Welcome to the TheWrap’s live blog for tonight’s Fox News GOP debate’s undercard event.
The early debate, often nicknamed the “Happy Hour” debate, will feature Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina and Jim Gilmore. Did you forget there’s a Republican candidate named Jim Gilmore? We understand.
This is probably the last “Happy Hour” debate of this presidential campaign, since some candidates are expected to drop out if they underperform in the Iowa caucuses.
Tonight’s participants received a minimum of 1 percent support in at least one recent national poll without qualifying for the primetime debate. If early debates are your thing, stay tuned and refresh your page often because we will update it with thoughts throughout the event.
And we’re off to the races.
4:02 p.m. PST: Huckabee goes first. He wants to not only “defund Planned Parenthood, but let’s do something bolder. Let’s get rid of abortion once and for all.”
4:05 p.m. PST: Santorum is asked whether Monday’s caucuses in Iowa is his “last stand.”
He goes on a rant complaining that the debate was not advertised, blaming the network for his failure to register in the polls.
“This is what the media has been doing over the past year, and trying to segregate, and take Iowans out of the process.”
Santorum complains about his lack of coverage from the media because of the “entertainer” in the Republican race — meaning Donald Trump.
4:08 p.m. PST: Fiorina: “The media thinks they own this country.”
4:10 p.m. PST: Gilmore is alive! The first question ever for former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore in a GOP presidential debate. He had not visited Iowa as of a week ago.
“Newsflash President Obama. Newsflash, Mrs. Clinton,” she said. “Climate change is not our most pressing national security threat.”
The line gets a thunderous applause form the audience.
4:24 p.m. PST: Huckabee says people who live in “bubbles” of New York, D.C., and Hollywood “don’t have a clue about how hard people out here are working every single day.”
4:27 p.m. PST: Meanwhile…
.@realDonaldTrump arrives in #Iowa for rally https://t.co/24EBbx14wz pic.twitter.com/0Qp97R1WwN
— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) January 29, 2016
4:32 p.m. PST: Huckabee discusses how “nobody wants to be poor” and says “people are poor because they don’t know how to get out of the hole.”
4:32 p.m. PST: Hmmm … We were wondering the same thing.
How long until #UnhappyGilmore starts trending? #JimGilmore #Happyhourdebate
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) January 29, 2016
4:30 p.m. PST: Santorum is asked about a woman at a Bernie Sanders rally who cried as she talked about the difficulty of living on the minimum wage. He’s asked what he would tell her.
Santorum insists the country needs more jobs and a “renaissance” in manufacturing.
4:35 p.m. PST: Gilmore actually said, “When I’m president.”
He says he is a board member of the NRA before proclaiming, “When Jim Gilmore’s President of the United States, I can tell you this. Gun control is not going to be an issue,” adding, “I’ll veto it as fast as it takes Hilary Clinton to eliminate her emails.”
Zing!
4:42 p.m. PST: Shots fired as Fiorina says Clinton “will do anything to gain and hang on to power, anything. Listen, if my husband did what Bill Clinton did, I would have left him long ago.
Florina then delivers two great zingers: “Hillary Clinton has been climbing the ladder to try and get power and here now she is trying for the White House. She is probably more qualified for the big house, honestly.
And then she hits with another crazy one-liner: “She has escaped prosecution more times than El Chapo, perhaps Sean Penn should interview her.”
4:48 p.m PST: Fiorina has Santorum’s back, “It is outrageous frankly, that Fox News, and you, would question the pro-life credentials of Rick Santorum.”
4:52 p.m. PST: Huckabee is asked about Democrats supporting a socialist.
I honestly don’t understand how anybody with IQ above plant life would honestly think that we would be better off if we let the government have all of the private property and that the government would dole out what they thought we should have,” Huckabee says, adding, “I’m not ‘feeling the Bern,’ Bill. I’m not feeling it.”
4:53 p.m. PST: And look who’s trending on Twitter (second from the top)… Did we call it or did we call it?
