(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump's re-election committee finished the year with $22.1 million in the bank, calling the sum “an unprecedented feat” for a president's first year in office, according to a statement obtained by Bloomberg.
The committee raised a total of $6.9 million in the fourth quarter. That included $2.2 million from direct contributions and $3.5 million from joint fundraising with the Republican National Committee, in addition to vendor refunds and other receipts, the statement said.
Trump's committee has had success with online fundraising and small-dollar donors. It said 98.5 percent of contributions were for $200 or less last year.
“Never before has a president's campaign committee raised so much in his first year in office, and never has a president enjoyed so much support from small donors who continue to rally around him,” Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law and a senior adviser to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., said in the statement.
Since taking office, Trump has held campaign-style rallies in states including Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio and West Virginia. The rallies double as re-election fundraising events because they boost sales of Trump's campaign merchandise, such as the iconic red “Make American Great Again” caps. Representatives from Ace Specialties Inc., a Louisiana business that fulfills all online orders for official Trump goods, are often stationed at the rallies, hawking the Trump-branded swag.
It's unusual for a sitting president to raise money for re-election as aggressively as Trump has during his first year in office. Former President Barack Obama had been in office more than two years before he headlined his first re-election fundraiser. Former President George W. Bush raised a total of $268,423 in his first two years in office, FEC records show.
--With assistance from Bill Allison
To contact the reporters on this story: John McCormick in Chicago at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net, Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Alex Wayne
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
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