Ewww! Strom Thurmond Hit On Chelsea Clinton When She Was A Teenager

Though he served in the United States Senate for 48 years, the late South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond was one of the most reprehensible and unrepentant racists to ever roam the face of the earth. And now we know that he was also allegedly a disgusting perv.

Former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay recalled Monday that at an inauguration lunch being held in 1997 for President Bill Clinton, Thurmond, who was 95 at the time, made a move on a 16-year-old Chelsea Clinton. DeLay told Mother Jones magazine:

“She had Strom Thurmond on one side of her and me on the other. I thought, ‘What a terrible thing to do a young lady.’ Strom Thurmond, he kept hitting on her.”

DeLay’s recollection of that dinner matches what Hillary Clinton wrote in her book, Living History:

“Perhaps it was someone’s idea of a joke to seat me next to Newt Gingrich and to put Chelsea between the House Republican Whip, Tom DeLay, and the frisky nonagenarian Senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond.”

But there was nothing funny about what happened next. As Clinton wrote in her 2003 memoir:

“‘I think you’re nearly as pretty as your mama,’ the senator said with that silky Southern charm that had gained him quite a reputation.

“By the middle of the meal, he mused, ‘You’re as pretty as your mama. She’s real pretty and you’re pretty too. Yes, you are. You’re as pretty as your mama.’

“By the time dessert arrived, Thurmond was saying, ‘I do believe you’re prettier than your mama. Yes, you are, and if I was seventy years younger, I’d court you!'”

Gross and disgusting, if you ask me. And if he’d said something like that to my daughter, he might have be walking with a pronounced limp when he left that inaugural luncheon.

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