RUSH: We start on the phones in Atlanta. This is Jerry. Thank you for calling, sir, and it’s great to have you. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, my pleasure, Rush. It’s always great to hear your voice. Hey, I had a question for you, or a suggestion, that if you had the opportunity before tomorrow night’s debate, I want to see if you can reach out to the president and just remind him what you always say to red state residents when they always call and complain about blue states residents moving in. And that is you always tell them you just need to compete with ideas.

And if you could do that, I think it would be game, set, and match. And you can almost tell the president you’re treating him like a professional golfer in the since that professional golfers, they don’t have coaches. They need friendly reminders. And if you could remind the president on that, I think it would be game, set, and match.

RUSH: Well, instead of doing — you want him to compete with ideas instead of what? What is he doing that you don’t like?

CALLER: Just lay out the differences. Here is where I stand. Here’s where my opponent stands. And if you can just lay it out simple, easy —

RUSH: Well, you know, I think Trump — I’ve been watching his rallies. And one thing I’ve noticed in the rallies is he has developed a four- to five-minute riff on exactly this. He has — I don’t know if it’s part of debate prep. I don’t know if it’s part of rally prep. He’s not gonna get four uninterrupted minutes, but he has been, in these rallies, I think doing a great job of explaining his achievements, the accomplishments of his administration to date. And he’s doing it within a time frame of four to five minutes so he could reduce that, I think.

He’s gonna at least get two minutes. And then Plugs is gonna get two minutes at the beginning, you know, answering every question. That’s when he needs to be quiet. Let Biden take all of his two minutes and don’t interrupt him. ‘Cause I’m telling you after about a minute or 90 seconds, that’s when it’s gonna get dicey. But let me share with you another perspective that I’ve had on this.

I think every one of us needs to take a moment and remember something. We need to actually remind ourselves what we are seeing happen every day. We see it, we take it for granted. But you need — we all do — to take a moment to appreciate what’s going on. Because in one sense it is very sad and strange to watch Donald Trump, who’s worn out, folks. Donald Trump is still coming off COVID-19. He got over COVID-19 in a record amount of time. But he still has to be worn out from it.

And not just COVID-19. He’s doing three to four rallies a day. He does not have time for downtime. He doesn’t really have time for debate prep. He’s focusing on these rallies, and he’s trying to make them as sharp as he can. He’s not doing 90-minute rallies anymore. He’s tightening them up. He’s getting in there, he’s getting it, and he’s getting out. And in the midst of all this he’s fighting the media, he’s fighting the swamp, he’s fending off the deep state and their efforts to destroy him, while what’s going on at the same time?

Joe Biden sleeps. Joe Biden rests. Joe Biden ostensibly preps. And the media puts a wall around him while attacking Trump. If you want to talk about a stacked deck, you could very well make the case here. I think that you all need to have a renewed appreciation for Donald Trump. And I’m not practicing sycophancy here. I don’t need to kiss up to President Trump. I’m saying this from the tip, the bottom of my heart.

I think there needs to be a renewed round of appreciation for what this man is attempting to do for everybody else, what he’s attempting to do for you, what he’s attempting to do for me, by saving this country. And he’s doing it, in large part, alone. Yeah, he’s got a staff. But he doesn’t have a whole lot of party assistance out there. We’re watching a worn-out — he has to be. Even these indefatigable, even though he has more energy than any president I’ve ever seen, there are still limits.

He’s not doing this for himself. Not strictly. I’m sure he wants the achievement. I’m sure he wants the achievement of being reelected. I’m sure he wants to serve his second term. But he’s doing things that none of us could do. He’s doing things that very few of us would even try. Three to four rallies a day while worn out, folks. No time for downtime. No time for debate prep. He’s fending off the media, like Lesley Stahl at 60 Minutes. By the way, that’s who it was that called me the other day.

Lesley Stahl called and her question was — and she didn’t want to talk to me on camera — “Will you tell your audience to be nice if the election’s undecided on election night? Will you tell your audience to be calm?” That’s what she was gonna ask me. The presumption being that you people are an out of control bunch of zombies, just gonna run around and raise hell. You’re not out of control. You’re not zombies. You’re the glue that keeps this country held together. They are the zombies. They’re the people running around setting their own cities and towns and businesses on fire.

I resent the implication that you people represent the problem in this country. You’re the solution. You get up and go to work every day, do everything you can to play by the rules. You got Donald Trump out there attempting to stand up for you and make sure that the effort you’re making is not wasted, that you have a country where your activity and your desires are going to be rewarded.

And, meanwhile, Joe Biden gets to sleep. Joe Biden gets to rest. He gets to prepare for the debate, whatever that is. The media puts up a protective wall and a moat around the guy while attacking Trump 24/7. So I think Trump can do what you want. I think Trump is got a technique here for espousing his achievements, his issues in a concise and limited amount of time.

Folks, we’ve had three years of allegations of corruption against Trump, and they have turned up nothing. Three years of absolute nothing. The most investigated, the biggest anal exam of a human being I’ve ever seen in American politics, the most offensive invasions of privacy we’ve ever seen, and they have turned up nothing. Donald Trump, of all the people in that town, is clean as a whistle. And he has every right to make this comparison between himself and Joe Biden. He just has to be careful how he does it. Gotta lower Biden’s approval and raise Trump’s at the same time.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, I was talking about the obstacles that Donald Trump faces mere moments ago, and I was discussing how I think that you and I and everybody else needs to try to have a renewed sense of appreciation for what Donald Trump is attempting to do and what he’s up against as he tries to do it.

He’s up against more forces arrayed against him than most politicians will ever see in a lifetime. He’s got the entire deep state of the United States government for four years and counting arrayed against him, trying to destroy him. He’s got the media-industrial complex in toto arrayed against him, and the only way they can operate the way they do is to lie constantly, literally to make things up — and you know how difficult it is.

If somebody is lying about you at work, lying about you in school, you know how difficult it is to refute that accusation. You can do it, but people that think you’re complaining about it wonder. (snidely) “Well, there must be something here or you wouldn’t be whining about it, would you? There must be something to it or it wouldn’t be bothering you.”

I hate that! I despise that when people tell me. But my point is, you know how challenging this is. All the while, the man is worn out. He’s doing three to four rallies a day. He doesn’t have time for downtime. He doesn’t have time to go to sleep like Biden does all day long and then go do whatever he does for debate prep — and then, ladies and gentlemen, there is something else.

A Democrat super PAC… Future Forward is the name of it, and one of the cofounders of Facebook, a guy by the name of Dustin Moskovitz, are now spending $100 million against Trump. This according to Vox. Because, you see, blocking him out of their platforms? No, no, that’s not sufficient. It’s not sufficient that they’re blocking all of Trump’s supporters out of their platforms.

It’s not sufficient that they make sure Trump supporters can’t talk about Hunter Biden and his laptop. No! Locking him out, locking his supporters out of their platform is not nearly enough. Now they’re running a $100 million war chest campaign against him. “Silicon Valley Megadonors Unleash a Last Minute, $100 Million Barrage of Ads Against Trump —

“Facebook billionaire co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has put more than $20 million into a little-known Democratic super PAC that is spending big. A little-known Democratic super PAC backed by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest donors is quietly unleashing a torrent of television spending in the final weeks of the presidential campaign in a last-minute attempt to oust President Donald Trump…

“The barrage of late money — which includes at least $22 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz — figures among one of the most expensive and aggressive plays yet by tech billionaires, who have spent years studying how to maximize the return they get from each additional dollar they spend on politics.

“Moskovitz is placing his single biggest public bet yet on the evidence that TV ads that come just before Election Day are the best way to” get your big bang for the buck. “The super PAC, called Future Forward, has remained under the radar but is spending more than $100 million on television and digital in the final month of the campaign — more than any other group — on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Joe [Bite Me] outside of the [Bite Me] campaign itself.

“And it has been leading a separate, previously unreported $28 million proposed campaign to elect a Democrat to the U.S. Senate from Texas…” They’re doing all these little things under the radar out there, but it’s all aimed at bouncing Trump. “Future Forward’s size and strategy is now moving more into the public view.

“It plans to report to the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday that it raised $66 million in just the 45 days between September 1 and October 15 — a haul powered by Silicon Valley billionaires like Twilio founder Jeff Lawson, longtime Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Moskovitz,” co-founder of Facebook, “who has been one of the most enigmatic Democratic megadonors of the Trump era.”

Now, up ’til now their money’s gone down the bottomless pit. They haven’t been able to stop Trump. They haven’t been able to unseat Trump. And I don’t know if this is gonna work, either. I’m just telling you, this is what Trump is facing on a daily basis. These are the things that Trump is up against every day. (interruption) Yeah, I think it’s a good question.

“Isn’t this meddling in the election?” How much did the Russians spend in the election? Russians only spent $100,000. Do you remember that? The ads that the Russians spent — (chuckling) which ran after the election, by the way. The Russians that Mueller indicted, they ran ads after the election, and they ran $100,000 worth, and these guys were indicted for meddling in the American election.

So what is this?

This is $100 million these wealthy little guys are dropping. Their ads are running at places like Fox & Friends. My point is, folks, that there are forces arrayed against Trump that you don’t even see. There are forces arrayed against him that you do see. But if there’s anybody that has earned your support and your loyalty because he’s out doing what he’s doing for you and your family and for this country, it’s Donald Trump.

I don’t think that he gets enough appreciation, and I understand why. He’s a controversial figure. He says things and does things that a lot of people wish he would say and do differently, and people get lost. They get caught up in all of that irrelevant minutia instead of focusing on the achievements, the accomplishments, the objectives, the future agenda.

This election really is about what kind of country this is going to be, and I know we probably make people… What’s the word? We might say this so often that people just become immune to hearing it. “Aw, there they go again. ‘Most important election in the history of the country.’ Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve been hearing this our whole lives. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Well, this really is, and I think it’s been true of the previous ones well as well. We wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are if Obama had not won those two elections, but he did. If Obama hadn’t won in 2008 and 2012, we wouldn’t be in the dire straits we’re in now. All these things do matter at the time. Now we have an election where we have a candidate who believes in the decency and in the goodness of the United States of America, who believes that we are the good guys — that we are the last, best hope of earth.

He believes it, and we’re running against a candidate who is being propped up and supported by a bunch of people who don’t think that at all. They think the exact opposite. But they’re not on the campaign trail. They are not putting their names or faces forward, saying that they don’t believe in the decency and the goodness of America.

They think America needs to be “software rewritten.” They think America needs to be shut down and rebooted. America 2.0. Because America’s problems are irredeemable in their world. Our problems are unfixable. We cannot fix slavery. We cannot fix the injustices done to women. We cannot. Even though we have, we can’t.

America, in their view, is forever and permanently flawed, and therefore the founding documents that put this country together must be abandoned. That would be the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of United States including the first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights. Dire circumstances, dire consequences — and that’s what Donald Trump is running to protect.

Now, all these polls, I’ve been looking at it. In “the swing states show the race narrowing. If the trend continues at the current rate, President Trump could poll even in two weeks — in addition to the ‘other’ polls that show him near there already.”

Now, Victor Davis Hanson says, “Trump’s mission at the final debate on Thursday is to continue to accelerate his momentum, not to take risks to melt down Joe Biden with verbal fireworks.” Mr. Hanson believes it would be a mistake to try to do anything designed to get Biden to flub up. Leave Biden alone, and he will. Don’t make Biden the focus. Focus on maintaining your momentum if you’re President Trump. Because at this stage of the campaign, every 10 days the campaign starts anew. This is my often made reminder that the events shaping this election haven’t yet all happened.

“Every 10 days, the campaign starts anew. Trump’s rallies are back. He miraculously beat COVID-19 in near record time. Judge Amy Coney Barret proved stellar. If most voters poll they are better off than four years ago -” This is a stunning result to me, because we’ve had the pandemic. And including the pandemic, people say they are economically better off today than they were four years ago under Barack Obama and Biden, including with the pandemic.

“They think Trump will win.” If most voters are saying these things, “it’s increasingly difficult to believe the disconnect that they are intent on voting against someone who will win and would likely continue to make things better for them.” It just doesn’t make sense they’re gonna vote against a guy that they think is gonna win that they understand has made things better off for them than they were four years ago. It doesn’t make sense that voters would vote against this guy, but that’s what the media is asking us to believe.

“No one has quite figured out how to calibrate the data on early voting, the Republican surge in swing state registrations, and the effect of the nation’s biggest campuses.” I’m telling you what, though, early voting is leaning in the Republicans’ favor in a massive way. It’s stunning how early voting is trending Republican. It’s stunning how in these battleground states Trump is surging.

All the while, “Joe Biden is inert.” He may as well be laying down in formaldehyde in the basement in Delaware. “He’s running a virtual campaign in fear of the virus.” He’s trying to avoid “questions about Hunter Biden, and of his suspected intention to pack the court or stop fracking.” Trump called him out on it last night at the rally in Erie, there’s the video, countless numbers of times Biden admitting that he’s going to ban fracking. So I think on balance things are looking up.