Donald Trump urges Republican support amid fundraising woes

Mr Trump's dismal fundraising numbers were released hours after the Republican candidate fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in an attempt to restart his struggling White House bid.

Mr Trump said: "I'm not looking to spend a billion dollars. I need support from the Republicans. In some respects I get more support from the Democrats than the Republicans."

He also sent out his first fundraising email on Tuesday, telling recipients "I need your help" to beat Mrs Clinton. He said he would personally match all donations up to 2 million dollars.

On TV, he said the Republican National Committee and its chairman, Reince Priebus, "have been terrific", but "it would be nice to have full verbal support from people in office".

Mr Trump continues to face criticism from Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Although both have endorsed him, they have condemned Mr Trump's renewed call to impose a temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the country.

Mr Trump's decision to fire Mr Lewandowski less than a month before the Republican convention sent a powerful signal that the billionaire businessman recognises the increasingly dire state of his presidential campaign.

Many in his party feel he has squandered the precious weeks since locking up the nomination and has allowed Mrs Clinton to gain ground despite her longer primary fight.

The fundraising reports showed donors gave his campaign about 3 million dollars (£2 million) in May, even though he enjoyed presumptive nominee status for almost the entire month. In contrast, Mrs Clinton, who spent all of last month fending off her primary rival, Bernie Sanders, raised 26 million dollars (£17.7 million).

Mr Trump said he will not be spending as much as Mrs Clinton.

"We're going to be running a little bit different campaign," he told the Fox News Channel. "We want to keep it lean. I'm not looking to spend all this money. She's going to spend more than 1 billion dollars."

Mr Trump said he may have to tap more into his own funds.

He said: "If it gets to a point, I'll do what I did in the primaries. I spent 55 million dollars (£37.5 million) in the primaries. I may do it again in the general election, but it would be nice to have some help from the party."

Aides also hope Mr Lewandowski's departure will bring an end to the infighting that has plagued the campaign since Mr Trump hired strategist Paul Manafort in March to help secure delegates ahead of the convention. Since then, the campaign's rival factions have been jockeying for power, slowing hiring and other decision-making.

Mr Manafort, who has long advocated a more scripted approach backed by a larger and more professional campaign apparatus, will be taking full control.

In a conference call with top aides following Mr Lewandowski's firing, Mr Manafort signalled a rapid expansion would be coming soon.

"The campaign's going to pick up the speed," senior adviser Barry Bennett said.

But even with Mr Lewandowski's departure, Mr Trump faces an uphill climb. The campaign is severely understaffed compared to Mrs Clinton's, and Mr Trump has so far shown little appetite for investing in even the basic building blocks of a modern-day White House campaign.

His communications team currently consists of a single spokeswoman and he has just about 30 paid staff deployed to battleground states across the country. Mrs Clinton, in contrast, has had a veritable campaign army mobilised for months, backed by millions of dollars in battleground-state television advertising. Mr Trump has yet to reserve any advertising time.

Instead, he is outsourcing even basic campaign functions to the Republican National Committee (RNC) - an untested strategy that comes with risks, given the shaky support he has received from Republican leaders.

Mr Trump has also squandered precious time campaigning in states unlikely to determine the election. And this week, he will take a trip to Scotland to promote the renovation of one of his golf courses.

Mr Trump has also been slow to embrace an aggressive plan to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to fund both his campaign and the RNC's ground game, which has frustrated donors.

New fundraising reports covering the first few weeks after Mr Trump became the presumptive nominee show the RNC raised 13 million dollars (£8.8 million) in May - about what it raised in April, before his rivals left the race. By comparison, four years earlier, Republican nominee Mitt Romney helped the RNC bring in 34 million dollars (£23 million).

Veteran Republican fundraiser Fred Malek said he doubted Mr Lewandowski's departure would have much impact on the campaign's fundraising and said the real change has to come from Mr Trump himself.

"If it signals a change in his style and approach, it can only be positive. But I feel he needs to do more. And I feel that, no matter what he does on the fundraising front, he's going to be at a huge financial disadvantage," he said, explaining that it typically takes candidates two years to build fundraising operations.