Instead, the network's well-known countdown clock led us wrong.

Related: Republican debate in Miami: What time, what channel, where is the live stream?

By 8:30 p.m. there was no national anthem or discussion from a moderator about the debate rules.

Twitter noticed and it was not happy about it.

Fox News host Todd Harnes used CNN's time flop to acknowledge the timeliness of his own network.

But in true Twitter fashion, a frustrating situation was easier to handle with some humor.