Republican Party's Financial Problems Are Way Worse Than Anyone Thought

It is no secret that the Republican National Committee is struggling financially, but what was not previously known is how bad of shape they are really in. According to a new report this week, the Party's finances are much worse than previously thought because they have an absurdly large amount of their money that they can't spend on political activities. In other words, they can't spend their very limited funds actually running campaigns. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

Check out our merch by visiting our store

Subscribe to our podcast

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

It's no secret that the Republican Party is suffering from a very severe lack of money right now, not just at the RNC, but also at state parties across the country. But what wasn't really known before this week, and a wonderful new report from The Daily Beast is that the Republican party's financial problems are actually even worse than anyone realized. And here's why. Let me read this. This is a, a snippet of an article from Roger Sullenberger and Reese Gorman for the Daily Beast. They wrote, quote on the surface, the RNC currently has more than $11 million on hand for this upcoming election cycle. While that's less than half of what the Democratic National Committee has in the bank at the moment, and far less than the 77 million the RNC had on hand at this point in the 2020 cycle, the RNC has pointed to fundraising numbers in recent months to suggest the party has turned a corner after a historically bad stretch last year.

However, a close examination of the RNCs recent financial statements reveals that those numbers are hiding some holes. A lot of the RNCs, recent fundraising, millions of dollars of it is unusable for political spending. Instead, that money can only support a limited range of activities. And here's why. Uh, both the RNC and the DNC have multiple different bank accounts. And because there are federal regulations on political parties and what they can spend, how they can raise it, how they can raise what they've spent, depending on what kind of account it goes into, 36% of the money that the RNC has collected can't even be used on campaigns. 36% of the money has been directed to accounts that are forbidden from being spent on political activities. That money can be spent on legal fees, both for the RNC itself and for Donald Trump if they choose to do so.

It can be spent on conventions, it can be spent on salaries, it can be spent on office equipment. It can be spent on all sorts of fun things, but not to help a candidate. So the Republican Party has a tiny amount of cash on hand, and we just found out that more than one third of it, they can't even use for campaigns. So things went from being very bad for the Republican party to being holy hell. How are you even functioning as a political party right now? That's how bad the financial situation is for the GOP. And I don't care what they say, like, oh, things are gonna turn around. No, they're not. Especially now with that deal you have with Donald Trump, like, oh, we're gonna join forces with Save America and

Half the money will go to us, half the money will go to you to pay your legal fees. You're gonna turn off so many donors with that because we already have wealthy Republican millionaires and billionaires who refuse to give to Donald Trump. And if you're already saying, we're gonna split it with him, well, you can kiss those donors goodbye. So yeah, they're gonna have a hell of a hard time trying to win an election when they can't even win over their own supporters and convince them to give them any money.