This was the GOP debate that was never supposed to happen.

Republicans dismissed Donald Trump at every turn — first insisting he would never enter the presidential contest, then guaranteeing he’d drop out before he had to reveal his personal financial information. They were sure that he’d never make it to the debate stage in Cleveland to deliver to a national audience the slash-and-burn diatribes that have endeared him to the grass roots and struck fear in the hearts of the GOP establishment.


Yet there he was Thursday, at center stage, throwing elbows at his rivals, dissing moderators and unleashing his fiery rhetoric alongside nine rivals desperate to knock him off balance.

Trump delivered the most memorable moments of the first prime-time Republican presidential debate, but he may have turned off some voters in the process with his cavalier comments about donating to Democrats in the past, his admission that his views on immigration and abortion have evolved, and his assertion that politicians he’s donated to nearly always bend to his will.

The New York real estate mogul set the debate stage ablaze just seconds into the prime-time showdown — refusing to commit to supporting the Republican ticket for president (if he’s not the nominee), dismissing questions about his insulting comments toward women as oversensitive political correctness. And he continued to hammer away on illegal immigration, saying U.S. leaders were “stupid” and unable to deal with the issue.

He neatly summed up his approach in one line toward the end of the debate, when questioned about his divisive rhetoric: “When you have people that are cutting Christians’ heads off … it’s almost got to be as bad as it ever was. We don’t have time for tone. We have to go out and get the job done.”

His remarks throughout were among the most explosive moments of a two-hour Fox News debate that underscored just how wild and unruly the Republican presidential field has become. And while Trump may have offered the most memorable quips, the debate also featured energetic opening salvos from the nine other leading Republican candidates sharing the stage, many of whom are gasping for oxygen amid Trump’s startling rise.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie brawled with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul over the merit of warrantless surveillance of Americans’ phone records. Ohio Gov. John Kasich argued that his embrace of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion was a triumph for his state’s mentally ill residents and incarcerated drug addicts. And former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush maintained his assertion that immigrants who arrive illegally are doing so out of love for their families.

The testiest exchanges occurred among the candidates polling in the low single digits, while those in the middle of the pack — Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson — worked hard to project sunnier, less divisive approaches. Bush said Trump’s divisive language is akin to the politics of “grievance” practiced by President Barack Obama and other Democrats and he pleaded for more unifying rhetoric.

Many of those exchanges, though, threatened to be overwhelmed by Trump’s theatrics. Trump was the only candidate to raise his hand when asked by moderators if any of the 10 men onstage would consider running a third-party campaign should he lose the Republican primary.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul jumped in quickly with a swipe at Trump: “He buys and sells politicians of all stripes,” Paul intoned. “He’s already hedging his bet on the Clintons.” Trump responded by noting that he gave the Clintons a lot of money.

Trump, the brash New York tycoon who’s exasperated party leaders with a steady, grass-roots-driven surge to the top of early polls, entered Thursday’s debate as the obvious piñata at the GOP carnival (during the earlier “happy hour” debate, some of the lower-tier candidates took some whacks at him).

Fox News moderators Bret Baier, Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly had signaled their intent to stoke confrontations with Trump and they appeared to succeed.

In one of Kelly’s first questions, she ticked off a long list of Trump’s insulting comments aimed at women, including calling some “fat pigs, dogs.”

“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Trump chimed in, to laughs from the crowd. But a clearly unamused Kelly insisted his comments went beyond comedian and actor O’Donnell. Trump, though, offered no contrition.

“The big problem this country has is being politically correct,” he said, to more applause from the audience. “I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness, and to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either.”

As anxious as the candidates are to knock Trump down a peg (or many pegs), they were just as focused on transcending the Trump spectacle.

Kasich, who earned an ovation from the hometown crowd, fended off questions about his decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, noting that President Ronald Reagan grew the program “three or four times.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, too, started on the defensive over a string of budget downgrades in his state since he took office.

Each Republican walked in with clear objectives. For Trump: Appear presidential and agreeable. For Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Exude competence and calm. For former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: Be the grown-up and avoid rhetorical stumbles. For a long-shot like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: Lure back skittish Republicans with blunt, honest overtures.

But for all those carefully crafted plans, Trump easily dominated the spotlight, delivering unrepentant screeds on illegal immigration and his belief that the Mexican government is outsmarting America and steering criminals across the U.S. border.

“Our leaders are stupid, our politicians are stupid,” he said to resounding cheers. “The Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning.”

The other candidates treaded carefully around Trump. Kasich said the mogul had “hit a nerve” with Americans, and Sen. Marco Rubio agreed with Trump about the need for border security.

The fiercest feud that didn’t involve Trump exploded when Christie was asked to defend his repeated takedowns of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who’s been a lone Republican voice calling to curtail warrantless collection of Americans’ phone records.

“I’m the only person on this stage who’s actually filed applications under the PATRIOT Act, who as gone before the Foreign intelligence service court,” he said, accusing Paul of trying to take tools away from homeland security authorities.

Paul fired back that he wants to “collect more records from terrorists but less records from innocent Americans.” A scoffing Christie retorted, “that’s a ridiculous answer” and accused Paul of “blowing hot air” and using his Senate floor speeches for political gain.

Then Paul threw a sucker punch, recalling the moment after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 when Christie embraced Obama in New Jersey and wondered whether Christie wanted to “give him a big hug again.”

Some hints of the clashes to come emerged earlier, when the seven Republican candidates who didn’t make the prime-time cut threw some haymakers at Donald Trump anyway. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry compared him with Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson — 2008 candidates whose national fame placed them in the top tier of Republican politics only to fade quickly — and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina accused him of switching positions on immigration, health care and abortion.

The first debate — derided as the “JV” round or the “kiddie table” — lived up to its underwhelming billing. Few attendees in Cleveland bothered to sit in the audience during the first round, and the candidates onstage delivered largely buzz-free performances, as did the moderators who spent the first quarter of the debate quizzing candidates about their personal and political failings, while trying to goad them into attacking Trump.

Only Fiorina seemed to rise above the format, earning rave reviews on Twitter and from post-debate analysts. Reporters mobbed her in the post-debate spin room, where tossed another barb at Bush, for recent comments questioning the level of government funding for women’s health issues.

“I think it’s going to become an ad in a Democrat campaign,” she said. “Hillary Clinton jumped all over it for a reason because she saw an opportunity, and it is foolish to say ‘women’s health isn’t a priority.’ Of course it’s a priority.”

Bush, in particular, entered the prime-time debate with a lot on the line. Though he’s several orders of magnitude ahead of most competitors in the race for campaign cash, he’s found only modest traction with voters, giving an opening to Trump, Walker and Rubi, to vie seriously for the nomination. He hasn’t run a campaign since 2002, and some inarticulate comments on Medicare, women’s health and the Iraq War have fueled worries that he’d be a weak opponent to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

For Walker, too, the debate was a test of his early success in primary polls. He represents a plain-spoken, every-man conservativism that has endeared him to Iowa Republicans, but he’s been dogged by questions about his readiness to be commander in chief. It’s not clear that he did much to answer critics or empower them — in fact, he was largely anonymous during the two-hour debate. He defended his pro-life credentials and broadly linked the Obama administration’s deal on Iran’s nuclear program with the rise of ISIL.

For those who squeaked through into the 10-candidate cut — from Paul, whose campaign has been reeling amid flagging support and disappointing fundraising, to Kasich, whose late entrance into the race bounced Texas Gov. Rick Perry from the top tier of contenders — the debate is a chance to justify their inclusion with the front-runners and to wrest some camera time from higher-wattage competitors.

Manu Raju and Alex Isenstadt contributed reporting from Cleveland