Biden tears into Republicans: 'I’ve served with real racists' but 'these guys are worse'

Before his White House career began, President Joe Biden spent 36 years in the US Senate. Some of his former colleagues — like Sens. Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) and Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina) — were open segregationists. But the president recently said the current crop of Republicans in Congress are "worse" than them.

The New York Times reported that while addressing an audience at a fundraiser in California, Biden was particularly candid in his analysis of today's GOP, though he didn't attack any specific members by name.

"I’ve served with real racists," Biden said. "I’ve served with Strom Thurmond. I’ve served with all these guys that have set terrible records on race. But guess what? These guys are worse. These guys do not believe in basic democratic principles."

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Thurmond still holds the record for the longest speaking filibuster of any legislation, when he spoke for a total of 14 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The president said that despite the "terrible things" Thurmond did during his career, he managed to redeem himself by the time he left office in 2003 at the age of 100. Biden noted that his late former colleague had more African Americans "in his staff than any other member in Congress" an that he "voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act."

"I’m not making him more than he was," Biden added. "But my point is, at least you could work with some of these guys."

Biden's comments about Republicans currently in Congress being "worse" than racists like Strom Thurmond come as leading GOP figures continue to draw criticism for racist remarks. In 2022, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) blasted some Democrats' calls for reparations for slavery, saying that Democrats were "pro-crime" and that "they think the people that do the crime are owed [reparations]." His comment was denounced by the NAACP.

In the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) was condemned for remarks that same year promoting the racist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory that the mass shooter in Buffalo, New York also subscribed to. At a rally in Arizona, Greene said "Joe Biden's 5 million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you, replacing your jobs and replacing your kids in school and, coming from all over the world, they're also replacing your culture. And that's not great for America." And earlier this year, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy did events alongside former Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) ahead of the Iowa Caucuses, who had previously defended the terms "white nationalist" and "white supremacist" before getting voted out of office in 2020.

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