Currently on stage debating: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich. The debate is moderated by ABC’s David Muir and Martha Raddatz, with questions also from WMUR’s Josh McElveen and conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham.
The debate is scheduled to run until 11 PM ET. It airs on ABC and streaming on ABCNews.com.
Every time they go to Carson, seems like he whines about not having been asked a question in a while. Psst, your competitors aren’t bothering to attack you. That’s why you’re not getting a lot of opportunities to talk.
Q to Cruz: You’ve said torture is wrong. Is waterboarding torture?
Cruz: Not under the definition of the law.
Q: Would you bring it back?
Cruz: Not in a big way, but …
Trump: Waterboarding hell yes.
Bush: I would not bring back waterboarding. Closing Guantanamo is a complete disaster. Something something. A little incoherent—maybe because waterboarding is a touchy subject for a Bush?
Rubio: Anti-terrorism is not law enforcement and we shouldn’t talk about what we’d do. We should be putting people into Guantanamo.
Cruz: president has inherent power to use waterboarding (e.g. despite federal statutes). Also, he thinks Obama is abusing executive power.— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) February 7, 2016
Cruz: president has inherent power to use waterboarding (e.g. despite federal statutes). Also, he thinks Obama is abusing executive power.
Kasich has an almost Trumpesque bravado about all the amazing stuff he’s going to get done in his first 100 days.
Cruz gets a question about New Hampshire’s heroin problem and talks at length about his half sister who struggled with addiction and ultimately died from overdose. Cruz does some rare self-humanizing with this one, talking about his own efforts to help his sister and her son.
New thread here.