RUSH: Big, big debate tonight. And I have some thoughts, as we all do, on what Trump’s strategery ought to be. I think, just to start covering some bases here, I think if the president can just look calm, like he’s looked in these rallies this week. He has looked calm and confident and in command, in charge, but really confident in these rallies that he’s had. It’s understandable. He’s got crowds of supportive and friendly people. But you’d still be amazed at the number of attendees at Trump rallies who are not Republican. It would blow your mind. But if he can just look calm.

And even in the assessment of observers, just get a tie. I think he could win this thing and win it big. Even if he just gets a tie, I think the momentum that is with him will continue. And I am starting to see — and I don’t want to get too far out in front of my skis on this — but I am starting to see some nervousness in the Drive-By Media about Biden. And it has to do with Hunter’s laptop, and it has to do with some of the rats now beginning to scurry and leave the ship.

The media is, at the end of the day, a bunch of cowards, and they’re narcissistic. And if some opportunist reporters start to see that Trump is surging — and he is. In the Rasmussen poll today, 52% job approval. If they see Trump surging, a few them — there’s already one of note that I will share with you here in a moment. A few them might break ranks and start reporting on this Hunter Biden stuff just to avoid embarrassment at missing the story, the problem, the thing that might have turned the tables against old Joe.

Let’s put it this way. If some of these reporters think, if they begin to fear that Biden is gonna lose this, then there will be a few of them — I don’t know who, and I don’t know how many – that may try to get out in front of that. You know, look back at 2019. They thought Biden was a sure loser. You go back to 2019, the Democrat primaries, they thought Biden was a sure loser back then, folks. They thought it was gonna be Fauxcahontas. They thought it was gonna be Crazy Bernie.

They did not think it was gonna be Biden. They thought he was a sure loser. And they were admitting everything about Biden back in 2019 that they are refusing to even mention or cover now. Because the idea has been to protect Biden all along and throughout all of this. Now, there are two key polls that show Biden tumbling and Trump rising, 49 to 46%.

I have a Washington Examiner story here. “Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who led President Trump by 12 points just two weeks ago, has seen his lead tumble to just 3 points in the much-watched Rasmussen Reports survey. In its weekly ‘White House Watch,’ Biden leads Trump, 49%-46%.” He was up 12 points in this poll not long ago. “It was the first time in a month of Rasmussen head-to-head polls that Biden fell below 50%.”

This poll echoes the one we talked about yesterday, the IBD/TIPP survey that had the race even tighter, 48.1% for Biden, 45.6% for Trump. Now, helping Trump over the past week, the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Amy Coney Barrett, it went great. He’s got back-to-back campaign rallies that he just owns. He’s just in the zone at these rallies. And there have been two truly bombshell reports on the Hunter Biden front.

And I think what they mean is Trump needs to ignore Hunter — it may be tough — in this debate tonight. Because Hunter Biden isn’t on the ballot, and it won’t be hard for Joe Biden to evoke sympathy for his son. Everybody has kids. Well, the vast majority of people have kids. And their kids, they’ll do anything for ’em. And if Biden is given a chance on playing the sympathy card and evoke sympathy for Hunter, then he’ll do that. But the real focus here for Trump ought to be Joe Biden.

Now, the truly bombshell reports on the Hunter Biden front are these. In the first, a guy named Tony Bobulinski, former partner of Hunter Biden, confirmed in a 689-word statement that he was one of the recipients of the now famous May 13th, 2017, email which laid out the cash and equity cuts from one China deal and included a 10% set-aside for the Big Guy.

And he admits that the Big Guy was Joe Biden. So now everything Biden has said about never talking to his son Hunter about any of these deals has now officially been exposed as a lie. And that’s where Trump needs to zero in. If he’s gonna bring this up at all, he needs to focus on Joe Biden. Joe Biden’s the Big Guy. Joe Biden is the guy that arranged all these deals. Joe Biden is the guy who had the power.

He is the ex-vice president — or, at the time, the vice president. He has the ability to get his son on Air Force Two, fly to China, and set his son up in some kind of China business deal or energy deal that is gonna result in Joe Biden profiting handsomely as the Big Guy. It is Joe Biden who had the power to make these deals happen, not Hunter.

You know, it wasn’t Hunter who said, “Hey, Dad, I got something big happening in China. Hey, can you go in there and help make it happen?” That’s not how it happened. Joe grabbed Hunter. “We got some things we’re gonna do in China. We’re gonna set you up over there,” blah, blah, blah, blah, and this is where, “You’re gonna send half of what you get to me, the Big Guy,” or whatever the percentage was.

Tony “Bobulinski states that the ’email is genuine’ and that” Joe Biden is the Big Guy in question. Bobulinski says that Hunter Biden referred to his father as “‘My Chairman’ … and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing.”

In the second big bombshell, Fox News has reported that “the FBI subpoenaed Hunter Biden’s laptop in December because they were investigating Hunter Biden for money laundering. A government official told Fox News, ‘If a criminal case was opened and subpoenas were issued, that means there’s a high likelihood that both the laptop and the hard drive contain fruits of criminal activity.'”

Which raises the question: Why did they sit on this? Why didn’t the FBI mention any of this during President Trump’s impeachment nonsense? Which, lest we forget, was about Trump’s phone call to Ukraine where he merely asked about Ukraine’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s Burisma deal. Well, I’ve explained to you why the FBI hung onto this. I gave you my theory.

My theory is they’re not about cleaning up poison in the U.S. government. They’re about controlling it. They’re not about cleaning up a bunch of corruption in the U.S. government. They are about profiting from it, in this case profiting from it by being able to exert control over the people guilty of corruption. You know, that’s quite a hammer to hold over somebody’s head.

So if they’re looking at Biden potentially winning, they’ll hold on to what’s on that laptop and use it after he’s elected to get what they want for the United States government to wield whatever power they want, ’cause these guys — the FBI, the intelligence community — they’re not running for office.

They’re never gonna be elected. They’re never gonna have that kind of power officially transferred to them by way of an election. But if they have a laptop computer that’s got all kinds of incriminating criminal evidence on it about the guy who may be the next president, why, they’ve got a gold mine.

So that could be one reason why they sat on it. That’s just my guess, I mean, based on what we’ve learned about the four years of Trump-Russia collusion BS that was nothing. That was an attempt to literally run Trump out of town, run him out of office using the power of made-up, totally made-up allegations that they tried to pass off as real.

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RUSH: So here is a tweet from Kayleigh McEnany from just this morning. “In the past 5 days, President @realDonaldTrump has traveled to 5 states, nearly 6,000 miles! He has carried his message directly to the American People while @JoeBiden sat in his basement, traveling to 0 states, 0 miles! The American People deserve better!!”

I want to try to put this in perspective for you. Just how strange is this? When looked at this way, we can clearly see the Biden strategy. The Biden strategy is to be nobody. The Biden strategy is to provide nobody an opportunity to run against anything because he’s not saying anything. He’s a ghost! He’s not even there. He hasn’t been seen since Monday. Maybe Sunday.

He’s literally holed up in his basement, and Trump is out there, as Kayleigh says, five states, 6,000 miles, however many thousands of people that Trump has directly addressed. He’s running against what? He’s running against a ghost! He’s running against a generic candidate with a D next to his name on the ballot. In a sense, there’s no “there” there.

The question is: How do you compete and how do you contrast yourself when there is no tangle tangible competition? What this does… See, I think this is rope-a-dope, and Trump’s gotta look out for this. He’s gotta be very careful. With Biden saying nothing — thereby giving Trump nothing to bounce off of, nothing to react to, nothing to counter — Trump has to make it up.

Not “make it up.” Trump has to provide the Biden side of the argument in order to present his side. You can’t run against nothing. Well, you can. Trump’s doing a good job of it actually. But I think it’s a rope-a-dope. I think one of the things they’re trying to do is to force Trump into voicing various things that he thinks of Biden, the kind of guy Biden is, the kind of guy Biden’s son is and all this sort of thing.

Because Biden isn’t providing it. Biden’s not even out. As we zero in on Election Day, Biden’s not even presenting the agenda. And nobody in the Biden campaign is, either. Kamala Harris isn’t out there on the agenda, and that’s not what Obama was doing.

Obama is strictly about trying to shore up the African-American vote. They are not presenting their agenda. They are not campaigning to get votes for them, as I have pointed out so adroitly and adeptly this whole week. They’re doing nothing to get people to vote for them. They are strictly trying to win this election by getting people to vote against Trump’s personality.

As such, they are standing silent, sitting silent, saying nothing, trying to sucker Trump into saying things about Biden that could be portrayed as mean or as insensitive or as bad mannered. It’s exactly what they’re doing here. I don’t know this was Kayleigh McEnany’s point in this. But this is how I read what’s going on. This is… It’s a circumstance where the president’s gonna have to be real careful, and I think he’s been pretty disciplined.

His mentions of Biden at the rallies have not been over the top, which is clearly what Biden has hoped for. Biden has hoped to frustrate Trump so much by giving him nothing to react to that he’s gotta go out and make things up that Biden has or hasn’t said or what have you. You get the drill, ’cause it’s really hard to contrast yourself with somebody who doesn’t exist.

Doesn’t seem to exist. There’s no “there” there. Tonight is gonna be the first chance Trump will have actually had, and I think what we’re gonna get are a from Biden tonight is more of the same that we’ve had this week: As much of nothing as he can provide and instead an attempt to goad Trump into saying mean things about his son.

To goad Trump into making allegations that sound so wacko that Biden says, “Come on, man. You gonna continue this clown act from the last time we got…? Come on, man.” Biden doesn’t want to have to say anything substantive tonight. He doesn’t want to have to go anywhere. But there are people on Biden’s side getting nervous about this.

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RUSH: So, folks, there’s something I gotta tell you. The way the Democrats are setting this up, it’s uncanny. I mentioned it a number of times. Replay, repeat 2016 from a candidate with obvious, shall we say, “limitations,” to a candidate that cannot and does not draw a crowd or flies. Now, in Hillary’s case, she had more of an agenda identification than Biden does.

But it’s clear what the Democrats are attempting to set up. They really do believe that all they have to do is basically stay quiet and let the country express its hatred for Donald Trump, because that’s what they think Twitter represents. They think Twitter represents America. They think Trump is despised and hated; so they just need to sit back and let that happen.

They’ve tried this. They tried this in 2016. Look where it got them. If this gets even slightly bigger, folks, it’s gonna blow up Biden, and we’re gonna see some things that you and I have not seen in our lifetimes. If his campaign either explodes or implodes, if Trump ends up winning this… I’m coming to you from their mind-set. Their mind-set is it’s over.

Their mind-set is they’ve won it. They’re just running out the clock. They’re in the four corners defense. They’re doing whatever they can not to rock the boat, and going so far as to keep the candidate invisible for four or five straight days so as to avoid any kind of a gaffe, any kind of a mistake. So Trump owns the playing field here.

And if, after this strategery, if Trump wins — after all of these premature victory laps and another letdown exactly like what happened to them in 2016 — they are gonna go berserk. They’re gonna take to the streets and worse, and that’s what I mean when I say we’re gonna see things that you and I haven’t seen in our lifetimes. So I’m telling you, these people believe it’s over.

That’s what Biden’s behavior means. Biden being hidden, Biden being invisible, Biden saying nothing. And after the debate, Biden isn’t gonna do much more than what he’s been doing this week. You wait and see. They think it’s over.

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RUSH: Patrick in Cleveland. We’ll start with you. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Rush, I’m concerned that the president will go off the rails, lose his composure, and put people off like he kind of did last time. I’m a big Trump supporter, believe me. I’m just nervous about it.

RUSH: Why?

CALLER: You know, he may say something to… Like, the people in — in the suburbs… Um, I live in a suburb of Cleveland. A lot of Biden signs, but there’s not a lot of Trump signs. I think the people don’t put ’em out. They’re just nervous.

RUSH: Right. There’s afraid that somebody’s gonna do vandalism to their property. But why do you think Trump’s gonna go off the…?

CALLER: I — I don’t want him to say something stupid, to be honest with you.

RUSH: No, I’m asking, why do you think he will? You said you’re afraid that he’s —

CALLER: I don’t know if he will. I’m afraid that… He’s done it in the past!

RUSH: Okay. So he’s done it once; he could do it again.

CALLER: I want him to be laser focused. You know, I don’t know who’s advising him on these things. It seems like they haven’t done a good… They didn’t do a good job last time. That’s all I have to say.

RUSH: Okay. So you are convinced that he’s gonna go off the rails tonight. You’re very worried about it.

CALLER: I didn’t say “convinced.” I said I hope he doesn’t. I… You know, it’s a fear I have.

RUSH: And your fear is rooted in the fact that he did it last time. So he’s done it once, he could do it again?

CALLER: Of course he could do it again. I don’t want him to, believe me!

RUSH: Well, I think in the last debate, Trump was already beginning to suffer from the ravages of the effects of COVID-19. I don’t think he was himself. I don’t think anybody advised him to behave the way he was. He was almost a caricature of playing the tough guy, not taking any grief, being the street fighter for his base to keep the base solid, to keep the base together.

But I just… Like I said to open the program today — pretty much what you said, I just put a different way — I think if Trump can just look calm. Just look calm, look as in control of events as he has at all of his rallies this week. Smile, not take any Hunter Biden bait, and most importantly, don’t waste a whole lot of time on Hunter.

Now, we all sit here and presumably believe that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing because of the last debate, like you. You’re fearful he’s gonna replicate that behavior. You’re afraid it’s gonna happen ’cause you saw it happen once, and a lot of people have the same kind of fear. Then there are stories that Trump is going to go in topic areas that the moderator has not announced.

That he’s gonna make sure he says some things he wants to say even though the crooked, rigged, biased moderator is going to try to stop him from doing so. That feeds into the fear that people have that Trump has this need to impress people that he’s his own man. He’s his own boss.

He’s not gonna let these moderators tell him what he can and can’t say, areas where he can and can’t go. I just think if he’s just calm, cool, collected, doesn’t take any bait on Hunter Biden, ’cause Hunter really is not the focus, especially with what we know now. We now know that Joe Biden is the Big Guy. Joe Biden is the guy that set all these things up. Patrick, thanks for the call.

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RUSH: Cal Thomas has a column out there in Jewish World Review: “Debate Topics And American Priorities.” And he contrasts the topics chosen for the debate tonight by the whoever the moderator is with what polling data says really matters to the American people. You can imagine there isn’t much overlap here, particularly when it comes to climate change. Hardly anybody cares about it, yet this is gonna be the third in a row of these type of events where climate change will be front and center.

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RUSH: This is Rob in Atlantic City. It’s great to have you, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How are you doing? Good afternoon to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I’m calling about, like, the tonight’s debate. I think President Trump should press Biden on this whole thing. You know, I don’t necessarily want him to go on Hunter. But this is an opportunity for a lot of people to see what’s happening. He could be compromised and, like you said, it’s not really getting out to a lot of people. So, you know, I think it’s something he should press him on.

RUSH: You think Trump should press Joe Biden on Hunter or on the arrangement itself?

CALLER: Well, not the arrangement itself ’cause I think, you know, possibly he could be compromised if he’s beholden to the Chinese. Bringing Hunter… He’s gonna have to kind of bring him in somehow. But like you said, a lot of people who have children, but this is an opportunity for a lot of people to see this, ’cause all of people be watching tonight.

RUSH: Okay. So I’m still a little confused. You don’t want him to bring in Hunter or you do?

CALLER: Well, I was —

RUSH: No wait. No, wait. Don’t hesitate. It’s my hearing. I didn’t hear what you said. I’m just asking you to repeat what you said so I can understand it.

CALLER: I got you. No, I think he needs to bring in the whole China issue of him being compromised. You know, I don’t know if he should be attacking Hunter, so to speak, but obviously he’s gonna have to bring it in somehow, so —

RUSH: Because you don’t think enough people know about it, and Trump unfortunately is the guy that’s gonna have to provide the education to people about it?

CALLER: Pretty much, ’cause I think mainstream media’s not covering. At least right now there’s a lot of things happening. And I think right now is an opportunity, you know, to kind of go after him and ask him a question, politely, “Are you gonna be compromised because of the situation?”

RUSH: What are you most afraid of happening in this debate tonight?

CALLER: Uhhh… (sigh) Well, you know, like I say, Trump, like I heard a couple of people saying, “going off the rails.” I’d like to see him maintain his composure and just cover the topics and then, you know, expose Joe for what he is. I mean, I think Biden’s gonna be able to handle himself if he’s not interrupted. But, you know, I want to see Donald — President Trump win tonight. I want to see him come off presidential.

RUSH: A-ha. So in order for him to win tonight he has to come off as presidential?

CALLER: I think so yes. You know, people expect who he is. We know who he is. He sometimes doesn’t finish his thought. But, again, come off not attacking him, come off presidential, but we’ll see.

RUSH: You know, that’s another thing: It’s not that he doesn’t finish his thought. It’s that he assumes everybody knows what he knows, and in his mind it’s not that he’s not finished. He’s just bringing it up, just reminding people — and in many examples, people don’t know everything knows.

I’ll give you a couple of examples of this in the next segment. It is a truism; leftists love to say, “Nobody’s above the law,” right? Nobody’s above the law. Well, this is how Trump can deal with Hunter if Biden tries to play the sympathy card. (impression) “You leave my son out of this. My son’s had some problems. My son (grumbling) lost his brother! My son has terrible, terrible…

“You leave my son out of this, you ogre. (sputtering) You’re a mean guy. I knew you were mean! I had no idea you’d go there.” If he tries that, what Trump has to say is, “I understand that, Mr. Vice President, but your son is not above the law. I don’t care what challenges he’s faced. None of us are above the law.”

To which Biden will say, “Well, you certainly aren’t above the law either. You ought to be in jail! If I had anything to say about it, you’d be in jail.” Let Biden go off the rails if he wants to. But there could be magic — there could be magic — in Trump saying to Joe Biden, “Your son is not above the law, sir.”

It’ll play to the exact sort of privileged BS that outraged people so much about these rich Hollywood liberals paying to get their kids into college. Remember how people thought, “That’s not fair. That’s not right!” Remember how mad people genuinely were about that? “Your son’s not above the law.” At any rate, I think that’s how he could bring Hunter into it and not make it personal about Hunter, but rather about Joe trying to protect him.

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RUSH: Here is Kemp in Charleston, North Carolina. Great to have you. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How you doing, buddy?

RUSH: Fine, sir.

CALLER: Quick to the point. Joe Biden is the luckiest man in America, and we — the conservative constituency and the conservative media — have contributed to that. He’ll never see a courtroom, because if anybody ever tries to convict him of conspiring with the Chinese, the very doctors who say that he’s of sound mind and body are gonna turn right around and say, “I’m sorry, he is not. He is in advanced stages of dementia,” and all of this has been —

RUSH: Wait a minute. Where have you heard that somebody wants to make a move on putting Biden behind bars?

CALLER: Oh, with the whole conspiracy — not conspiracy. What’s going on with he and Hunter and the ChiComs. I mean, we all know what he did.

RUSH: Did you say “we all know what he did”? Well, but that’s a far cry from going to court and trying to put somebody in jail for it.

CALLER: Well, but the point is that Biden is gonna be able to say, “I don’t remember. I don’t recall. You know, I — I — I’m suffering from dementia.” (crosstalk)

RUSH: I understand it, but I don’t know of a political objective out there that has as part of it putting Joe Biden in jail. I actually don’t understand your point. If it is to say Biden’s never gonna get in trouble, well, neither is Hillary, and neither is James Comey, and neither is Peter Strzok Smirk.

Now, they all ought to be getting in trouble. But I don’t know anybody out there… I’m not aware of an objective anybody has of a criminal prosecution of Biden. He’s gonna get away with it ’cause he can always say he’s got dementia and so forth?

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RUSH: Here’s Eileen in St. John’s, Michigan. You’re next. I’m glad that you waited. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. Mega dittos, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: My point is that since Joe Biden has not been seen in five days and everybody else is doing his campaigning for him, what speaks to me is that he will not be able to negotiate with world leaders because they’re not gonna give him five days for every thought that he has to prep for it.

RUSH: Well, he’s not gonna be president five days after he’s elected or inaugurated. So —

CALLER: Well, I agree with that because I think Kamala’s husband, or Kamala, whatever. But, anyway, he came out of voting and said he’s married to the next president of the United States, which I felt was pretty interesting.

RUSH: Right. Well, look. I think this is a campaign strategy. I understand that you think Biden, he can’t he can’t go to sleep for five days and not negotiate with world leaders. That’s not what this is. Biden is not doing this ’cause he’s incapable of doing it. This is a strategy. I elucidated, I explained the stragegy in the first hour of the program today. This is a rope-a-dope.

As I explained so adeptly and adroitly, if you’re Trump, how do you run against somebody who’s in bed? How do you run against somebody who’s asleep? How do you run against somebody who’s giving you nothing to bounce off of or react to? You can’t. He’s running against somebody who is in bed, in the basement five days in a row. This is an attempt to get Trump to start talking about Biden in ways that will allow him to bounce off of Biden.

So if your opponent is not saying anything, then you’re gonna have to put words in your opponent’s mouth and then react to those. That’s what they’re trying to get Trump to do. They are trying to get Trump to start saying really caustic, mean-spirited, extremist things about poor old Joe. That’s why Kamala Harris isn’t saying anything. She’s certainly not asleep out there. Guaran-damn-tee you of that.

This is a campaign strategy, and it’s designed to frustrate Trump so that he will start behaving in ways that are not complimentary, flattering to himself. And so far he’s not taken the bait. He has not taken the bait. He’s been really good about it. Their strategy has bombed out on them. It’s not that he doesn’t have the ability to show up for an hour or two someplace every day. It’s not that. It’s not that he doesn’t have the mental ability to show up and talk to somebody for a half hour yesterday. It’s not about that.