Donald Trump proposed eliminating taxes on tips at a Sunday campaign rally in Las Vegas as he looks to win over voters in a critical swing state that has a sizable number of service industry workers.
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The proposal — which came at the presumptive GOP nominee's first campaign rally since his historic conviction of him in his New York hush money trial last month — was immediately slammed by the state's powerful Culinary Union as “wild campaign promises from a convicted felon."
The former president's Las Vegas visit follows a flurry of stops that included high-dollar fundraisers in California and a campaign town hall in Arizona. On Saturday night, he attended a fundraiser in Las Vegas hosted by construction equipment tycoon Don Ahern, a longtime ally.
Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita said Sunday the campaign and the Republican National Committee raised a total of $27.5 million from the four Trump fundraisers attended in recent days in California and Nevada.
Trump's excursion out West comes at a critical juncture for his campaign as it looks to shift the narrative to his general election message after a seven-week criminal trial that culminated in his conviction on 34 criminal counts related to a hush money scheme to pay off a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.
During his visit to Las Vegas, the Trump campaign also launched a new “Latino Americans for Trump” coalition, as it looks to increase its outreach to Hispanic voters ahead of November's election. The decision to launch the new program in Nevada was no coincidence.
Recent polling has indicated a noticeable shift toward Trump among Hispanic voters, who have traditionally voted Democratic. In a state like Nevada, where Latino voters make up a sizable portion of the electorate, siphoning away some of them could help deliver Trump the critical battleground state, and potentially the White House. Nevada has backed the Democratic nominee for president in four consecutive elections – but Joe Biden carried it by just 2 points in 2020.
“Some of us believe that we might be better positioned in Nevada [this cycle] than we are even in Georgia,” one source close to Trump told CNN ahead of the rally.
Trump campaign sources pointed specifically to the Covid-19 pandemic as a reason for their optimism. Nevada was particularly hard hit by the pandemic, given its dependence on tourism and hospitality.
One senior adviser said ahead of the event that there are also plans to try to work with the state's Culinary Workers Union, which has traditionally worked closely with Democrats as part of a massive get-out-the-vote operation crafted by late Nevada Sen. Harry Reid. Last month, the union unendorsed several Democratic states over their votes to remove Covid-era cleaning requirements placed on the casino industry.