Will Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama watch the GOP debate?
President Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton can reasonably expect to be mentioned frequently during the GOP debate Thursday evening in Cleveland. And neither one plans to tune in to watch the slingshots aimed at them.
Clinton will in transit during both debates - on a plane during the second-tier debate at 5 p.m. and in a car during the main debate at 9 p.m.
As for Mr. Obama, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he doubts the president will watch the live debate, but he will probably tune in for the coverage afterward.
"It's going to be a circus," said Earnest predicted during an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Thursday.
But even though the president isn't watching, he's doing his part to boost the debate's ratings by urging Democrats around the country to tune in.
"The other side is counting on folks like you sitting this one out, so I need you to say that you'll be watching on Thursday," the president wrote in a Democratic National Committee email earlier this week.
"While these Republicans may have bad ideas, they're still smart politicians. They know how to make policies that will take us in the wrong direction sound like they might actually be pretty good ideas. That's exactly why I'm calling on you to tune in, listen carefully to what the Republican candidates for president say, and then hold them accountable for trying to undo all of the hard work we've done to move this country forward," he wrote.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders hasn't said what he's going to be doing during the Republican debate, but he already knows what he thinks of what his GOP opponents will say on stage.
"When you watch that debate just imagine if you are one of the wealthiest people in this country and extremely greedy and selfish, and you're going to have 10 candidates more or less talking about your needs and not the needs of working people," Sanders said in a SiriusXM Progress Channel interview with Ari Rabin-Havt.
There's no word yet on what Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb or Lincoln Chafee plan to do during the debate.
CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller and Political Digital Journalist Hannah Fraser-Chanpong contributed to this story.