I don’t know what President Donald Trump said privately to his Silver State pep squad after Thursday’s Make America Great Again stump speech in Las Vegas, but I’ll bet there wasn’t much talk about Yucca Mountain.

Build the wall? That’s an easy one. Tax cuts good? Go, team.

Democrats are radical socialists, the economy is rolling, Mueller’s Russia probe is a witch hunt and journalists are the enemy of the people. Check, check, check and double check.

If there’s one thing U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, laconic gubernatorial candidate Adam Laxalt, and congressional suitors Danny Tarkanian and Cresent Hardy agree on, it’s everything that comes out of Trump’s mouth. They’ve cast all independent thought to the winds of autumn in exchange for the president’s political embrace.

It arrived Thursday at the Las Vegas Convention Center in a big, wet, sloppy kiss of an endorsement before a cap-wearing crowd that had heard the president’s MAGA routine before and can’t get enough.

Naked fealty didn’t always define Heller’s and Hardy’s political philosophy. They once had the gumption to take issue with the president’s moral shabbiness, hot air and outright lies. But no more. After effusive praise, Heller pronounced, “Mr. President, it’s an honor to work with you in putting Nevada back to work.” That’s high praise for a man who once said he was “100 percent against Clinton, 99 percent against Trump.”

But that gushing loyalty to the president leaves them all staring at their shoes on the issue of Yucca Mountain, the proposed nuclear waste repository most Nevadans oppose and into which billions of dollars and whole political careers have been poured over the last three decades. It’s easy for them to agree they want to help the president Make America Great Again at a pep rally, but it’s also obvious Trump wants to make the Yucca Mountain Project active again.

Hardy has been open to considering storage of nuclear waste at Yucca, which is within District 4. While the issue is being decided at the federal level, Hardy mewled to The Nevada Independent, “I want Nevadans to decide on it. I want them to actually spend the time, the effort to look at it and see the, the value versus the dangers, see the science … and let’s have that open discussion.”

Tarkanian has been even more bold. Back when he was pummeling Heller in the GOP Senate primary before hearing his master’s voice and switching to CD3, Tarkanian was loud and proud in his support for Yucca Mountain as a job creator. After the Trump administration’s budget included $120 million to restart Yucca’s mothballed licensing process, Tarkanian said in a statement, “In pushing to revive the project, the Trump administration recognizes how important Yucca Mountain is to Nevada and America. Dean Heller should be ashamed of himself for standing against President Trump, a safer America, and a more prosperous future for Nevada."

Heller, meanwhile, took credit in April for blocking the funding item: “I've made it clear why Nevada does not want to turn into the nation's nuclear waste dump." But Trumpian House Republicans, led by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Illinois), have put Yucca in play.

Nevada’s Democrats continue to call the project that has already cost $15 billion a “colossal waste of funds.” And if there’s something Democrats know plenty about, it’s a colossal waste of funds.

The obvious difference here is consistency. If the Democrats are droning on about the lack of fairness and inherent dangers of transporting and storing high-level nuclear waste in a state that lacks a single nuclear power reactor, it’s a song sung in tune.

Not so with Trump’s Nevada pep squad.

Heller has the most to lose in what political experts are calling the most hotly contested Senate race in the country. He’s hard to hit on Yucca, but due to his own blind enthusiasm for all things Trump he’s also harder to trust on the issue.

He recently boasted to rural Nevada newspaper editors, "I am the only person standing between Yucca Mountain happening and not happening. I am the only person that can stop that."

Unfortunately for Nevada, the president has decided reopening Yucca will help Make America Great Again.

Rather than remaining on the field as a player, Heller has moved to the sidelines and joined Trump’s Silver State pep squad.

That makes the revival of Yucca Mountain more likely than at any time in the past decade.

 Contact John L. Smith at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith