In Las Vegas, Trump Calls Harris a ‘Copycat’ Over ‘No Tax on Tips’ Plan

The rivals have zeroed in on service industry workers in Nevada, a swing state where polls show a tight race.

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Former President Donald J. Trump, speaking at a restaurant in Las Vegas on Friday, pitched his idea to exempt tips from federal income taxes.

Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday fumed over the fact that when it comes to exempting tips from being taxed, he and his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, are on the same page.

Mr. Trump, before a gathering of supporters at a Las Vegas restaurant, complained that Ms. Harris had stolen his idea and sought to cast her as an opportunist who was pandering to service industry workers by cribbing from one of his signature proposals.

“She’s a copycat,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s a flip-flopper, you know. She’s the greatest flip-flopper in history. She went from communism to capitalism in about two weeks.”

A Harris campaign spokesman declined to comment. This month, while in Las Vegas herself, Ms. Harris said she would seek to end federal income taxes on tips if she were elected. Mr. Trump first floated the idea in June, and it quickly garnered bipartisan support.

He has publicly stewed over her embrace of the plan, especially in Nevada, a battleground state that Mr. Trump lost in 2016 and 2020.

Before President Biden withdrew from the race in late July, Mr. Trump had appeared to be on a trajectory to end his electoral drought in the desert — where one of his hotels towers over the Strip. Mr. Biden, whose campaign called the “no tax on tips” overture a “wild campaign promise,” had been trailing Mr. Trump by an average of seven percentage points in Nevada.

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