Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will hold an outdoor rally in the sweltering heat of Las Vegas, Nevada, in a bid to shore up a swing state that he has lost twice and polls show is leaning toward the Nov. 5 U. S. election.
Sunday will be Trump’s first large-scale rally since a New York jury found him guilty on May 30 of falsifying documents to conceal the payment of a sum to a movie star on the eve of the 2016 election, which would make him the first former U. S. president. convicted of a crime.
Trump spoke Thursday at a mayoral meeting in the battleground state of Arizona, speaking to supporters about his plans to curb illegal immigration and blaming the unrest at the southern border on his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden.
Immigration will be one of the central topics of his speech in Las Vegas, along with complaints about the increase in post-pandemic inflation during Biden’s term, according to a statement from Cruzada.
Scorching heat is forecast for the event, with temperatures reaching 36 degrees Celsius (97 degrees Fahrenheit) when Trump takes office at noon local time (19:00 GMT) and 40 degrees Celsius (102F) at 15:00, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
In a news release, Trump’s crusade encouraged participants to dress for the heat and stay hydrated, and said there would be bottled water, misting and cooling stations available, and a medical corps of workers on site in case of an emergency.
The crusade noted that the NWS’s excessive heat warning for Las Vegas, amid a heat wave ravaging the southwestern United States, will expire Saturday night ahead of the event.
The measures were aimed at preventing a repeat of the cases of heat exhaustion that occurred at Trump’s event in Arizona on Thursday, when 11 other people who had waited in line for hours in extreme heat had to be rushed to the hospital.
Nevada is one of the six or seven swing states most likely to be elected. A Fox News investigation conducted after the guilty verdict showed Trump trailing Biden on five percentage issues in Nevada, a merit roughly in line with the average of polls compiled over time. through the survey tracking site FiveThirtyEight.
Democrat Hillary Clinton won Nevada in 2016, as did Biden in 2020. Yet it is the battleground state where Trump has opposed Biden more than Clinton.
Sunday’s rally follows a three-day fundraising crusade led by Trump that included stops in San Francisco and Beverly Hills, where he raised millions of dollars from tech executives and donors.