Even Chris Matthews winced at Barney Frank’s ‘fag burning’ attack on Scalia, ‘that’s not funny’
Former Congressman Barney Frank‘s reaction to Donald Trump‘s flag burning tweet featured a comment about the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, using the phrase “fag burning,” making Hardball host Chris Matthews a little uncomfortable.
Frank went off on Trump’s provocative tweeting, first by attacking the vote count: that since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote so decisively and Trump is so polarizing, “he is by far the most minority President we’ve ever had in this country is going to be a very big problem”
“I do think that maybe one kinda problem — it is interesting that as you noted, Scalia wrote the opinion, was strongly on the other side of this and he cited Scalia as his favorite judge. I think there was a pronunciation problem. You know, Scalia was actually the leading advocate of fag burning, not flag burning and I think that’s where he got himself a little confused.” (Emphasis added, The Dispatch)
Matthews seemed shocked: “Okay. Let’s — do you want to — that’s not funny.”
Frank was asked about Scalia in an interview earlier this year, he said, “I was troubled that his homophobia never got mentioned when he died. If he had been as comfortably prejudiced against African Americans, or women, or a lot of other groups, he would not have been considered such a wonderful person. He was a bigot. He expressed prejudice in his opinions.”