John Fugelsang: ‘No Scandal,’ But 'Gruber Is Stupid’

Comedian and radio host John Fugelsang argued that Jonathan Gruber’s comments about American voters were “stupid,” but that “there’s no scandal here” in an interview on Saturday’s “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on the Fox News Channel.

“I think Mr. Gruber is stupid and that’s something progressives and conservatives can agree on” he said. Later adding “Gruber was not the architect of Obamacare,” but rather “a paid consultant by a man who saw that insurance companies were ripping off regular people, a man who passed a law to try to get people covered, and this guy [Gruber] was an economist to help crunch the numbers and people did get covered, and the man who passed the law was named Mitt Romney.”  Fugelsang did admit Gruber was a “consultant.”

He did downplay the meaning of Gruber’s comments to the larger debate, arguing that many other people, such as advertisers, think Americans are stupid and stating “it may get some of your viewers really riled up and then they’ll see nothing’s going to come of it because there’s no scandal here. This guy thought that, but the individual mandate is not what liberals wanted. Liberals wanted single payer. Democrats wanted public option. Barack Obama enacted the conservative plan conceived by the Heritage Foundation.”

Pirro and Fugelsang concluded by debating whether or not the fine assessed against individuals who do not have insurance was a tax or a penalty, Fugelsang argued it wasn’t any different from an officer making someone pay a ticket for not having auto insurance, to which Pirro that the US Supreme Court said the fines were taxes and that Gruber admitted that they wanted to prevent the CBO from scoring the fines as taxes, which Fugelsang seemed to agree with.  He concluded by saying “in terms of lies I’ve heard about Obamacare, this comes somewhere below, ‘it’s a government takeover,’ [and] ‘it’ll cover illegal immigrants.’”

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