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When Democrats Vote, Trump Is Never Far Away

First Iowa, then New Hampshire. Now the president is on a Western trip, and basing it in Las Vegas, days before the Nevada caucuses.

President Trump on Wednesday in Palm Springs, Calif. “Internal REAL polls show I am beating all of the Dem candidates,” he wrote on Twitter.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

LAS VEGAS — President Trump is not exactly a fan of life on the road.

He agreed to a four-day Western trip this week on the condition that he spend every night at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. And that location had another attraction: It placed him at the current center of the 2020 presidential race — Nevada, where Democrats will vote Saturday in caucuses that could reshape the campaign.

The trip was meant to showcase the president’s aggressive re-election push to drum up funds from high-dollar donors in California, a Democratic state where Mr. Trump is widely unpopular but enjoys some concentrated pockets of support. But the president believes that wherever he goes, he can force the news cycles — and political fortunes — to turn in his favor.

And the first opportunity to do that was Wednesday night, at the same time the Democrats debated in Las Vegas.

“Should I go to that debate?” Mr. Trump asked a group of volunteers gathered at his hotel before he left for a high-dollar fund-raiser in Palm Springs, Calif.

The president then set off on a hectic schedule that had him hopscotching around California and touching down in Phoenix for a “Keep America Great” rally before returning to Las Vegas for the night. And he will hold two other rallies before returning to Washington — on Thursday in Colorado Springs and on Friday in Las Vegas.

Both in private and in public, it was clear that Mr. Trump did not want to cede any political spotlight to Democrats on the debate stage.

“We’ve seen the polls except some of the fake ones,” Mr. Trump said in Phoenix. “If I was treated fairly, we’d be up 20 points higher in the polls. There wouldn’t even be a competitive election. Unfortunately, I think it’s probably going to be competitive.”

Journalists were not invited to the president’s campaign breakfast at his hotel, but a New York Times reporter was dining in the restaurant as a guest. There, Mr. Trump took aim at CNN and MSNBC for reporting on the polls, but saved his special contempt for Comcast, which owns NBC Universal. He called the media conglomerate “corrupt” and a “disgrace to this country.”

Mr. Trump was reacting to several recently released polls, including one by NBC and The Wall Street Journal, that show him trailing several possible Democratic opponents, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

“Internal REAL polls show I am beating all of the Dem candidates,” Mr. Trump tweeted shortly before leaving for Rancho Mirage, Calif., near Palm Springs, for a private fund-raiser. “The Fake News Polls (here we go again, just like 2016) show losing or tied.”

One Democrat in particular has held the president’s attention: Michael R. Bloomberg. For weeks, Mr. Trump has been preoccupied with Mr. Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor and late entry to the Democratic presidential race.

“Is corrupt Bloomberg News going to say what a pathetic debater Mini Mike is,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning, using a nickname to insult Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire who has recently enjoyed a surge of popularity but who was untested on the debate stage.

At his rally, the president again assailed polling in the news media and expressed criticism that Mr. Bloomberg had bought his way into the Democratic race, appearing to fixate on the amount of money the former mayor had spent on his campaign.

“My father would teach me: If you could spend less and win, that’s better than spending a lot and winning,” he told the crowd.

Mr. Trump’s setting up base in Nevada this week was not the first time he suddenly appeared in the middle of the Democratic Party’s nominating process. Last month, he held a rally in Des Moines, four days before the Iowa caucuses.

Eleven days later, the president traveled to Manchester, N.H., the evening before the state held its primary election on Feb. 11, though in that case he was on the Republican ballot.

“If you want clear proof of how terrified Donald Trump is, just look at his travel schedule,” Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on Wednesday. “He keeps following Democrats from state to state because he knows our message is resonating. Nevada is no exception. Nevadans have rejected this president and his policies, and they’re ready to elect a Democrat to the White House.”

In Nevada, it seemed that voters were attuned to Mr. Trump’s attempts to wrest attention back to his own campaign.

“It’s really disruptive, and in a way it goes hand in hand with his presidency,” Hillary Steinberg, 56, said at a restaurant in the Las Vegas Arts District. “His entire presidency has been a disruption, so it makes sense that he would do a rally so close to the primary.”

Rick Van Diepen, an owner of a sustainable architecture consultancy in Las Vegas, said that it was a “pretty typical distraction,” but an effective one.

“It’s a good tactic to keep his base energized, especially in a state that doesn’t have a Republican primary,” said Mr. Van Diepen, 49. “It’s reminding them that he’s here, too.”

But at his rally, Mr. Trump tried to pre-emptively cast doubt on the Nevada electoral process, using the caucus chaos in Iowa as an example. (Technical glitches, among other problems, caused a major delay in reporting the results from the state’s first-in-the-national presidential contest.)

“In Nevada I’m hearing bad things about the vote count — they don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” the president said before quickly adding he hoped that was not the case.

Aside from the attention-grabbing spectacle of long lines, ample media coverage and cars festooned with Trump-Pence signs driving by candidates’ events, Mr. Trump’s travels through four states on his Western swing have created a logistical nightmare for some Democratic candidates.

At least one campaign complained that Mr. Trump’s trip to Las Vegas hampered its Thursday plans, with the flight restrictions that accompany an Air Force One arrival and departure complicating its attempts for travel to more than one other state from now until Saturday.

But Justin Buoen, Senator Amy Klobuchar’s campaign manager, saw only an upside to the president’s presence.

“I haven’t gotten any sense that people care about him being here except for that it fires our base up,” he said. “I don’t think it’s hurt coverage of the candidates on cable news networks or even local TV. It hasn’t been any kind of distraction.”

Though she rarely even makes mention of the president’s current travels, Ms. Klobuchar, of Minnesota, does have a favorite laugh line in her stump speech regarding Mr. Trump’s last-minute rallies before the Louisiana and Kentucky governors’ elections last year.

“The night before the election in both those states, who went down there to campaign for those Democratic governors as opponents? Donald Trump,” Ms. Klobuchar has said. “So my first question is, where can we send him next? Because that went pretty well.”

The Democratic candidates won in both cases.

Reporting was contributed by Jim Rutenberg, Reid J. Epstein, Maggie Haberman, Nick Corasaniti and Isabella Grullón Paz.

Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent in the Washington bureau, covering the cultural impact of the Trump administration on the nation's capital and beyond. More about Katie Rogers

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: When Democrats Vote, the President Is Never Far Away, This Time Out West. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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