Live updates: Republican presidential debate

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Read a full transcript of the debate, which has been annotated by Washington Post reporters and readers using Genius.

The science of vaccine safety has long been settled. The political debate hasn’t quite.

Donald Trump again called for smaller vaccine doses Wednesday, suggesting that reducing their size — though not ending the practice — may reduce autism, even though scientists have said repeatedly that there is no link between vaccines and autism.

Trump has previously sounded a skeptical note on the issue. Last year, he sounded off on Twitter:

Other candidates have struggled with the issue on the campaign trail this cycle. Earlier this year, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have both called for more choice in vaccination requirements, prompting medical experts to voice concern.

“When you see educated people or elected officials giving credence to things that have been completely debunked, an idea that’s been shown to be responsible for multiple measles and pertussis outbreaks in recent years, it’s very concerning,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease physician at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh. He called the comments from Paul particularly troubling because Paul is a doctor.

Christie’s aides quickly tried to clarify his remarks, insisting in a statement that the Republican governor believes vaccines are “an important public health protection.”

Trump’s response Wednesday the first time a candidate has seemingly stumbled a bit on debate night over a vaccine question. Four years ago, it was Michelle Bachmann:

But controversy ensued when Bachmann said after the debate that the HPV vaccine is “potentially a very dangerous drug” and related the story of a mother who claimed that her daughter had become mentally retarded because of the aftereffects of the vaccine.

In a subsequent debate, Bachmann was asked: “Do you stand by your statement that the HPV vaccine is potentially dangerous, and if not, should you be more careful when you’re talking about a public health issue?”

As shown above, she immediately denied that she had made that claim.

She said this even though the transcript shows that she called the vaccine “potentially a very dangerous drug” before she mentioned the distraught mother.

Bachmann also never acknowledged that it was a mistake to pass on unverified information — and she never made any attempt to identify the mother. She simply reinvented history and pretended that she never made the statement in question.

It was one of the unforced errors that helped sink Bachmann’s presidential bid.

SOCIAL STUDIES | First came the awkward Carson-Trump handshake/high-five heard ’round the web: 

Then, later, a slightly more aggressive Bush-Trump low-five:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

ON THE ISSUES | As the debate was winding down, there were a couple quick rounds of some more lighthearted questions, including this one: Which woman would you like to see on the 10-dollar bill?

One by one, the long line of male Republicans on the debate stage listed off women who should be honored:  Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky picked Susan B. Anthony. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas both picked Rosa Parks, as did Donald Trump. Two candidates picked non-Americans: former Florida governor Jeb Bush went with Margaret Thatcher, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich picked Mother Teresa. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says Abigail Adams deserves more recognition, while Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker named Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee named his wife, while retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson picked his mom, because she “refused to be a victim.”

The only woman on the stage, Carly Fiorina, went in a different direction. She doesn’t want to change any currency because: “It’s a gesture. I don’t think it helps to change our history.” She added that she hopes women will soon be recognized as the majority they are, not the special interest group for which they are often treated.

Fiorina has not shied away from gender issues in this election — joking about hormones in the White House, while calling out reporters and fellow Republicans who make sexist comments. She has been one of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fiercest critics, partly because as a woman she is able to make those attacks without the usual charges of sexism.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

ON THE ISSUES | Ted Cruz is upset that the main American diplomatic mission in Israel is in Tel Aviv, and not Jerusalem. His ire was stoked by a June Supreme Court ruling that blocked a young Israeli-American citizen from listing his place of birth in his passport as “Israel” instead of “Jerusalem.”

What’s the issue? I explained when it flared up last year:

The issue of sovereignty over this ancient city is a very delicate matter. Israel considers Jerusalem its eternal capital and has controlled the city in its entirety since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which saw Israel also seize the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The United States, on the other hand, let alone other countries less well disposed to Israel, does not recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

Washington is the main proponent of the moribund peace process and the two-state solution, which, among other things, prescribes East Jerusalem as the capital of a separate (and thus far unrealized) Palestinian state. Successive administrations in the White House, irrespective of their own ideological predilections, have maintained the U.S.’s longstanding neutrality on the question of Jerusalem’s status — even as Israel has steadily (and controversially) changed the facts on the ground.

Like some important figures in the right-wing cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, some of the Republican candidates clearly don’t believe in the future of the two-state solution, either. Mike Huckabee recently grandstanded in a West Bank settlement that’s considered illegal in the eyes of the international community. And Cruz carries on with his call for the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

“I am the only person on this dais — the only person — that fought very, very hard against us, and I wasn’t a sitting politician going into Iraq, because I said going into Iraq — that was in 2003, you can check it out, check out — I’ll give you 25 different stories.”

–Trump

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump. AFP PHOTO / FREDERIC J. BROWN

THE FACT CHECKER | Trump claimed that there were “25 different stories” demonstrating his opposition but BuzzFeed News reported that an extensive review could not turn up any statements by Trump before the invasion in March 2003. However, the week the war started, he was quoted by The Washington Post as saying “the war’s a mess.” But apparently he also told Fox News that because of the war, “I think the market’s going to go up like a rocket.”

Trump became significantly more vocal about being against the war in 2004—when U.S. troops began to be bogged down in an insurgency.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

THE CONTENDERS | As candidates debated how the United States should regulate and police marijuana — with Jeb Bush admitting that he smoked some back in high school — Carly Fiorina said that it’s dangerous to send a message to children that pot is just as safe to consume as beer. Fiorina shared that she and her husband, Frank Fiorina, “buried a child” because of drugs. Here’s a passage from an article I wrote in early May when Fiorina called for decriminalizing drug addiction:

For Fiorina, the issue is a personal one: One of her two stepdaughters, whom she helped raise from a young age, struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse for years and died in 2009. Lori Ann Fiorina was only 34.

“At that moment, we lost both the woman she was and the woman she could have been,” Fiorina wrote in the prologue of her latest book, “Rising to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey,” which goes on sale Tuesday. “All our hope for her and her life had died. … A heart truly can feel as though it is breaking apart into a thousand shattered pieces.”

Fiorina described her stepdaughter as full of potential — smart, talented, hardworking, outgoing, kind and compassionate. But Lori drank heavily in college and later, while working in pharmaceutical sales, she began abusing prescription drugs. Bulimia made the problem even worse. Although Lori went into rehab three times, Fiorina wrote, addiction overtook her life.

“As anyone who has loved someone with an addiction knows, you can force someone into rehab, but you can’t make her well,” she wrote. “Only the addict can do that. Lori couldn’t — or wouldn’t — take that first step of admitting she was powerless over her addiction. And ultimately her body just gave out.”

You can read more here: Carly Fiorina: ‘Drug addiction shouldn’t be criminalized.’

THE CONTENDERS | At one point in the debate tonight, Donald Trump said that speaking English is a key part of assimilating to the United States — and that he finds it off-putting that former Florida governor Jeb Bush speaks Spanish so much.

“This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish,” Trump said at one point.

Bush defended himself, saying that English is his first language and the one that he usually speaks — but that when someone asks him a question in Spanish, he will respond in the same language. Marco Rubio jumped in and said that while speaking English is “unifying,” he would rather communicate directly with Spanish-speaking Americans than have his message conveyed to them by a translator.

Soon after this back and forth, Hillary Rodham Clinton started tweeting in Spanish:

ON THE ISSUES | The American West is facing an epic drought and simultaneously burning up with what’s expected to be yet another record-setting wildfire season — extreme weather events that climate change activists say is evidence of the negative impacts of shifting weather patterns.

Most Republican presidential candidates now agree climate change is occurring, but question whether humans are the cause and whether we should do anything about it — especially something that could hurt businesses. Meanwhile, the Obama administration released stringent rules in August designed to cut down on U.S. coal production.

The United States under Obama has invested heavily in alternative energy forms, such as solar and wind power, as well as expanded its natural gas production, extracted through a controversial process known as fracking, that detractors say pollutes the environment and causes earthquakes.

Relatedly, the next president will likely get to decide whether to build the fourth stage of the Keystone XL pipeline to ship Canadian oil to Nebraska — something the administration hasn’t yet done. Also on the table could be whether to lift the U.S.’s four-decade-old ban on exports of crude oil — something House Republicans are pushing for.

THE CONTENDERS | Carly Fiorina took on Trump and his comment regarding her “persona.” Hear her other memorable moments from the second GOP debate.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Carly Fiorina dinged Jeb Bush for smoking marijuana as a young person. Shortly afterward, this message appeared on Bush’s Twitter account:

ON THE ISSUES | A summer filled with mass shootings — including two local Roanoke, Va., reporters gunned down in August on live television, a deadly Lafayette, La., movie theater shooting in July by a man with mental problems and another apparently racially motivated mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, S.C. — has brought the gun debate back into the spotlight.

Polls consistently show that upward of 90 percent of Americans support expanding background checks, but a majority of Americans are doubtful that changing gun laws will help. And a new background checks bill failed in Congress after the 2012 Newtown massacre and hasn’t really been resurrected since.

Still, there could be some movement in Congress in the fall; in August, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn (Tex.), introduced legislation designed to encourage states to send more information about residents with serious mental problems to the federal background-check system. As for restricting gun ownership, though, it’s a complete non-starter for Republicans.

STOPWATCH | Trump’s still on top:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

THE CONTENDERS | No, he wasn’t on the stage. But three of the most memorable moments from tonight’s debates involved the 43rd president.

“You’re brother’s administration gave us Barack Obama,” Donald Trump admonished Jeb Bush in the prime-time debate.

Bush offered an impassioned response: “There’s one thing about my brother: He kept us safe.”

Later, Ted Cruz criticized George W. Bush’s decision to nominate John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

Bush said Roberts had “made some really good decisions” but had no “proven, extensive” record.

In the first debate, Lindsey Graham noted how well George W. Bush did among Hispanic voters and regretted that more recent Republican candidates have done a lot worse.

The 43rd president remains a major topic of debate in the GOP when it comes to Iraq, Roberts and immigration — issues that are at the forefront of the GOP conversation in 2015.

Courtesy of The Post’s Katie Zezima:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Maybe he had some extra time during the commercial breaks?

He isn’t the only one to think social while on stage, apparently:

“I was made U.S. attorney by President [George W.] Bush on Sept. 10, 2001.”

–Christie

THE FACT CHECKER | Nope. Christie said this twice last debate, and it’s still not correct. Let’s review the timeline again.

Christie officially was nominated to the vacant U.S. attorney position in New Jersey on Dec. 7, 2001 – three months after the attacks. He was confirmed to the position in late December 2001 and began his role January 2002.

Christie emerged as a front-runner for the job by early September of 2001. He later said in interviews that the Bush White House called him on Sept. 10, 2001, saying he would be nominated to the position and that the background check process would begin. He didn’t hear back until two weeks after 9/11, when the White House said his nomination would be delayed because of a lack of FBI agents for his background check in the aftermath of the attacks.

It’s not the same thing as being “made” attorney general on Sept. 10, 2001.

“As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

–Carly Fiorina

Fiorina might have trouble finding this video to show to Clinton. No such video has surfaced, certainly with no scenes inside a Planned Parenthood facility.

But the third episode of secretly-taped videos by the Center for Medical Progress includes a disturbing interview with a technician at at biotechnology company that had partnered with Planned Parenthood affiliates in California to purchase aborted fetus parts.

Holly O’Donnell, the technician, described witnessing a scene similar to Fiorina’s description, but it is not actually shown. A supervisor “just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think,” she says. “She gave me the scissors and told me that I had to cut down the middle of the face [to get to the brain]. I can’t even describe what that feels like.”

There are images of an aborted fetus inter-cut with her narrative. But the procedure she describes is not shown.

ON THE ISSUES | Sen. Marco Rubio’s assertion that North Korea has the potential to strike “where we are standing” — in their case, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.  — is highly unlikely, at least in the near future.

In May, Pyongyang claimed it could miniaturize nuclear weapons, which is vital step to building nuclear missiles. In response, the Pentagon declared that the North Koreans did not have that ability.

“Our assessment of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities has not changed,” National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement. “We do not think that they have that capacity.”

“However, they are working on developing a number of long range missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, that could eventually threaten our allies and the homeland,” he added.

Read more here:

North Korea is preparing a space rocket launch

This is how far those North Korean missiles can actually reach

ON THE ISSUES | “Arab name, Arab name, Arab name.”

That’s what Trump intoned during his halting response to a question about his earlier confusion of Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s shadowy Quds Force, and the Kurds, a stateless ethnic group spread across four countries in the Middle East. Soleimani is not an ethnic Arab. Nor are the Kurds — a different ethnicity with a language that’s more closely related to Persian than Arabic — Arab either.

If you missed it, the Twitter pedants (including yours truly) got in on the act.

asd

STOPWATCH | Donald Trump dominated the conversation during the first hour of the debate — but to a far lesser degree than he did during last month’s debate in Cleveland.

The billionaire businessman accounted for only three in 10 mentions of the candidates across traditional, broadcast and social media, according to our analytics partners at Zignal Labs. Here’s the breakdown:

In the non-Trump category, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and John Kasich are getting mentions. To be sure, many of the Kentucky senator’s mentions are linked to him being on the receiving end of a personal jab from Trump. Nearly 14,000 of the almost 25,000 Rand Paul Tweets during the first hour also mentioned Trump.

ON THE ISSUES | Donald Trump’s foreign policy chops have been called into question by Marco Rubio. But international relations are an issue of emerging importance for Republican voters according to a new CNN poll.

Fifty-two percent of Republican voters say this is extremely important in how they will vote for president. That is far higher than issues such as abortion, gun control, education or the wealth gap in America. 

SOCIAL STUDIES | Watch Twitter react, state by state, to Carly Fiorina’s swipe at Donald Trump over his comment about her face.

Via our analytics partners at Zignal Labs, watch how she dominated the conversation across the country in the ten minutes after calling out The Donald.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

“As the brand new first ever pro-life governor of New Jersey since Roe versus Wade, I defunded Planned Parenthood.”

–New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.)

Republican U.S presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

This is a shift in Christie’s rhetoric, tying his decision to veto Planned Parenthood funding to his anti-abortion beliefs. A review of news coverage from 2010 and Christie’s vetoes of funding measures for Planned Parenthood clinics shows that Christie previously explained his veto as a measure to balance the state budget — not as a pro-life measure.

The Star Ledger also recently reported that when Christie vetoed $7.5 million in funding for family planning clinics in 2010, he said that the funding was duplicative and that the state could not afford it. “However, Christie maintained publicly through the years that his family planning vetoes were made because the funding was duplicative. He said so much as recently as 2013, when he was running for re-election in a state where polls show support for abortion rights,” the Star Ledger reported.

In his veto statement, Christie said New Jersey was confronting “unprecedented financial difficulties.” As a result of his office’s need to balance the budget, “many worthy programs were cut or eliminated. Grants to organizations providing this part of family planning services were one of the many programs eliminated from the Fiscal Year 2011 budget.”

“There are several facilities in Iran they designate as military facilities that are off limit all together. Beyond that, the other facilities, we give them [Iran] 24 days notice before inspecting them. That is designed to allow them to hide the evidence. And most astonishingly, this agreement trusts the Iranians to inspect themselves.”

–Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

THE FACT CHECKER | Cruz repeats two dubious claims about the international nuclear agreement on Iran.

Iran’s declared nuclear sites, such as the Natanz uraninum encirchment facility, will be under continuous monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency – and the IAEA would have immediate access. The agreement even allows IAEA monitoring of Iran’s centrifuge production and storage facilities, the procurement chain, and mining and milling of uranium — verification measures that many experts say exceed previous negotiated nuclear deals.

At undeclared sites, the IAEA can demand instant access — but Iran could refuse. So the agreement sets up a process to resolve the stand-off. But 24 days is the maximum, not the minimum, as Cruz claims.

Ironically, this provision was added to remove a loophole in an enhanced IAEA inspections regime known as the Additional Protocol, which Iran has agreed to accept. The Additional Protocol requires access to suspect sites in 24 hours, but it does not have immediate consequences for a nation that refuses to permit access. The deal’s 24-day provision is intended to close that loophole, though critics say that if it is stretched to the maximum, Iran might be able to eliminate evidence.

As for self-inspections, Cruz is referring a side agreement between Iran and IAEA about the collection of samples at a military site, which is not subject to regular nuclear safeguard procedures. A disputed media report suggested Iran would take the samples itself, but other experts have said it would be overseen by IAEA inspectors. The actual process has not been confirmed.

THE CONTENDERS | After Donald Trump and and Carly Fiorina got into a back-and-forth over their respective business careers, Chris Christie edged into the conversation with a blunt response: “They could care less about your careers.”

“They” are the viewers and voters. And Christie’s point was that a tick-tock history of how the businessman and woman ran their companies does little for the middle-class. It was one of Christie’s most notable moments — not just in the debate, but in his entire campaign, which has gained little steam so far.

Christie also told Fiorina that she couldn’t interrupt him.

All in all, it was vintage Christie. An outspoken retort reminiscent of the town halls that made him a national star. It remains to be seen whether taking on Fiorina so bluntly will backfire. But Christie just got himself into the conversation — which is a big part of the battle in large debates like this.

ON THE ISSUES | Donald Trump and others in the GOP field may be adamant about the absolute need to speak English while in the U.S., but there’s one foreigner who’s not paying attention: Pope Francis. The Argentine pontiff arrives in the United States next week and will deliver 18 speeches. Only four of them will be in English.

Pope Francis has made no secret of his progressive views on issues of immigration, as well as his belief in the principles of multiculturalism, and is expected to focus on them while in the United States. From the Financial Times:

“The Pope obviously has a very soft spot in his heart for immigrants,” said one Holy See insider. “He won’t say, ‘open all borders’, but there’s no two ways about it, he will say, ‘let’s give our immigrant brothers and sisters a fair chance’.”

How to understand Pope Francis

For Pope Francis, an unfinished mission in Cuba

Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Pool/Getty Images)

ON THE ISSUES | Virtually every Republican on the stage tonight, it seems, was a China-basher.

Scott Walker, for example, repeated his call for President Obama to cancel a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping next week and demanded that Washington holds Beijing accountable for recent cyber attacks and currency manipulations that helped send global stock markets in a nosedive recently.  Other issues of concern to the Republicans include China’s militarization of the South China Sea and continued persecution of Christians and human rights activists.

While some of the Republicans may seem out of step with Americans on issues of immigration or sending more U.S. forces into war, on China the Republicans seems to have the pulse of voters. The Pew Research Center last month found that only 38 percent of Americans view China favorably, down from 51 percent four years earlier.

STOPWATCH | Donald Trump acknowledged before the debate that he could afford to “tone it down a little bit,” as The Fix’s Amber Phillips notes, but he doesn’t appear to be holding back. Our stopwatch shows he dominated slightly more airtime during the first hour of tonight’s debate than during the first hour of the August GOP debate:

STOPWATCH | With the main Republican debate more than half over, moderator Jake Tapper has been the dominant figure among the three-member panel.

Tapper has asked the vast majority of questions and follow-up questions, leaving little room for his colleagues, CNN correspondent Dana Bash and Salem Radio host Hugh Hewitt. Tapper has deferred to Bash and Hewitt just once so far.

Meanwhile, the candidates have competed for his attention, with numerous calls of “Jake! Jake! Jake!” from the podium.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

SOCIAL  STUDIES | Since her dig at Donald Trump over his comment about her face, Carly Fiorina is actually drawing more media attention than Trump.

Just before the first commercial break, CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked the only woman in the GOP field about a comment that the front-runner made to Rolling Stone.

“I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,” Fiorina said to loud applause.

Trump replied, “I think she’s got a beautiful face, and I think she’s a beautiful woman.”

Via our analytics partners at Zignal Labs, here is a list of the mentions of the two rivals across broadcast, online and social media during the moments after their back-and-forth.

ON THE ISSUES | Trump has called for ending tax breaks for the wealthy, such as the carried-interest exemption that allows some hedge-fund managers and venture capitalists to pay a lower tax rate than average Americans. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has said that some banks are too big. Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) wants to end monetary policy that favors the wealthy.

In a moment where two-thirds of Americans (68 percent) believe our economic system favors the wealthy rather than being fair — including about half of Republicans, according to a July Washington Post/ABC News poll — the Republican party finds itself these days talking about income inequality almost as much as Democrats. And Trump’s increasing populist bent makes this particularly timely.

BY THE NUMBERS | Republican candidates expressed mixed views of Donald Trump’s strong anti-immigration positions tonight — but most rank-and-file Republicans approve of Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the issue, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week. 

Fifty-six percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents said they support Trump’s immigration proposals, while 33 percent were opposed.

A look at some specifics helps explain Trump’s appeal in the GOP: On the key policy question of the status of undocumented immigrants currently in the United States, 60 percent of the public says they should be allowed to live and work here legally if they pay a fine and meet other requirements. Thirty-seven percent in a July Post-ABC poll said they should not. Republicans narrowly reject a path to legal status, with 51 percent saying they should not be allowed to remain and 43 percent saying they should.

Trump’s push to build a wall along the border with Mexico is relatively popular among Republicans. A recent Monmouth University poll found 73 percent of Republicans favor building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. This is similar to a 2013 Post-ABC poll in which 75 percent of Republicans supported the idea of adding 20,000 border agents and a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border, at a cost of $46 billion. If the funding were not a concern — since Trump has claimed he can negotiate with Mexico to cover the cost — support goes up to 84 percent among Republicans.

The downside for Trump’s anti-illegal immigration stances are also clear: he’s alienated Latino voters in a big way. Fully 75 percent of Hispanics in the Post-ABC poll said they oppose Trump’s immigration proposals, and similar shares have said they have an unfavorable view of him generally.

ON THE ISSUES | Donald Trump’s response to moderator Jake Tapper’s question on how he would deal with Vladmir Putin evoked George W. Bush’s gaze into Putin’s “soul”.

“I would talk to him. I would get along with him. I believe — and I may be wrong, in which case I’d probably have to take a different path, but I would get along with a lot of the world leaders that this country is not getting along with,” Trump said.

Tapper asked for clarification: “The only answer I heard to the question…you would reach out to Vladimir Putin, and you would do what?”

Trump reply: “I believe that I will get along — we will do — between that, Ukraine, all of the other problems, we won’t have the kind of problems that our country has right now with Russia and many other nations.”

“We are spending $200 billion” on immigration

–Donald Trump

THE FACT CHECKER | The source of Trump’s figure is unclear, but it appears to ignore the fact that there are both costs and benefits to illegal immigration — and also to dealing with the issue, especially if all undocumented immigrants are ejected from the country, as he proposes.

The Federation of American Immigration Reform, which seeks to limit illegal immigration, says that undocumented immigrants cost U.S. and state governments $113 billion a year in welfare programs. But other reports have shown that there are benefits as well, especially because illegal immigrants pay payroll taxes and cannot hope to ever collect the benefits. So it’s inaccurate to only look at the cost side of equation.

Patton Oswalt is keeping us updated:

THE CONTENDERS | Jeb Bush called on Donald Trump to apologize to his Mexican-born wife for bringing her into the debate over immigration. Trump refused. “I said nothing wrong,” he said.

Even as his campaign team took increasingly tough shots at Trump, Bush had so far mostly stuck to a policy-based and ideological critique of Trump. But this time it got personal — perhaps signaling that Bush is ready to come at Trump from more than just the he’s-not-a-real-conservative angle we’ve seen on the campaign trail so far.

… Because he’s live-tweeting the second Republican debate. Here are a few highlights:

THE CONTENDERS | Carly Fiorina effectively got revenge on Donald Trump for mocking her face during a recent interview.

Asked about his comments during the debate, Fiorina quipped to applause: “I think women all over the country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.”

And for once, Trump didn’t take the bait and stood down from this battle.

“I think she’s got a beautiful face and I think she’s a beautiful woman,” Trump responded when asked about the comment.

Last week, Trump made comments appearing to mock Fiorina’s appearance to Rolling Stone. “Look at that face,” Trump told the magazine. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”

Fiorina swiped at Trump over his comments this weekend at the National Federation of Republican Women’s annual conference in Phoenix.

“Ladies, look at this face,” she said. “This is the face of a 61-year-old woman. I am proud of every year and every wrinkle.”

STOPWATCH | Via The Fix’s Amber Phillips:

THE CONTENDERS | Fashion semiotics: Among the 11 candidates on stage, Sen. Rand Paul and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are the only ones on stage who are not wearing an American flag pin.

STOPWATCH | A breakdown of who has been dominating airtime so far:

ON THE ISSUES | A lot of the Republican candidates tonight are treating the Iran deal as if it automatically guarantees a nuclear Iran; Democrats, foreign leaders elsewhere and a host of international arms control experts vociferously disagree. Whatever the case, Trump flagged the threat of a rogue regime that actually has nuclear weapons: North Korea under the young, tubby despot Kim Jong Un.

Whether no one’s talking about it is another thing. But it certainly highlights the disproportionate shadow cast by the specter of Iran’s nuclear program, which experts believe presently has the capacity to produce barely one nuclear warhead — let alone a full arsenal — and which the Obama administration is confident can be curtailed under the terms of the present agreement.

A former IAEA official on why the deal will prevent Iran from cheating

North Korea celebrates its long history of magic

An interesting debate on Iran, with some thoughtful responses and some questionable statements, beginning with Carly Fiorina’s assertion that Russia’s recent deployment of additional military equipment and personnel to Syria was sparked when Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force “flew to Russia and talked Vladimir Putin into aligning itself with Iran and [Syrian President] Bashar Assad.”

Suleimani did, indeed, visit Moscow in July—in apparent violation of international travel sanctions. But strong Russia-Syria relations, including military sales and support, date from Syrian independence in 1946. Russia has had a naval base in Syria—its only port in the Mediterranean—since 1971 and has been Assad’s primary diplomatic and military supporter since long before Syria’s civil war began more than four years ago. Russia has also sold arms to Iran, and the two countries share an interest in limiting U.S. power in the region.

While several candidates, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), said they would tear up the Iran deal—and Mike Huckabee said that “not one of us on this stage would honor this agreement”–both Jeb Bush and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) demurred. Bush said he would send sophisticated weapons to Israel (a reference to the bunker-busting bomb whose sole delivery vehicle, the B-52, cannot be transferred to another country under the New Start treaty). Paul said he would first “see if [Iran] is complying” with the deal.

Cruz misstated the terms of the Iran agreement, saying that “several facilities designated as military facilities that are off limits all together” and “this agreement trusts the Iranians to inspect themselves.” No facilities are off-limits under the deal, in which the International Atomic Energy Agency can demand to inspect any Iranian facility where it believes undeclared nuclear activities are taking place. Critics have questioned the formula for adjudicating an Iranian refusal to comply, which can take up to 24 days.

After Cruz accused the three senators on the stage of failing to vote for U.S. air attacks on Assad’s chemical weapons facilities when Obama asked them to approve it in 2013, Rubio correctly noted that he said at the time he disapproved of what the administration called a “pinprick” attack because it was too weak.

In this 2012 file photo, Syrians hold posters of Syrian President Bashar Assad, far left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, second left, during a pro-Syrian government protest. (AP Photo/Muzaffar Salman)

ON THE ISSUES | Forget talking to Vladimir Putin. The candidates swept from one extreme to another to address how to deal with the Russian leader, his growing involvement in the Syrian war and his backing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Front runner Donald Trump offered virtually no substance, saying only — as he’s said many times before — that Putin would respect him and treat him differently than he does President Obama.

On the other extreme was Carly Fiorina, who seemed to practically take us back to the 1950s and 1960s calling for what amounts to a new Cold War — with the U.S. Sixth Fleet confronting the Russians, and U.S. troops headed back to Germany. It’s fair to say that if a Republican becomes the next president, relations with Moscow could be much rockier.

The Republican stance was starkly different than the approach taken by Obama, who is reportedly contemplating speaking with Putin later this month about the Syrian crisis, especially the recent deployment of weapons to Damascus. If so, that would end more than a year of diplomatic chill between the two leaders over Putin’s intervention in Ukraine’s conflict.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Debate watchers went wild after Carly Fiorina’s impassioned answer on Planned Parenthood, and her dismissal of Donald Trump:

THE CONTENDERS | An early consensus is beginning to emerge among political observers that Carly Fiorina has fared particularly well in tonight’s debate, most notably for how she aggressively took on frontrunner Donald Trump a number of times.

Well into the debate, an interesting trend emerged: You know who we didn’t hear much from for a long stretch? Donald Trump. Yes, Donald Trump.

Trump came into this debate with a plan to be less combative. Early on, candidates took turns taking shots at him — and then the conversation shifted to foreign and domestic policy issues. While other candidates begged the moderator to call on them, Trump hung back. After dominating the first debate, Trump is far less of a player so far in this debate.

But just when we almost came to the edge of forgetting about Trump, moderator Jake Tapper asked former Florida governor Jeb Bush about comments he made about funding for women’s health issues, which Trump has said will “haunt him.”

“Tell Donald Trump why he’s wrong,” Tapper said.

ON THE ISSUES | Unlike the 2012 campaign, there’s no serious bid in Congress right now to reform our immigration system. Instead, President Obama has acted unilaterally to extend deportation relief to about 5 million of the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.

In 2012, he signed an executive action to protect many young people brought into the country illegally by their parents, and in 2014 he expanded those protections to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Both programs are on hold as a Texas-led lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the actions winds its way through the courts.

Separately, the GOP is still dealing with some urgency to do something about immigration — in large part because the party is hemorrhaging Latino voters. But most Republicans who express support for a path to citizenship find themselves targeted by the conservative base. One of them is Bush, who has instead moved to calling for legal status — rather than citizenship — for undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, Trump has called for ending birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment — something Walker briefly joined him on.

BY THE NUMBERS | Just over half of Republicans in the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll say Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis should be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples regardless of her religious objections. Forty-four percent say she should not be required to issue them.  

There is even broader support among Republicans for prioritizing the equal treatment of everyone over accommodating someone’s religious beliefs when the two principles conflict.

The public overall is less sympathetic to Davis’s position. By about 2-1, adults polled say she should be required to issue gay marriage licenses, and by almost 4-1 they say equality under the law should take precedence over religious beliefs when the two conflict.

While a bare majority of Republicans say Davis should be required to issue licenses, they do not support her being sent to jail for not complying with a federal judge’s order. Just 31 percent of Republicans support the judge’s action, while 64 percent either oppose jail time or say she shouldn’t be required to issue them in the first place.

Republican U.S. presidential candidates businessman Donald Trump (L) and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush talk simultaneously. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Jeb Bush: “When he [Donald Trump] asked Florida to have casino gambling, we said no.”

Trump: “Wrong.”

Bush: “We said no, and that’s the simple fact.”

Trump: “Don’t make things up, Jeb.”

THE FACT CHECKER | Post reporters Philip Rucker and Robert Costa recently wrote about this very issue. Short answer: Trump did seek to set up a casino in Florida while hosting a fundraiser for Bush in 1997. And, as CNN reported recently, Bush rejected a plan from Trump to bring a casino into the state after Bush became governor. So the facts are on Bush’s side on this dispute.

Here is what Rucker and Costa wrote:

Trump fondly remembers one of his first encounters with the Bush family patriarch. It was 1988, and he hosted George H.W. Bush for a presidential campaign fundraiser at the Plaza Hotel, the palatial New York property Trump owned at the time.

“I remember Don King was there,” Trump said in the interview. “Big Don King. . . . He’s shaking Bush’s hand and saying, ‘Only in America!’ And, you know Don King’s voice. It’s like Pavarotti, right?”

Trump soured on Bush when he increased taxes, but they eventually made amends. In 1997, Trump said, Bush asked him to host a fundraiser for his son, Jeb, who was running for Florida governor. Trump agreed. The event was in his apartment at Trump Tower.

It was not merely a political favor. Trump had been trying to persuade Florida lawmakers to allow his company to manage casinos on tribal land.

“I had a fundraiser and raised about $1 million, which in those days was a lot of money,” Trump said. “In fact, I remember [Jeb Bush] saying, ‘It was the most successful fundraiser I’ve ever had.’ ”

Trump said George H.W. Bush wrote him “a beautiful note thanking me for helping with his son.”

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Karen Tumulty:

ON THE ISSUES | A little-known antiabortion activist group released several videos in the summer showing Planned Parenthood officials talking casually about the procurement of organs from aborted fetuses. Planned Parenthood officials denied doing anything wrong — the implication is the organs were being sold — but apologized for their tone.

The videos have caused an uproar in conservative circles, with Republicans introducing bills in Congress to take away the $500-plus million in annual federal funding for the organization (money that, it should be noted, is already prohibited from going to abortion services in most cases).

The issue is likely to become one of the biggest sticking points in this month’s debate to fund the government, where it could be a line in the sand similar to Obamacare during the 2013 government shutdown. An August poll, though, shows Americans approve of federal Planned Parenthood funding 49-39.

THE CONTENDERS | Everyone agrees: the standout word of the debate is Jake, as each of the 11 candidates on stage jockeys for the attention of moderator Jake Tapper to get a word in.

His handle is @BernieSanders. Here’s a sample:

SOCIAL STUDIES | No, it’s not your TV: nearly every Republican in the line-up is sweating like crazy. And we’re only an hour in.

ON THE ISSUES | The Texas senator name-checks Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This is what Twitter heard:

ON THE ISSUES | After the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the nation in June, the debate within the Republican Party turned toward protecting religious liberties among Americans who don’t support it and don’t want to participate with it in any way.

Many of the most socially conservative candidates, such as Huckabee, Jindal, Cruz and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, promised to use their increasingly limited means to fight for religious liberty laws like the one passed in Indiana this year that grants protections to Christian businesses who refuse to serve or work with same-sex couples — particularly at weddings.

But the issue of supporting same-sex marriage is largely decided when it comes to public opinion, including the 61 percent of young Republicans who support it, according to a March Pew poll. Christie is one of the few candidates who has said he won’t fight this new reality and would enforce the law.

STOPWATCH | A quick breakdown of who has been dominating airtime so far:

Scott Walker suggested Obama should cancel the upcoming state visit with China.

West Wing advisers earlier had called that unthinkable.

West Wing advisers called such a move unthinkable at a time when the White House is counting on Beijing’s commitment to a major agreement to slash greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030 and its backing of the U.S.-led nuclear accord with Iran.

“The debate over protocol is a bit of a cul-de-sac because the Chinese are a major power,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. “When U.S. leaders met with Soviet leaders, there was pageantry just because they were two very powerful countries.”

The sensitivities around how the summit is handled has been on display in recent days, as the White House privately debated whether to enact economic sanctions on Chinese businesses that have benefited from the cybertheft of U.S. trade secrets.

Such an unprecedented move would have risked embarrassing and provoking Xi. Instead, administration officials decided to hold off after meeting with a high-level Xi aide last week in Washington.

Read more here.

BY THE NUMBERS: Ted Cruz wants to rip up the Iran nuclear deal and Republicans would agree with him. American opinions overall continue to erode on the nuclear agreement, led by sharply declining support among Republicans. A bare 51 percent majority of the public supports the agreement and 41 percent oppose it, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Republicans have moved from 47 percent support in March to 30 percent now and 68 percent in opposition.

“The facts are the facts. We balanced a $3.6 billion budget deficit. We did it by cutting taxes $4.7 billion.”

–Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisc.)

THE FACT CHECKER | Walker overstates his success here. First, he legally had to balance the state budget. The “deficit” he describes is the difference between the amount of money that state agencies were asking to spend, and the amount of projected tax revenue. It’s fair to include the agency requests, but that skews this figure higher. Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau has calculated this figure at $2.5 billion, without the agency requests.

The $3.6 billion deficit figure applies only to Walker’s first budget. But his tax cut figure, $4.7 billion, is over the time he has been governor — since January 2011. This distorts the actual net tax cuts under Walker, which is more like $2 billion.

The first Republican debate began with Donald Trump rambling through an answer, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) cutting in to accuse him of “buying politicians of all stripes.” This debate, which was preceded by days of speculation about how Trump might handle former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, started with Fiorina deciding not to spar with Trump — and Trump taking a swing at Paul.

“First of all, Rand Paul shouldn’t even be on this stage,” Trump said, seemingly out of nowhere. “He’s number 11. He’s got one percent in the polls. There’s too many people onstage already.”

Paul, baffled but ready, wondered why Trump had gone for a “non sequitur,” and said it was representative of his character.

“I think really there’s a sophomoric quality that is entertaining about Mr. Trump,” Paul said. “But I am worried. I’m very concerned about having him in charge of the nuclear weapons. His response, his visceral response to attack people on their looks — short, tall, fat, ugly.”

Paul had defended Fiorina, though not by name — it was Trump’s apparent disdain for Fiorina’s “face,” made in the presence of a Rolling Stone reporter, that started the primary’s umpteenth descent into trivia. And Trump returned fire at Paul, not Fiorina.

“I never attacked him on his look,” he said, leaning into his microphone and looking sideways at the senator at the far end of the stage. “Believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter right there.”

Instead of the ballyhooed, possibly unwinnable, fight with the race’s only female candidate, Trump got away with an insult directed at his well-established critic.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Fix’s Chris Cillizza:

THE CONTENDERS | One of the exchanges you’re going to see played over and over (and over) again is the direct confrontation that just took place between Jeb Bush and Donald Trump, who are positioned right next to each other. Bush accused Trump of trying to bring casino gambling to Florida. Trump denied it. Then Bush tied Trump to Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.

“More energy tonight — I like that,” said Trump, referencing his repeated insult of Bush — that he lacks the energy to be president. Trump also boasted that his campaign could have more money than Bush and his allies have raised if he was taking money from special interests.

One of the questions tonight was just how the Bush-Trump dynamic — which has grown increasingly bitter over recent days — would play out on stage. We just got our answer.

It’s on.

ON THE NUMBERS | Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina argued voters are looking to elect an outsider candidate, which was certainly true of Republicans in a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week.

By 58 to 36 percent, more Republicans said they prefer a candidate outside the political establishment over someone with experience in how the system works. Among Republicans who said this, two-thirds supported either Donald Trump or Carson for the GOP nomination.

“I’ve never gone bankrupt.”

–businessman Donald Trump

THE FACT CHECKER | What’s Trump talking about? He’s making a distinction about the fact that his companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which means a company can remain in business while wiping away many of its debts. The bankruptcy court ultimately approves a corporate budget and a plan to repay remaining debts; often shareholders lose much of their equity.

Trump personally has not gone “bankrupt” but as a result of his corporate bankruptcy restructurings, he did have to give up personal assets, such as yacht, to help make loan payments, and his equity stake in various casinos was greatly reduced.

Trump claims he is worth $10 billion but other estimates put it much lower—around $3 billion.

Max Ehrenfreund of The Washington Post’s Wonkblog documented that Trump’s business performance was actually relatively poor given the massive real estate assets that he inherited from his father. Citing an independent evaluation, Business Week put Trump’s net worth at$100 million in 1978. Ehrenfreund said that had Trump gotten out of real estate entirely, put his money in an index fund based on the S&P 500 and reinvested the dividends, he’d be worth twice as much — $6 billion – today. So that suggests his business skills are not quite as savvy as he claims.

Washington Post reporters and readers can annotate this running transcript using Genius.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt is stuck on set tonight, so he’s not live-tweeting the Republican debate like last time.

Luckily, he’s got plenty of material to choose from in his own feed, and he’s taking advantage of it. (We know you wish you were watching tonight, Patton.) Here’s what he’s retweeting:

We’ll let you know if he finds a television tuned to CNN before 11.

Republican presidential candidates, businessman Donald Trump, left, and Scott Walker, right, both speak. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Scott Walker planned on being much more aggressive and combative during this debate — and he did both just now, jumping into a discussion about Donald Trump’s qualifications to be president.

“We don’t need an apprentice in the White House,” said Walker, who is the governor of Wisconsin. “We have one right now.”

Trump quickly pivoted to attacking Walker’s record in Wisconsin. Walker struck back: “Mr. Trump, you’re using the talking points of the Democrats.” Walker listed off accomplishments of his four and a half years in office and also said that Trump’s business strategy for the country would be putting the U.S. into bankruptcy. Walker added: “Just because he says it doesn’t make it true.”

The exchange quickly earned Walker praise on social media from his supporters and others:

THE CONTENDERS | In the opening minutes of the debate, CNN has employed many more split-screen shots to show the candidates reacting to their rivals’ statements than it did in the “junior varsity” debate earlier in the evening.

The debate stage now includes 11 candidates, instead of four in the earlier debate, so split-screens and “wide” shots offer a much more expansive view.

ON THE ISSUES | U.S. diplomats and five other countries announced in July that they reached an agreement with Iran to try to make it more difficult for the pariah state to build a nuclear bomb.

Under the deal, Iran must reduce the number of centrifuges it has and allow for increased vigilance from international inspectors. (The idea is that Iran can still use nuclear power for energy and medical purposes — just not a bomb.) If it complies, the U.S. and international partners will lift crippling economic sanctions on the country.

Congress had a say on whether the deal would be implemented as-is. In lawmakers’ first two weeks back to work in September, Senate Democrats successfully blocked the Republican Congress from pushing through a bill that could derail the deal, even as the American public starts to sour on it.

But congressional budget watchers like Stan Collender don’t think the debate’s over: Some Republicans opposed to the deal could try to defund it in this month’s budget debate, and you can expect candidates on Wednesday to promise they’ll tear up the Iran deal once in the White House in 2017.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

Donald Trump. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

BY THE NUMBERS | The opening question to Carly Fiorina was an opportunity for a blunt assessment of Donald Trump: Does he have the temperament to be president? The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll asked just that question of the American public.

The public overall — 63 percent — says no, to 33 percent who say he does. Republicans give a far better assessment: By 54 to 42 percent, more say he does have the personality and temperament to be president.

THE CONTENDERS | At the end of his opening statement, Marco Rubio mentioned the California drought and noted jokingly, “That’s why I made sure I brought my own water.”

Why? It might have something to do with this infamous moment from 2013, when he gave the GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union address:

But some didn’t think it was wise to make the joke:

Wish Marco Rubio had not made joke about bringing his own water b’cause CA is dealing w. drought–when much of state is “Grapes of Wrath”ish

— John Gizzi (@johngizzi) September 17, 2015

Ok Rubio.. Love ya but the water bottle joke is played out. Be strong out there. #CNNDebate #GOPDebate

— texansforrubio (@texansforrubio) September 17, 2015

Trump: “I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’”

Well, co-wrote: The 1988 best-seller is credited to Trump and co-author Tony Schwartz.

Republican U.S. presidential candidates (L-R) Dr. Ben Carson, businessman Donald Trump and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush before the start of the second Republican presidential debate. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

ON THE ISSUES | Front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday offered a glimpse at what he may say tonight on the subject of national security, which is expected to play a large role in the debate.

In his typically grandiose and sweeping style, Trump proclaimed that the nation’s military might would swell so large under his guidance as to become nearly obsolete and he promised that he would be “respected by Putin, respected by Iran.”

The short speech offered few specifics, but served as a possible preview of his comments tonight.

Read more:

A day before the GOP debate, Donald Trump talks national security on board a battleship

SOCIAL STUDIES | You’re welcome. Via Giphy:

“If you poll Iranians and Iraqis, Shias in the region, more than two-thirds of them believe that the end of the world will come in their lifetime. Why? Because their regime preaches it. They believe in bringing about the end of times. That’s their theological goal and we are in the process of giving them nuclear weapons to do just that.”

–-Santorum

THE FACT CHECKER |Santorum appears to be referring to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey on Muslims and faith, of 38,000 Muslims in 39 countries and territories. But he mischaracterizes what the survey says. In fact, there is also a strong belief that Jesus will return in their lifetime.

Among the questions, the survey asked about the imminence of two events that will take place before the Day of Judgment, according to Islamic tradition: the return of the Mahdi and the return of Jesus.

The Mahdi — the redeemer or “Guided One” — is believed to rule on earth “shortly before the day of resurrection of judgment to rid the world of error, corruption and injustice,” according to the survey’s glossary.

In nine of 23 nations where this question was asked, half or more Muslim adults said they believe the return of the Mahdi will occur in their lifetime. Two-thirds of these adults were in Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and Tunisia. Half or more Muslims in seven nations said they expect the return of Jesus — the Second Coming, which would precede Judgment Day — would happen in their lifetime. This conviction was most widespread in Tunisia, Turkey and Iraq.

In some countries with big populations of Sunnis and Shias, their views on the Mahdi’s return differed depending on the sect, the survey found. In Iraq, Shias were more likely than Sunnis to expect to be alive for the Mahdi’s return.

How about the rest of the world? A 2012 Reuters poll found nearly 15 percent of people believed the world will end during their lifetime. In fact, the United States ranked among the 20 polled countries with the highest percentage (22 percent) of people who believe they will live to see Armageddon.

THE CONTENDERS | The two biggest personalities in the Republican race, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Donald Trump, walked out toward the stage together, in conversation and amiable.

While they’ve occasionally clashed this year, they have long had a friendly relationship and rapport — two blunt Northeast Republicans who relish political theater and know how to navigate the press with ease.

There are other ties: Trump gave thousands to the Republican Governors Association when Christie was chairman of the group, and Trump has properties in the Garden State. It was a light moment, but it did hint, perhaps, that these two are inclined to avoid hitting each other, at least tonight.

Another pair that strolled together: Ben Carson and Sen. Marco Rubio. Sen. Rand Paul walked alone, as did Carly Fiorina.  

ON THE ISSUES | The Iran deal — an agreement thrashed out over many months by diplomats from six governments and the European Union — has sucked up all the foreign policy oxygen in Washington of late, and will likely shadow the election campaign in the year ahead. But, as I noted earlier, if you care about the security and stability of the Middle East, there’s a lot more to worry about than the putative threat of Iran’s nuclear program. Here’s our list of seven regional crises more vexing than the Iran deal:

1. The Syrian endgame
2. The spread of the Islamic State
3. The disastrous conflict in Yemen
4. Turkey’s renewed civil war with Kurdish guerrillas
5. The failure of governments in Iraq and Lebanon, whose corruption feeds into militancy
6. The zombie after-life of the two-state solution
7.  Egypt’s turn to tyranny

You can read why over at WorldViews.

Headed to the main stage. (Cheryl Evans/The Arizona Republic via AP)

Carly Fiorina has been fighting for tonight.

During the first debate, she was on the small stage with other low-polling candidates — but quickly won praise for her sharp attacks on Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, and also the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, whom many Republicans have been afraid to openly criticize. When it looked like her poll numbers still might not be high enough to secure a spot on the main debate stage for a second time, Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager Sarah Isgur Flores wrote a sharply worded column posted on Medium that laid out her boss’s case, attacked the Republican establishment and ended by saying:

We’re proud of Carly’s debate performance. We’re excited that grassroots voters around the country want to hear more from her. It will be interesting to see if CNN has no qualms excluding someone who is polling in the top 5 in Iowa and New Hampshire, in second place in multiple states, and well within the top 10 nationally. And it will be disappointing if Reince Priebus and the Republican establishment stand by and let a TV network keep Carly off the main stage…again.

It’s a simple question: Will we have a fair debate process or will the political establishment keep ignoring grassroots Republicans?

[How Carly Fiorina earned a spot on the big stage at the GOP debate]

CNN soon changed its criteria to allow Fiorina to join the main debate, although that now means there will be 11 candidates. Most of the other candidates have refrained from criticizing Fiorina, and several have even gone out of their way to praise or defend her. But there’s an exception: Donald Trump, who has viciously attacked her business career and personality.

Earlier this summer, as Fiorina basked in the glow of that early stand-out debate performance, Trump tweeted:

Last week, Rolling Stone published a lengthy profile of Trump that recounted the candidate seeing Fiorina on television and having this reaction: “Trump’s expression sours in schoolboy disgust as the camera bores in on Fiorina.’ Look at that face!’ he cries. ‘Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!’ The laughter grows halting and faint behind him. ‘I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?'”

Fiorina quickly fired back at the comments, and the super PAC supporting her candidacy released this Web video:

BY THE NUMBERS | What do Republican voters care about as they make their choices about which candidate to support? And will those issues surface in the debate?

CNN polled on this question this week. Terrorism is clearly the top concern with 70 percent saying it is extremely important. Terrorism is something of a catch-all issue, spanning domestic and international issues.

Of much lower salience are global warming and issues regarding the gap between rich and poor Americans.

Whether or not these issues come up tonight remains to be seen.

Here in the press file at the Reagan Library, the press got quite a surprise – as the candidates were debating, the TV feed switched to a guy in the CNN control room.

For a few minutes all the press saw was a guy in a navy blue polo shirt, sitting on a red chair. He was wearing a wireless microphone.

There was, obviously, some confusion. The feed came back in a few minutes later and the press is watching the debate again – though the sound is pretty bad.

THE CONTENDERS | Famed neurosurgeon-turned-candidate Ben Carson entered Wednesday’s debate on a high: a newly released Washington Post-ABC News poll found him securely in second place among the candidates.

With 20 percent support—a huge 14-point surge since July—Carson stands well ahead of every other candidate but Trump, who nabbed 33 percent support.

But while Carson’s strong showing gives him momentum, it also means he will likely face more scrutiny in the debate. A flub-free performance may allow him to harness the momentum he’s seen in the polls.

THE CONTENDERS | For months, Jeb Bush has seen his support slide in the polls, but as Post reporter Ed O’Keefe wrote earlier this week tonight’s debate offers him a chance to correct the course:

Al Cardenas, a longtime friend and generous donor, said that at the debate, “Jeb’s job is not to win the debate but to do well by building on his record of conservative accomplishment.

He entered this race with burdens no else had to share,” Cardenas said in an e-mail. “The so-called Bush identity and a misperception on his positions on education and immigration. So, while others entered the race with a mostly blank canvas, he has had to erase a biased and incorrect one before he can gain traction amongst a conservative audience which will largely decide his fate.”

“If you poll Iranians and Iraqis, Shias in the region, more than two-thirds of them believe that the end of the world will come in their lifetime. Why? Because their regime preaches it. They believe in bringing about the end of times. That’s their theological goal and we are in the process of giving them nuclear weapons to do just that.”

–-Santorum

THE FACT CHECKER |Santorum appears to be referring to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey on Muslims and faith, of 38,000 Muslims in 39 countries and territories. But he grossly mischaracterizes what the survey says. In fact, there is also a strong belief that Jesus will return in their lifetime.

Among the questions, the survey asked about the imminence of two events that will take place before the Day of Judgment, according to Islamic tradition: the return of the Mahdi and the return of Jesus.

The Mahdi — the redeemer or “Guided One” — is believed to rule on earth “shortly before the day of resurrection of judgment to rid the world of error, corruption and injustice,” according to the survey’s glossary.

In nine of 23 nations where this question was asked, half or more Muslim adults said they believe the return of the Mahdi will occur in their lifetime. Two-thirds of these adults were in Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and Tunisia. Half or more Muslims in seven nations said they expect the return of Jesus — the Second Coming, which would precede Judgment Day — would happen in their lifetime. This conviction was most widespread in Tunisia, Turkey and Iraq.

In some countries with big populations of Sunnis and Shias, their views on the Mahdi’s return differed depending on the sect, the survey found. In Iraq, Shias were more likely than Sunnis to expect to be alive for the Mahdi’s return.

How about the rest of the world? A 2012 Reuters poll found nearly 15 percent of people believed the world will end during their lifetime. In fact, the United States ranked among the 20 polled countries with the highest percentage (22 percent) of people who believe they will live to see Armageddon.

Via The Fix’s Chris Cillizza:

So is everyone else. Via The Post’s Aaron Blake:

ON THE ISSUES | Former New York Gov. George Pataki said that Donald Trump “Will do for America what he did for Atlantic City.”

Here’s what that means, and how that line of questioning could affect an other candidate: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Trump was once one of Atlantic City’s biggest casino owners —  Michael Jackson even showed up when the Trump Taj Mahal opened in 1990. A year later it filed for bankruptcy. There were three more Trump casino bankruptcies, the last in 2009. Billionaire Carl Icahn bought the bankrupt Taj Mahal, and it is still open. Atlantic City has seen its fortunes drop in the past two decades; the city has a $100 million budget gap and the city’s bond rating has been downgraded.

“I made a lot of money in Atlantic City, and I’m very proud of it. I want to tell you that. Very, very proud of it,” Trump said during the Aug. 6 debate.

The city’s sagging fortunes may also affect Christie, who bet big on Atlantic City, with the opening of the Revel Casino, which Christie labeled a “game changer” in 2012. It closed last year, the day after the Showboat Casino closed; the city lost 5,000 jobs in 24 hours.

The Christie administration took over the city’s finances in January through an emergency manager. The unemployment rate in the Atlantic City area is 9.1 percent as of July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Bottom line: watch for more talk of Atlantic City as the presidential race continues.

ON THE ISSUES | By calling for U.S. ground troops to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Republican candidates are seeking to appease their own constituency: In a poll by the Brookings Institution earlier this year, 53 percent of Republicans surveyed said the U.S. should send ground forces into Iraq.

The problem, though, comes in the presidential election: In the same poll, 57 percent of Americans oppose sending ground forces to fight ISIS. And while a majority of Americans believe that ISIS can be defeated, they also believe that the group or a similar group, would return once U.S. forces withdraw. Another 22 percent believe that U.S. ground forces are unlikely to defeat ISIS. That suggests how jaded Americans are after two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

ON THE ISSUES | Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) kept a safe distance from the undercard debate, but his presence was felt in a brawl-starting question about a notorious liberal: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Just four days after Cruz told a conservative St. Louis audience that Roberts should have been passed over for a “conservative,” Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) went further, saying that Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, and former Justice David Souter should not have been placed on the court. (Cruz had also denounced the Souter nomination.)

“Look, you never worry about where the Democratic judges are going to vote, it’s always the conservatives,” said Jindal. “You’ve never had a Democratic judge wake up and say, surprise, I’ve evolved, I’ve become a conservative. It’s always the Republicans, because we have presidents that try to find judges with no records, no rulings, no writings. I’ll tell you, I am going to have a litmus test. For judges, I’m going to find judges that are conservative, judges that are going to be pro-life, judges that are going to follow the Constitution, judges, by the way, that are going to follow the American law, not international law.”

Jindal, who was a member of the House during Roberts’s 2005 nomination fight, had less to say about it at the time than any undercard candidate. Both Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and then-Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum voted for Roberts; in a 2005 statement, then-New York Gov. George Pataki called him a “highly experienced, qualified and accomplished legal scholar and Supreme Court practitioner.”

The Louisiana governor, who has yet to find a hard-right position he can’t endorse, was thus freed up to sidle up to the vast majority of Republican voters. In a July Gallup poll, taken after a 6-3 ruling against a lawsuit that would have struck down Obamacare’s tax subsidies, only 18 percent of Republicans said that they approved of the court.

Kennedy and Roberts have become the pinatas of that backlash, even though Roberts broke with Kennedy on gay marriage — and even though the subsidies lawsuit was seen as frivolous until it was finally granted cert.

“People of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today,” Roberts wrote in his dissent to the Obergefell v. Hodges decision. “This universal definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman is no historical coincidence. Marriage did not come about as a result of a political movement, discovery, disease, war, religious doctrine, or any other moving force of world history — and certainly not as a result of a prehistoric decision to exclude gays and lesbians.”

Santorum and Graham did not apologize for their votes. (Neither was in the Senate to support Kennedy or Souter.) The former Pennsylvania senator could only argue that the court, generally, needed to be reined in.

“We need as a president who’s going to fight a court that is abusive, that has superseded their authority,” he said. “Judicial supremacy is not in the Constitution, and we need a president and a Congress to stand up to a court when it exceeds its constitutional authority.”

He made no attempt to match Jindal’s previous reaction to the court’s rulings.

“The Supreme Court is completely out of control, making laws on their own, and has become a public opinion poll instead of a judicial body,” Jindal told a crowd this summer, as quoted by Baton Rouge’s Advocate. “If we want to save some money lets just get rid of the court.”

Read a transcript of tonight’s early debate.

Pick your favorite:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s last debate did not go well. He aimed to be the nice guy on the stage and mostly focused on answering the questions he received, sometimes not even filling up his allotted time. Instead, many viewers forgot that he was even on the stage. Ever since then, Walker has plummeted in early polls and struggled to find his place in the crowded GOP field.

His major donors, fundraisers and supporters have made one thing clear: Tonight must be different. Walker needs to stand out if he wants to rebound.

[He was the everyman candidate. Now Scott Walker needs to stand out.]

Here’s what he’s planning to do differently: Instead of being the nice guy on stage, Walker plans to point out the differences between his positions and those of his rivals, especially when it comes to the Affordable Care Act and labor policy. He has already directly gone after former Florida governor Jeb Bush for not agreeing to rip up the Iran deal on his first day in office, and he is likely to go after some of his fellow governors for expanding Medicaid in their states, something he has refused to do. In recent weeks, Walker has been bashing Republicans in Washington, who he says have failed to keep their promise to voters to repeal the Affordable Care Act and pass immigration reform legislation.

During an interview on Fox News’s The Kelly File on Monday night, host Megyn Kelly asked Walker to quickly summarize his debate strategy. His answer: “Be aggressive. Show passion. Show the kind of energy that got us to that recall victory in Wisconsin. If we can do that, we can win in Washington.”

SOCIAL STUDIES | Last time, the celebrity attendee was Steven Tyler, remember?

With the “junior varsity” debate nearly over, moderator Jake Tapper has dominated the questioning from the panel, greatly overshadowing his colleagues, CNN correspondent Dana Bash, and Salem radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. Watch for an “adjustment” when the main debate begins later tonight. CNN has said the three would work cooperatively to question the candidates. It hasn’t been evident so far.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Maybe it’s obvious:

ON THE ISSUES | So this came up in the undercard debate: Russia’s recent escalation in Syria. It shouldn’t be a surprise — Moscow has been very consistent on its messaging regarding Syria and the Bashar al-Assad regime, a longtime Kremlin ally and the custodian of Russia’s only naval facility on the Mediterranean. Here’s a bit more background:

The Cold War brought more focus to Soviet ambitions. The United States, the Western superpower, had close allies throughout the region — Israel, of course, but also authoritarian or military regimes in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran (until the 1979 revolution).

Syria and quasi-socialist Egypt gravitated to Moscow’s orbit. Between 1955 to 1960, the Soviet Union gave Syria more than $200 million in military aid. Some Western and Israeli observers believe the Soviets played a key rolein instigating the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which Israel won in six blistering days (with the U.S.S.R. nowhere to be seen).

The Syrian-Soviet alliance, though, tightened in 1971 with the rise to power of Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, a military officer who spent years in the Soviet Union learning to fly the MiG fighter jets that soon became the mainstay of Syria’s air force.

His Baathist regime was built loosely on the model of a Soviet single-party state, supported by an all-pervasive network of intelligence agencies. Many of Syria’s elites were educated in top Soviet schools in Moscow.

The Assad regime let the Soviet Union set up a repair and resupply center in the port of Tartous, a facility which is now Moscow’s last outpost on the Mediterranean. Considerable Soviet military aid went to supporting the Syrian forces that intervened in fractious Lebanon in the mid-1970s and only finally withdrew in 2005.

Read more:

Why Russia is in Syria

The supposed Russian plan to remove Assad that the West ignored

The stakes are high for Scott Walker at tonight’s debate. Here’s how he got ready:

THE CONTENDERS | With the “junior varsity” debate nearly over, moderator Jake Tapper has dominated the questioning from the panel. He has greatly overshadowed his colleagues, CNN correspondent Dana Bash, and Salem radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt.

Watch for an “adjustment” when the main debate begins later tonight. CNN has said the three would work cooperatively to question the candidates. It hasn’t been evident so far.

THE CONTENDERS | Bobby Jindal, perhaps the most outspoken critic of Donald Trump, just praised him.

“One of the things he is right about is to say nonsense to the D.C. establishment,” said Jindal.

Why? Because, Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, is trying to run against Washington. Just like Trump. It’s been one of the most powerful components of Trump’s outsider pitch so far. Anger with Washington has become one of the big emerging themes of the race.

Jindal has had far less success than Trump in using it to make gains in the polls. But it’s clear he’s not going to stop trying.

Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore speaks at a Republican Leadership Summit, Friday, April 17, 2015, in Nashua, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

Keep reaching for that 1 percent, Jim:

THE CONTENDERS | Man, I wanna play Bobby Jindal in a comedy so so so badly.

— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) September 16, 2015

THE CONTENDERS | CNN’s main debate moderator, Jake Tapper, got the line out of the way in a hurry.

“We are in the house of Reagan, who made famous the so-called 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow Republican,” Tapper told Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.). “What drove you to violate that unofficial commandment?”

Tapper, unlike many pundits who shall go unnamed, got it right. Ronald Reagan neither coined nor lived by the “11th commandment.” The idea that he did has haunted many candidates, whose sharpest attacked on their opponents are cited for “violating” the laws of the GOP’s modern saint.

In fact, as Kitty Bennett helpfully reported in 2011, the 40th president borrowed the “commandment” from a Republican Party chairman, who was citing it to get people to lay off of Reagan. In 1966, during his insurgent bid for governor, Reagan came under fire from more liberal Republican George Christopher. It was California GOP chairman George Parkinson who cited a heretofore undiscovered higher law.

“Christopher was hindered and Reagan helped by” the commandment, Lou Cannon wrote in his 2003 biography Governor Reagan. “His motive for promulgating it was not to help Reagan but to unify his divided party by silencing leftover recriminations from the 1964 Goldwater-Rockefeller campaign.”

Reagan went on to run in three presidential primaries, only winning in 1980. In those races — unsurprisingly — he ended up attacking Republicans. The “commandment” was a popular Reagan dodge, up until he decided not to dodge. The only downside was that reporters might remind him.

“He has shown neither the vision nor the leadership necessary to halt and reverse the diplomatic and military decline of the U.S.,” Reagan said of President Gerald Ford in a 1975 Newsweek story that noted the “commandment” being broken. “I believe in the peace of which Mr. Ford speaks as much as anyone, but in places such as Angola, Cambodia and Vietnam, [it] is the peace of the grave.”

Reagan narrowly lost that primary, but won in 1980, the “commandment” in shreds — especially after he cited it to skip a debate in Iowa, then lost the state’s caucuses in an upset. But the commandment gained mythological weight after Reagan claimed that he had always really believed it. Writing of the 1966 campaign in his 1990 members, Reagan called the commandment “a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since.”

Cornered by Tapper, Jindal, too, found a way to kind-of-sort-of follow the commandment.

“I would tell my fellow Republicans, let’s stop treating Donald Trump like a Republican,” said Jindal.

SOCIAL | Lindsey Graham earned the largest share of online chatter among the four candidates on stage during the first half hour of the first debate. Our analytics partners at Zignal Labs are tracking how much of the conversation each candidate gets:

Here were the top Graham-related Tweets during that half hour:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Karen Tumulty:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

SOCIAL STUDIES | No, it’s not Bruce Springsteen tonight. The answer is: Van Halen. “DJ-ing with some Van Halen en route to Reagan Library,” he wrote with the photo below:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via The Post’s Michael Cavna:

Why radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt is asking questions tonight:  Because the Republican National Committee insisted that the TV networks carrying its debates include “a conservative element” to counter perceived liberal bias during 2012 debates.

ON THE ISSUES | One of the buzziest stories of the day just came up in the earlybird debate: Ahmed Mohamed, a high school freshman in Texas, was recently arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school that was inexplicably mistaken for a bomb by a teacher. On Wednesday, President Obama invited Mohamed to bring his clock to the White House.

The candidates were asked how the U.S. should strike the balance between vigilance and discrimination. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was the first to answer and hammered on the vigilance part of the question, saying that the U.S. is at war with “radical Islamic extremists.” He was pushed on the original question and said that  “no 14-year old should ever be arrested for bringing a clock to school” — but that Christians are the ones being most discriminated against. “Let’s talk about that,” he said.

That pivot allowed the other candidates on stage to instead elaborate on religious freedom instead of the news of the day. And instead of talking about Mohamed, the candidates focused on Kim Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who was recently jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Davis has quickly become an icon for conservatives who are frustrated with the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year to allow same-sex marriages across the country.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former New York governor George Pataki both said that Davis is not a threat or someone who could hurt them. But Pataki said he would have fired Davis for failing to do her job. Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, even mentioned Martin Luther King Jr. in defending Davis.

THE CONTENDERS | CNN’s main debate moderator, Jake Tapper, got the line out of the way in a hurry.

“We are in the house of Reagan, who made famous the so-called 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow Republican,” Tapper told Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.). “What drove you to violate that unofficial commandment?”

Tapper, unlike many pundits who shall go unnamed, got it right. Ronald Reagan neither coined nor lived by the “11th commandment.” The idea that he did has haunted many candidates, whose sharpest attacked on their opponents are cited for “violating” the laws of the GOP’s modern saint.

In fact, as Kitty Bennett helpfully reported in 2011, the 40th president borrowed the “commandment” from a Republican Party chairman, who was citing it to get people to lay off of Reagan. In 1966, during his insurgent bid for governor, Reagan came under fire from more liberal Republican George Christopher. It was California GOP chairman George Parkinson who cited a heretofore undiscovered higher law.

“Christopher was hindered and Reagan helped by” the commandment, Lou Cannon wrote in his 2003 biography Governor Reagan. “His motive for promulgating it was not to help Reagan but to unify his divided party by silencing leftover recriminations from the 1964 Goldwater-Rockefeller campaign.”

Reagan went on to run in three presidential primaries, only winning in 1980. In those races — unsurprisingly — he ended up attacking Republicans. The “commandment” was a popular Reagan dodge, up until he decided not to dodge. The only downside was that reporters might remind him.

“He has shown neither the vision nor the leadership necessary to halt and reverse the diplomatic and military decline of the U.S.,” Reagan said of President Gerald Ford in a 1975 Newsweek story that noted the “commandment” being broken. “I believe in the peace of which Mr. Ford speaks as much as anyone, but in places such as Angola, Cambodia and Vietnam, [it] is the peace of the grave.”

Reagan narrowly lost that primary, but won in 1980, the “commandment” in shreds — especially after he cited it to skip a debate in Iowa, then lost the state’s caucuses in an upset. But the commandment gained mythological weight after Reagan claimed that he had always really believed it. Writing of the 1966 campaign in his 1990 members, Reagan called the commandment “a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since.”

Cornered by Tapper, Jindal, too, found a way to kind-of-sort-of follow the commandment.

“I would tell my fellow Republicans, let’s stop treating Donald Trump like a Republican,” said Jindal.

THE CONTENDERS | Bobby Jindal, perhaps the most outspoken critic of Donald Trump, just praised him.

“One of the things he is right about is to say nonsense to the D.C. establishment,” said Jindal.

Why? Because, Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, is trying to run against Washington. Just like Trump. It’s been one of the most powerful components of Trump’s outsider pitch so far. Anger with Washington has become one of the big emerging themes of the race.

Jindal has had far less success than Trump in using it to make gains in the polls. But it’s clear he’s not going to stop trying.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via the Post’s Michael Cavna:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Maybe it’s obvious:

SOCIAL STUDIES | Last time, the celebrity attendee was Steven Tyler, remember?

ON THE ISSUES | Three of the four Republican candidates spoke of sending thousands more U.S. ground troops into Syria to fight the Islamic State, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) being the most vocal, arguing that if troops were not sent that ISIS could end up in the U.S. But would most Syrians want US troops inside their country?

That’s debatable. A recent survey conducted over the summer by ORB International, a reputable U.K-based market research firm, found that one of five Syrians surveyed said they consider the Islamic State a positive influence. And 82 percent said they believe the Islamic State was created by the United States and its allies. In the survey, 1,365 Syrians were interviewed from all 14 governorates.

ON THE ISSUES | The South Carolina senator signaled his intent to commit 20,000 U.S. ground troops to both Iraq and Syria, in a bid to defeat the threat of the Islamic State. He invoked Reagan, invoked the Cold War, invoked the specter of a great evil, and then put on his soldier’s helmet and said only he knew how to win the next battle.

“President Obama has made a mess of the world,” said Graham. “Syria is hell on earth.”

Graham blames Syria’s entire crisis on a) Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces — something the Iraqi government at the time demanded; b) on the Obama administration’s reticence to take aggressive action at an earlier stage in the Syrian conflict.

Both these contentions are a matter of debate. In 2013, when the U.S. was contemplating initiating action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, public opinion in the West was firmly against a military intervention.

It ought to be noted that the “mess” of the current situation also has its roots in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was supported by Graham. The political status quo left behind by the Bush administration, including a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad installed by Bush officials, created the conditions for disgruntled Sunni jihadists to gain traction.

As my colleague Liz Sly, The Washington Post’s Beirut bureau chief, documented in a lengthy, important expose, the leadership and political structures of the Islamic State are in part built upon the skeleton of Saddam Hussein’s secular Baath Party, which was dismantled after the invasion.

Read: The hidden behind the Islamic State? Saddam Hussein’s.