Trailblazing Congressman Barney Frank’s Final Regret Was About Donald Trump

Barney Frank, the sharp tongued Massachusetts Democrat who spent 32 years in the House and became the first member of Congress to come out as gay of his own accord, died at 86 after weeks in hospice care. In the interviews he gave while his heart was failing, he left one last political shot at President Donald Trump.

His sister Doris Breay confirmed the death to NBC Boston. Close friend and former campaign manager Jim Segel told the Associated Press that Frank died late Tuesday, May 19, 2026, at his home in Ogunquit, Maine. He had entered hospice in April with congestive heart failure. He is survived by his husband Jim Ready, sisters Ann Lewis and Doris Breay, and brother David Frank.

Frank represented the Boston suburbs from 1981 until he retired in 2013. He chaired the House Financial Services Committee during the 2008 crash and helped write the Dodd Frank overhaul that tightened rules on banks and created new consumer protections. In 1987 he publicly said he was gay, the first sitting member of Congress to do so without being forced out by a scandal. In July 2012 he married Ready in Newton, Massachusetts, becoming the first sitting member of Congress to enter a same sex marriage.

“It was life changing, lifesaving for me,” Frank told NBC News last month. “I think the key to our having made the enormous progress we made in defeating anti gay prejudice had to do with us all coming out and people discovering the gap between our reality and the way we were painted.”

Born March 31, 1940, in Bayonne, New Jersey, he left office with a reputation for biting humor and a willingness to lecture his own party as well as the other side. In his final weeks he kept talking. He told Politico from hospice that one regret stayed with him.

“One of my regrets is that I won’t see the continued implosion of Donald Trump.”

On Boston public radio station WBUR, in an interview published May 14 from that same Maine house, he went further and called the president an “idiot savant.”

“As to Trump, I have developed my theory about him: It’s not just that he’s bad on all these values, but he is an idiot savant,” Frank said. “He has just one talent: an ability to exploit anger that got him into power. But having gotten into power, he’s got nothing left, and that’s why now he’s just floundering.”

He added that he could not think of an issue on which Trump was popular, naming the Iran war, a fight with the Pope, the economy, and even immigration. “His anger, his narcissism, all of the negative parts of his personality have asserted themselves, and he really doesn’t have much of a positive vision of things to offset that.”

Former President Barack Obama posted a tribute on X. “Barney Frank was one of a kind. For more than three decades in Congress, he fought tirelessly for the people of Massachusetts, helped make housing more affordable, stood up for the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans, and helped pass one of the most sweeping financial reforms in history designed to protect consumers and prevent another financial crisis. Barney’s passion and wit were second to none, and our thoughts are with his family today.”

Nancy Pelosi said Frank had called her the month before to tell her he was in hospice. “He has been about idealism and pragmatism to get the job done,” she told NBC. “He was a real mentor to so many of us here.”

Frank spent those last weeks at home, still arguing about how Democrats should win again and still needling the man in the White House. The voice that once filled hearing rooms went quiet on a Tuesday night in Maine.