Former President Trump campaigned for his endorsees, Nevada Republicans Joe Lombardo and Adam Laxalt, on Friday less than one month after they won their respective Republican primaries.
Lombardo, who serves as the Clark County Sheriff, won the Republican gubernatorial primary in the Silver State in mid-June while Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general, won his Republican Senate primary.
“Adam was an exceptional attorney general. He really was a great attorney general of your state of Nevada,” Trump said of the Senate hopeful at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
He lauded Laxalt for battling Big Pharma and for opposing executive action taken by former President Obama on immigration.
While Laxalt was still attorney general of Nevada, the state was part of a lawsuit that sued the Obama administration after former President Obama took executive action to shield five million people in the United States who were undocumented from deportation, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Trump painted Laxalt’s opponent, incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) as an “open borders fanatic” and criticized her for her opposition to his border wall.
Masto has previously been critical Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allowed migrants to be turned away at the border during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, she was also among a handful of senators who criticized President Biden’s announcement to rescind the program.
The Nevada Senate race will likely be tight. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has rated the race as a “toss up,” and will test the impact of the former president’s endorsement on election victories in November.
During the former president’s speech, he also called Lombardo “a patriot,” adding later that he would be “very strong on crime, strong on the borders and very strong on election integrity.”
Trump is anticipated to hold an event stumping for several other candidates in Anchorage, Alaska, on Saturday, including Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R), Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka (R) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is running for a House seat.