"While Senate minority leader, Trent Lott praised Sen. <br />Strom Thurmond at a retirement party for the South Carolina Republican in 2002. ""When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either,"" Lott said.<br /><br />Thurmond ran for president in 1948 as a segregationist. Lott, a Mississippi Republican, later said the his statement was intended to endorse Thurmond as a man, not his beliefs.  Lott resigned his leadership post over the controversy and since left the Senate."
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