WASHINGTON -- The Trump campaign on Friday downplayed federal filings showing Hillary Clinton with an $85 million cash advantage in the final stretch of the campaign.
New fundraising records show her campaign and joint accounts with Democrats had $153 million in the bank as of last week. That's more than double the $68 million the Republican's campaign and partnership committees had on hand.
Donald Trump has repeatedly said he will spend $100 million or more of his own money on his presidential bid. Yet even with a fresh donation, he'd be $34 million short of that promise.
The Republican nominee told supporters at a New Hampshire rally Friday afternoon that he'd given another $10 million earlier in the day. That means his personal investment over the course of the primary and general elections would have grown to about $66 million.
Trump, a New York businessman who says he is worth billions of dollars, invested heavily throughout his GOP primary race. Then, during the general election, he slowed his personal contributions to about $2 million per month.
Trump's giving has been tied to email appeals to his supporters, promising to "match" their donations up to $2 million.
He stopped making those solicitations in October, according to Tom Sather, senior director of research at the email data solutions firm Return Path. The firm tracks every email from political candidates.
His campaign resumed the "matching" solicitations on Friday. "I will TRIPLE MATCH any amount you can contribute today," stated an 11 a.m. email message to his supporters.
The new gift -- not yet reflected in public documents -- would represent the most Trump has put into his bid since the month of March, when he loaned his campaign $11.5 million. Trump later zeroed out all of his loans, converting them into contributions that cannot be repaid.
His personal investment shrinks when accounting for about $9 million in campaign cash that has returned to his family and businesses.
On ABC's "Good Morning America," Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence said the campaign's message matters more than "dollars and cents" and it's up to Trump to decide if he wants to plunge more of his personal fortune into the campaign. The latest contribution reports, up to date as of Wednesday, show he had given only about $33,000 this month -- far short of the $2 million he typically gives.
Clinton's continued fundraising edge in the latest filings, which cover the first 19 days of the month, helps ensure the Democratic nominee can maintain her sprawling political operation in the frantic final days of the race. She maintains a staff of more than 800 -- several times larger than Trump's -- and has spent more on advertising than the Republican has every single week of the race.
Still, Pence said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that he senses "real momentum" in the Republican campaign.
"This week, I saw all the headlines: 'The race is over. It's over and done.' That's just not what I see out there," Pence said.
The Indiana governor was making the rounds on the morning shows Friday after his plane slid off the runway during a rainstorm at New York's LaGuardia Airport late Thursday, tearing up concrete before coming to rest on a patch of grass. No one was injured and Pence plans to campaign in Pennsylvania and North Carolina on Friday.
Trump is holding events in New Hampshire, Iowa and Maine, one of two states that split their electoral voters by congressional district. Facing an increasingly narrow path to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, his campaign is shooting for one of the traditionally Democratic state's four electoral votes in the more rural, conservative 2nd district.
Clinton, meanwhile, plans to campaign in Iowa, where new polling shows her in a dead heat with Trump, erasing a lead he's maintained for much of the race. Her campaign will also get a boost from President Barack Obama, whose national approval rating recently reached a new high. He'll be holding an evening rally in Orlando, a key battleground area of the crucial swing state of Florida.
White House officials say Obama will be travelling to boost Clinton nearly every day until Election Day, Nov. 8.
Her campaign also released a new ad featuring the president saying that a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to uphold his legacy. Obama says in the ad that "all the progress we've made these last eight years is on the ballot."
The president's appearance comes a day after Clinton and first lady Michelle Obama held a joint campaign rally in North Carolina.
At the raucous rally, Mrs. Obama passionately touted Clinton's experience and denounced Trump as too divisive and thin-skinned for the White House.
"We want someone who is a unifying force in this country, someone who sees our differences not as a threat but as a blessing," Mrs. Obama said as she addressed an enthusiastic, 11,000-person crowd in Winston-Salem, one of Clinton's biggest gatherings of her campaign.
The Obama family's public role in the campaign marks a sharp contrast from two years ago, when he was unpopular and Democrats winced when he occasionally said his policies were on the ballot in the midterms.
AP writers Julie Pace, Kathleen Hennessey, JIll Colvin, Will Weissert and Josh Lederman contributed to this report
