By GABBY MORRONGIELLO • 7/17/16 10:36 AM

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus claimed Sunday that Donald Trump's controversial ban on some immigrants would not include a religious test, despite Trump's previous calls for a "total and complete ban" on foreign-born Muslims seeking to enter the U.S.

"His position is a temporary ban on immigration from certain countries," Priebus told CNN's Jake Tapper. "There's no religious test on the table."

Trump himself has updated his earlier call, suggesting it applies to nations from which terrorism is emanating.

"It's simply limited to countries that are harboring terrorists and that's really where 75 percent of the American people are at," Priebus claimed.

Priebus declined to say whether Trump had "changed" his position on wanting to bar non-American Muslims from immigrating to the U.S. He instead suggested that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee has always intended to halt immigration from countries with terrorist ties as opposed to people of a certain religious background.

"That is his position. It is not a religious test. It is a ban on immigration from countries that harbor and train terrorists," he said. "That's what I believe in. That's what the American people believe in."

Nevertheless, Trump's original proposal could pass constitutional muster. The ban in the Constitution on religious tests applies to qualifications for public office, not to immigration.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pr...rticle/2596725