Sen. Tom Cotton made headlines this weekend because something he said about slavery is being misinterpreted — perhaps maliciously. He is being accused by some of defending the institution and its existence in America during the founding era, but he did nothing of the sort.

Cotton was speaking about his bill that would deny federal funds to schools that incorporate the New York Times’s 1619 Project, a series of historically inaccurate and dishonest essays about America’s founding, into their teaching curricula. He told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that it’s important to “study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise, we can’t understand our country.”