Call this Gruber 2: Stupid and Stupider. Jonathan Gruber attempted to escape scrutiny for his October 2013 declaration that Americans are “stupid” and that ObamaCare was designed to exploit that and hide its true nature by saying that he regretted his “off the cuff” comments. “I basically spoke inappropriately,” he told Ronan Farrow, “and I regret having made those comments.”

Last night, though, a second video emerged from the same time period in which Gruber explained that the ACA passed “because the American people are too stupid” to understand the law. Megyn Kelly wondered last night how this squared with Gruber’s mea culpa on that “little-watched MSNBC show”:

ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber apparently doesn’t think much of the intelligence of the American people. A new tape has surfaced showing Gruber, once again, claiming the health care law’s authors took advantage of the “stupid” American public. The tape, played on Fox News’ “The Kelley File,” showed Gruber speaking at an October 2013 event at Washington University in St. Louis. Referring to the so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-end health plans, he said: “They proposed it and that passed, because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.”

Oopsie! Another “speak-o”? Hardly. The architect of the nanny-state takeover of the health insurance industry has a pattern of public remarks about his evaluation of the American public as too stupid to take care of itself. That shouldn’t shock anyone; it’s exactly the same attitude that drives all nanny-state policies. Unfortunately for the current administration, Gruber’s dumb enough to air that opinion in public, multiple times, on camera.

Rep. Trey Gowdy says, “I can’t even get past the irony to get to the arrogance.” Is this really a “smoking gun,” though, or just confirmation about the nature of progressive elitists? Kelly and Gowdy debate that point, but it’s still a fait accompli. It’s an object lesson, Gowdy says, on the dangers of passing “comprehensive” legislation — like immigration reform, for which Republicans can now make Gruber the poster boy for the Obama administration’s credibility.

Update: Either Gruber makes a lot of “speak-os” or he thinks Americans are really dumb …. and therefore exploitable:

“It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012. He was discussing what is known as the Cadillac tax and how it came into being. In an effort to add a cost-control measure to Obamacare, former Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who Gruber called a “hero,” successfully pushed through a 40 percent excise tax on insurance companies for plans that cost more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,000 for families. This was an alternative to putting a cap on tax breaks employers provide employees for health insurance plans, which, according to Gruber, the public mistook for a tax increase rather than the removal of a tax break. “You just can’t get through, it’s just politically impossible,” Gruber said during his talk.

Let’s not forget that when Gruber calls voters stupid, it can’t be applied to those who opposed ObamaCare on the very same grounds as he states in these videos. Critics had made these arguments all along about the deceptive structure of the bill, and the lies being told to cover it up. Gruber’s talking about the Obama coalition in these remarks.