Election Updates: Trump rallies in Las Vegas. (2024)

In Las Vegas, Trump appeals to local workers and avoids talk of his conviction.

“I got no teleprompters, and I haven’t from the beginning,” Mr. Trump said after speaking for roughly 15 minutes, though his speech included excerpts from prepared remarks that his campaign had provided to reporters. “That probably means we’ll make a better speech now.”

Mr. Trump repeatedly voiced his frustration with the lack of a teleprompter, even though he has often boasted of his ability to give long speeches without one.

His remarks, which lasted roughly an hour, felt unfocused as he cycled through well-worn territory, railing against electric vehicles, immigration, the four criminal cases brought against him and President Biden’s physical and mental condition.

Once again, Mr. Trump broadly depicted migrants crossing the border illegally as violent criminals or mentally ill people, and then recited “The Snake,” a standby poem he has used since 2016 to expound on the threat that he believes undocumented immigrants pose to the country.

He continued to revive his unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 election. And he baselessly insisted Democrats would try to cheat in November, sowing doubt about the general election months before a single vote has been cast.

“Don’t let them cheat,” he told the crowd in Nevada. “You watch that vote and watch it all the way.”

Mr. Trump again praised the mob of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, calling them “J6 warriors,” suggesting they had legitimate reasons to try to stop Congress from certifying the presidential election and saying that they had somehow been “set up” that day.

“They were warriors, but they’re really, more than anything else, they’re victims of what happened,” Mr. Trump said. “All they were doing were protesting a rigged election.”

Mr. Trump said next to nothing about his recent conviction on 34 felony charges in Manhattan, but he lamented the four times he was indicted last year as a “disgrace.” Still, a number of people at the rally wore shirts reading “I’m voting for the convicted felon.”

Much as he did at a town-hall-style forum last week in Phoenix, Mr. Trump spoke at length about immigration, saying that Mr. Biden’s border policies constituted an “all-out war” on Black and Hispanic Americans.

Mr. Trump again criticized Mr. Biden’s recent executive order meant to deter illegal crossings at the U.S. border with Mexico, calling it “weak,” “ineffective” and garbage, though he used an expletive.

In response, the crowd began chanting the expletive, as his supporters did in Arizona when he used the same description. “This word seems to be catching on a little bit,” Mr. Trump said approvingly. (When Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, spoke before Mr. Trump took the stage, her remarks prompted three identical chants.)

At the rally in Las Vegas on Sunday, the Trump campaign formally announced its Latino outreach effort, known as Latino Americans for Trump, and a number of Hispanic Americans spoke before Mr. Trump did.

Nevada has a large Hispanic population, and polls show that Mr. Trump’s support among the state’s working-class and Latino voters is increasing. His campaign is trying to capitalize on dissatisfaction among those groups with Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy.

Linda Fornos, a Las Vegas resident who came to the United States from Nicaragua, said that she voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but that she was disappointed with his administration. “For many years, I believed in the promises of the Democrats for more opportunities for the Latino community,” she said.

Mr. Trump’s pledge to eliminate taxes on tips for restaurant and hospitality workers was a direct appeal to that group, a significant force in the Las Vegas area. “When I get into office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips,” he said.

After the rally, the Culinary Workers Union, a key part of the Democratic coalition in the state, attacked Mr. Trump’s proposal as hollow.

“Relief is definitely needed for tip earners, but Nevada workers are smart enough to know the difference between real solutions and wild campaign promises from a convicted felon,” Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the union, which has 60,000 members, said in a statement.

Mr. Trump’s rally in Nevada, a key battleground state, concluded a multiple-day Western swing that started on Thursday with a forum in Phoenix hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action.

As record-high temperatures hit Phoenix, at least 11 people at that indoor event were taken to the hospital to be treated for heat exhaustion. The Trump campaign took steps to avoid similar issues in Las Vegas, where the heat was less severe but where the rally was held outside. At least six people on Sunday were taken from the event to the hospital, according to the Clark County Fire Department.

After his speech in Phoenix, Mr. Trump attended three fund-raisers in California and one in Las Vegas. Chris LaCivita, one of Mr. Trump’s two campaign managers, said that the campaign had raised about $27.5 million across the four events, a figure that cannot be independently verified until campaign filings are made public in the coming months.

Tester and Sheehy attack — and agree — in first debate of Montana’s Senate race.

Running for his fourth term in a deep-red state, Mr. Tester demonstrated why he has been such a difficult target for Republicans. He was quick to distance himself from President Biden, who is unpopular among Montanans, and repeatedly emphasized his bipartisan reputation. He said he had broken with Mr. Biden’s administration on immigration and energy, positioning himself as a proponent of fossil fuel use and calling some of Mr. Biden’s energy regulations “unacceptable.”

“The bottom line is: He doesn’t listen to me enough,” Mr. Tester said of Mr. Biden. “He needs to.”

Mr. Sheehy laid out a vision of a nation on the brink, and he did his best to tie Mr. Tester to it. Mr. Sheehy repeatedly took aim at the crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, an issue that Republicans have pushed to the forefront, as they accuse their opponents of encouraging a flood of illegal migration into the country. And he denounced what he said were lowered standards in the workplace and the military, criticizing diversity initiatives and an emphasis on higher education over blue-collar jobs.

“We’ve seen runaway spending,” Mr. Sheehy said. “We’ve seen an executive branch of government that’s running out of control. We see a wide-open southern border, record-high interest rates, record-high inflation. And Jon Tester supported Biden’s agenda 95 percent of the time.”

The race in Montana is expected to be one of the most competitive in an election cycle that has Democrats playing defense as Republicans try to regain the Senate. Mr. Tester’s campaign has a significant financial advantage over Mr. Sheehy’s, but the few polls of the race have shown the two men essentially tied.

Sunday’s debate, hosted by the Montana Broadcasters Association and the Greater Montana Foundation, gave voters an early opportunity to see the candidates battle each other. But on many issues, they were quick to find common ground. Mr. Tester and Mr. Sheehy agreed on support for Israel, greater assistance for mental health services and a need to be tougher on meatpacking conglomerates.

“We agree on more than we disagree,” Mr. Sheehy said in response to a question about political polarization.

Still, areas of sharp contrast did not go unnoticed.

Mr. Tester, a third-generation farmer from Montana, took aim at the surge of wealthy out-of-state transplants, who have driven up housing prices. He hit Mr. Sheehy, who grew up in Minnesota and moved to Montana a decade ago, on his background.

“We’ve had a lot of folks move into this state, a lot of folks with thick wallets,” he said. “On the housing front, Tim Sheehy’s not the solution — he’s part of the problem.”

Mr. Sheehy, who owns an aerial firefighting company and a stake in a cattle ranch, argued that he had done plenty to help Montanans, including by creating jobs.

“If you’re not from here, Jon Tester doesn’t think your voice matters, apparently,” he said.

Mr. Tester also attacked Mr. Sheehy for saying he would have voted against a bill that provided aid to Ukraine and Taiwan. And Mr. Tester was perhaps at his most animated on abortion, after Mr. Sheehy argued that voters did not want “elective abortions up to and including the moment of birth.”

“Tim, this is too important of an issue to play politics with,” Mr. Tester replied. “For you to say they’re killing babies at 40 weeks is total BS.”

Mr. Sheehy hit Mr. Tester for being a major recipient of lobbyist donations and argued that he had his chance to push for improvements in areas like health care for veterans and had come up short.

“We cannot keep sending the same politicians to Washington over and over and over again,” Mr. Sheehy said.

Trump and Biden surrogates go toe-to-toe on the Sunday shows.

Noem recommended a woman as Trump’s running mate — and again defended killing her dog.

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who was campaigning for Mr. Trump in Wisconsin, said it “would be beneficial” for him to choose a woman as his running mate. His campaign’s shortlist, according to people briefed on the process, consists of seven men and only one woman, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York.

“All the polls tell him in these swing states that a woman on the ticket helps him win,” Ms. Noem said on CNN. She added, “I have spent the majority of my time here in Wisconsin talking to women and talking to those people that are independent and on the fringe, and they’re leaning towards Donald Trump, but they also want to know that their perspective is going to be at the table when decisions are made.”

Ms. Noem was once seen as a potential running mate herself, but her stock fell when she published a book in which she described shooting her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, after it disrupted a hunt and killed a neighbor’s chickens. She defended herself again on Sunday, saying she had “protected my children from a vicious animal.”

Abbott denounced Biden’s executive order …

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican who has sought to set his own border policies, condemned the executive order Mr. Biden issued last week to close the border to asylum seekers when crossings surge — a measure similar to one Mr. Trump tried to enact in 2018.

“What Biden has done is not doing anything to actually secure the border,” Mr. Abbott said on Fox News, arguing that the restrictions were not being sufficiently enforced.

He then made a questionable claim that — because Mr. Biden’s executive order closes the border to asylum seekers only when illegal crossings reach a seven-day daily average of 2,500, which they have regularly done — Mr. Biden was “actually authorizing more people to cross the border illegally.”

… while Coons praised it.

Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat and co-chairman of Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, opposed asylum restrictions when Mr. Trump enacted them. But on Sunday, he defended Mr. Biden’s similar restrictions because, he said, their motivations were different.

“There’s a stark difference in the values that President Biden and former President Trump bring to trying to address the issue of border security and immigration,” Mr. Coons said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” noting Mr. Trump’s ban on people entering the United States from several majority-Muslim countries and his separation of children from their parents, as well as his opposition to a bipartisan border-security deal that Mr. Biden supported.

“Former President Trump actually wants a problem to solve through his election rather than a solution that a bipartisan group of senators stood behind,” he said. “President Biden is moving ahead with forceful leadership at securing our border. President Trump is simply making a political issue of this.”

Whitmer said contraception was “very much at risk” under Republicans.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, dismissed many Republicans’ assertions that they supported unfettered access to contraception.

“When the U.S. Senate puts forth policy to ensure that they have an opportunity to enshrine access to contraception, and Republicans vote against it and kill that bill, it is very much at risk here in this moment,” she said on CNN, referring to legislation that Republicans blocked last week. “I think that what we’re seeing out of the Republicans, saying that they want to protect this, is disingenuous at best and an outright lie at worst.”

In response to a question about the trial of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, she praised the president for affirming that he would accept the verdict and would not pardon his son.

“There is a stark choice in front of us between a president who respects the rule of law and a former president who is a convicted felon, who wants to use the implements of government to go after his enemies,” she said.

Cotton said Biden wasn’t supporting Israel and Ukraine enough.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who is on the Trump campaign’s list of possible running mates, said on “Fox News Sunday” that Mr. Biden wasn’t sending enough aid to Ukraine, a claim that ignored the fact that his fellow Republicans for months blocked aid Mr. Biden had supported.

Mr. Cotton also accused the president of insufficiently backing Israel. Mr. Biden, while increasingly criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza, has supplied billions of dollars worth of weapons to support them, alienating opponents of the war whom Mr. Cotton said the president was “catering to.”

Vance recast Trump as a champion of veterans.

Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, another possible running mate to Mr. Trump, criticized Mr. Biden for his trip to Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, and for an ad from his campaign that featured veterans denouncing Mr. Trump.

“Joe Biden is trying to cover himself in the glory of the Greatest Generation, despite trying to destroy everything that they fought for,” Mr. Vance said on Fox News. “So he’s made up these ridiculous accusations that Donald Trump doesn’t respect veterans.”

‘Cheaters don’t like getting caught’: Harris blasts Trump in Michigan.

“Simply put, Donald Trump thinks he is above the law,” she said. “This should be disqualifying for anyone who wants to be president of the United States.”

The speech on Saturday evening capped a day of campaigning across Michigan, a crucial battleground state. Ms. Harris was accompanied by the actress Octavia Spencer, attending a fund-raiser in Ann Arbor and stopping at a Black-owned bookstore in Ypsilanti.

In Detroit, the vice president opened her speech with remarks about the war in Gaza. As she tried to describe the Biden administration’s monthslong efforts to negotiate a cease-fire deal, a protester stood up and shouted at her and was quickly removed from the ballroom. Ms. Harris’s response was stern: “I value and respect your voice, but I’m speaking right now.”

She then continued her speech. “We have been working every day to bring an end to this conflict in a way that ensures Israel is secure, brings home all hostages, ends ongoing suffering for Palestinian people and ensures that Palestinians can enjoy their right to self-determination, dignity and freedom,” she said. “As President Biden said last week, it is time for this war to end.”

Turning to the election, Ms. Harris, the former top prosecutor of California, accused Mr. Trump of attacking “the foundations of our justice system.” She said that the former president was convicted by a jury of 12 Americans who were selected in part by his defense team, and that his lawyers had a chance to present their side of the evidence.

“You know why he complains? Because the reality is cheaters don’t like getting caught,” she said.

A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The event took place in a key swing state with heightened stakes. President Biden won Michigan’s primary in February, 81 percent to 13 percent, prevailing over a movement that urged Democrats to vote “uncommitted” on the ballot in protest of his support for Israel. But more than 100,000 voters took that stance against him, among them progressives, young people and many in the state’s large and politically active Arab American community. Mr. Biden’s campaign has also been seeking to shore up its support among Black voters in cities like Detroit.

Mr. Trump won Michigan by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016, and lost it to Mr. Biden by more than 150,000 votes in his 2020 re-election bid. Mr. Trump focused on the voting in Michigan in his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.