Play the Media Debate Game with Me: What Must Trump Do at the Debate?

RUSH: Let me go back to the question I asked at the end of the previous hour. We're told that this campaign is like every other presidential campaign, that people are making up their minds and changing their minds frequently. People were gonna support Trump and all of a sudden the Access Hollywood video came out and people that were supporting Trump decided to abandon Trump. But Trump can get 'em back, yeah, somehow Trump can get 'em back. He had 'em in droves last fall during the primary, and then something happened and they started dwindling away, they started bleeding away from Trump. Every debate Trump lost some in the middle of the debate, gained some back in the middle of the debate, remember how they analyzed these things.

So now we're down to, Trump has one last chance. He's got to do X, Y, or Z or all three during the debate tonight to somehow get back to where he was in May and June and early parts of July. I don't accept that premise, by the way. That's the conventional wisdom premise that the media's presenting each and every day, that that's how fickle voters are, that they change their minds maybe two or three times during a debate. They can be all for Trump and then he'll say something that embarrasses them about Mrs. Clinton and they vanish. The next time a pollster shows up, they admit they can't vote for Trump.

And then after the debate something else will happen and they're back to Trump. "Oh, my God, he's changed his mind," and they're all back on board again. It's really hard to believe that people change their minds this fluidly and often, but that's the message. So what does Trump have to do tonight? It's the last debate, it's the last chance he's got. So what's his objective and how should he do it, as we play the media's game.

RUSH: Okay, look. I don't want anybody to be confused here by things I'm saying. I've not changed my attitude or mind on anything. I'm just phrasing questions here based on how the media wants us to think. So there's nobody confused, let me tell you what I think is going on, and then you go ahead and answer my questions as I have asked.

Trump is hemorrhaging support, is the narrative of this week. It is because this is the last debate and this narrative sets up, is supposed to set up the theme or a couple of themes for the debate tonight. So I think all of this, or much of it, is what I would call psychological warfare and that the Democrat Party and its allies, the media and everybody, are waging psychological warfare on Trump and his supporters. It is carefully coordinated -- White House, media, all of the scheming, this incestuous liberal network that's being exposed in this WikiLeaks dump. It's incredible! It's all there for people if they would just accept it, it's all there. Everything that we are up against and have been for years is out there. It's being paraded right before our eyes.

Let's look at the things that have handed here. The release of Trump and that three-page tax report where he took a near billion-dollar loss. Then next came Alicia Machado, the Miss Universe. Then came the hot mic tape from Access Hollywood. And now there's a tsunami of supposed groped women out there. These having coordinated and released at specific times in this campaign designed to suppress Trump's support, to weaken Trump's own resolve. Each of these dropped at precisely planned campaign moments, many of them around or near debates in order to create lead-ins for the moderators.

For example, the hot mic tape. That happened to come out at the same time the first WikiLeaks dump happened and just enough prior to a debate to provide that as the opening subject. Now, this is the last debate. I don't think any of this has affected Trump's support. What it has done, or what it's designed to do is freeze the minds of the so-called undecided. The people who are undecided are supposed to now stop and take stock and they're supposed to think, "Oh, my God, this guy Trump, I can't, I just can't." That's the purpose.

RUSH: Let me go through this again. I don't want anybody confused. I'm not adopting the Drive-By way of thinking. I'm asking you why you might be, or why anybody else is, 'cause I think all of this is contrived. But, folks, I don't know, I mean, I'm not saying the polls are wrong. I'm not in any way going there. I'm not even touching on that. Because what's happening, the polls are just a part of it. We are all being played. But it's common; we are played every election year.

Every presidential election year we are played. The Democrat Party, made up of its various constituent groups, which this year includes the White House and every federal bureaucracy and the media, and even some weak conservative media, is all aligned for one outcome, and that is Donald Trump losing.

Some of them actually want Hillary to win, but most of this is energized by the objective or concept of Trump losing, and of course the Democrat Party winning. But it's specifically focused on Trump losing because of who he is and what he is. He's an outsider. He has no business doing this. He has no business getting close. He has no business winning. He needs, and every other outsider, needs to be taught a lesson. That if you try this yourself, this is what's gonna happen to you, this is what's gonna happen to your family, this is what's gonna happen to your career.

This is serious, serious stuff. We're not engaged here in junior high, middle school civics 101 where they teach you about civics and government. We are so far beyond that. This is about the powerful unifying and organizing and behaving according to script to protect what is theirs, which, in a human nature sense, is fine.

Many people have no concept that that's what's going on. Many people think that this is just another election and that there are people campaigning, and that we're up for votes, and there people are being campaigned for, people running ads and so forth. But the nature of the campaign, the timing of the release of news stories, people don't even think about it. It's just what's happening, even though it happens every four years.

That's why I have secretly been hoping that at some point there's a backlash because it's always predictable. The Republican nominee, and only the Republican nominee, is going to face surprise after surprise after surprise allegation, things that nobody had heard before, nobody knew before. And as the allegations are made and made public, there is mock outrage and anger and shock from the people releasing the information, the Democrat Party and Clinton campaign. It's all scripted, the timing of all of this is scripted.

Let's go through this again. Today, the day of the last presidential debate, the narrative throughout the media, no matter where you go is that Trump is hemorrhaging support. It's just what's happening. And because of the news that's been reported in previous days, it's supposed to all make sense. Trump should be hemorrhaging support. It makes sense, given what we have learned about Trump, quote, unquote, in the recent past.

That Access Hollywood tape. NBC's had that since 2005. Billy Bush has been loose mouthed for I don't know how many years working at NBC. All of a sudden now he's gotta go because they have to carry out with this shock and surprise. "Look what we found. Why, why, look at what Trump said on the lot at one of our shows 11 years ago, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh." Then they found Billy Bush, they tried to protect him at first. They couldn't.

NBC hires these people in the first place to do this kind of stuff! NBC, however, is acting shocked and outraged that this kind of horrendous personal behavior could have occurred in anything that they have anything to do with! And yet they hire people like this, potty mouths, foul mouths, you name it. They're all over the place. But when it comes to the presidential campaign, all of a sudden it's totally unacceptable.

So the meme, the narrative right now is Trump is hemorrhaging support. You're not supposed to ask the questions I've been asking, how can this be? People supported Trump during the Republican primaries. Why would they be hemorrhaging support? Trump does not represent a standard, ordinary, everyday politician. Trump's got support precisely because of things about him that have not changed. Trump is still an outsider, he's still campaigning the same way he did during the primaries. He's still objecting to the same things. He's still announcing the same things, gonna pay for wall, Mexico gonna pay for it, gonna stop the immigration.

Nothing has changed that resulted in Trump being supported in the first place. Trump has not given his supporters reason to abandon him because of substantive things, and yet we're told that he's hemorrhaging support. Just happens to be the narrative in the early days of the week where we are having the final presidential debate. It's all psyops, psychological operation, the script carefully coordinated amongst the Clinton campaign, the Obama White House, and the media. And the whole scheming, corrupt, incestuous mess is there for all of us to see in all of these WikiLeaks email dumps.

It's all there. The incestuous, corrupt collaboration of all of these groups and people on the Democrat side is there for anybody to see. So let's take a look at some recent events, suggest their timing. Trump's 1994 taxes. "Oh, my God, look what we just found. Came out of the blue, didn't it? Some friend of a friend just found the first three pages of Trump's tax return, and Good Lord, what does it show? Why, he took a nearly $950 million loss! Do you know what that means? That means Trump was probably able to escape paying taxes for 20 years!"

Same kind of concept that they rolled out against Mitt Romney. Harry Reid says a friend of his told him that Romney hadn't paid his taxes in ten years. So here comes that version on Trump. They roll that out, Trump's a tax cheat, Trump not paying his fair share, typical rich Republican. And then during the debate where this is being discussed and Trump's tax returns, Hillary drops Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe pageant when Trump used to own it. And something that's totally irrelevant to Trump's support, it literally doesn't matter to the people that support Trump, ends up being the dominate discussion. Trump doesn't help by thinking that he's got to nuke this woman. That's his personality, and they play on that.

Then after that we had the Access Hollywood, the hot mic tape where he talks about the behavior patterns he has with beautiful women. Billy Bush and he are yukking it up as a couple of men, and that just happened to drop right before another debate. So that subject becomes the lead item in the debate, this one moderated by Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz. And guess what? The whole first half of the debate, the first 20 minutes dealt with how Trump was going to defend himself and what Hillary thought of it, how outrageous it was.

Meanwhile, it obscures the very fact that Hillary's married to somebody who actually did things like this that Trump was just talking about, and that Hillary helped bully and abuse the women who were accusing her husband. That gets swept aside and swept over by Trump and this audiotape, and it becomes the subject matter for the debate. They've had this thing for 11 years.

And that, then, leads to a tsunami of women who have known Trump for all of these years who all of a sudden, out of the blue, because of a question Anderson Cooper asked, are coming forward and claiming, "Hey, he groped me, too. Hey, he felt me up, too. Hey, he tried to get under my skirt, too."

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton's out there, we have another allegation today, another woman from Arkansas with proof. Drive-Bys not interested. All of this leads into the "Trump is hemorrhaging support." The purpose of this is not to hemorrhage Trump support because this kind of stuff is not gonna cause Trump supporters to abandon him. What this is designed to do is freeze undecideds. The undecideds are in the process of making up their minds and all this stuff happens to descend on Trump, and they're supposed to say, "Oh, gosh, I can't support guy. Oh, my God, I was all ready to support Trump. Oh, my God, I certainly can't tell anybody I'm gonna support Trump, oh, my God."

Then, on top of that, what else do we get? We got first the Washington Post poll, four-point lead for Hillary, and then the next two days, Monmouth and ABC/Washington Post at 12- and 11-point Hillary lead. If you look at those polls, Democrats were heavily sampled in both of those polls. So, Trump hemorrhaging support, as evidenced by the polls taken after all of this stuff has been strategically dropped on Trump, designed to freeze undecideds and others, the thing to look out for, if I'm right about this, there aren't any more debates.

So the choreography calls for something new to drop after the debate. Hillary has decided to do the debate. Even David Axelrod said, "This is maybe a mistake, because she's got nothing to gain here." She's got more to lose than gain. What if she has a coughing spasm? What if she can't stay vertical for 90 minytes? What if something unforeseen happens? What if Trump just hits a grand slam home run and Hillary's a babbling blah, blah, blah, blah. You just never know.

But they're feeling their oats. They're feeling confident. They have choreographed this so well that they think they can end it tonight. They're gonna try to hammer the final nail in Trump's coffin tonight. And part of that will be, what are they gonna drop tomorrow? The choreography calls for something to drop the day after the last debate. They need to continue to bury any mention of the WikiLeaks and the DOJ-Hillary email scandal, Project Veritas. I mean, they're under assault, too, and the only thing that's protecting them is the media wing of the Democrat Party is ignoring all of that.

But there is devastating stuff that's out there. This WikiLeaks dump is devastating to the Democrat Party and to the Hillary Clinton campaign and to her personally. It's criminal, some of the stuff that's in the WikiLeaks dump. And then the ongoing document dump from the FBI, despite being heavily redacted, there's all kinds of clear evidence of deep corruption. And then James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas videos showing how the Democrat Party

from the White House on down engineered all of these protests at Trump rallies to trying to make it look like Trump supporters are unhinged. Those are all bought and paid for Democrat sponsored rallies. That has to continue to be covered up.

So after the debate tonight or tomorrow, something else has to drop about Trump. We'll see if it does. In the meantime, I maintain my question: What do you think Trump needs to do tonight? In the face of all of this, what does Trump have to do?

RUSH: This is Laurie in Monroe, Michigan. Great to have you. Thank you for waiting, too.

CALLER: Hi, Rush! It's such an honor to talk to you. You are such a big part of our family. But, listen, there are no undecided votes. Everybody knows who they're voting for and that's what they're afraid of. We are not abandoning Trump. We are more pumped up than ever. The latest garbage coming out of the Democrat playbook with James O'Keefe's investigation, the FBI also makes (unintelligible) Democrats, media, the blue-blood (unintelligible) establishment --

RUSH: Okay, we're having cell problems, Laurie. You're breaking up. I need to ask you about one thing you said. When you say there aren't any undecided voters, you mean among Trump voters nobody's undecided, right?

CALLER: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's not any undecided voters out there at all. We're not abandoning Trump. Everybody knows who they're voting for, and that's what they're afraid of. This latest garbage that's been coming out with that playbook of the Democrats, with the James O'Keefe, the investigation, the FBI, it's only making us stronger. And the corrupt Democrats, the media, the blue-blood Republicans --

RUSH: Yeah, but what about all the low-information boobs out there that don't even know about these videos and don't even know about WikiLeaks and don't even know about the corrupt emails?

CALLER: Hey, you know what? Those low-information people, they're not psyched about Hillary. Are you kidding? They're not even gonna get up that day to vote. They are just gonna go about their job, laying around. They're not going out. They're not gonna vote.

RUSH: Okay. So you're one of these people, you look at the polls, and you don't believe a thing in them.

CALLER: No, not at all. Trump's gonna win this. When I travel for my job all over the country, I see Trump signs all over this great country. The citizens who love America, they're happy to stand with Trump along with President Obama's brother, Malik.

RUSH: Yeah, I haven't mentioned that yet. By the way, this is not the brother who lives in the hut. There's been some confusion about this. Obama has a brother in Kenya who lives in a hut. He's lived in a hut the whole time Obama's been in the White House. It's a six-by-nine-foot hut. Dinesh D'Souza went over and found the guy and put him in one of his movies, and he's still in the hut. I think somebody might have given him a sign, you know, "Home, Sweet Hut." It's not that brother. This is Malik Obama. He's a half-brother, lives in Washington, who is being invited by Trump to the debate tonight and is attending.

RUSH: I have an audio sound bite here from Fred Barnes. I don't have time to get it in. Fred Barnes was on Brit Hume last night, the Fox News Channel, and Hume said Trump's only at 80% support among Republicans. He's been higher than that. What does that say to you?

Fred Barnes says he's gotta do better than that. Now, the rule is Republican has to win 90% of the Republican vote, as Romney did. Romney got 93%, still lost. Eighty percent, if that's all Trump's getting, Republican vote, he's doomed. So Trump needs to appeal to the 10% of Republicans who are against him. That's what Fred Barnes said that Trump needs to do. I just want to throw that out as the kind of suggestion Trump is getting. Do you agree, disagree, what do you think?

RUSH: Here is Barbara in Blacksburg, Virginia. I'm glad you called. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: All right. I'm calling today to let you know that there is a silent majority, and we are out there, we are numerous, and we are saying, "No, we are embarrassed by the Democrats." So therefore, because they are acting rude, prude, and socially unacceptable, we are not responding in the media. But we're here. And we can be counted. It's just that traditional methods of counting us are not there. And so we are going through this campaign not kicking and screaming, but waiting in the wings, waiting for our moment that we can say, "Hey, I'm gonna cast my ballot." And we're not talking about it. We're just gonna do it.

RUSH: You can say that every year. Every year the media and the Democrats are aligned against the Republican candidate, and you could say --

RUSH: -- there's silent the majority out here, we're waiting to break for Romney, we can't wait to break for Romney 'cause these people are mistreating us, it's a rigged game. What's different this year?

CALLER: Facebook. We connect on Facebook. We connect with each other. There are groups that are formal and informal, and we talk to each other and we say, "Hey, can't say a whole lot. We're gonna be beat down, somebody's gonna say something nasty." Yet if you did a tally you would find that Republicans say, respond, or initiate a lot less than Democrats on Facebook, on opinions, on polls, on quips about cartoons that they see about the left or the right. A lot of us, I'd say most of us, are just silent and biding our time.

RUSH: Well, okay. We'll find out. It isn't gonna be long. Again, this is four years ago, same question, get the same kind of an answer, silent majority out here just waiting to blow the doors down. And then found out that four million of them didn't even bother to show up and vote. So we'll see.

RUSH: Okay. Big debate tonight. I didn't get a chance to tell you what I think Trump ought to do. It's too late now. I've only got five seconds. It's not enough time. Just don't spend too much time on her. Just tell the American people you're up for the gig, you want the gig, and they need to vote for you or America as we've known it may not be around for a while.

Hillary is extremely vulnerable on policy. There is such an obvious contrast between the traditional Left/Right divide, with Hillary playing the cheerleader for a governmental command-control economy.

Hillary claims that Trump’s economics are “top down”, but when it comes to Top Down, you can’t get any higher than Government. Hillary’s entire economic strategy founded on top down, a belief that Government knows best, that government grows the economy, and her plan is to take money from Americans and “invest” it in ways she thinks will grow the economy. Of course this is nonsensical. But it is a philosophical difference that IMO should be explained. Do you believe that government is the best arbiter of “investment in the economy”, or is the economy best left to the people and their interaction through economic forces like supply and demand? Trump did very briefly allude to Solyndra in the first debate - where taxpayers “invested” in the kind of solar energy concepts Hillary speaks about today and $575 million was flushed down the drain. When you don’t have to account for the money or pay a cost of money, you are a lot more likely to invest it poorly, as Solyndra did, building out capacity and inventory far in excess of demand. And yet even after Solyndra, under Obama, 79% of all federal grant “investments” into private enterprise went to people with personal relationships with Obama!

Trump doesn’t do so great on the detail. On Haiti, he could have body slammed her. Clinton said she did a lot of good things in Haiti - yes, the Clintons (including Bill who asked to be appointed the official UN delegate to Haitian relief funds) appointed their friend and donor an exclusive telecom and micropayments franchise that he parlayed to 75% market share. They gave her supporter and donor Warren Buffet’s companies a non-competitive grant of $100’s of millions in government grants to build homes that were unsuitable for carbon life forms (filled with asbestos, no cooling mechanism etc). They invested in “small start ups” in the $10 million range which turned around and hired scores and scores of Clinton cronies and supporters but accomplished next to nothing on the ground. Most of all, she gave her brother a freaking Gold Mine!

When we look around the world and see the worst abuses of state corruption what do we find? We find leaders to take billions of dollars in private donations while in office, and leaders who give their friends and family members franchises to steal natural resources. This is 3rd world style corruption. You expect this from Suharto, from Ferdinand Marcos, from Mobutu Seko - but not from the United State Secretary of State and wannabe President! And as more evidence of corruption, a compliant media which openly admits its support for Clinton essentially whitewashes all of this. Yes it was reported, but very faintly. On a scale of relative scandals this kind of stuff is far worse than Senator Menendez, or Senator Toricelli, or Senator/Governor Corzine - each of which got far more play and outrage by the political establishment.

Trump touches on this stuff but only in the most general sense. He could really have devastated her on the debate stage. He still could use this in speeches and TV ads. Raise the stakes. “If you vote for Hillary, you are voting for corruption, insider dealing, and abuse of power.” IMO this is the kind of stuff this election is all about. We need to hold government accountable. Yes Hillary is unfit. She is outmaneuvered by world leaders not because she is incompetent, but because her priority is power and enrichment over the needs of the country.

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