Update: Tonight’s debate has concluded. Here’s the schedule for the next debates.
CNBC Republican debate 2015 live stream: time, TV schedule, and how to watch online
Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.
The third Republican presidential debate started at 8:15 pm Eastern tonight, and is being aired live on CNBC. It will also be livestreamed on CNBC.com — but to view the livestream, you will have to log in to with cable account information. The earlier “undercard” debate, with four candidates who didn’t poll well enough to make the primetime stage, began at 6 pm, and has since concluded.
It’s unfortunate that the network has chosen not to make the debate freely available to everyone online. But if you’re truly desperate to watch it legally online and have no cable credentials, there’s one way you might be able to tune in — by signing up for CNBC Pro’s 30-day free trial. Please note that this is very risky, because you have to give them your billing information, and if you fail to remember to cancel your trial before those 30 days are up, you could be on the hook for the annual fee — which is a whopping $299.99. So, caveat emptor.
This is the first debate with a specific name and theme — CNBC is calling it “Your Money, Your Vote,” and says the candidates will discuss“ job growth, taxes, technology, retirement and the health of our national economy.”
What that means, of course, is that you can expect a whole lot of Donald Trump bragging about his alleged success in business, Carly Fiorina defending her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, and Jeb Bush bragging about Florida’s economy during his governorship while conveniently neglecting to mention the enormous housing bubble the state was then experiencing.
It's possible that the candidates will discuss some policy ideas too. Most of the candidates have released tax reform plans at this point — check out our rundowns of plans released by Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, and Bobby Jindal. Meanwhile, Ben Carson has said he'd support a flat tax based on Biblical tithing, and John Kasich and Chris Christie have both supported plans to reduce the number of tax backets, lower rates, and eliminate deductions. (Check our cool visualization of the history of tax brackets.)
Now, if you should happen to miss tonight’s debate — for instance, if you decide to watch Game 2 of the World Series despite its lack of Donald Trump, or if you can’t get your hands on login credentials for a cable account — then I have some good news for you. The next GOP debate, the fourth, is only 13 days away. And the next Democratic debate is just four days after that!
This post has been updated.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC, is an investor in Vox Media.
How to watch
When: 8 pm Wednesday
Where: University of Colorado Boulder
TV: CNBC
Online: CNBC.com, but only if you have access to a cable account
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