RUSH: Now, I want to get to this phone call before the guy hangs up, and I want to make a point about this as well. But not about his comment, about callers in general. Thomas in Palmetto, Florida. Thank you for waiting, sir.

CALLER: (garbled cell) Hello, Rush. Can you hear me?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: (silence)

RUSH: I hear you.

CALLER: Um. Um… (unintelligible)

RUSH: Can you hear me?

CALLER: Great, awesome. It’s an honor to speak to you.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: And every day that you show up, you bless us and the nation.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you.

CALLER: The question is, you have all these callers calling up and they want Trump to be “presidential.” They say this will help him win the debate. Well, we already know has a gonna lose the debate. The media hasn’t… Joe Biden could fall asleep and he’s gonna lose. I’m not talking about Joe Biden; I’m talking about Trump. That’s what the media thinks. But my question is, my comment, I want Trump to be Trump.

I want Trump… They’re gonna attack him on COVID. I want Trump to talk about all of the things he’s done, his plan for COVID — what he did with ventilators, with vaccines, the testing, the shutdowns, the lockdowns — and then turn to Joe and say, “Joe, you’ve disavowed everything I’ve done. (Unintelligible) disastrous. What the hell is your plan?

“We want to know. America wants to know. This is what I’ve done for this nation. This is what my administration’s done. This is what we’ve worked for. What is your plan?” Because (unintelligible) don’t know, and he disavows them, but he should attack Joe on Joe’s plan — and brag.

RUSH: See, this is my… Look, I know what you’re saying. Let me take over here, ’cause I know what you’re saying. You don’t want Trump to hold back. You want him to be aggressive but positive. You want him to be himself. You want him to be the guy that got him here. You want him to be the guy that got elected.

You want him to be the guy who brags about his achievements and not in an off-putting way, ’cause it ain’t bragging if you can do it. I know what you want. You want him to just unabashedly — and with a lot of proud intonations — tell people what he’s done for them, what he’s done for America, and what else he plans to do for America.

I know exactly what you want. You gotta understand something, Thomas. You’ve talked about the people who’ve called before you, prior to you, and you’ve expressed concern that they’re being a little defensive. They’re scared, Thomas! Every one of the people who have called this program today and who have said to one degree or another, “Trump just needs to be presidential.

“He just needs to be calm. He just needs to…” They’re scared death, Thomas, because of the first debate. They are scared to death. They don’t know the Trump that showed up in that first debate, and once they see that version of Trump, they’re gonna be scared that it’s gonna pop up again.

It’s why I have tried to tell people that I think Trump was feeling sick from COVID during the first debate. Look, I don’t hang around Donald Trump as much as other people do, obviously. But I’ve hung around him, and I didn’t recognize that guy that night. “Joe, there’s one thing about you that nobody’s gonna ever get confused about, and that’s ‘smart.’

“You’re not smart, Joe. People do not even use the word smart and your name in the same sentence, Joe.” I’m thinking, “Wait, who is this? That’s not him.” You’re scared. The other callers you’re talking about, they’re scared, Thomas, that this is who’s gonna show up, and they’re afraid that that version of Trump plays into the critics’ version of Trump and allows the critics to say, “See this guy? This is who he is.”

I know fully what you’re saying is that Trump needs to be unembarrassed. He doesn’t need to act ashamed. It can be a fine line, Thomas, because as I’ve told you, one of the things I’ve learned over the course of my broadcast career is there are a lot of people who don’t like confidence. They don’t like to hear confident people express it. It makes ’em nervous.

And, sadly, I have to tell you, a large number of people like that are women — and particularly young women, but not exclusively. But they don’t like braggadocio. But it’s more than that. It’s they don’t like anybody that sure of themselves because they’re not. They aren’t that sure of themselves. And, as such, it’s off-putting to them.

Now, you would think that it would be just the opposite.

You would think that it would be inspiring.

That’s what I’ve always thought confidence was. I understand that arrogance could rub people the wrong way and condescension can rub people the wrong way. But that’s not Trump. The thing Trump has going for him is that he’s also funny when he is engaging in talking about his greatness, talking about his achievements and his accomplishments.

Your wish is that Trump would list his achievements. “Here’s what I’ve done for America, Joe. This is what I have tried to do. This is what I have attempted. These are the things that we’ve done, and we were on a roll ’til the Chinese virus hit — sorry, Connie — and then we got sidetracked for a while. What is your plan, Joe? What are you gonna do?” I don’t… (sigh)

Joe does he have one of those. Joe does not have that plan, Thomas. Now, that may be your point. Is that right? You think that if Trump hits him with that question he’s not gonna have an answer for it?

CALLER: I think if he gives that minute or two he will stumble because he has no plan. He’ll look to the camera and he’ll say some type of gibberish. And being a former New Yorker, a question that I would love you to ask President Trump is this: How much are you holding back? Because I know coming from Queens, he’s probably holding back more than people even can fathom.

RUSH: Wait. You want — I didn’t understand. You want me to ask Trump something, did you say?

CALLER: Yeah. Yeah. You know, people say that he speaks his mind, and I really do believe he does. But being a former New Yorker, being from Jackson Heights, Queens, I know that he holds back a lot. He probably really wants to let go. He probably wants to lower the boom on Hunter, lower the boom on a lot of things. He knows a lot more and can say a lot more than he does, and I just admire him, and I just want him to brag about everything he’s done for this country —

RUSH: Okay. So you’re talking about at a time other than the debate when you want me to ask him something. Okay. The tricky thing tonight for your request, so Trump lists his achievements, he goes through his accomplishments and turns to Biden, “What are your plans, Joe? What are you gonna do for -” At that point the moderator is gonna be there to bail Joe out like no moderator has been there to bail anybody out. We’re gonna be looking Candy Crowley on steroids tonight if Joe gets into any kind of trouble that results from Trump challenging him.

(interruption) Do I think Trump should try to take out the moderator? You mean like pull out a tommy gun and aim for the knees? (interruption) The Official Program Observer is asking me if I think that Trump should, if the moderator starts in her usual liberal gibberish and starts trying to push Trump by limiting his time or by not allowing his questions or muting his microphone — I think he needs to use his instincts on this because if such a circumstance presents itself, he’ll know whether it is the right time to go after the moderator or not.

Like, look at Megyn Kelly when he went after Megyn Kelly. She started it. Right? He went after Megyn Kelly. Did that help him or hurt him? It helped him immensely in that first debate, right? He was expecting totally friendly behavior from her because she was Fox News. And she was loaded for bear because she was attempting to make her bones with the mainstream media. Just using regular street vernacular, “Making her bones.” Career lingo there, folks.

She was attempting to impress mainstream media types. And Trump went after her and that was when he had the Rosie O’Donnell answer. Remember, he thought that she was setting him up for a grand-slam home run kind of answer, and he found out very quickly after his Rosie O’Donnell comment and joke, that she was loaded for bear. Went after her accordingly. But you see, in that case, she had started it, and he was reacting. Same situation has to be on the agenda here, same kind of circumstance.

If the moderator starts something and it is patently obviously unfair, then, yeah. But I don’t think he should just go after the moderator on the premise that she’s the moderator and biased and unfair. She’s gotta do something that exhibits that. Anyway, Thomas, I appreciate the call. Thanks very much.

Just one other thing. There have been occasions on this program where I have gone an hour and a half, the program starts, I’ve gone an hour and a half without taking a call. Now, those days are generally when I am overwhelmed with material. That I have got more than I can possibly get to and I am doing everything I can to get to as much as I can as quickly as I can. So an hour and a half will go by, half the show, without taking a call. And I’ll hear from people, “You really ought to make an effort to take some calls.”

I’ll say, “Why? Did it not sound good?”

“No, no, no. It’s, Rush, you have to understand, when you have other people to bounce off of, who’ve got other people’s thoughts, when you have a chance to react, why, sometimes it’s even better.”

Well, this is what they have been attempting to set up with Trump. By having Biden and Kamala both be, for all intents and purposes, in bed asleep for five days in a row, they have been denying Trump one of his strengths. That is reacting. That is bouncing off of. That is having a — well, just a reaction point of view. If you’re not saying anything, if you’re Biden and Kamala, you’re not saying anything, then there’s nothing to react to. And so they are attempting to eliminate one of Trump’s real powers, one of his great strengths.

They’re also trying to goad him into providing his own reaction. They’re trying to get him to put Biden’s words in his mouth, since Biden isn’t saying them, they want Trump to go out and say them, and they want him to start making things up about Biden, that they can then say, I never said that. This guy’s off his rails.

My point is, there is a strategy to this. It’s not because Biden can’t stay awake for five minutes. Don’t think that whatever physical or mental problems Biden has they’re so bad that he can’t come out and face a camera for 10 minutes a day or whatever. It’s a strategy. And it’s a strategy at denying Trump one of his strengths. It’s a strategy, I think, genuinely try — they think they can drive Trump crazy.