In response to Obama Claimed to Have ‘Stolen Ideas’ from Gruber in 2006:
Allow me to toss a few more tidbits onto the fire as we burn whatever remains of Barack Obama’s credibility: former Administration official Steve Rattner testifying – on MSNBC! – that Jonathan Gruber was a pivotal figure in the creation of ObamaCare: “I remember that when I was in the White House he was certainly viewed as an important figure in helping to put Obamacare together. The problem is not that Gruber helped them put Obamacare together, because he was the man, the problem is what he’s said in the last two weeks and how the White House has handled it.”
We’ve also got Gruber pinned to the scene in an Oval Office meeting with Obama, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, and just two other economists on July 20, 2009, as a strategy for squeezing a better budget score out of the CBO was discussed. And among the many, many times the White House cited Gruber as a top expert was an economic report the President delivered to Congress just six months ago.
So I’d say we’re well into a second scandal: not only did Obama lie copiously to foist his health-care scheme on the American people, he’s looking right into Media’s eye and telling her ridiculous lies about his relationship with Gruber, trying to offhandedly dismiss him as “some adviser who never worked on our staff” the President can scarcely remember. (On that score, if you check out media coverage of Obama’s disgraceful performance in Australia, you’ll notice that the line was doctored to read “an adviser,” to make it look less like a teenager ploy to pretend Gruber was a nobody. I assume the many media reports that incorrectly quoted Obama were working from transcripts edited by the White House to make the President look less sleazy.)
The question now becomes: will the media call out Obama for trying to conceal Gruber’s role in crafting ObamaCare? He straight-up lied to them, indefensibly. He only had to tell that lie because someone from Fox News dared to break the media embargo and ask him point-blank about Gruber, so the mainstream press obviously hasn’t been eager to inconvenience their beloved President with this affair… but now that he’s been caught lying to them, and perhaps even insulted their integrity further by slipping them doctored transcripts of his remarks, is anyone from outside Fox News (and perhaps Jake Tapper at CNN) going to confront the President and ask about his ridiculous attempt to airbrush Gruber out of ObamaCare history?
Here, Media, I’ll help you out by getting you started on the question: “Mr. President, why did you feel it was necessary, or appropriate, to dismiss Jonathan Gruber as merely ‘some adviser who never worked our staff’ when the evidence clearly shows he was a primary architect of the Affordable Care Act, you met with him in the Oval Office on one of the very same matters he discusses in his infamous ‘stupid voter” clips, and you have personally spoken of ‘stealing’ his ideas in the past?”