In one of the last speeches in office, Biden tries to rehabilitate the image of the late segregationist Strom Thurmond

President Biden appeared to try to rehabilitate the image of notoriously pro-segregation Senator Strom Thurmond on Monday during one of the final speeches of his presidency.

Biden did the comments while speaking at a White House reception for new Democratic members of Congress. The president offered several redeeming details about Thurmond, though he said he wasn’t defending the man.

“In my career I have been asked to eulogize the most incredibly different people. Strom Thurmond, 100. On his deathbed, I get a phone call from the hospital. From the hospital, by Walter Reed and his wife, Nancy said Joe, I’m here with the doctors at the nursing station Strom asked me if you would do his eulogy or not,” Biden said. he accepted the offer.

“Strom Thurmond decided that separate but equal wasn’t right, not that blacks and whites should be together. But if you separate equals, you should spend as much money on black schools as on white schools. When Strom Thurmond left The United States had the United States Senate and I’m making the case for it,” Biden continued.

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President Joe Biden speaks at a reception for new Democratic members of Congress in the State Dining Room of the White House, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

“But he had more African-Americans on his staff than any senator in the United States, more. Strom Thurmond had an illegitimate child with a black woman (and he) never denied it. He never stopped paying for his education. There there’s a lot of weird stuff. people, a lot of different people. And I mean, well, I bet I can look at you and find weird stuff, too,” Biden added.

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Biden has it he repeatedly mentioned his relationship with Thurmond at various times during his presidency. In August 2023, he claimed that he had “literally” convinced Thurmond to vote for the Voting Rights Act before his death in 2003, when he was just 21 years old.

President Joe Biden and the late Senator Strom Thurmand. (Getty Images)

“I was able to literally, not figuratively, convince Strom Thurmond to vote for the Civil Rights Act before he died.” Biden said at the time.

“And I thought, ‘well, maybe there’s real progress,'” he added. “But hate never dies, it just hides. It hides under rocks.”

Biden was born on November 20, 1942. The Civil Rights Act passed the Senate on June 19, 1964.

President Joe Biden speaks to the media after signing the Social Security Fairness Act at the White House in Washington, DC on January 5, 2025. (CHRIS KLEPONIS/AFP via Getty Images)

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While Thurmond and Biden were contemporaries in the Senate, the president would have been 21 at the time of the landmark legislation’s passage, and nowhere near the Senate seat he won at age 29.

Fox News’ Houston Keene contributed to this report.