CNN's Jake Tapper asked Jeb Bush about his tweet during the Democratic debate, where attacked the candidates with the latest right wing talking point of the day following the terrorist attack in Paris.
As Tapper pointed out to Bush, here's what his brother said about Islam back in 2001:
The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war.
Bush proceeded to punt when asked by Tapper whether or not he and his fellow Republicans would attack Hillary Clinton if she said the same thing today:
TAPPER: Is Islam peace governor?
BUSH: You know what? I know what Islamic terrorism is, and that is what we’re fighting with ISIS, al-Qaeda, all of the other groups, and that is what our focus should be on. This is not a question of religion. This is a political ideology that has co-opted a religion.
Yeah, I think it's more than acceptable to call it for what it is and then organize an effort to destroy it.
TAPPER: I guess the question is though, Hillary Clinton said she doesn't want to label it as Islamic terrorism, and that seemed to be at least in the first few years of the war on terror under President Bush your brother, his blueprint as well when he said Islam is peace.
It's hard to imagine Hillary Clinton saying Islam is peace and not being attacked by Republicans.
BUSH: I don't... look, all I know is that she does not believe that this is our fight. This is a fight for Western civilization. We need to be all-in on it, and the simple fact is that these are Islamic terrorists who have co-opted a faith that is peaceful, but never the less, this is something we need to fight.
And I don't think anybody would question that my brother was in that fight, that he viewed it as a national security fight and he led, and that's what we need to do again.
In other words, of course we'd attack her but I'm not going to say it out loud. There was absolutely no follow up by Tapper either following his mealy-mouthed response. He just moved right along to the next question on Trump.
Jon Perr's response to Jeb! on twitter was much better than this interview.
