RUSH: Here’s Bill in Cadillac, Michigan.  Great to have you, sir.  Hi.

CALLER:  Hi.  How you doing this afternoon, Rush?

RUSH:  I’m doing well.  Thank you.

CALLER:  I just wanted to touch on a few things here, get your opinion on the debate tonight.  The question that was asked of, you know, what are they so afraid of, what are they doing, I believe that they’re honestly trying to achieve the unachievable and put Donald Trump on the defensive, which is something the status quo they have not been able to achieve this entire campaign in getting him to be on the defense about the lies. I heard several reports about them saying they expect him to be sexist and talk about this, talk about her hair and they’re trying to goad him into talking about certain things, ’cause they’re afraid he is gonna come out swinging, saying things directly about Benghazi, about the emails, about the Clinton Foundation, about, to use a quote —

RUSH:  You know, this is an excellent point.  In fact, I can even relate this to experiences I’ve had personally.  I’m making a note here because I’m out of time here, but, Bill, I want to expand on your point here, because it’s actually an excellent point.  Their prejudices, their bigotry about Trump confounds their strategy and their thinking.  They have created a caricature out of Trump, and it’s not who he really is.  And they are going to try to bait him into behaving the way they think he is with characteristics they think he portrays, which is wrong.  And it’s gonna bite ’em, or it could.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  You people, have you heard about Trump’s debate prep, what do you think of Trump’s debate prep?  He’s really not doing any.  I mean, not in the traditional sense.  Just to give you a contrast, Mitt Romney started preparing for his debates against Barack Hussein O in August, mid-August of 2012. 

Romney actually had a series of Obama impersonators play Obama in a debate. He replicated the podiums and the lecterns. He tried to get close to the size of the arena.  He had people come in as moderators, and he actually did 90-minute and two-hour actual debate rehearsals, a series of them, running through a plethora of issues, and a number of different people playing Obama.

Trump is doing none of that.  Trump has steadfastly refused to do a single rehearsal.  He has not rehearsed. He has not prepared for these debates by standing at a lectern with somebody pretending to be Hillary and then somebody pretending to be Lester Holt.  He has studied up on issues, from what I’m told, but he has not over-prepared. He’s not gonna show up paralyzed, not knowing what to say next because he’s trying to remember so much of what he’s prepared for. 

And when people hear this, it depends who they are, some of them go, “Oh, no, this is a disaster waiting to happen.  You mean he’s not even trying to familiarize himself with the format and the proceedings?”  Nope.  None of that.  And I think what people don’t understand — by the way, greetings, and welcome back.  800-282-2882.  It’s the Rush Limbaugh program here on the EIB Network. 

I think a lot of people, many more than I realized, by the way, just cannot relate to, it’s not winging it, but I guess improvisation is the best way for me to describe it.  Trump is obviously very confident in himself.  He’s confident in being on TV.  Big deal, too.  Most people on TV who are not paid professional TV people are so self-conscious on TV that who they are doesn’t come through.  And you can spot them. 

You can spot an amateur on TV in a moment’s notice.  Their eyes dart all over the place, and if there happens to be a monitor anywhere nearby where they can see themselves, you will see them constantly glancing at it.  They are so self-conscious, they worry about how their tie is hanging.  They will worry about how they look, how they are coming across.  And they just are unable to help it.  It’s that self-consciousness that destroys — anybody that wants to be an actor cannot be self-conscious, not while you’re doing the gig.  You can be self-conscious all day long, but you’ve gotta get outside yourself. 

Now, what overcomes self-consciousness is confidence.  And Trump obviously has it, and he is very familiar and very comfortable being on TV, and he’s obviously very comfortable being in confrontational situations, which is what debates can often be, and, by definition, are.  So he doesn’t feel the need to prepare to do something he has done so often in the sense he doesn’t have to rehearse for it.  Now, some people say he’s not taking seriously.  I don’t think it’s not taking it seriously. 

It’s just that most people don’t have the confidence that Trump has, and therefore they think they’ve gotta work so hard in prep that they overdo it. They end up being overcoached, overprepared, and they end up being paralyzed.  Let’s say the subject is ISIS, and you’ve been preparing with counselors and advisers, and they’ve been giving you this answer if this is said.  “If Lester asks you this, this is what you say.  If Hillary points out that you said this back in September, here’s your retort.” 

And by the time they’re finished, you’ve got a bunch of things to remember, instead of just being who you are.  And Trump has decided he’s gonna be who he is, rather than try to remember a bunch of coaching.  And it’s been this way pretty much through his whole campaign.  You know, people have tried to force various strategies on him and behavioral modes and consultant type behavior, and he’s for the most part blown it all off. 

One of the most often-heard complaints — I know some of the people advising Trump, and the most often heard complaint I hear, “He doesn’t listen to anybody.”  Which gives me a little comfort.  One of the things I’ve often wondered — not often; always — is why does somebody need advisers on matters of your heart or your intellect? 

For example, give me an issue, I know what I think about.  I don’t need an advisor to tell me what I think.  I don’t need an adviser to tell me how to say it. But there are all kinds of people who think that they need to tell me, or in this case Trump, “Well, yeah, Donald, you may know what you think, but let me tell you how not to say it.  Don’t do this, don’t do that.” 

So you flood the candidate with a bunch of don’ts or a bunch of things to remember based on what she says or what the moderator says, and you can end up being over-coached into paralysis.  And it’s obvious Trump has gone the other way to avoid that happening.  But it’s all rooted in confidence, and I think most people don’t have the kind of self-confidence Donald Trump has, and, as such, they get queasy when they hear of his prep routine.  They don’t think it’s enough, or they think he’s not taking it seriously, think he’s being lackadaisical about it.  Not the case at all. 

Now, back to the caller’s point right before the end of the hour.  I think this is actually a great, great point.  And in making it, let me use myself as an example.  I’ve told the stories countless times, when I run around in public and I meet people who have never listened to me but think they know who I am because of what has been said about me in the Drive-By Media.  The vast majority are shocked and stunned that I am a nice person. 

They have been so conditioned to believe — even now, folks, even though I’ve been doing this coming up 28, 29 years, even now, if I attend a party or a social gathering where people who have not met me are there, you’d be amazed what they prepare themselves for when they find out I’m going to be there.  And one of the things that I am told most often is people expect me to walk in the room, start finding the liberals and picking fights with ’em, start shouting at them, telling them they’re wrong and so forth. 

This is what people actually think is going to happen.  Or they think that I’m some ogre or some extreme buffoon or couthless, impolitic, impolite loudmouth, whatever it is.  They’re always shocked and stunned to learn it isn’t true.  Now, the left puts that stuff out because they can’t debate me on ideas so they try to destroy reputation, character, and they do that with everybody on the right who they think is effective.  The problem is, they end up believing it themselves. And I think with Trump, they’re coaching Hillary or they’re coaching Lester, they’re trying to tell Lester what to do and how to fact check and don’t let Trump get away with this and don’t let Trump get away with that. 

They really have got themselves, I think they believe that Trump is a fascist, that he’s quasi-Hitler, that he’s all these horrible, rotten, they actually end up believing the things they end up saying and, as such, Trump is none of those things.  Trump is not who they believe he is. He does not behave as they think he’s going to, and they always end up shell-shocked or stunned.  Their strategies to take him out don’t work because Trump is not an unlikable person.  Trump is not a mean guy.  Trump’s not a bad guy.  But to them he embodies all of that and more, and they end up believing it themselves. 

And so they want Lester to take Trump out on the basis that he is all of these negative personality-oriented things, because they don’t understand how Trump operates. They don’t understand the pacing and the leading that he does. They don’t understand self-confidence. They think everything is scripted and rehearsed, because that’s how they do it.  So they always, in many cases, end up — like how many of them thought George W. Bush was an absolute stupid fool idiot and then they find out he’s not.  He beat them twice.  And both times they thought they had it done in a slam dunk because Bush is a stupid, idiot, dumb, cowboy-sounding loco weed. 

They end up underestimating everybody because they have such an extraordinarily high opinion of themselves coupled with their false construct of their enemies and opponents, that up against the wrong person, and Trump is the exact example of the wrong person, it can backfire on them big time, and I think that is a possibility as well. 

You notice that on the Hillary side we read stories about Hillary’s debate prep and the consultants and their advice.  Nobody, nobody is saying, “Hey, look, this is easy.  Just let Hillary be Hillary.  That’s all she gotta do.”  No, no, no, no, no.  We can’t, ah, ah, can’t trust that.  But with Trump it’s, let Trump be Trump.  Just let him be who he is.  Don’t do this over-coaching and all of this positioning and just let him be who he is.  They don’t dare.  Now, Obama’s device was “Hillary, just be yourself.”  Worst piece of advice he could have given her, by the way. 

So anyway, it’s gonna be fascinating to watch this all play out, but I know that the left creates these erroneous stereotypes of people, and it’s not just for public consumption.  They end up be believing all of this insanity that they attach to their political opponents.  And oftentimes — not always, I mean, sometimes they, as you well know, get away with it, but oftentimes it comes back and bites them big time.