Palin Calls Out Media on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac: 'Now Do You Get It?'

On Tuesday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin reminded the media that she was correct in her assessment four years ago that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had gotten too big for taxpayers.

She made her remarks a day after President Barack Obama said it was time to “wind down” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as government-sponsored entities and before Obama echoed the same sentiments in an interview with the home-buying website Zillow.com on Tuesday.

Palin tweeted, “Hey media, now do you get it?” She linked to a Hot Air article that reported Palin’s comments during the 2008 campaign: 

The fact is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers. The McCain-Palin administration will make them smaller and smarter and more effective for homeowners who need help.

The mainstream press were quick to ridicule Palin in 2008, accusing her of making a “gaffe” and “misstatements” because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were technically private enterprises. Sam Stein, of the Huffington Post, said it was her first gaffe. Jake Tapper, then at ABC and now at CNN, also piled on. 

Hot Air noted, though, that Palin accurately called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “lending agencies that our government supports” and the reason they were “allowed to get out of control was because they had understood backing from the United States government. They would never have otherwise been able to become as big and risky in their practices as they did, and everyone concedes that.”

These were the same concessions that Obama also made this week.