During the January 14 Fox Business Republican Presidential Debate, co-moderator Neil Cavuto asked Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) how he would handle recent stock market fluctuations should he become president. Cavuto framed his question by wondering what needs to happen if American stock market declines continue to escalate “like it did back when Barack Obama first assumed the presidency.” 

Economists and journalists slammed Cavuto's biased line of questioning, writing that "A doctorate in recent history isn't necessary" to see Cavuto's bias, and that Cavuto's selective memory is "part of a larger pattern" of misinformation. 

Cavuto responded with criticism on the January 15 edition of his show, claiming that "The New York Times, Media Matters, some of these left wing sites" had unfairly claimed that “I somehow manufactured a crisis, and lumped it on the president,” concluding that “if anyone can divine any political motives to that question, you're an ass”:

NEIL CAVUTO (HOST): You know I said before that anyone can look at a debate through their own prism and their own bias, but when I hear a story and a myth and a series of lies that's repeated and repeated and tweeted and then re-tweeted, it begins to get my attention. Especially something that hit the liberal blogosphere, that I apparently in a question implied that Barack Obama was to blame for the financial crisis that actually happened before he became even president. I wondered what triggered that. And they point to this question that I asked. Now, I want you to hear anything that implies that I blamed the financial crisis that Barack Obama inherited, on Barack Obama. Listen to this. 

[...]

Did I blame the president for that crisis? No. What I was saying was that with starting this year out with a huge market selloff, much as we were looking at the middle of a meltdown, in the last year of the Bush Administration, that Senator Barack Obama, once elected president, would be inheriting, taking over, when he was inaugurated president. My point was then, and to stress now, that he would be taking over as president in the middle of what would be a market meltdown, not of his doing. I wasn't blaming it on him. 

So, for people to reconstruct like, well, Krugman in The New York Times, Media Matters, some of these left-wing sites -- that I somehow manufactured a crisis, and lumped it on the president, the same president, I had reminded my Republican guests, had seen the unemployment rate cut in half under his stewardship and the millions of jobs created. I wasn't framing any economic argument to benefit either Republicans or Democrats. I was simply saying to the people on the stage that in this case, particularly John Kasich, “What would you do if what we're looking at now is the beginning of a financial crisis, that on January 20, 2017, you would be inheriting, much as Barack Obama was inheriting back then?” Now, if anyone can divine any political motives to that question, you're an ass.