Ben Stein, the author and pundit who will be forever best known for intoning the name “Bueller” in a 1980s high-school comedy, is outraged that Democrats are trying to persuade voters of color that the Republican party isn’t looking out for their best interests. He took his frustration to a friendly place, Fox News’ America’s News HQ on Sunday, and said these words (emphasis added):

What the White House is trying to do is racialize all politics and they’re especially trying to tell the African-American voter that the G.O.P. is against letting them have a chance at a good life in this economy, and that’s just a complete lie . . . I watch with fascination—with incredible fascination—all the stories about how the Democratic politicians, especially Hillary, are trying to whip up the African-American vote and say, “Oh, the Republicans have policies against black people in terms of the economy.” But there are no such policies. . . .

It’s all a way to racialize voting in this country . . . This president is the most racist president there has ever been in America. He is purposely trying to use race to divide Americans.

Whoo-boy, Mr. Stein! Where to start? Twelve American presidents owned slaves (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Johnson, Grant), eight of them while in office. Richard Nixon, who had plenty of theories when it came to race, believed that “the Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality, ” and that, when it came to black Americans, “what has to happen is they have to be, frankly, inbred.” (Stein, of all people, should have remembered Nixon’s curious racial theories—he was a lawyer and speechwriter for the president, and remains one of his biggest defenders.) The recorded history of racism among American politicians is too long to delineate here, so let’s end by including just one more illustrative example. Lyndon Johnson, the man who became a champion of equality when he signed the Civil Rights Act, once had this to say to his sometimes chauffeur, Robert Parker, according to Parker’s memoir, Capitol Hill in Black and White: “As long as you are black, and you’re gonna be black till the day you die, no one’s gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a goddamn piece of furniture.” We’re sure he meant well.

Stein was trying to accuse the Democrats of drumming up votes by cynically exploiting voters’ fears that Republican elected officials will pursue discriminatory policies. “The idea that Republicans are in some way making life difficult for black people is just nonsense—absolute nonsense,” he said. His position is complicated, at the least, by the Republican Party’s insistence on trying to make it difficult for people of color to vote. To be clear, neither party has a monopoly on craven politicking, and the argument here is not that Democrats are incapable of either racism or of preying on race-based fear for political gain. The argument here is that, by accusing Obama of being more racist than slaveholders and men who believed that “most Jewish people are insecure,” Stein is saying something demonstrably untrue, and should probably apologize.