The panel of MSNBC’s “The Cycle” agreed that the recent flurries of insulting and impolitic videos of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber was horrible press for the law, with MSNBC reporter Alex Seitz-Wald saying it confirmed “all the worst suspicions that Republicans had” about Obamacare. (RELATED: Bret Baier: Obama’s Minimization of Gruber A ‘Disconnected Reality’)
HOST TOURÉ: I think that Grubergate is probably the dumbest self-inflicted wound to happen to Obamacare since the rollout of Obamacare. He calls voters dumb, and he contributes to this notion they had to be secretive in order to get this thing passed. Does this become a lasting stain on the way that people perceive this whole law, do you think?
SEITZ-WALD: Well, it’s hard to tell how much this will penetrate the larger consciousness outside of the beltway and New York. Jonathan Gruber, I’m guessing his name I.D. is 0.00001 percent among most Americans. But it does confirm all the worst suspicions that Republicans had, everything that they’ve been saying about Obamacare, that it was passed on a platform of lies, that Democrats were not transparent in passing this bill. His words, his own words, kind of confirm all of that, so they’ll point to that, and it’s just yet another hurdle in trying to get the numbers back above water for Obamacare.