the white house with first lady melania trump. and as the music is playing, the crowd is cheering. this has a very much it does have a rally feel. folks here in this v.i.p. section are the president s political allies, many of them, some of them are also u.s. service members. but you re seeing a lot of people in make america great again hats and t-shirts and memorabilia. a few minutes ago vice-president mike pence came to the rally as well and got an extended applause from the crowd. we have a little sense of what president trump is going to say in the speech. let me reed you a few of the excerpts. he s going to say we come together as one nation with this very special salute to america. we celebrate our history, our people and the heroes who proudly defend our flag and brave men and women of the u.s. military. we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told in the history of america. as long as we stay true to our cause and as long as we remember our great history, as long as w
planes and helicopters. but his biggest expense is those now famous make america great again hats and t-shirts at 781,000 line item, nearly 400,000 more than rick santorum raised all quarter. where isn t trump spending money? advertising, for one. he is a proven master at generating free air time. by contrast, bush spent $415,000 on media in the last quarter. then there s this. i don t want polsters who are running against me. reporter: his estimate is a tad low. hillary clinton s campaign paid more than $1 million for polling last quarter alone. trump is proud of his conservative spending, saying in a statement, to be number one in every poll and to have spent the least amount of dollars of any serious candidate is a testament to what i can do for america.
depot, and $324 at applebees. all right. let s talk more about the cnn political commentator and democratic strategist mary cardona is with me. we know the trump campaign is not traditional. the fact that the biggest line was these now famous hats and t-shirts. i think it proves that donald trump is, as he says, very good at business. look, i think of all the candidates on the republican side, he has proven the return on investment primary clearly because he hasn t raised a whole lot of money. at least he hasn t solicited money. he hasn t spent a lot of money. yet he is still a top the polls by wide margins and key states is. he has been at the top since the moment he jumped into this race. and it doesn t seem like he s going anywhere no matter how
political outsiders did best. carson raised the most of any candidate in the quarter, $20 million. carly fiorina, $7 million. donald trump, proudly self-funding his campaign. he took in $3.9 million from 74,000 of what the campaign calls unsolicited donors. surprisingly, the billionaire front-runner s campaign has little cash in its coffers. trump s war chest something he can drop millions into whenever needed had only $254,000 at the end of the quarter. the unorthodox candidate runs an unusual political operation. his second biggest expense, $723,000 to tag air, a company he owns that operates his fleet of planes and helicopters. but his biggest expense is those now famous make america great