Michael Reagan: 'The Butler' Disparages Memory of Ronald Reagan

Former President Reagan's administration is currently on display in the new movie "Lee Daniels' The Butler," where the 40th president is portrayed as a racist because he was in favor of lifting economic sanctions against South Africa.

"My father was not a racist, but the whole story ... is really a bogus story," says his son and Newsmax contributor Michael Reagan in an exclusive Newsmax interview.

Reagan said the movie, which supposedly is based on the life of Eugene Allen, who worked as a butler in the White House for 34 years, is filled with inaccuracies for the purpose of disparaging his father's name.

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"Eugene Allen — whom I knew, by the way — is a guy who comes from segregated Virginia, gets a job at the White House, works there 34 years, retires in 1986.

"The story in the movie about Cecil Gaines, he was born and raised in Georgia, his mother was raped, his father was shot, he got a job at the White House, then he quit the White House to join a protest against America and what's going on in Vietnam and race, which is the farthest from the truth about Eugene Allen," Reagan explains.

"You could have done a movie just about Eugene Allen and it would have been a great movie about somebody working at the White House. But instead, Hollywood decided they want to make this about Ronald Reagan and disparage Ronald Reagan and others, and did the same thing to Eugene Allen's wife. To sit there and take his wife, make her an alcoholic, as Oprah Winfrey did, and have her have an affair with the neighbor is outrageous.

"I hope people who go see it don't believe it's a true story. Once again, it's a fictionalized account of a true person at the White House, but it's written and directed by a person who, in fact, has another agenda, and that's to disparage the memory of Ronald Reagan."

The son of the 40th president adds that it was his father — "that 'racist' Ronald Reagan" — who signed the law that gave us Martin Luther King Day. "People have forgotten that," he said.