Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) was trying to be one of the people when she announced she would cross Missouri in an RV tour.
Unfortunately, she was caught skipping between stops on her private plane, valued at $1 million.
Comparing GPS tracking data on both the plane and the RV, it’s clear that the two modes of transportation hugged exactly the same route and stopped in the same cities–with the implication that McCaskill was pretending to her constituents that she was riding across the state in the humbler RV.
McCaskill hasn’t denied that she occasionally hopped on her plane, but stressed that most of the time she spent on the RV.
“I added some stops with the use of the plane,” McCaskill said, “but I was on the RV so much that the broken door drove me crazy.”
She added that, had she used the plane, there would’ve been more evidence than GPS data.
“Anybody could have followed me,” McCaskill said. “They could have seen when I got off the RV and when I went and got on the airplane.”
McCaskill has previously gotten in trouble for charging taxpayers to fund her private plane travel, but this election cycle she’s been funding the plane out of pocket.
However, McCaskill is considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the U.S. Senate.
Last month, polls showed that she trailed two of her Republican rivals by large numbers: Attorney General Josh Hawley by 9 points, and businessman Austin Petersen by 16 points.
