In Las Vegas, Trump Appeals to Local Workers and Avoids Talk of Conviction

At a rally on Sunday, former President Donald J. Trump promised to end taxes on tips for hospitality workers in a speech otherwise filled with familiar refrains.

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Former President Donald J. Trump’s rally on Sunday in Nevada, a key battleground state, concluded a multiple-day Western swing that started on Thursday in Phoenix.

In his first campaign rally since he was convicted in Manhattan on 34 felony charges, former President Donald J. Trump stood in blazing heat in a Las Vegas park and directly appealed to working-class voters by promising to eliminate taxes on tips for hospitality workers.

But beyond that proposal, little at the rally suggested that Mr. Trump’s new status as a felon had changed his message. And when Mr. Trump’s teleprompter apparently stopped working, his speech — which his campaign advisers had billed as focused on issues of local concern to Nevada voters — devolved into familiar stories and riffs.

“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.

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