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Donald Trump raised $50.5 million (£40 million) at a Florida fundraiser over the weekend, reportedly shattering the record for a single campaign event.
His haul was more than double the $25 million Joe Biden raked in at Radio City Music Hall in New York last month.
Experts believe the 2024 presidential election will be the most expensive in US history, with the competing campaigns having already raised more than five times what they had at the same point in 2020.
Tickets for the “inaugural leadership dinner”, held at the Palm Beach home of hedge fund manager John Paulson, cost between $250,000 and $814,600.
Special guests included three of Mr Trump’s former rivals for the nomination: Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and North Carolina governor Doug Burgum.
The amount raised surpassed the $30 million which had been predicted ahead of the event by the Trump campaign.
Mr Trump hailed the success on his Truth Social social media channel.
“Biggest night in Fund Raising of ALL TIME!!! Will double up the Biden number of last week at Radio City. People are desperate for change. They want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he wrote.
The haul will also go some way towards paying the former president’s massive legal bills as he tackles a blizzard of civil and criminal litigation.
Under an agreement with the Republican National Committee, the first $6,000 of each donation goes towards Mr Trump’s presidential campaign and the next $5,000 towards a political action committee which has been footing the bill for the legal costs.
“You can’t run for president without enormous amounts of money,” Professor Christopher Galdieri, of the politics department at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, told The Telegraph.
“Biden has been outpacing Trump and he is playing catch up,” he added.
Mr Biden currently has $192 million cash in hand and Mr Trump $93 million.
