Fabiola Santiago: GOP presidential debate was just another reality show

Live from Cleveland, home of the Cavaliers, it’s the Republican Reality Show, hosted by the spirited, if joke-challenged, team of Fox News!

Our celebrity guest tonight is… The Donald, who could make history at the end of the 2016 political season as the nation’s first Offender-in-Chief – or be revealed as a most clever plant of the Clinton machine.

In this episode, ready-for-prime-time GOP players have been whittled down to the Top Ten, not ABC-style with a rose, but by way of polling. The one important fact you’ll come away with is that Trump had to pay important people like Hillary Clinton to attend his Palm Beach wedding to Slovenian model Melania Knauss in 2005.

How’s that for a reveal?

From his mouth (think The Apprentice) to the ears of Americans who catapulted him to the No. 1 spot of GOP presidential candidates: “Hillary Clinton, I said, be at my wedding. And she came to my wedding. She had no choice because I gave to a foundation… When they [politicians] call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.”

Is he here for her now?

Stay tuned.

Anything is possible with mean, angry Trump, who looks into American hearts and knows how to locate the phobia and dig in — even when he has a bad night like Thursday’s, and ends up annoying his GOP supporters because he’s going to run as somebody’s candidate, nomination or not.

Cliffhanger!

Next up is the brotherly love skit As The Dynasty Turns: Jeb! vs. George. Since he hasn’t talked about Iraq now more than a dozen times, we get to re-measure just how much Jeb Bush is willing to put his brother out there to win the presidency.

Move over, George, he wouldn’t do what you did, it’s his turn!

Flash the voter map that shows Jebby, the smart one, with top digits along the southern U.S. border, all the way from the 305 to the Rio Grande. Looks like the wall Trump wants to erect. But this wall is proof that this Bush is the only candidate with a tiny bit of heart for people like his Mexican wife and his bilingual children, the eldest already a politician like dad. But by God, the newcomers will have to earn — earn! — that citizenship. Learn English, pay a fine. Dying on the way here is not enough!

See the “fire in his belly” now, Fox News?

The real tantalizing question of the Bush candidacy, however, is this: If he wins the nomination, will Jeb! show any love to his Miami brother, Marco, or will he make him sweat the VP post?

Or, is this kinder, more boring Bush already looking at underdog Carly Fiorina, who didn’t make the Top Ten but trounced her six male bottom-rung opponents at the forum before the headliner reality show?

For a hint, it pays off to stay tuned for the after-party — I mean, the post-debate analysis. One of the Fox News entertainers gives you a clue when he reveals the Marco Rubio advantage: The GOP women like cherubic Marco, whose distinctive quality Thursday night is to bring Mexican druglord El Chapo into a conversation that had already included mentions of fat pigs and dogs as Trump’s favorite synonyms for women.

Slim Carly or babe-in-the woods Marco?

"He’s definitely my friend," Bush assures us.

Classy cliffhanger!

And thus, we come to the brilliant neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson, a revelation as a presidential candidate in a field in which everyone is still running against President Barack Obama.

And so is he.

Enter Greek chorus here: “Repeal Obamacare!”

Dr. Carson knows little of the innards of governance and sweats his foreign affairs, but can he cut into a brain! He’s The One, if you ask me, a Republican Obama without the pathos about equality and fairness. His motto is not change we can believe in, but things we need to get over, fellow people of color.

Plus, he will surely be able to work with Congress.

When they don’t see things his way, Dr. Carson can schedule at the Oval Office much-needed lobotomies for legislators like know-it-all Sen. Ted Cruz, who speaks truth and nothing but truth, so help him his preacher dad, the rehabilitated illegal alien.

In fact, these two would make the perfect, modern America GOP ticket.

Until next time, when we will settle who suffers from the bigger case of Islamophobia, good night from the most watched debate in primary history!

This story was originally published August 7, 2015 at 4:40 PM with the headline "Fabiola Santiago: GOP presidential debate was just another reality show."