Media falsely claim Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) did not answer question asking if he bore any responsibility for financial crisis
Several media figures falsely claimed Barney Frank did not answer a student's question asking how much responsibility he bore for the financial crisis. In fact, Frank did provide a substantive response to the question.
During the April 8 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough falsely claimed, repeatedly, that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) would not give an answer to a student's question: "[H]ow much, if any, responsibility do you think you have" for the financial crisis? Similarly, on the April 8 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy falsely claimed Frank "never answered" the student's question, and on the April 7 edition of his Fox News television program, Sean Hannity asserted that Frank "had a little trouble answering a very simple question last night." Contrary to their claims, Frank did provide a substantive response, which none of them mentioned or aired.
Scarborough, Doocy, and Hannity all played clips of the exchange between Frank and a student at an event at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. But none of them noted that Frank said, "The answer is, yes, I do take responsibility for something," or that he later added that after filing "a bill in 2006 when I was still in the minority to say that hedge funds should be registered," in 2007, he "was approached by people who said, 'No. No. You can't do too much regulation,' and I backed off. I wish I hadn't." Frank also noted that he did, in fact, work on legislation to deal with mortgage lending, stating that in 2007 his committee passed restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and on subprime lending.
