Will Donald Trump’s decision to set a new record for entering a presidential primary pay off? In the most literal sense, so far the answer is a resounding no, at least according to NBC News. Despite having the field entirely to himself, Trump raised less money in the second half of the quarter than he did prior to his announcement, even with super-PAC assistance.

How much will that matter, though? Especially at this moment?

Former President Donald Trump is strapped for campaign cash following the mid-November launch of his 2024 presidential campaign, according to end-of-year figures obtained exclusively by NBC News.

Trump, who has been the GOP’s most prolific fundraiser in recent years, pulled in about $9.5 million over the final six weeks of last year through his campaign and a joint fundraising committee, according to a person familiar with his haul.

The numbers were shared with NBC News in advance of Trump’s filing of the first campaign finance totals of his third bid for the presidency Tuesday.

Even NBC loads this up with caveats. In the first place, Trump didn’t announce early in order to get a leg up on fundraising. He would have been better off not formally entering the race if Trump and his team intended to focus on that. Formally entering the race made fundraising and spending more complicated and restrictive. It forced Trump and his team to do much more work on compliance and obeying limits on contributions and spending, and cut off coordination between Trump’s org and any friendly super-PACs.

Plus, no one expected the post-midterm lull to be a gold mine of donor cash. Trump hasn’t even revved up his potent direct-mail operation, NBC notes, probably because his team recognizes that the post-election burnout would make it relatively useless. That’s the main reason why Trump did worse after the announcement than before it, plus the FEC regulations and restrictions. They’ll likely spend the money building up lists for later fundraising.

So why did Trump announce so early? He jumped into the race early primarily as a legal strategy intended to keep the DoJ and prosecutors in New York on the sidelines — which didn’t work, of course. Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel immediately afterward, and both Letitia James and Alvin Bragg have continued to pursue their prosecutions of Trump in civil and criminal matters.

Secondarily, Trump must have hoped to discourage other entrants by getting in before anyone had a chance to organize. It’s tough to see whether that worked out for him, as no one else has yet to announce, but it certainly hasn’t stopped former Trump administration officials like Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, John Bolton, and others from very publicly exploring the possibilities.

And of course, Ron DeSantis has made it very clear that he’s going to run this cycle. DeSantis had nearly $100 million in his campaign coffers by the end of the midterms, plus an organization that turned Florida nearly red in its entirety. Both financially and organizationally, DeSantis has an enormous head start on anyone else in the field, Trump included. Trump has a better start than anyone else, but even he’ll be playing catch-up to DeSantis, at least for a while, depending on when DeSantis enters the race.

Playing catch-up seems to be on Trump’s mind, too, and the minds of his backers. That explains why Trump has launched some pretty bizarre attacks on DeSantis of late, casting the Florida governor as a lockdown lover when DeSantis actually bucked the Trump administration to end shutdowns in the Sunshine State. Aaron Blake calls this a manifestation of Trump’s “growing Ron DeSantis problem“:

DeSantis was initially and heavily criticized for waiting to issue a stay-at-home order until April 1, 2020. (Incidentally, while explaining that decision, DeSantis cited Trump’s brief shift in tone toward taking the virus more seriously.) A handful of generally smaller and more rural states never put such orders in place, but Florida was among the last of the states that did.

Governors — especially Republican ones — began talking about reopening later that month, and drew up plans to do so. And Florida was among the more ambitious states when it came to reopening — to such an extent that it earned DeSantis plenty of criticism at the time.

Indeed, at one point, it was actually Trump who criticized state leaders for moving too fast. Asked on April 22 about Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) move to reopen small businesses, gyms, salons and restaurants, Trump said he “strongly” disagreed with what Kemp was doing and accused him of violating the federal guidelines.

About a week later, though, Trump appeared to sign off on DeSantis’s more gradual reopening plan. He welcomed the Florida governor to the White House to discuss it on April 28 and the next day remarked that DeSantis had given “a really good presentation of how he’s doing it, what he’s doing, how he’s opening.”

This is really nothing more than normal campaign spin, albeit at a level than strains credulity and the clear historical record. (Jazz had more on this specific to the vaccinations, so be sure to read that if you haven’t yet done so.) Trump and DeSantis will compete for the same MAGA base, and the only strategy Trump has is to make DeSantis look like an establishmentarian rather than a populist. That won’t be easy — in fact, this attack’s lameness makes it clear just how hard it will be — but it’s still nothing more or less than normal primary campaign strategy. Trump has always had a casual-at-best relationship with the truth, so we can expect more in the same vein. (He’d better find something better than inviting Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, to the inauguration this month.)

DeSantis has an easier task. He doesn’t need to make Trump look establishmentarian, although we can probably expect to see some attacks based on Trump’s praise of Anthony Fauci along those lines. All DeSantis has to do is praise Trump’s first term while arguing that Trump is not temperamentally or physically capable of moving the MAGA ball further down the field. The more Trump engages in these false attacks, the more he plays into DeSantis’ likely argument.

In that sense, DeSantis has an enormous head start on Trump with his massive victory in Florida. And that might be enough for DeSantis to clear out the field early and make it a choice between yesterday and tomorrow for the GOP.

That is Trump’s “Ron DeSantis problem,” not six weeks of fundraising in the doldrums, and Trump is making it worse with his constant focus on yesterday.

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:

• Republicans want to probe the DoJ over its political weaponization. A jury handed them a big target in acquitting Mark Houck in a case Merrick Garland never should have brought.
• Andrew Malcolm and I discuss the verdict in the abortion-protest case, as well as the Biden administration’s efforts in Ukraine. What was the real story behind the transfer of Abrams tanks?
• The Washington Post tried stirring the pot in Florida, and we look at their woes in both subscribers and relevancy.

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!