How to watch the Fox News Republican Presidential Debate live stream tonight

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Watch the GOP debate online for free with these instructions

Brace yourself for 15 consecutive months of presidential debates, which started with last week's Fox News and Facebook-hosted 2016 Republican Primary Debate.

You can still watch the back-and-forth video between Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and eight other top-tier candidates at this Presidential Debate. It originally aired at 9pm ET (6pm PT, 2am BST) on August 6.

This wasn't actually the first presidential debate you could watch online last week, though. There was also a second-tier debate happening, four hours beforehand, for seven candidates with lower poll numbers.

Both debates were live streamed, just in case you can't get to a television set in time for the verbal sparring. However, only the right credentials would let you watch it online in realtime initially.

Here's how you could watch the Fox News GOP debate, for future reference, and see the replay right now.

10 Presidential Debate video highlights

  1. Donald Trump open to the idea of a third-party run
  2. Trump combative on 'sexist' comments with Megyn Kelly
  3. Chris Christie, Rand Paul spar over NSA surveillance
  4. John Kasich on his support of gay marriage
  5. Kasich on how Trump is hitting a nerve in politics
  6. Jeb Bush on dynastic 'Bush' politics and 'brother's war'
  7. Marco Rubio: 'This election isn't a resume competition'
  8. Trump explains stance on illegal immigration, and so does Rubio
  9. Carly Fiorina jabs Clinton and Trump in same sentence (earlier debate)
  10. 7 minutes of closing arguments from the candidates

Watch the Presidential Debate full video

Fox News sent TechRadar its full debate video, so that it could be available to one and all, and offered it in both MP4 and Windows Media Video formats.

It's conveniently split the night into six parts, too, just in case you want to load it onto your 16GB iPhone 6 that's already run out of space, one-by-one.

How the Presidential Debate live stream worked

Fox News is known as America's conservative cable news channel, but the right aisle-leaning network is actually fairly progressive when it comes to online live streaming technology.

Eight years ago, Fox News began live streaming extra hours of programming, dubbed Strategy Room, with webcam-like quality and a makeshift table. Discussions were frank and unrushed.

2015 presidential debates

It has since morphed into mirroring the cable channel and contrasts with MSNBC and CNN, which are just getting their online programming acts together. MSNBC in particular has a smaller, buggier video player.

Of course, now that it's called Fox News Live and is a broadcast-level video service, it requires an authenticated cable subscription username and password. It's not unlike HBO Go. In fact, it uses the same username and password credentials you log in with to watch Game of Thrones.

The good news is that it currently supports 279 cable and satellite providers, including Time Warner, Comcast, DirecTV, Charter, Verizon Fios. Even Sony's PlayStation Vue is represented.

Fox News is fairly progressive when it comes to online live streaming technology.

Nick Pino
Nick Pino

Nick Pino is Managing Editor, TV and AV for TechRadar's sister site, Tom's Guide. Previously, he was the Senior Editor of Home Entertainment at TechRadar, covering TVs, headphones, speakers, video games, VR and streaming devices. He's also written for GamesRadar+, Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer and other outlets over the last decade, and he has a degree in computer science he's not using if anyone wants it.