Trump could use faulty polling to 'sow chaos and violence' when he loses: ex-senator

Polls are showing president Joe Biden in a weaker position than he was at the start of the 2020 general election, and MSNBC's Claire McCaskill warned that Donald Trump would exploit those findings to stoke violence and chaos.

Biden consistently led Trump in national and swing states at this point four years ago, and while Democrats are confident the ex-president's criminal cases and legal bills will sap some of his strength by November, McCaskill told "Morning Joe" that she doesn't believe the polling tells the whole story.

"We've got a situation where Joe Biden is aggressively going out to swing states and campaigning vigorously," McCaskill said. "Meanwhile, we have a fat guy sitting on a golf cart, and, you know, he's not doing anything. His rallies are smaller, I don't think people covered that enough, and he's got real problems in his party. If you just look at the primary results, Joe Biden has done so much better in the primaries than Donald Trump has in every single one. He has over-performed the polling and Donald Trump has under-performed on the polling."

That suggests the polling isn't entirely reflective of public sentiment, but McCaskill said the appearance of an early lead gives Trump an opening to whip up anger among his supporters as he did before mail-in votes were counted and his Election Day lead evaporated in 2020.

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"I think the polling is off," McCaskill said. "It worries me because if the polling is off, like I believe it is, and Joe Biden wins, like I hope he does, that is just another reason that Trump would use to sow the distrust and chaos and possibly violence that he did last time."

Those efforts culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection, when Trump drew his supporters to Washington, D.C., for a protest of the alleged fraud he falsely claimed had cost him re-election, and many of them stormed the U.S. Capitol to violently prevent the certification of Biden's win.

Thousands of those Trump supporters have been charged with crimes related to that attack, and the former president also faces criminal charges in federal court for related crimes, but he's trying to stave off a trial until after the election in apparent hope of ending that prosecution as president or getting bailed out by the U.S. Supreme Court.

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