“He had no choice, now that he’s in the general election,” said Sue Gillis, 73, of Millen, Georgia, who came to see Trump in Atlanta on Wednesday.

“He has to,” said Michael Stainbrook, 64, of Stone Mountain Ga., who also attended Trump’s Atlanta rally. “You’re talking the difference between maybe — what was it? — he spent maybe $100 million on his campaign of his own money. Now they’re talking about a billion dollars. That’s an awful lot to spend.”

“We’ve entered into a different entity,” said Joan Buchli, a homemaker from West Tampa. “We have to come to the realization that it takes $2 billion to run a presidential campaign — that’s disappointing to me because we teach our kids you can grow up to be whatever you want, but that’s not true.”…

Many supporters believe Trump’s already made his point by largely self-funding his primary. Now he needs to be able to compete with Clinton because she is the one actually beholden to donors, they argue.