Gowdy to ObamaCare Architect: 'Put Down the Cognac and Lost Writings of J.D. Salinger'

By Bridget Johnson
PJMedia.com

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said President Obama should publicly repudiate how the architect of Obamacare referred to the intellect of the American people.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass,” MIT professor Jonathan Gruber said at a conference.

“I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately and I regret having made those comments,” Gruber told MSNBC on Thursday.

Last night Fox aired a new Gruber video in which he talks about how Democrats “played with the language of the Obamacare law” and “the American voters are too stupid to understand the difference.”

“I can’t get past the irony to even get to the arrogance. The most transparent administration since the continent shifted had to rely on artifice and deception to pass its signature piece of legislation. You can’t make that up. He had to lie to people and then he justified it, so I can’t even get past the irony of that to even get to the arrogance of him calling our fellow citizens stupid,” Gowdy told Fox.

“It’s really serious in a participatory democracy when you tell your fellow citizens that you are either not smart enough to understand the truth or we can’t tell you the truth because you wouldn’t go along with it. Well if you wouldn’t go along with it, maybe you shouldn’t pass the law,” the congressman continued. “It’s not the responsibility of your viewers to read thousand page bills. Hell, the people who voted on it didn’t read it before they voted on it. So, it’s not my fellow citizens’ responsibility to read this bill.”

“I would say this to the professor, put down the cognac and the lost writings of J.D. Salinger, you want to see how stupid our fellow citizens are, take a look at last Tuesday night. Because they rejected you, this bill and this administration.”

Gowdy said he hopes voters will keep Gruber’s comments in mind “the next time anybody tries to sell them a ‘comprehensive piece of legislation,’ whether it’s Dodd-Frank or whether it’s the immigration bill the president so desperately wants.”

“Comprehensive is Latin for ‘there’s lots of bad stuff in here.’ And he just proved that he’s willing to lie, he’s willing to lie because he has the arrogance of thinking that he knows what is best for this country and the citizens and the voters do not. So keep that in mind the next time anybody tries to sell you on a big piece of legislation by calling it comprehensive,” he said.

Gowdy added that he would “love” for Obama, “whom I saw in his purple jacket over in China, to repudiate” Gruber.

“I mean, there’s an insult, he insulted the very people, frankly, who put the President in office twice. So I would love to hear somebody other than Josh Earnest apologize for what this professor said,” he said.

“They’re laughing all the way to the bank because they lied, they got away with it and they got the bill that they wanted. So my fellow citizens have to keep in mind, fool me once, shame on you, ever fool me again, shame on us.”

Gowdy, who is the chairman of the special committee investigating Benghazi, said they have “a very robust investigative plan that will kick off in December.”

“It is not with a lot of fanfare and there aren’t a lot of public hearings, but trust me when I tell you we are making tremendous progress,” said the former prosecutor.