LAS VEGAS — Former President Donald Trump rallied voters in the scorching heat of Las Vegas, at points telling his supporters to ask for help if needed and appearing irritable with the teleprompters that he said were not working.

The presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign hired extra medics, loading up on fans and water bottles and allowed supporters to carry umbrellas to an outdoor rally Sunday in Las Vegas, where temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius).

“I don’t want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote,” he said, adding that he was joking.

Earlier in his speech, he said the campaign would offer help to people who were feeling tired and joked that “everybody,” including the U.S. Secret Service, was worried about the safety of the crowds and not about him.

“They never mentioned me. I’m up here sweating like a dog,” he said. “This is hard work.”

Trump returned to Nevada, one of the top battleground states in the November election, for his second rally since he was found guilty in a hush-money scandal.

The unprecedented conviction of a former president has juiced Trump’s fundraising and galvanized his supporters, but it remains to be seen whether it will sway swing voters. Trump is scheduled to be interviewed by New York probation officials via a video conference Monday, a required step before his July sentencing.

Temperatures in the Southwest have cooled since reaching historic highs late last week but remain above normal for this time of year and topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) at the rally, which took place at a park with little shade next to the airport.

Well into his speech, Trump said it was “not as bad” as he thought it would be, and said he was angrier with the teleprompters not working well, even when he used to mock President Barack Obama for relying on that device.

“I pay all this money to teleprompter people, and I’d say 20% of the time, they don’t work,” he said, adding he would not pay the vendor who provided the prompters. “It’s a mess.”

Campaign organizers handed out water bottles as supporters waited in line to be screened by security officers. Inside the venue, large misting fans, pallets of water and cooling tents were placed around the perimeter. Clouds moved in and a breeze picked up about two hours before Trump was scheduled to take the stage, bringing a semblance of relief from the oppressive sun.

“This is a dry heat. This ain’t nothing for Las Vegas people,” Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald said. “But what it symbolizes for the rest of the United States — we will walk through hell” to elect Donald Trump.

McDonald and five other Republicans have been accused of submitting certificates to Congress falsely declaring Trump the winner of Nevada’s 2020 presidential election and their trial has been pushed to next year.

Trump said the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 were “victims” of a “set up.”

“They were really, more than anything else, they are victims of what happened. All they were doing is protesting a rigged election. That’s what they were doing. And then the police say, go in, go in, go in, go in,” he said. “What a set up that was. A horrible, horrible thing.”

The conspiracy theory that the Jan. 6 rioters were encouraged by law enforcement is widespread on the right but has no basis in fact. Many of those who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 have said — proudly, publicly, repeatedly — that they did so to help the then-president.

Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the 2020 election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.

The campaign paid for additional EMS services to be on site in the case of emergency. The Secret Service made an exception to allow people to bring in personal water bottles and and umbrellas. Food trucks sold shaved ice and oversized cups of lemonade.

“You know what? It’s worth it,” said Camille Lombardi, a 65-year-old retired nurse from Henderson in suburban Las Vegas who was seeing Trump in person for the first time. “Too bad it wasn’t indoors, but that’s OK.”

During a Trump rally in Arizona on Thursday, the Phoenix Police Department said 11 people were transported to hospitals, treated and released for heat exhaustion. Many of Trump’s supporters waited in line for hours and some were unable to get inside before the venue reached capacity. The temperature reached a record 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius) that day.

Trump’s Nevada rally, his third in the state this year, came on the tail end of a Western swing that included several high-dollar fundraisers where he was expected to rake in millions of dollars.

Democrat Hillary Clinton won Nevada in 2016 as did President Joe Biden in 2020, but Nevada was the only battleground state where Trump did better against Biden than Clinton. In the 2022 midterms, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, was the only incumbent governor who did not win reelection.

Trump hopes his strength among working-class voters and growing interest from Latinos will push him to victory in the state.

In a play for Nevada’s massive service-sector workforce, Trump said he’d seek to eliminate taxes on tips, a major source of income for food servers, bartenders and others who power glitzy Las Vegas hotels.

His campaign announced a renewed push for Hispanic voters ahead of the event with a Latino Americans for Trump Coalition. Four of the speakers who warmed up the crowd before Trump took the stage were Hispanic immigrants.

Gomez Licon reported from Miami.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida was the latest surrogate to accompany Trump, joining him Thursday for the 14th day of his hush money trial in New York. Last week, it was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who joined the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

The Republicans’ courtroom presence can help Trump connect with constituents while he’s stuck in court and feeling the pressure of a gag order placed on him by the judge. Both Scott and Paxton have been through legal troubles of their own, and have railed against what they call politically motivated prosecutions — a message that echoes Trump’s own. And while having friends by one’s side is a common practice encouraged by attorneys to show support for defendants in court, it’s also a chance for Trump’s friends to publicly demonstrate their loyalty to the leader of the GOP.

Scott started his day Thursday as the 6 a.m. guest on the morning show “Fox & Friends.” He later entered the courtroom behind Trump and witnessed the tense exchange between Stormy Daniels and Trump’s defense attorney as they were going over the alleged 2006 sexual encounter between the former president and the porn actor.

The senator filed into the first row of the courtroom gallery behind the defense table, joining Trump’s entourage, and spoke with Trump lawyer and spokesperson Alina Habba before taking a seat.

After an hour and a half, Scott left the courtroom and walked across the street to speak to news outlets. There, he commented on a a subject Trump has been ordered not to, bringing up Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter and saying she was a political operative who raises money for Democrats.

“This is just a bunch of Democrats saying we want to make sure that Donald Trump can’t talk,” Scott said. “Then they’ve got a gag order, so he can’t go campaign. They’ve got him holed up in a courtroom.”

The gag order prohibits Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about people connected to the case, including the judge’s family.

Scott denied his presence had anything to do with the gag order.

“No. I’m fed up,” he said. “This is just simply they don’t want this guy on the ballot.”

Paxton did not speak publicly when he joined Trump last week, but he gave interviews later to Fox Business and Newsmax about the trial, calling it “perversion of justice.”

“This is tyrannical, and to stop him from speaking out and defending himself and keep him from basically campaigning, I think is hard to believe and I hope the American people do not put up with this,” Paxton told Fox Business the day after.

David Weinstein, a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, said Trump can’t directly or indirectly comment, adding that an indirect comment would include a friend saying something Trump shared or told. But surrogates like Scott are free to speak.

“They can say whatever they want to say. They are not bound by a gag order,” he said.

Weinstein said Trump is not only on trial for the crimes he is charged with, but he’s also before the court of opinion while trying to win an election.

“He can bring other people in, can show constituents of other states that he has the backing of other politicians,” he said. “This is a political and a public relations tactic. It’s got nothing to do with his defense.”

Trump’s attorneys have argued against the gag order, saying the former president should be allowed to respond to Daniels’ testimony. But Merchan on Thursday refused a request to modify it.

Gustavo Lage, a criminal defense attorney, said it is controversial as to what extent this gag order applies.

“I think the court would have a hard time saying that a third party can’t voice their opinion or their feelings about a trial,” Lage said.

As far as connecting with voters by bringing in surrogates and allies, Lage said that should not be relevant in court.

“I don’t think that is something the court could or should control as long as it doesn’t interfere with the administration of justice in the courtroom,” he said.

Republican Party of Florida chairman Evan Power said the 18-year-old high school senior will serve as one of 41 at-large delegates from Florida to the national gathering, where the GOP is set to officially nominate his father as its presidential candidate for the November general election. NBC News first reported the choice of Barron Trump as a delegate.

Barron Trump has been largely kept out of the public eye, but he turned 18 on March and is graduating from high school next week. The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York said there would be no court on May 17 so that Trump could attend his son’s graduation.

Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, are also part of the Florida delegation to the convention taking place in Milwaukee from July 15 to July 18.

“We are fortunate to have a great group of grassroots leaders, elected officials, and members of the Trump family working together as part of the Florida delegation to the 2024 Republican National Convention,” Power said in an emailed statement.

Trump’s remarks at events in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan were being closely watched after he received a $9,000 fine for making public statements about people connected to the criminal case. In imposing the fine for posts on Trump’s Truth Social account and campaign website, Judge Juan M. Merchan said that if Trump continued to violate his orders, he would “impose an incarceratory punishment.”

“There is no crime. I have a crooked judge. He’s a totally conflicted judge,” Trump said speaking to supporters at an event in Waukesha, Wisconsin, claiming again that this and other cases against him are led by the White House to undermine his campaign.

The former president is trying to achieve a balancing act unprecedented in American history by running for a second term as the presumptive Republican nominee while also fighting felony charges in New York. Trump frequently goes after Merchan, prosecutors and potential witnesses at his rallies and on social media, attack lines that play well with his supporters but that have potentially put him in further legal jeopardy.

Later at a rally in Freeland, Michigan, he said he was being forced to spend days in a “kangaroo court room,” and claimed without evidence the district attorney was taking orders from the Biden administration.

“I’ve got to do two of these things a day. You know why? Because I’m in New York all the time with the Biden trial,” he said. “It’s a fake trial. They do it to try and take your powers away, try and take your candidate away.”

Even before the hush money trial got underway on April 15, Trump has held just a handful of public campaign events since becoming his party’s presumptive nominee in March.

The gag order bars him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his hush money case. Trump is still free to criticize the judge and the district attorney.

Trump insists he is merely exercising his free speech rights, but the offending posts from his Truth Social account and campaign website were taken down. Merchan is weighing other alleged gag-order violations and will hear arguments on Thursday.

Attendees agreed he is being unfairly prosecuted, contending the trial and gag order were designed to distract him .

“It’s a trial looking for a crime,” said Ray Hanson, of Hartford. Hanson said he expected Trump’s lawyers would “keep him in line” so he doesn’t violate the gag order, as much as he likely wants to talk about the trial.

Manhattan prosecutors have argued Trump and his associates took part in an illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential campaign by purchasing and then burying negative stories. He has pleaded not guilty.

Trump’s visits to Wisconsin and Michigan mark his second trip to the swing states in just a month. For the previous rallies, the former president largely focused on immigration, referring to people who are in the U.S. illegally and who are suspected of crimes as “animals.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are hoping to remind voters ahead of these visits about Trump’s position on abortion, which Trump has been openly concerned about being a political liability for him and Republicans.

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan met on Wednesday with half a dozen women, including a family doctor, and warned that a second Trump term would threaten abortion rights even in her state, which enshrined those rights in its state constitution after the Supreme Court overturned national rights to the procedure.

Whitmer appeared with the women at a bookstore in Flint surrounded by signs that read “Stop Trump’s Attacks on Health Care” and “Stop Trump’s Abortion Ban.” She told reporters not to believe Trump’s contention in a Time Magazine interview that Republicans would never have enough votes in the U.S. Senate to pass a national abortion ban.

“We cannot trust anything that Donald Trump says when it comes to abortion. So no one should take any comfort in the fact that, yes, he wants an abortion ban, but he won’t get it because he doesn’t think we’ll have 60 votes in the Senate. Baloney,” she said.

Wisconsin and Michigan are among a handful of battleground states expected to decide the 2024 election.

For Trump to win both states, he must do well in suburban areas like the areas outside of Milwaukee and Saginaw, Michigan, where he visited Wednesday. He underperformed in suburban areas during this year’s primary even as he dominated the Republican field overall.

Trump has repeatedly falsely said that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Trump’s losses in battleground states in 2020 have withstood recounts, audits and reviews by the Justice Department and outside observers.

In an interview Wednesday with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Trump did not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election.

“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that,” Trump said. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

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Gomez Licon reported from Miami, and Bauer reported from Waukesha, Wis.