Fox News Channel host Neil Cavuto said anyone who thought he blamed the financial crisis on Barack Obama during the Republican presidential debate Thursday night is “an ass.”
Cavuto, who moderated the Fox Business debate with Maria Bartiromo asked this question to John Kasich:
Gov. Kasich, we are not even two weeks into this stock-trading year but think about it: Investors have already lost $1.6 trillion in market value. That makes it the worst start to a new year ever. Many worry that things could get even worse, and that banks and financial stocks are particularly vulnerable. And, if this escalates like it did back when Barack Obama first assumed the presidency, what actions would you take, if the same thing happens all over again just as in this example you are taking over the presidency?
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Writing at Talking Points Memo, Tierney Sneed said the question “had a curious way of glossing over the fact that the 2008 financial crisis came under President George W. Bush.”
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman accused Cavuto not of saying anything false, but of being “selective”:
Cavuto spoke about the dip in stocks that took place in the very early days of the Obama presidency — which, not incidentally, led a lot of the usual suspects to declare that his policies had already failed — and about the decline in the past few weeks. Somehow no mention of what happened in between.
On his FNC show Friday, Cavuto played his question again in its entirety, then asked viewers, “did I blame the president for that crisis? No.”
Cavuto said “for people to re-construct, like Paul Krugman in The New York Times…that I somehow manufactured a crisis and lumped it on the president…if anyone can divine political motives to that question, you’re an ass.”