Former Florida governor, brother of former President George W Bush, son of former President George H W Bush, and Republican frontrunner for the 2016 US presidential election, Jeb Bush ... has strongly defended the NSA's mass surveillance of innocent people.
Speaking at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs as part of his run for the White House, Bush made it clear that if he did become president he would retain the programs introduced under his brother's administration.
While covering broad foreign policy topics, Bush appeared to go off script when he said that in order to effectively tackle Islamic terrorism, it was necessary to have "responsible intelligence gathering and analysis - including the NSA metadata program, which contributes to awareness of potential terror cells and interdiction efforts on a global scale."
He continued: "For the life of me, I don't understand.. the debate has gotten off track, where we're not understanding or protecting.. we do protect our civil liberties.. but this is a hugely important program to use these technologies to keep us safe."
Fast forward to the 28-minute mark for the fun to begin in this vid, streamed live on Wednesday, of his talk:
