GOP Debate: And Then There Were Seven
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Here is the latest from the GOP presidential debates, sponsored by Fox Business Network, in North Charleston, S.C. All times local.
10:17 p.m.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says if Hillary Clinton is president "it will lead to greater war in this world."
Christie made the comment during Thursday's Republican presidential debate when asked how important it was to remove Syrian President Bashar Assad from power.
Christie says President Barack Obama has done "worse than nothing" about Assad, and former Secretary of State Clinton will be worse.
Christie says there can't be peace in Syria as long as Assad is in charge. He also spoke out against the U.S. taking in Syrian refugees, saying they should stay in Syria.
He says the key to approaching Syria is to bringing together other Arab countries that believe the Islamic State is a threat to combat the terrorists.
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10:06 p.m.
Jeb Bush says the U.S. must rebuild its military so Russia and other countries will take the U.S. seriously.
Bush is lamenting cuts to the Navy and other parts of the military. He says U.S. military planes are older than the pilots.
The former Florida governor says the U.S. should re-impose sanctions on Iran. He says Iran has already violated its obligations following the recent nuclear deal by testing missiles.
He says the U.S. must "get back in the game" to restore order and security for itself.
Bush is also calling for moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Israel considers Jerusalem to be its capital but that designation isn't internationally recognized because the Palestinians also claim the city for their future capital. The U.S. and almost every other country have their embassies in Tel Aviv.
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10:02 p.m.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz says the problem with Donald Trump is his "New York values." Like any New Yorker, Trump isn't taking that dig lightly.
When asked to explain the phrase by moderator Maria Bartiromo, Cruz says most people know what New York values are. (To Bartiromo, he noted, "You're from New York so you might not.")
To his GOP audience the meaning was clear.
Cruz says "not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan. I'm just sayin'."
Trump said he was insulted. He invoked Sept. 11 and the way New Yorkers came together after the attacks to deal with "the smell, the air."
Trump says, "that was a very insulting statement that Ted made."
9:54 p.m.
Donald Trump says there are no circumstances under which he thinks the U.S. should limit gun sales.
Trump is deriding President Barack Obama's executive actions to tighten gun control. He says guns don't pull the trigger, people pull the trigger.
Trump says if more people present for the San Bernardino, California, and Paris attacks had guns, fewer people would have died.
Instead of gun control, Trump is calling for more mental health care. He says there's a huge problem, with hospitals and mental wards closing.
Trump says Obama doesn't want to get lawmakers together to write gun legislation "the old-fashioned way." He says Obama instead just "writes an order."
Obama used executive action this month to try to expand background checks to cover more gun sales. The president's efforts to secure broader gun control legislation collapsed in the Senate in 2013.
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9:51 p.m.
Jeb Bush says new gun laws won't prevent gun violence, but better enforcement of the current laws and more mental health support will.
Bush cited the shooting at a Charleston church a few miles from the debate site as an example. Bush says the shooter in that case, Dylann Roof, shouldn't have been able to buy a gun.
Bush says the FBI made a "mistake."
He says, "We don't need to add new rules, we need to make sure the FBI does its job."
Bush accused President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of trying to "take guns away from law-abiding citizens."
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9:46 p.m.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is completely ignoring the substance of the question about his criticism of former President Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions.
Instead, he's offering a vague, roundabout defense of standards of moral conduct that "come from our Judeo-Christian roots."
Carson asks, "Is this America anymore?"
He adds, "There is such a thing as right and wrong."
Carson says the nation's ills are in part a product of division by race and a breakdown in civility. Still, he says the majority of people in the United States "actually have principles."
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9:44 p.m.
John Kasich says if Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee for president, "we're going to win every state."
He says the notion of Sanders as competition is "not even an issue."
The Ohio governor says he knows Sanders. He says he can promise Sanders won't be president.
Kasich is knocking Sanders' approach to economics. He says the U.S. must "fight like crazy" to ensure people still think the American dream exists.
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9:43 p.m.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is mixing it up with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, saying he talks so much it's hard to keep track of whether he's telling the truth.
Christie's comments in Thursday's Republican debate came after Rubio first went after Christie, accusing him of backing Planned Parenthood, Common Core academic standards and gun control. Rubio says, "We can't have a president of the United States that supports gun control."
Christie says that two years ago Rubio called him a "conservative reformer" but now he is attacking him and misrepresenting his record. Christie says he has not supported Planned Parenthood and he has taken action as governor to protect 2nd Amendment gun rights.
Christie says, "When you're a senator what you get to do is talk and talk and talk and no one can keep up to see if what you're saying is accurate or not." He says governors are held accountable.
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9:36 p.m.
Donald Trump says he'll gladly accept the "mantle of anger" from Nikki Haley and others.
Trump says he wasn't offended by the South Carolina governor's response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. Haley gave the Republican response and urged people not to follow angry voices. She later specified she was referring to Trump.
But Trump says it's true he's angry. He says he's "very angry" because the U.S. is being run horribly. He's pointing to health care, veterans, the military and the border.
Trump says he won't be angry once "we fix it." But he says until then, "I'm very, very angry."
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9:35 p.m.
Marco Rubio isn't going to let Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have all the fun — or the attention.
Just as the feisty fight between Trump and Cruz over Cruz's citizenship and eligibility reached its peak, Rubio saw his way in: "I hate to interrupt this episode of Court TV."
Rubio is casting himself as a serious candidate focused on the important issues. He successfully steered the conversation back to defeating a Democrat and stopping President Barack Obama's agenda.
He says, "I think we have to get back to what this election is about."
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9:28 p.m.
Donald Trump didn't dispute that he's brought up the issue of Ted Cruz' citizenship because Cruz "is doing a little better. It's true."
And he says he doesn't necessarily believe Cruz isn't eligible. He says only that Democrats will challenge Cruz in court should he become the Republican nominee.
Trump says: "There's a big question mark on your head and you can't do that to the party. You have to have certainty." He is urging Cruz to ask courts for a declaratory judgment to settle the matter.
Cruz cites the widely accepted legal principle that anyone born to an American parent is a natural-born citizen, regardless of where the child is born. He says Trump is basically claiming that a natural-born citizen would have to be born in the United States to two parents who were also born in the United States.
That standard, Cruz says, would disqualify several candidates. Among them: Donald Trump, whose mother was born in Europe.
Cruz says to Trump: "You're an American, as is everybody else on this stage. I would suggest we focus on who is best prepared to be commander-in-chief."
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9:26 p.m.
It's taken little time in the GOP presidential debate for front-runners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to go head-to-head. The matter: Cruz's citizenship and eligibility to be president.
Moderators asked Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and Cuban father, to respond to Trump's suggestion that he's not eligible to be president because he was not born on American soil.
Cruz notes that Trump previously said he didn't think Cruz has a problem.
Cruz says that in September, "my friend Donald had had his lawyers look at this from every which way ... and there was nothing to this birther issue."
He notes, "Since September, the Constitution hasn't changed, but the poll numbers have."
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9:21 p.m.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is dismissing his failing to disclose a $1 million loan to his 2012 Senate campaign as a "paperwork error."
Cruz was asked about the issue during Thursday's presidential debate in South Carolina. The New York Times first reported Wednesday that Cruz failed to properly disclose the loan from Citibank and Goldman Sachs, where his wife works.
Cruz did not disclose the loans on one filing, but did disclose them in later financial reports.
Cruz says, "I made a paperwork error disclosing it on one piece of paper but not another." Cruz says he had to take out the loan because "I don't have masses of money in the bank, hundreds of millions of dollars."
He casts aside the questions about the loan as part of a "hit piece."
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9:18 p.m.
Donald Trump is defending his opposition to allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S.
He says "it's not fear and terror, it's reality."
Trump is rattling off a list of places recently struck by terror as evidence the U.S. needs to take a harder line against people who want to perpetrate "great destruction." He's citing attacks in Indonesia, California and Paris.
Trump says the U.S. must take a "good, strong look" at its policies. He says "the country's a mess."
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9:16 p.m.
It took the moderators more than 15 minutes to get around to asking Ben Carson a question. He answered by thanking them for waking him up.
The neurosurgeon-turned-outsider candidate came prepared with the joke. He's made it before.
He also seemed prepared with an answer about President Barack Obama's foreign policy.
Carson says Obama "doesn't realize we now live in the 21st century." He says the president needs to be on alert for stateless terrorists and the threat of dirty bombs.
He says "war is very different."
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9:12 p.m.
Republican Jeb Bush is attacking Democrat Hillary Clinton over the FBI investigation of her private email server.
The former Florida governor is seeking a breakout moment in an unsettled race in which he's faded from the front of the presidential pack.
He says Clinton would be a "national security disaster."
Bush is pointing out questions over the 2012 killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
But the larger point he's making in his first opportunity during the debate is that she would be distracted by personal matters during her first 100 days in the White House if she's elected.
He says she might be shuttling "between the White House and the courthouse."
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9:09 p.m.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is casting the president's State of the Union address earlier this week as "story time with Barack Obama."
Christie described Obama's speech when asked when he would use military force if he were commander in chief. Christie says Obama gave a rosy picture of the current state of affairs, noting that earlier this week Iran captured 10 U.S. sailors.
Christie says Obama's speech "sounded like everything in the world was going amazing."
Christie adds that a Hillary Clinton presidency will be a "third term of Barack Obama's leadership." Christie says if he wins, Clinton "won't get within 10 miles of the White House."
Christie has said he will use military force as president only when absolutely necessary to protect American lives.
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9: 07 p.m.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich says familiar Republican ideas are the key to spurring economic growth: cut taxes, reduce regulations and balance the federal budget.
"When you do that ... the job creators begin to get very comfortable with the fact that they can invest," Kasich says.
Kasich says it's particualrly important to cut corporate income taxes. Regulations, he says, are "smothering people." He did not cite specifics.
He also reminded voters that he was budget chairman in the 1990s, the last time the federal budget was balanced. "We're nowhere near a balanced budget," he said.
The annual deficit actually has been cut by more than half during the seven years of the Obama administration. The 2015 deficit was equivalent to about 3 percent of nation's overall economic activity, about what it was in 2008, the last year of President George W. Bush's administration.
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9:06 p.m.
Ted Cruz says millionaires and billionaires have done great under President Barack Obama but everyone else is suffering.
He's blaming what he calls the "Obama-Clinton economy." He says it's left behind working men and women.
Cruz says Obama tried to paint a rosy picture of jobs in his State of the Union address Tuesday. He says it's just in Washington that "things are doing great."
Unemployment under Obama recently fell to 5 percent.
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9:05 p.m.
Sen. Ted Cruz got the first question at the Fox Business debate, but he didn't immediately answer it.
Rather than talk about his view of the U.S. economy, Cruz opens with a charging attack on President Barack Obama and his relationship with Iran.
Cruz says he was "horrified" to see images of the 10 U.S. sailors briefly held by Iran Tuesday night after crossing into Iranian waters. He slammed Obama for not even mentioning the incident in his State of the Union speech.
Cruz says Obama is too cozy with Tehran. He says if he were president, any nation that held U.S. sailors would feel "the full force and fury" of the United States of America.
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9:02 p.m.
The first question of the prime-time GOP presidential debate is about jobs: President Barack Obama says the economy is durable and new jobs are being created. What do the Republican candidates see that he doesn't?
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