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Republican debate live: Cruz and Rubio seek to take Trump down Republican debate: Trump defends immigration stance against Cruz and Rubio – live
(35 minutes later)
1.12am GMT 1.59am GMT
01:12 01:59
Here’s a sampler of our politics coverage so far today: Cruz joins attack on Trump
Related: Black Lives Matter protesters interrupt Hillary Clinton at private event Cruz says he finds it funny that Trump pretends he invented the immigration issue. He says when he was fighting the Gang of 8 immigration reform proposal, “Where was Donald? He was firing Dennis Rodman on Celebrity Apprentice.”
Related: Brian Sandoval withdraws name from being considered for supreme court seat Laugh line.
Related: From surprising synonyms to expected insults, the top nicknames for Trump Then Trump hits Cruz for being unpopular. “Nobody likes you.” Trump:
Related: How Obama gave us Donald Trump | Matt Laslo “I get along with everybody. You get along with none of them... you don’t have one Republican senator backing you, and you work with these people... you should be ashamed of yourself.”
1.09am GMT Cruz flips the attack. “Donald, if you want to be liked in Washington, that’s not a good attribute for president,” he says. He also hits Trump for hiring foreigners.
01:09 “Anyone who really cared about illegal immigration wouldn’t be hiring illegal immigrants,” Cruz says.
Former Mexican president: 'I’m not going to pay for that fucking wall' Trump hits back at Cruz, calling him duplicitous for leaving a 2012 loan from Goldman Sachs after financial disclosure forms.
Scott Bixby 1.56am GMT
Former Mexican president Vicente Fox has given an uncompromising response to Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s plans to make Mexico pay for a wall along the US border with Mexico. 01:56
“I’m not going to pay for that fucking wall. He should pay for it. He’s got the money,” Fox told Jorge Ramos on Fusion. Rubio hits Trump on immigration
Related: Former Mexican president blasts Trump, says he will not pay for wall Rubio says that he would secure the border “before we doing anything on immigration.” Then he turns to Trump: “a lot of these positions that he’s now taking are new to him.” He mentions a 2011 Trump position in favor of a path to citizenship and the fact that Trump criticized 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney for talking about “self-deportation.”
1.05am GMT Rubio goes straight to the attack.
01:05 He then picks up on a New York Times report that Trump hired foreign workers on immigration visas instead of Americans at a Florida resort.
Sanders on TV for debate warmup Trump defends himself:
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is being interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC in advance of the Republican debate. “As far as the people that I’ve hired... during the absolute prime season... you could not get help, it’s the up season... everybody agrees with me on that. They were part-time jobs.. because you couldn’t get help in that hot, hot section of Florida.”
Sanders starts off talking about Woody Guthrie and how he uses This Land Is Your Land at campaign rallies. Sanders visited the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Wednesday. Guthrie grew up in Okemah in central Oklahoma. Then Trump defends his criticism of Mitt Romney:
“I think what he did was capture the spirit of working Americans in an extraordinary way,” Sanders says. “He should’ve won that election... he ran a terrible campaign, he was a terrible candidate, that’s an election that should’ve been won.”
12.58am GMT Applause.
00:58 But Rubio will not let him go:
You ask, we answer: top trending questions on Donald Trump “You did criticize him for using the term “self-deportation.” Then Rubio says, “you’re the only one on this stage for hiring people to work illegally.”
Google is tracking the top questions people are asking the Internet about Donald Trump. The top five are: Trump has a great comeback: “I’m the only one on this stage who’s hired people.”
"What does Donald Trump's win mean for the Republican party?" & more trending Qs on @realDonaldTrump #GOPDebate pic.twitter.com/6hVBdDswqP Rubio keeps after Trump, accusing him of hiring workers from Poland. He tells the audience to Google it.
Let’s give these a crack: “I’ve hired tens of thousands of people,” Trump says.
12.46am GMT “Many from other countries,” Rubio says.
00:46 Sizzling!
Jon Swaine 1.50am GMT
As he attempts to make his lead in the Republican presidential race unassailable at next week’s Super Tuesday primary contests, Donald Trump is being confronted with resurfaced allegations that he sexually assaulted and tried to rape a woman in the early 1990s, reports the Guardian’s Jon Swaine: 01:50
The woman alleged in a federal lawsuit in 1997 that Trump violated her “physical and mental integrity” when he touched her intimately without consent after her boyfriend went into business with him, leaving her “emotionally devastated [and] distraught”. Cruz gets the Q. He says “the people who get forgotten in this debate” are the millions of “legal” immigrants who are losing their jobs – because, he implies, of undocumented workers.
The woman, whom the Guardian is not naming, dropped the $125m lawsuit in Manhattan the following month. It coincided with a separate legal dispute between Trump and the woman’s then-boyfriend over an alleged breach of contract relating to their beauty pageant business venture. Trump claimed at the time that the lawsuit alleging assault was aimed at pressuring him to settle the other dispute, which reportedly he did for a six-figure sum later that year. Cruz says let’s fight for legal immigrants instead of ones “who break the law.” He says he’s led the fight against granting citizenship to undocumented migrants.
On Wednesday, Trump’s counsel Michael Cohen told a reporter for Mail Online that there was “no truth” to the lawsuit’s allegations. “The plaintiff in the matter ... would acknowledge the same,” Cohen was quoted as saying. Then Trump brags about Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona endorsing him. There’s some applause. Some Trump fans in this crowd.
Yet when asked by the Guardian whether she stood by the allegations detailed in the lawsuit, the woman said in a text message: “Yes.” The woman, now a successful makeup artist in New York, declined to discuss the allegations in detail. 1.48am GMT
Read the full piece here: 01:48
Related: Sexual assault allegations against Trump resurface as Super Tuesday nears First Q is about immigration. For Trump. You want to remove 11m undocumented migrants from the USA. But in your words “the good ones” can come back in. Cruz wouldn’t allow that and calls your plan “amnesty.” Is it?
Updated “He was in charge of amnesty, he was the leader, and you can ask Marco,” too, Trump says. Trump says the only reason it’s even an issue is because he brought it up. “We either have a country or we don’t have a country.”
at 12.48am GMT 1.46am GMT
12.38am GMT 01:46
00:38 Introductury statements
Tom Dart Ben Carson: America is “heading off the abyss of destruction.” A call for civility: “Marco, Donald, Ted, John: We will not solve any of these problems by trying to destroy each other... It’s not about us.”
The Guardian’s Tom Dart reports from a protest outside the debate venue at the University of Houston: John Kasich: My grandfather was a coal miner and my grandmother was an immigrant. For viewers: You can do whatever you want to do in your life. America is an amazing country. Shoot for the stars. America’s great and you can do it.
As smartly-dressed guests headed for the debate venue, several hundred protestors massed then marched along the edge of the security perimeter at the University of Houston campus, agitating for a variety of causes, among them Black Lives Matter, pro-immigration, anti-Trump and anti-Cruz. Marco Rubio: We have to decide the identity of America in the 21st century. Ronald Reagan. Conservatism. Hopes and dreams. Are we still that kind of party or one who “preys on people’s anger and fears?” Applause.
Dozens were with Fight for $15, calling for a $15 minimum wage. GOP contenders including Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio rejected the idea of raising the minimum when the issue came up at last November’s debate in Milwaukee, while Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have proposed an increase. Ted Cruz: Welcome to Texas. [Applause.] I grew up here. I graduated from high school here. I am a senator from here. Democrats tell me I didn’t vote for you, but you’re doing what you said you would do. As president I will do that.
“It’s something that we need, we have families that are struggling,” said a demonstrator, Carlton, who works at a burger restaurant and goes to college while trying to take care of his three-year-old son by himself. Donald Trump: My whole thing is Make America Great Again. We don’t win anymore. Isis, Obamacare, our Swiss cheese borders. We’re gonna start winning again. It’s gonna be a big difference.
Another fast-food worker, Janice, 47, said that she earns $8 an hour. “There’s no way a human can live off that,” she said. She lives with five children, and a granddaughter she looks after, in a studio apartment. “It’s real hard,” she said. 1.40am GMT
“Prices go up and still my wage doesn’t go up… Everyone lives in one room. That’s what $8 is doing for me right now.” 01:40
She had no strong opinions about the politicians who were soon to take the stage a couple of hundred metres away - while they indulge in rhetoric, her focus is on practical and immediate matters. “I’m trying to get a roof over my head,” she said. Our Ben Jacobs is in the room. And we’re going to fact check this after the commercial break:
Updated Ben Carson is wearing a weirdly striped tie, not a solid color
at 12.44am GMT 1.38am GMT
12.33am GMT 01:38
00:33 There they are. One of these men will be the Republican presidential nominee, unless something really unpredictable happens.
Google’s at the Houston debate and they’ve produced a 360-degree view of what the room looks like from Trump’s podium: Here comes Deana Carter to sing the national anthem. And here comes the high note. O’er the land of the fuh-reee – cleanly hit, no showing off with the extra octave. And the home of the brave. Applause. Nicely done. The crowd chants USA! USA!
It seems like it would be hard to think in there? So loudly colorful and lights and purple seats and too many shapes – and this is without Wolf Blitzer. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal sighting.
Updated And a quick commercial break.
at 12.59am GMT 1.34am GMT
12.27am GMT 01:34
00:27 Suprise guests at the debate – Wolf Blitzer, the moderator, introduces former president George HW Bush and Barbara Bush.
Sanders in Flint, Michigan: 'never again' Notably not in the hall: one Jeb Bush.
Ryan Felton The candidates are being introduced.
The debate isn’t scheduled to start for more than an hour, and if it starts on time that’ll be a first. So let’s detour for a moment to Vermont senator Bernie Sander’s visit to Flint, Michigan, today. The Guardian’s Ryan Felton reports: 1.33am GMT
Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders called the lead contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, “one of the more serious public health crises in the modern history of this country” as he addressed community members in his first visit to the city. 01:33
With the Michigan presidential primary looming on 8 March, Sanders addressed a crowd of some 300 residents in a church, saying he hoped that “out of the tragedy” would come “fundamental changes in public policy.” CNN is running its hype reel ahead of the action onstage in Houston. What’s on your mind in the comments?
“In Flint, the situation may be more extreme, but all over this country, our infrastructure is crumbling,” Sanders told a majority-white crowd. The Vermont senator said he has proposed a $1 trillion infrastructure program that aims to “provide safe drinking water” and create “millions of decent paying jobs.” Horrendous as it sounds, it appears Trump is poised to win the Republican ticket. There are enough disenfranchised, angry and fed up Americans for whom the "Great American Dream" of hope and opportunity has become a nightmare of despair and joblessness. They have seen the corrupt bankers and establishment prosper while their standards of living have plummeted. They want revenge and believe rightly or wrongly that Trump will give them what they are looking for.
“It is my hope that the American people will look at Flint and say never again,” he said. Looks like this "minutes away" thing is going to be another 45 minute delay. They must be having a pre-argument back stage. You know, a warm up.
In answer to one question, he renewed his call for Michigan governor Rick Snyder to resign. Bunch of idiots. I never thought i'd miss a Bush!
“The dereliction of this community has been so extraordinary, that I think in good conscious he should resign,” he said. Snyder, a Republican, has rebuffed calls to step down. 1.30am GMT
At the close of the event, Sanders said the US has to help “rebuild Flint” and “get our priorities right.” 01:30
12.02am GMT Got a minute? Sign up for daily politics fun
00:02 If you like what you read here, we’d encourage you to sign up for The Campaign Minute, our quickie politics roundup, delivered once a day to your phone or inbox.
Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 10th Republican presidential debate in the 2016 race for the White House. The Minute brings you the top headlines, the best photography, the telling-est quotes and the wackiest moments from the 2016 presidential campaign trail. It’s all delivered in a speedily scrollable format (full disclosure: you can read it in 45 seconds).
Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs is with Tom Dart in Houston, Texas, for the proceedings. This blog is anchored out of New York City and let’s see if we can’t find readers from all around the world. Hit the comments and tell us where you’re calling from! Here’s what it looks like on your phone:
With only five days to go till 12 states vote on so-called Super Tuesday, it’s do-or-die night for would-be rivals who might take out Donald Trump. The question is, what could they possibly do on the debate stage that would change things? Trump has won the last three state contests running away, and it’s hard to find an upcoming state where he looks vulnerable. Don’t want to spend your every minute following politics – but want to keep caught up? Sign up now for the Campaign Minute
A new Quinnipiac poll of Florida Republicans, for example, measured Trump ahead of Senator Marco Rubio by 16 points, 44-28. Marco Rubio is from Florida. 1.30am GMT
Related: Debate is last chance for Rubio and Cruz to dent Trump before Super Tuesday 01:30
Tonight we’re looking for Rubio and Texas senator Ted Cruz to go all Eight Mile on the frontrunner (and yes we’re aware that’s Dr Ben Carson’s song). If there was any reason for them to pull punches before, it disappeared in Trump’s 46% crusher win in Nevada on Tuesday. Trump won across every demographic. It looks an awful lot like what happened in Vegas is going national. The contestants are, alphabetically:
Ohio governor John Kasich joins Carson, Cruz and Rubio tonight to fill out the non-Trump field. 1.30am GMT
Boring Details 01:30
Where: University of Houston in Houston, Texas: “Space City” And then there were five…
When: 8.30pm ET, CNN says, which probably means more like 9pm Here we go – the 10th Republican debate of the 2016 race for the White House is about to begin. You’ve been told and told what to look for: will Florida senator Marco Rubio or Texas senator Ted Cruz (or Ohio governor John Kasich??) mount an attack on accomplished politician Donald Trump that could somehow alter or interrupt the nominee-in-waiting’s authoritative lead in polling in the 11 states to host Republican voting on Super Tuesday this … Tuesday?
Who: The debate is hosted by CNN, Telemundo and the Salem Media Group What would such an attack look like? Do debates matter that much? Can anything be said – after nine previous debates, countless individual rallies, town halls or whatever, enough campaign commercials to sink Noah and all Trump’s tweeting – can anything be said onstage in Houston tonight that would change the mind of the average Trump supporter sitting in Georgia or Texas or Virginia?
The candidates are, alphabetically: From where we sit, it will be dramatically interesting to watch them try. Thanks for joining our coverage and pitch in in the comments with who you think’s up, who’s down and who’s next out.
The moderators / questioners are, as billed:
Why: pick a GOP nominee
What to Watch For In Tonight’s Debate: A bald-headed man, seated in the fourth row, noiselessly weeping.