President Donald Trump on Wednesday took his midterm campaign show to a casino a few miles off the Las Vegas strip in Nevada, where Republicans are targeting three light-blue House seats with control of the chamber on the line in November.

The head of the Republican Party hit on his usual midterm campaign themes, including paring down illegal immigration and lowering prescription drug prices. He groused to UFC executive Dana White, who introduced him before the rally, that “I’m not getting credit from the fake news for what I’ve done.” And he described Michigan’s newly minted progressive Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed as “full of s—.”

He reprised his midterms season attacks on ultraliberal candidates who’ve won recent Democratic primaries, including El-Sayed, who defeated moderate Rep. Haley Stevens in a primary Tuesday.

“They’re trying to destroy it with the disaster known as, not socialism, communism. These are communists,” he told the audience at the Red Rock Casino.

“It’s a big danger. The [democratic socialist] agenda is now being championed by the Democrat members of the United States Congress — they have officially endorsed defunding the police, defunding the United States military, abolishing ICE and giving up prisons,” he said, embellishing the opposition party’s policy stances. “They do not want prisons because nobody deserves to be in prison, even a person that’s killed people.”

Trump was back in the city where he contended in 2024 that a “beautiful” waitress planted the initial seeds for his “no tax on tips” plan, which Republicans included in their 2025 tax and spending law. “In 2024, we won the state in a landslide,” he said of his 3-point victory over Kamala Harris in the Silver State. “‘No tax on tips’ didn’t hurt.”

“With the help of our Republican majorities in Congress, last year I signed the great ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ giving you the largest tax cuts an American has,” he said. “So if you’re a waiter, a waitress, a bartender, a bellhop, a caddy — I love caddies — valet, hotel worker, taxi driver in Las Vegas or anywhere else, anywhere, you pay zero taxes on your tipped income.”

But the influential Las Vegas-based Culinary Workers Union Local 226 said in a statement released a few hours before Trump’s remarks that Trump’s “short-sighted plan includes a marriage penalty, leaves out banquet and restaurant workers who get tips through service charges/buyouts, penalizes immigrant workers, and is temporary.”

The union knocked Trump’s no-tax-on-tips plan over the fact that it is “set to sunset when he leaves office,” adding: “As tourism continues to decline under Trump’s policies, many hospitality workers already don’t make enough in tips to tax in the first place.”

Trump’s address at the casino Wednesday also served to rally support for the three Republican candidates seeking to flip three Las Vegas-area House seats. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates the race for Nevada’s 4th District as Likely Democratic and for the 1st and 3rd districts as Lean Democratic.

In the 1st District, longtime Democratic Rep. Dina Titus faces a challenge from GOP state Sen. Carrie Buck. In the 3rd, Democrat Susie Lee is up against Republican Marty O’Donnell, the composer of the popular Halo video games. And in the 4th, Democrat Steven Horsford is defending his seat against GOP businessman Cody Whipple.

Trump said he had heard O’Donnell has been “doing incredible.”

‘Fake’ polls

Trump’s visit to Las Vegas comes as polls show his job approval rating sliding, including a survey released Tuesday that brought more bad news for the president and congressional GOP candidates.

Democrats enjoyed an 8-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, according to a July 31-Aug. 3 YouGov-The Economist survey, with 41 percent of U.S. adults saying they supported the Democratic candidate for Congress, while 33 percent opted for the Republican.

The same survey found 61 percent of U.S. adults saying the moment stood at a political turning point less than three months from Election Day. And just 16 percent said the economy — amid full Republican control of government — was improving. More than half (57 percent) said the economy was getting worse, and 20 percent said it was in limbo.

Trump on Wednesday acknowledged seeing those polls but called them “fake,” saying: “I saw polls today on television saying, ‘Our Donald Trump polls on the economy aren’t good.’ The economy is the greatest economy we’ve ever had by far.”

The president departed the casino moments after “Y.M.C.A.” played him off stage, en route to the White House. When he rises on Thursday, Senate GOP leaders hope to have a clearer sense of just when the chamber could leave for an election year recess that is slated to last until Sept. 14. 

That will put the often-demanding Trump back in the same ZIP code as the Senate Republican leaders with whom he has clashed in recent weeks over their reluctance to bring his prized GOP elections bill, known as the SAVE America Act, to the floor. Detractors say it lacks the votes to pass.

“The president is obviously frustrated with the situation. He thinks there is enough Republican support to pass the parts of SAVE that are popular,” said a source familiar with the situation. “He believes there are parts of SAVE that are popular with Republican voters, but also other voters, too. And it’s popular with the Republican donor class. He thinks this is something that could pass, if it came to a vote on the Senate floor.”

The source suggested the president wants to attach parts of the SAVE legislation to a spending bill to be selected later. But that’s not part of leadership’s get-out-of-town plan.

Asked what Trump’s reaction would be if the Senate adjourns later this week for its annual August recess without voting on the elections bill, the source replied: “He’s not going to be happy about it. We’ll all read that Truth Social post together and see what happens after that.”

To that end, Trump got a late applause line Wednesday when he declared: “We will pass the SAVE America Act to defend American life.”