Trump, Term-Limited, Amasses $200 Million War Chest for Political Ambitions

New York Times

3 days ago

President Trump's super PAC is sitting on about $200 million that it can spend against his rivals, giving a term-limited president a never-before-seen amount of power in his party's finances and future.
In the first half of 2025, Mr. Trump's group, MAGA Inc., collected about $177 million from the likes of Elon Musk, Mr. Trump's erstwhile ally, the TikTok investor Jeffrey Yass and the Silicon Valley executives Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, according to a filing on Thursday with the Federal Election Commission.
Mr. Trump has been able to capitalize on a thirst from corporate America to get into his good graces. He held a half-dozen fund-raisers for his super PAC this year with tickets costing seven figures a seat. At the dinners, often held at one of Mr. Trump's properties, executives and lobbyists had the chance to tell the president about their businesses.
The super PAC's exact cash on hand is $196.1 million, according to the filing.
There is no precedent for politicians so aggressively raising money for their own entities when they do not have a campaign to use it for. In the first half of 2013, a similar political group supporting a term-limited Barack Obama, Priorities USA, raised just $356,000. As of that June, it held $3.4 million, less than 2 percent of the cash on hand of Mr. Trump's super PAC.
The money raised by MAGA Inc. during the first six months of the year is almost twice the amount collected by the Republican National Committee, which is subject to contribution limits. Mr. Yass donated $15 million to the super PAC and Mr. Horowitz and Mr. Andreessen combined to donate an additional $11 million.
That Mr. Trump is raising so much money for his group has confounded some Republicans.
Some of Mr. Trump's most loyal supporters have argued that he should try to run for a third term, despite it being unconstitutional. Mr. Trump's aides have argued that he would be foolish not to accept money that is essentially for the taking, and that the assets can be used to target Mr. Trump's rivals, beginning with Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican whom MAGA Inc. is attacking. Mr. Massie broke with Mr. Trump on the president's decision to bomb Iran and on his domestic bill.
With a $200 million war chest, MAGA Inc. figures to be a big part of Republican primaries, making Mr. Trump's endorsements in those races all the more important. The money is sure to be spent on advertising to back Mr. Trump's endorsed candidates.
The sum raised by Mr. Trump's group has scrambled the Republican fund-raising landscape and worried some conservatives. Mr. Trump's group, not those of the Republican leadership in the House and Senate, will most likely be the biggest spender in the 2026 midterm elections, weakening the power of allies like Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator John Thune, the majority leader.
Mr. Johnson's and Mr. Thune's groups, the Congressional and Senate Leadership Funds, reported holding just $32.7 million and $29.7 million as of June 30. Super PACs had to file reports with the F.E.C. by midnight Thursday, detailing fund-raising and spending activity from January to June.
Perhaps the only group that could rival the influence of Mr. Trump's super PAC is Fairshake, a super PAC supported by the crypto industry that entered July with about $140 million on hand, filings show.
MAGA Inc. also has an allied political nonprofit group that is not required to disclose its donors or total donations but can spend some of its money on political advocacy. The New York Times reported in May that MAGA Inc. and the nonprofit had raised about $400 million since the November election.
Support from Mr. Musk was never guaranteed. He initially pledged to Mr. Trump that he would spend about $100 million on the president's political operation, but his eventual contributions were far smaller — just $5 million. Mr. Musk's relationship with Mr. Trump has recently blown up, and Mr. Musk now considers himself unaligned politically.
The Tesla chief also made contributions to the Senate and Congressional Leadership Funds, the filings reveal. Mr. Musk donated $5 million to each group a few weeks after his public blowup with Mr. Trump, seemingly a signal that he planned to back Republicans in the midterms.
But a few days later, after Mr. Trump's budget bill passed, he pledged to leave the Republican Party and start a rival entity. He has made little headway in that work.
The filings also reveal that Mr. Musk spent about $45 million through his super PAC, America PAC, on a Wisconsin judicial race. Two-thirds of the money that Mr. Musk put into the super PAC in the first half of the year went to incentives for people who had signed or promoted a petition hawked by the super PAC, according to its filing. Mr. Musk's chosen candidate lost badly.
Other significant donations in the first half of 2025 revealed this week included $10 million from Mr. Yass to a super PAC supporting Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor of Ohio; $1 million from the Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to support Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and a longtime friend; and millions from Paul Singer, John Paulson and a group backed by Miriam Adelson to another anti-Massie group, donations that Mr. Musk deemed 'interesting.'