Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, told CNN that we should only be taking Syrian Christian refugees into our country this past Sunday.

There are a lot of Christians in Syria that have no place now," he explained. "They'll be either executed or imprisoned, either by Assad or by ISIS. And I think we should have -- we should focus our efforts as it relates to the Christians that are being slaughtered."

Tapper wondered how screeners would know which refugees were Christians.

"We do that all the time," Bush insisted. "I think we need to be -- obviously -- very, very cautious. This also calls to mind the need to protect our borders, our southern border particularly."

Jake Tapper still asked him how he would be able to tell the difference between a Muslim and a Christian and he plowed right through without giving a definitive answer. And really, how could he?

Jeb wasn't so lucky on Tuesday when a reporter came back to the same problem.

Jeb Bush on Tuesday dug in further on his position that the United States should prioritize bringing in Christians from among the refugees of the Syrian civil war — and he insisted that people can even prove that they’re Christians.

“Well you’re a Christian,” Bush started off saying to reporters. “You can prove you’re a Christian. It’s—”

“How?” a reporter asked.

Bush gave a shrug: “I think you can prove it — if you can’t prove it then, you know, you err on the side of caution.”

OMG, I know Jeb has had a horrible campaign so far, but this man is stupid. He's running into this problem because of the power the religious right has over the GOP, but to not even have a halfway believable answer ready after he was quizzed on this in the past is really telling. I know he wants to be president because he says he does, but man, I don't get it.

Digby writes:

Fergawdsakes. Are these people even remotely aware of history? Do they think these Islamic fundamentalists aren't?

In 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was established with the papal approval of Pope Sixtus IV. The reform and extension of the ancient tribunal which had existed from the thirteenth century was mainly to discover and eliminate Jews and Muslims secretly taking up their beliefs in private.

They had an interesting way of "proving it" --- what we might call "taking the gloves off" or a "no brainer."

Obviously, Jeb has no intention of doing such a thing but his brother certainly had no problem using some of those tried and true Inquisition techniques against suspected terrorists. It's just a very bad idea to talk about making people prove they are true Christians when you are fighting a group of medieval fundamentalists. It's just ignorant and dumb.