And when Chotiner noted that it seemed like Frank said Sanders voters “have a slightly unrealistic sense about the political process,” Frank shot back, “I didn’t say slightly.”

“Bernie Sanders has been in Congress for 25 years with little to show for it in terms of his accomplishments and that’s because of the role he stakes out,” Frank told Isaac Chotiner in a question and answer piece published on Slate.com .

In an interview with Slate , former Congressman Barney Frank said he thinks Senator Bernie Sanders has “little to show” for more than two decades in Congress.


On the other hand, the former Massachusetts political heavyweight had kind words for Hillary Clinton.

“I think it’s been good on the whole,” he said of her campaign.

Frank did not hold back when asked about a slew of other topics, including “The Big Short,” Donald Trump, Antonin Scalia, and Mitt Romney.

When asked why Frank thought Trump fared so well in the Massachusetts primary last month, Frank noted, “Because the Massachusetts Republican Party has moved to the right along with the rest of the Republican Party. The Republican side in Massachusetts is a lot less different from the rest of the country than it used to be.”

Frank also called former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney “a pretend governor” whose only endgame was running for president, with “no real interest in the state.”

He also harshly criticized Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February.

“He was a bigot. He expressed prejudice in his opinions.” Frank told Slate of Scalia’s “homophobia.” The former congressman publicly came out in a Boston Globe story almost 30 years ago.

And Frank — whose name is on the Dodd-Frank Act — said he did not see “The Big Short,” which is about a select few who saw the financial crisis coming — but noted that he read the book.


“I am told at the end of the movie they say nothing changed, which is nonsense,” he said.

He went on to also criticize Jon Stewart and “House of Cards,” saying he thinks “there is a tendency in the media to demonize politics to the extent that it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“It basically tells people, ‘Everybody [in politics] stinks, they’re all no good,’ and that’s one of the reasons people don’t participate,” Frank said.