Here, Trump should fully expect Hillary’s “bait machine” to try and draw attention away both from Trump’s winning issues and Hillary’s own mounting scandals. In fact, in recent weeks, the Clinton-Kaine spin doctors have been running this form of psych ops hard—and the media has thus far been gullible enough to quickly take Clinton’s bait.

For example, during the August 8 week of the dueling Trump-Clinton economic speeches, the Clinton campaign, with big assists from the liberal press, was at least partially successful in diverting attention away from her failed economic and trade policies and her corruption scandals. All Clinton had to do was chum the media waters with her tax returns, and demand that Trump release his, and the game swiftly morphed from policy to politics.

The most important strategic rule in this race may, therefore, be this: whichever campaign best controls the news cycle will win the race.

At this point, the only thing certain about this election is that it will deeply and truly matter. This is a hundred-year flood conjuring up everything from Andrew Jackson’s 1828 “rise of the common man” and Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 “Bull Moose” run at Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal win in 1932, which completely redrew the political party landscape. A record number of voters will likely show up for this showdown—and Trump has a very good chance of winning once one really assesses the chessboard.

Peter Navarro is a professor at the University of California-Irvine and a senior policy advisor to the Trump campaign. He is the author of Crouching Tiger: What China’s Militarism Means for the World (Prometheus Books) and director of the companion Crouching Tiger documentary film series.

Image: Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Fountain Hills, Arizona. Flickr/Gage Skidmore