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<\/p>\nRUSH: The only word I have for it is frustrating. So frustrating. We had a moderator last night who everybody knows that I like and everybody knows that I respect and a moderator that treats me fairly whenever I appear on his program, Chris Wallace. But he said before the debate last night that the best measure of his performance, of his job, would be if he ended up being invisible. Well, no. There was no way. He ended up being part of the debate staff. It was Trump versus two people last night.<\/p>\n
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And it was unfair. All this white supremacist stuff being dredged up, but there wasn\u2019t one mention of Joe Biden out there saying, “If you ain\u2019t voting for me, you ain\u2019t black.” I get so sick and tired this white supremacist allegation that Trump has refuted, he didn\u2019t do it, he didn\u2019t say it, and yet they keep dredging it up.<\/p>\n
Greetings, folks. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m gonna do my best here to try to remain somewhat facile, cogent, and organized. But man, oh, man. So much about last night, it\u2019s just so frustrating. Trump desperately wanted to debate last night. It was obvious and clear. I thought the first five minutes of this debate last night, I thought it was gonna end up being a grand-slam home run. Trump came ready. He was loaded. He knew what the strategy was. Now, you can disagree with the strategy. I think the strategy was to try to rattle Biden and to facilitate whatever they thought might happen with the mental deficiencies that the candidate has exhibited. The effort was to try to hasten that.<\/p>\n
And the frustrating thing is that Biden was demonstrating that, and Trump interrupted him rather than let it happen a number of times. That is because Trump desperately wanted to debate. The moderator kept interrupting. The moderator and the questions. And just — get out of the way. You got a debate starting. You got a debate raging. Let them go at it.<\/p>\n
This is not a question of is the moderator gonna be elected president or is the moderator\u2019s job performance gonna matter a hill of beans in terms of the future of the country. Let the candidates engage. Let the audience decide who\u2019s more in command of facts and more in command of the stage. Instead of this silly attempt to enforce a bunch of rules. Let the candidates enforce the rules. Let\u2019s find out who can stand up for themselves and who can\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Trump, I don\u2019t think, lost a single vote from his base last night. The question is whether any undecideds were moved. CNN has pointed out: hey, hey, don\u2019t get excited out there since Trump lost every debate in 2016, they think. And they also point out that incumbent presidents never have first debates that are any good. Even though the Drive-Bys might think that Biden was a slam dunk winner just \u2019cause he lasted 90 minutes, they are not at all confident of that.<\/p>\n
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And now these demands on Biden that he not do the other two debates. Those are demands coming from the Drive-By Media \u2019cause they think he can only do damage. He showed that he can handle himself for 90 minutes and he could withstand whatever Trump threw at him. No need to do this anymore. Biden\u2019s out there saying, “Can\u2019t wait. I want to bring on those other two debates.” Bring \u2019em on. But there has to be some clarification of the rules.<\/p>\n
It was rather obvious to me that Biden did not want to debate. He wanted to mumble a bunch of facts he wrote down and he wanted to make sure he articulated them before he forgot \u2019em. But Trump wanted a vigorous exchange. He was thwarted every time a debate nearly broke out. You know, part of a free flowing debate is to measure strength and tenacity, assertiveness. Those are all Trump strengths, as well as his record and his accomplishment.<\/p>\n
But there was micromanagement of this debate going on, as though the questions mattered more than what the candidates were naturally evolving in and to as the debate unfolded. And excuse me, but it seemed like a number of times, it looked like somebody thought that Biden needed to be rescued. And so the life raft was thrown. But the audience last night was denied the ability to judge the candidates in a meaningful way because they were interrupted.<\/p>\n
And I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s hard for me to relate because I put myself in the position all a moderator, and my ego would tell me I\u2019m not the reason anybody\u2019s here tonight as the moderator. I\u2019m not the reason this is happening tonight. I\u2019m not what people are tuning in to see. The people are not tuning in to see who stays closest to the rules. People are not tuning in tonight hoping the moderator does a great job enforcing the rules. That\u2019s not why people watch these things. And they\u2019re not gonna judge a debate like last night on the basis of who appeared to be more acquiescent to the moderator. That\u2019s not what was at stake.<\/p>\n
Now, I realize a lot of people think that Trump could have brought a different attitude and it would have been better, that he could have brought the Trump of the rallies, that he could have brought… Oh, I don\u2019t think the word they don\u2019t want to say but what they mean is “likability.” You gotta understand — and I think a lot of people do — this is ball game.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re going up for an election here whereas — as Trump made it abundantly clear last night — the future of the country and what kind of country we are going to have is what is up for grabs. That\u2019s what\u2019s at stake, not listening to a debate between the moderator and the president of the United States on climate change. We don\u2019t want moderators who are control freaks.<\/p>\n
If the candidates are control freaks, let\u2019s see it. Let us judge. We don\u2019t need the participants of a debate treated like this is Romper Room and they are violating some of the school rules and they\u2019re gonna be punished by being sent to the corner. Trump wanted to debate. He desperately wanted to debate. Instead we got a scolding, “Tsk-tsk-tsk, you\u2019re not listening to the questions,” moderated kind of debate, and it was just frustrating.<\/p>\n
It was frustrating all the way around. I really thought, folks, after five minutes… I thought Trump was gonna blow Biden away. I thought Trump was calm, he was informed, he was tough. And then it turned into this circus as if Trump didn\u2019t really think or wasn\u2019t aware beforehand what he was up against. I don\u2019t know. It looked to me like Trump wasn\u2019t prepared for the kind of moderator that he got last night.<\/p>\n
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I mean, he adapted after a while, but it looked like he was… I don\u2019t know. Maybe I\u2019m wrong. It looked like he was a little taken aback. He seemed surprised that Biden would slander him. He seemed surprised that Biden would lie. I can\u2019t believe he was surprised by it, but the way things changed after the first five minutes I just had to wonder — and I had some regrets too.<\/p>\n
You know, Biden was in the process a number of times of melting down. He was in the process of forgetting what he was saying. He was in the process of losing his place in his mind, his train of thought, and Trump saved him. And the reason Trump saved him was Trump has got so frustrated over the lies that Biden was saying that he just couldn\u2019t resist jumping in and correcting what Biden was saying, which stopped Biden\u2019s meltdowns dead in their tracks.<\/p>\n
The latest Hillary Clinton scandal — and it\u2019s a doozy, and it\u2019s something that we\u2019ve known for I don\u2019t know how long. Hillary Clinton was the behind all of this that was the Russian scandal. You know, I remember, ladies and gentlemen, I went back and looked, because I had a distinct memory of the way I dealt with this. I went back to my own program; I looked up a transcript of my own show, a transcript of me, April 22, 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n That day, the New York Times ran their story on how the dossier may not be true. April 22, 2019, the New York Times with a story reporting that the dossier may be Russian disinformation. They knew that even before Trump was inaugurated. The question I asked back then: Hillary Clinton spent $10 million on that dossier. Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign and the DNC spend $10 million on that dossier.<\/p>\n That dossier was a pack of lies. Everybody knew it was a pack of lies, and do you know the one thing that didn\u2019t happen? Hillary Clinton and the Democrats did not act upset that they got ripped off. Here they supposedly go out and they hire a guy, Christopher Steele, and they pay him $10 million to come up with this dossier of data on Trump that they can use as opposition research.<\/p>\n It turns out to be not only Russian disinformation. It\u2019s double-down Russian information. We now know that the primary sub-source — meaning the guy that fed the data to Steele — was a Russian agent working for the Brookings Institution in Washington, living in suburban Washington and Virginia. The guy was a Russian agent, a spy. He was KGB.<\/p>\n Hillary Clinton not one time acted like she got ripped off. She didn\u2019t and neither did the DNC. Why wasn\u2019t she mad? She could have even acted mad. To carry out this hoax, to continue this BS that the dossier was true, the dossier was — or that they thought it was — she could have at least acted like she was upset that she had just wasted $10 million.<\/p>\n She spent $10 million; she got a pack of lies. Why wasn\u2019t she angry? Why wasn\u2019t the DNC angry over the fact that that $10 million investment ended up not being worth anything? They couldn\u2019t use it. She paid for fake October Surprises, fake news. Well, the fact that she didn\u2019t get mad, the fact that she did not act ripped off is further evidence that she knew exactly what it was. It was designed to be a pack of lies.<\/p>\n Anyway, that doesn\u2019t come up. None of that comes up. No! You know what comes up? Charlottesville and a bunch of lies<\/a>. We\u2019re gonna go through the debate at that point. I\u2019ve got a transcript here of this exchange between Debater Number 1 (the moderator), Debater Number 2 (the president), and Debater Number 3 (Biden) over this whole mess that somehow Trump is a white supremacist and to this day has not denounced it, which he has over and over and over again.<\/p>\n Biden wasn\u2019t lectured for calling Trump names. That\u2019s the one thing that Trump did not do. Trump did not engage any personal attacks last night, unless you want to say that it was a personal attack to say, “Joe you and the word ‘smart\u2019 don\u2019t go together in the same sentence.” But Biden was the one with mean-spirited personal attacks. They weren\u2019t called out.<\/p>\n The moderator never said that there was a violation of rules going on there. So now the thinking is that Team Biden will say, “We don\u2019t need to do any more debates. America cannot endure another circus like last night, and so we are bowing out.” The problem is that Biden has already said he can\u2019t wait for the next two. Of course, that might have been planned anyway, should it have gone the way it did. Now, I know a lot of people…<\/p>\n For example, I know a lot of Millennial women are made nervous by behavior such as that last night, by both sides. They\u2019re made nervous by confidence, made nervous by assuredness — and I\u2019m sure that many people last night thought Trump was a bully. So you could look at what people might think this election is gonna be.<\/p>\n Is this — oops. I just saw the clock. I got take a break. It\u2019s a good thing that I didn\u2019t really get started in this and is V to interrupt myself. We\u2019ll resume when I get back.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n RUSH: All right. Now, so Donald Trump was told that he had to denounce white supremacists. He had to denounce the Backstreet Boys. He had to denounce Charlottesville. He had to denounce all this stuff. He\u2019s already done that. Meanwhile, Joe Biden was never asked to denounce Antifa. In fact, Antifa was mischaracterized.<\/p>\n “Antifa\u2019s not an organization. It\u2019s an idea.” BS! It\u2019s not just an idea. It is an organization of anti-capitalists and anarchists, and it\u2019s got real people in it. Black Lives Matter is a Marxist\/communist organization. It has nothing to do with civil rights. Biden was not asked to denounce them.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n I know many of you think that Trump was a bully, and I know that he makes Millennial women scared. But you know what? Forget bully. We need to get used to the fact that we have somebody who\u2019s going to stand up and fight — and a lot of people saw that last night and appreciated it.<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n RUSH: This is Debbie in Amsterdam, New York. I\u2019m glad you called. You\u2019re up first today. Hi.<\/p>\n CALLER: Hi, Rush. I listened to that debate last night, and Trump was being Trump. He\u2019s angry, and I don\u2019t blame him. Who would? From day one, they\u2019ve been trying to impeach the man, and now we\u2019re supposed to be like friends with them? Biden\u2019s out there campaigning today that Trump should be pulling together the Congress. How do you pull together the Congress when all they\u2019ve done is undermine him?<\/p>\n RUSH: Exactly right! What in the world…? Why is the onus always on Trump? Trump the guy they\u2019re trying to destroy, the guy they\u2019ve lied about. They have slandered. They have impugned. They have done everything they can to try to destroy him, his past, his life, his family, his career, and his future — and he is supposed to try to welcome them in? There\u2019s no logical reason on earth why Trump would treat people this way.<\/p>\n CALLER: And also, they don\u2019t really want him to be friends. They don\u2019t… They never reached out to him for anything. Any meetings he had, Pelosi and Schumer ran out of the meetings and acted like 2-year-olds. You know, anyway, the other part I wanted to say is that I think Biden\u2019s goal — I mean, Trump\u2019s goal, I\u2019m sorry — was accomplished \u2019cause he was trying to flush Biden out of the bush about the Green New Deal and how he felt about Antifa and the police. That\u2019s what he was trying to do.<\/p>\n CALLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n RUSH: I appreciate the call. That\u2019s exactly right. What Trump did last night, you successfully got Biden to disavow the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democrat Party, and that\u2019s the only reason Biden\u2019s got the nomination. He\u2019s out there; he\u2019s disavowing the Green New Deal. He\u2019s disavowing a bunch of things.<\/p>\n He\u2019s come up with this newfangled definition of defund the police. No, that was masterful that Trump pulled that off, got Biden to denounce his own benefactors. What did that illustrate? What that illustrated is Biden knows damn well that the Green New Deal is not something on which the Democrats are gonna win the presidency.<\/p>\n They might win elections in certain pockets of the country, but they\u2019re not gonna win a national election on the Green New Deal. They\u2019re not gonna win a national election on this whole notion of defunding the cops. But the people that made sure Biden got the nomination — the people he made the deal with, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Crazy Bernie — he threw \u2019em under the bus.<\/p>\n Now, this was not something that was made readily apparent during the debate. It\u2019s the kind of thing, however, that people on Biden\u2019s side — the Crazy Bernies and the Cortezes — are gonna be steamed about. How it manifests itself within the Democrat Party, we\u2019ll just have to wait and see. But it\u2019s gonna be a problem because the radical left base of the Democrat Party thinks the Green New Deal is nirvana.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the guy running for president on their ticket disavowing it or acting like he doesn\u2019t support it, doesn\u2019t believe in it. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I read — I think it was either at the Hot Air or the Power Line blog. I\u2019m not sure which. But apparently Neil Cavuto… Just before the debate started last night, Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business Network explained to everybody that everybody had agreed that Chris Wallace, the moderator, would not act as a fact-checker on stage.<\/p>\n That was during the Mitt Romney-Obama debate, and Candy Crowley is telling Romney he doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about when Romney\u2019s about to nail Obama on something. She interrupts, intercedes, and ends up acting as Obama\u2019s debate partner. Well, this is largely what happened last night. Within the first half hour or so, the moderator began to break that rule.<\/p>\n He was fact-checking Trump in real time, almost exclusively fact-checking Trump. There was one time when Biden was having trouble remembering whether he was for or against the Green New Deal, and of course Biden was rescued in that moment. But, see, folks, here\u2019s the thing. This debate or any other debate is not about the moderator and his questions. When Chris announced the questions some days in advance, I said, “Why?<\/p>\n “What\u2019s point of this?” and then I saw he was gonna bring climate change. What the hell has climate change got to do with anything here? That is a… You know, I looked at all these lists of topics and every one of these topics has a direct route to a Trump vulnerability but not a Biden vulnerability, within the context of the left or the Democrat Party and the mainstream media.<\/p>\n But people did not tune in to make sure that the questions were answered. People didn\u2019t tune in to make sure these candidates understood that they had to answer every one of these questions, and if they didn\u2019t, that they were gonna be called out on it like Romper Room students who need to be disciplined. I guess the point I\u2019m trying to make is the purpose of a presidential debate is not to hamper and constrain discussion so that questions can be asked on time.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve gotta know when to get out of the way. You\u2019ve gotta know when something is happening. And if Cavuto was telling the truth, that there was an agreement that there wouldn\u2019t be any fact-checking by the moderator, well, that didn\u2019t last very long. Now look, moderators… There\u2019s nothing unique about Chris Wallace in this regard. I just gave you the Candy Crowley example.<\/p>\n This is common, and I think it\u2019s one of the many things that had Trump frustrated last night. But I\u2019ll tell you, Debbie is exactly right here. They\u2019ve treated this man like garbage since his campaign began. They have shown no respect whatsoever. They have yet to accept the election results of 2016. They have lied. They have slandered. They have libeled.<\/p>\n They have literally attempted to destroy everything about Donald Trump. To expect him to be nice and welcoming and accepting and the onus is on him to somehow make peace when that\u2019s not possible, is largely, again, another setup. James Woods, famous Hollywood actor, had a tweet<\/a>: “President Trump crushed his opponent Chris Wallace head to head in the debate. There was also another fellow wandering around muttering to himself.”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/APP-BREITBART-TEARAWAY-093020.jpg\")
<\/a>And it was dredged up by the moderator. But what was not dredged up? What Biden told my old Buddy Charlamagne tha God, “Hey! Hey! If you ain\u2019t voting for me, you ain\u2019t black.” That didn\u2019t come up, and then we had to listen to the moderator lecturing Trump on butting in. We had to listen to the moderator lecturing Trump on interrupting. But Biden didn\u2019t get lectured for interrupting.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/AUDIO-Antifa-BLM-Protest.jpg\")
No, it was only Trump who was told that he had to denounce, and you should have heard it. Biden and the moderator ganging up on Trump. “Will you do it? Do it! Say it! You better do it! Say it!” Both of them ganging up on Trump. I can understand why Trump\u2019s losing his mind here. I just… All this stuff, you know going in, and for some reason, expect it to be different.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/APP-040220-AOC-Green-New-Deal.jpg\")
RUSH: Oh, yeah. We\u2019re gonna get to that.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/APP-093020-Pres-Debate-93.jpg\")
Cavuto made this announcement on the Fox Business Channel, that if either Trump or Biden lied or if they made grand mistakes, it was up to the other candidate to call that out. That the moderator wasn\u2019t gonna go there. In other words, the moderator wasn\u2019t gonna be Candy Crowley. You remember the Candy Crowley reference. You remember that, right?<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s about getting out of the way. It\u2019s about realizing what is developing right in front of you. Donald Trump came wanting to debate. He came and he had a strategy. And he wanted to prevail. I don\u2019t know what Biden\u2019s strategy was. I think it was just to survive the 90 minutes. But one guy was denied the implementation of his strategy. Well, it wasn\u2019t denied. It was interrupted and obstacles were placed in the way. And that\u2019s to me not the role. But that\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/APP-093020-Pres-Debate-991.jpg\")
CALLER: That\u2019s right. Both sides had agreed to what the format would be. And Trump did not honor his agreement. He needs to learn from this. In prior debates he was able to run it his way. But that\u2019s not how a debate goes. Second, Biden\u2019s team analyzed Trump\u2019s style. They knew how he would approach things. And they formulated their approach to make him look bad. So Biden calls him a clown for not following the agreed-upon structure.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/APP-093020-Pres-Debate-96.jpg\")
RUSH: Oh, yeah, he did. He had a strategy, and the strategy didn\u2019t work. But he had a strategy. And he undermined his own strategy. I myself said so in the opening moments of today\u2019s award-winning broadcast. The strategy was to have Biden implode based on the mental deficiencies that everybody is aware that he has. Now, you might think, “Well, that\u2019s really mean.” But that\u2019s what the strategy was.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/APP-093020-Pres-Debate-94.jpg\")
RUSH: It doesn\u2019t happen. I mean, on NBC, you don\u2019t hear anybody ripping Chuck Todd for screwing up on Meet the Press this past Sunday or ripping into Savannah Guthrie for wearing the wrong color lipstick on the Today show. You just don\u2019t see people on the same network ripping it. Now, in fact, this is one of the things that\u2019s always amazed me on radio.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/APP-093020-Pres-Debate-4.jpg\")
RUSH: Well, look, I understand your point. He was debating the president, and he\u2019s not a candidate. What was he doing debating the president, right? That\u2019s your point.<\/p>\n