While Donald Trump is playing well to rank-and-file Republicans with his brazen campaign tactics, he is "frightening a lot of the Republican donors," Newsmax Media CEO Christopher Ruddy said Friday.
"I don't see the Republican donors," he told CNN's Don Lemon. "He's frightening a lot of the Republican donors. The same ones he needs the general [election] he's scaring off."
Those donors are critical, Ruddy said, because well-financed liberal groups are lining up to spend heavily on advertising slamming the front-runner — particularly those backing the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.
"The other thing is that you have $2 billion in earned media," Ruddy said, citing a report from The Huffington Post on the value of free air time Trump has garnered thus far. "That's going to be equal time for Hillary. "He's not going to get the free air time the same way" in the general election. "The Soros groups and others will spend a billion dollars against him."
George Soros, the liberal New York financier, has spent or committed more than $13 million to support Clinton and other Democrats this election cycle.
The figure is already more than his total disclosed spending in the last two presidential elections combined, according to news reports.
Soros broke political spending records in trying to unseat President George W. Bush in 2004.
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