Biden Says He ‘Literally’ Convinced Segregationist Strom Thurmond to Vote for Civil Rights Act
When the lying never ends.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Have Old Joe Biden and reality finally formalized their separation and divorce? The alleged president was breathing on Monday, so it comes as no surprise that he was also lying; it would be hard to identify two operations that come more naturally to him. His latest howler is the claim that he convinced South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond to vote for the Civil Rights Act “before he died.”
Even among Biden’s innumerable lies, this one sets a new standard for mendacity, as every detail of it is false: the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, eight and a half years before Biden entered the Senate, Thurmond voted against it, and the segregationist senator didn’t die until nearly forty years later. Is it the dementia? Or is it just Joe being Joe? It’s increasingly hard to tell the difference.
Biden sounded even feebler than usual as he spoke to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Pause for just a moment,” Old Joe began weakly. “I thought things had changed.” He was reiterating his false and destructive claim that America in 2023 is beset by a systemic racism that only socialism and forced redistribution of wealth can cure.
Sounding as if he were on the brink of collapse, he summoned the strength to go on: “I was able to — literally, not figuratively — talk Strom Thurmond into voting for the, the Civil Rights Act before he died. And I thought, ‘Well, maybe there’s real progress.’ But hate never dies, it just hides. It hides under the rocks.” How does someone “figuratively” convince someone else to do something? But never mind, that’s the least of the problems with Old Joe’s latest ramble.
The Civil Rights Act passed the Senate by a 73 to 27 vote on June 19, 1964. Thurmond and other Southern Democrat senators (Thurmond would later become a Republican) made up twenty of the 27 dissenting votes. Old Joe Biden wouldn’t enter the Senate until Jan. 3, 1973. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, Biden was enjoying the summer before his senior year at the University of Delaware. There is no indication that Young Joe, 21 years old at the time, knew Strom Thurmond or spoke with him about the Civil Rights Act.
Biden regime wonks in the White House, once again assuming the role of the guy who follows behind the circus elephant with a dustpan and broom, explained that Old Joe “was instrumental in getting Thurmond’s vote for the Voting Rights Act, in 1980.” And while that’s swell, if it’s true, and it probably isn’t, Biden said the “Civil Rights Act,” not the “Voting Rights Act.” If Biden’s vilified predecessor had made such a confusion, he would have been raked over the coals in the establishment media for demonstrating what would have been described as an insensitivity that revealed a deep racism.
Maybe Old Joe meant other Civil Rights Acts; while the 1964 Act has gone down in history as the Civil Rights Act, there was another Civil Rights Act that passed the Senate on August 27, 1957. Old Joe was just fourteen years old then, and Thurmond famously mounted a 24-hour-long filibuster against this Act. So cross that one off the list. On Oct. 30, 1991, Thurmond did vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, but that one came over two decades after Thurmond had abandoned his earlier support for segregation, so it’s unlikely that he had to be cajoled by Joe Biden into voting in favor.
In fact, in 1989, when the senate rejected the nomination of William C. Lucas to be Assistant Attorney General for civil rights, Thurmond rebuked Democrat senate leadership for refusing to “give this black man a chance.” None other than Joe Biden responded defensively to Thurmond, saying that Lucas was rejected not because of racism, but because he was deemed unqualified for the position. Even in the unlikely event that Biden really did convince Thurmond to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1991, this was not right before Thurmond died, as Old Joe said Monday: the long-serving senator didn’t die for another eleven and a half years.
Any way you slice it, Biden was lying when he said he convinced Thurmond to vote for the Civil Rights Act. The only thing that’s unclear is whether the increasingly befogged Oval Office corruptocrat actually believes his own tall tales or if he simply has so much contempt for the American people that he figures a large segment of them will believe anything. And considering that there are still multitudes in the land who believe that he got 81 million votes in 2020 in an election that was entirely on the up-and-up, Old Joe isn’t wrong.
Robert Spencer
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur’an and The Sumter Gambit. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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