Ben Stein Blasted for Saying Both Trump and Nixon 'Kicked Out of Office'

Ben Stein famously played an economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but some are now arguing that the actor needs to brush up on his U.S. government studies.

Critics slammed Stein over the weekend after he claimed that former presidents Donald Trump and Richard Nixon had been "kicked out of office." His comments came while speaking with Lara Trump on her podcast The Right View late last week.

"The thing that's most apparent...is that both President Trump and President [Richard] Nixon were kicked out of office for doing exactly nothing wrong," Stein told the podcast's host. "It was just a lynch mob that was assembled on the words of some crank people who happened to be highly placed in the media."

Prior to making it in Hollywood, Stein worked as a speechwriter for Nixon and former President Gerald Ford. He has argued that the media got a lot wrong when it came to Nixon, drawing parallels to how Trump's supporters have viewed Trump's press coverage.

But what many Twitter users have since noted is that neither president was "kicked out of office" exactly. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached over his role in the Watergate scandal. Trump, meanwhile, simply lost the 2020 presidential election.

"Hey, Ben Stein, Trump wasn't 'kicked out of office' midway through like Nixon," journalist Jonathan Alter wrote in a Sunday quote-tweet. "He was defeated in a free and fair election, mostly for poor performance in a pandemic that cost 1 million lives."

"Uh, Trump was not kicked out of office. There was an election," tweeted David Corn, the D.C. bureau chief for Mother Jones. "Can we get this guy a film strip that explains how American democracy works?"

Certain Twitter users referenced Stein's most well-known flick in response to his remarks.

"Ferris Bueller did nothing wrong," The Nation correspondent Jeet Heer wrote in a Sunday tweet.

And Tom Nichols, staff writer for The Atlantic, also weighed in with his own hot take.

"Can't there be just a few ancient Republicans left who will decide that maybe holding on to one last shred of dignity is better than doing interviews like this," he wrote in a tweet.

Stein has come under fire for his conservative views before. He was criticized in August for asking why the Republican Party isn't credited enough for working to "free the slaves."

Detractors also blasted Stein back in 2019 after he said Black people have a "very deep attachment" to "feeling like they're the underdogs and feeling like they've been victimized."

Newsweek has reached out to a Stein representative for comment.