Trump In Attack Mode As Polls Give Him Edge; Ex-AG Barr Warns Of 'Horror Show'

Former president Donald Trump has led a new poll on the 2024 presidential election even though he has yet to be officially nominated as a candidate.

However, William "Bill" Barr, ex-attorney general of the Trump administration, has warned of a "horror show" should the business mogul run for president again and claim victory next year.

In the new Washington Post-ABC News poll whose results were released Sunday, 54% of the respondents said they thought Trump "did a better job handling the economy" than current president Joe Biden.

Trump also claimed 43% of the Republican-leaning respondents who were asked who they would like the Republican party to nominate as a presidential candidate in 2024. Twenty percent said they wanted Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and 2% said they preferred former vice president Mike Pence.

On the question of whether they would be satisfied if Trump was chosen as the Republican nominee for 2024, 75% of the respondents said they would be satisfied, while 22% said they would be dissatisfied.

For DeSantis, 64% said they would be satisfied, and 23% said they would be dissatisfied. Among the poll respondents, 438 leaned Republican.

When asked who they would "definitely" vote for between the former president and the current president, 36% said Trump, while and 32% said Biden.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said on "This Week" that the poll results were "just brutal for President Biden," as only 36% of Democratic respondents believed he should be nominated by the party, while 58% thought someone else should be chosen.

On the question of whether Trump or Biden was too old to run for president, 26% said only Biden was too old, while 1% said Trump was too old. Meanwhile, 43% said both were beyond their age for another presidency.

The results of the poll, which included 1,006 respondents from across the U.S., were released days after Barr made said at an event in Cleveland Friday that the billionaire "does not have the discipline" necessary to lead the White House.

"It is a horror show when he's left to his own devices. And so, you may want his policies, but Trump will not deliver Trump policies," he said, adding that the 76-year-old would "deliver chaos."

Barr went on to say that he believed Trump would be the "last person" who could execute and achieve the policies he was advertising to the American public.

The former AG isn't the only ex-Trump ally to have expressed opposition against the businessman's 2024 campaign.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said a Trump 2024 campaign would be a "vanity exercise to try to make himself feel better." Christie is considering running for president.

Christie further noted that the reason he was contemplating a 2024 presidential campaign was his concern that "people that are in the race so far are unwilling to take him [Trump] on directly."

Meanwhile, support for Trump's potential 2024 presidential run has gradually been building up in the past few weeks even with his ongoing legal battles.

Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., said in an interview with CBS' "The Point with Marcia Kramer," which was released Sunday, that he would support Trump next year. On the legal challenges faced by Trump, Santos admitted that there was "concern," but that he would support the former president "until proven guilty."

The recent poll also asked respondents, 900 of them registered voters, if the 34 felony counts of falsifying business records filed against Trump in New York were brought upon him "appropriately" to hold him accountable to the law. Forty-nine percent said the case was raised appropriately, while 44% said the charges were "inappropriately" filed to "hurt Trump politically."

On the other cases against Trump, including alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and his role in the Capitol riot in early 2021 that killed five people, the majority said he should face criminal charges.

Aside from Rep. Santos, Republican senators Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Braun of Indiana, Ted Budd of North Carolina, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and seven other GOP senate lawmakers have expressed support for a Trump 2024 campaign, as per Insider.

In the House, around 53 Republican members have expressed support for Trump as of early May, including West Virginia's Alex Mooney and Florida's Anna Paulina Luna, who told Politico in March that for a presidential run, she would support Trump over her state's own DeSantis.

Meanwhile, Biden's net approval rating was only at 36% in the recent poll, indicating increasing concerns over his age and mental acuity, as he was the only U.S. president to have turned 80 while in office.

In an NBC News poll last month, 68% of the GOP primary respondents said they agreed with the statement that the recent investigations into Trump were politically motivated and they would still stand behind the former president.

Despite increasing support for another Trump run, there was also some concern about how the latest legal battles of the 45th president of the U.S. could affect his presidential campaign.

The NBC poll found that 60% of Americans believed Trump shouldn't run for president again, and only 35% said he should.

Furthermore, some observers believed Trump would not clinch a 2024 victory if he could not "replicate" the same level of evangelical support that brought him to the White House in 2016.

Trump announced his 2024 presidential bid at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November 2022. He said he would establish the "greatest economy ever" and criticized the Biden presidency.

"We will again put America first," he said.