Former President Donald Trump returned to Las Vegas on Friday to highlight proposed economic policies in a speech meant to woo swing state Nevadans, but spent much of his time repeating falsehoods and bemoaning this week's presidential debate. 

In a freewheeling late evening speech lasting more than 80 minutes, Trump spoke to more than 6,000 people, according to his campaign (that grew noticeably smaller as he spoke) at the World Market Center in downtown Las Vegas, delivering his usual rhetoric against illegal immigration — this time complete with internet memes blown up on screens beside and behind him — and once again predicting that a victory for his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, would mark the undoing of America.

Most of his speech was a typical Trump affair that haphazardly weaved political points on immigration and the economy with myriad tangents, such as a back-and-forth with the crowd about the best nickname for President Joe Biden, as well as criticizing his treatment at Tuesday’s debate by the ABC moderators who fact-checked him in real time. He said Harris was “clearly not well” — accompanied by videos of her laughing — and called her “a threat to democracy.”

But it was at the end of the speech where he made another new Nevada specific pledge: To “open up large portions of land” that he said will foster the development of new housing, a reference to the bipartisan push to free up federal land for affordable housing development. The federal government owns about 85.9 percent of the land in the state, limiting their development and use.

However, he also said these opened up public lands will have “ultra low regulations,” a vague promise that does not reflect what has been included in Nevada lands bills that have stalled in Congress. He also linked the opening of land to a pledge to grow the state’s film industry with the help of Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, though that policy is likely to be addressed on the state level, as has been proposed through tax credits.

“We’re going to open up that land to you, you’ll be able to build studio lots and everything else,” Trump said.

He also touted a trio of economic proposals —no taxes on Social Security benefits, overtime pay and tipped wages, the last of which he originally pitched in Las Vegas during a June rally. Harris made the same pledge at a Vegas rally of her own last month, while Trump highlighted the proposal in his most recent appearance in the Silver State last month — his second visit to Nevada in three weeks. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), also held a rally here last month, and Sam Brown, the Republican candidate for Nevada’s U.S. Senate seat, was brought onstage at both that event and Friday’s rally.

Trump’s emphasis on Nevada is no accident — polls show Trump and Harris in a dead heat in the state, whose six electoral votes could prove crucial in determining the winner of the election. Trump and his allies have said in multiple appearances that if he is victorious in Nevada, he will regain the presidency.

Despite the close polling, attendees of Friday’s rally interviewed by The Nevada Independent said they weren’t worried about November and believed the only way Trump could lose is by cheating.

“I think he's gonna do it, but also I think the Democrats got to figure out some way to f--- him out of it,” said Kerry Denman, a 65-year-old maintenance director at an aviation company. “That's just American politics now.”

The debate

Trump kicked off his speech praising his Tuesday debate performance, although he has since refused a rematch offered by Harris. A CNN poll taken immediately after the debate found 63 percent of respondents believing Harris had performed better. 

Screens next to Trump shared clips of the debate, and he condemned moderators for not fact-checking his opponent while demanding that moderator and ABC anchor David Muir owed him an apology. On a projector above him, he played clips of Harris’ giving different stances on fracking, health care and the mandatory buyback of assault weapons — echoing a debate question Harris was asked Tuesday about her shifting policies. 

“She tried to gaslight people about her radical left positions,” Trump said.

Moderators also fact-checked Trump on a host of statements made, some of which Trump reiterated Friday, including that some states allow the killing of babies after they are born (which is not true). 

“They were wrong, and Trump was right,” he said about the moderators. 

He also repeated a false conspiracy theory that Harris was wearing an earpiece during the debate to feed her answers.

Jim Cardello, 56, said at Friday’s rally that he was dismayed by the overall tenor of the debate, saying Trump could have shown more humility and that it did nothing to alleviate political divisions in the country.

“That certainly did nothing to let either side feel like you're working together,” Cardello said.

The border

In his speech, Trump delivered his standard anti-immigration rhetoric, but with an added twist: memes. As he condemned the increase in illegal border crossings, an image of tattooed Latino men was projected above him, with text saying they would be people’s apartment managers under a Harris administration. 

Later, another image projected above him showing a man with a knife following a woman captioned “No one is safe with Kamala’s open border.”

He also derisively referred to Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, though he did not repeat the unsubstantiated claim he made at the debate that they are eating people’s cats and dogs. Wayne Allyn Root, a far-right Nevada radio host, however, did echo this conspiracy earlier in the night, and Trump said earlier Monday that he would deport Haitian migrants in the community “back to Venezuela.”.

He referred to news reports of a Venezuelan gang’s increased reach in the U.S. and said, without providing evidence, that some undocumented immigrants are being flown into the U.S. on “beautiful jet planes.”

Trump has faced criticism from Democrats for urging Senate Republicans to kill a bipartisan immigration bill that would have increased the number of border patrol agents and given the Biden administration the authority to “close” the border — or cease processing most asylum claims — if the number of migrant encounters reaches a certain threshold.

He also said, without evidence, that hundreds of millions of people would enter the U.S. illegally if Harris were elected president, and that “our country will be obliterated”

Raquel Lara, a 55-year-old Las Vegas teacher, said the border was among the issues most important to her, citing stories she has heard about migrants hurting children.

She was among the attendees who, like Trump, underscored the stakes of the election — not just in regards to the border — which she thinks will be a “landslide.”

If Trump doesn’t win, Lara said, it’s going to “be war.”