising, compared to $117 million from Hillary Clinton and her allies, according to data from the ad tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG. . . . In the first week of the general election, Clinton and her super PAC ran nearly 4,000 more spots on broadcast and national cable TV than Trump and his allies, according to the Kantar Media data. The Latest Polls Are Not Good for Trump, but They Could Be Worse Two sets of polls out this morning show bad news for Trump, but not disastrous news, in light of how he's conceded the airwaves. CNN's new poll shows Hillary Clinton with a 47 percent to 42 percent lead among registered voters. If you throw in Gary Johnson as the Libertarian party candidate, and Jill Stein as the Green Party candidate, Hillary leads, 42 percent to 38 percent, Johnson gets 9 percent, Stein gets 7 percent. Meanwhile, the Quinnipiac survey of swing states shows mixed to bad news for Trump: "Democrat Hillary Clinton opens an 8-point lead over Republican Donald Trump in Florida, the largest of the presidential swing states, and erases a small Trump lead to create a dead heat in Ohio, while Pennsylvania remains too close to call." How Many Trump GOP Delegates Want to Support Someone Else? For those of you wondering if the delegates in Cleveland can dump Trump, the answer is "Yes, but it will be difficult." The task before the rebellious anti-Trump delegates is considerable. They first need to get 57 members of the 112-member Rules Committee to affirm that they may vote their consciences and reject the candidate they have pledged to support. The Rules Committee consists of 112 Republican delegates — one man and one woman from every U.S. state and territory, plus Washington, D.C. It is chaired by former Utah congresswoman Enid Mickelsen and co-chaired by longtime RNC member and GOP lawyer Ron Kaufman. Neither figure is seen as a Trump loyalist; both are thought to be allies of the previous nominee, Mitt Romney, who remains intensely critical of the real-estate mogul. It is, thus, conceivable that the Rules Committee might side with insurgent anti-Trump delegates. BUT . . . . . . The rules decided upon by the Rules Committee must then be ratified by 1,237 of the 2,472 delegates. Right now, Trump is estimated to have about 1,542 delegates committed to him, at least on paper, in Cleveland. More than 300 would have to abandon him on a rule-change vote and a subsequent nomination vote for an insurrection to succeed. It could happen, especially if Trump continues to seem headed for electoral disaster in November, but it's unlikely. ADDENDA: From David Gurney, a caption of the happy grandparents looking at Aidan: "Look, Hillary, he has your lies!" 
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