By
For many Republicans, the problem with Sen. Katie Britt’s response to the State of the Union address was obvious before it was even over. An adviser to Donald Trump, for example, asked during the Alabama senator’s remarks, “What the hell am I watching right now?”
It was not an uncommon question. So many official State of the Union responses have been dreadful that some have raised the possibility of a “curse,” but Britt’s overwrought delivery, wild tonal swings, and kitchen setting were unusually cringeworthy, drawing complaints from GOP officials and their allies.
The fact that the Republican’s remarks were parodied on “Saturday Night Live” helped drive home the obvious point: Britt’s response failed. As a New York Times report summarized, “With a sunny, inviting smile, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama welcomed Americans into her kitchen on Thursday night. Many soon backed away nervously.”
It wasn’t long, however, before attention shifted away from the problem with the senator’s delivery and toward a substantive problem with Britt’s message itself.
Early on in the Alabama Republican’s remarks, she talked about having traveled to Texas, where she spoke to a woman who’d been raped and sex-trafficked by Mexican cartels starting at the age of 12. As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained:
Britt goes on to detail the woman’s horrific experience of daily sexual assault. She concludes by saying, “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.” Britt’s phrasing fairly clearly implies that the woman’s sexual abuse had taken place in the U.S.
But it didn’t. The woman Britt referred to was Karla Jacinto Romero, who survived a horrific nightmare that few can even imagine, and who has become a prominent activist. (Former Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz first highlighted these details in a TikTok video.)
The senator’s office told MSNBC in a statement that the story from the State of the Union response was “100% true.” But it was also plainly misleading: By omitting highly relevant details — the abuses Romero endured predated Biden’s presidency by decades, and Romero does not appear to have ever lived or sought asylum in the United States — viewers were obviously given a false impression of what happened and when.
It led The Washington Post to publish a fact-check report that concluded, “In a high-profile speech like this, a politician should not mislead voters with emotionally charged language. Romero’s story is tragic and may be evocative of other Mexican girls trapped in the sex trade in that country. But she was not trafficked across the border — and her story has nothing to do with Biden. Britt’s failure to make that clear earns her Four Pinocchios.”
It’s become frustratingly common for Republicans to blame Biden for developments that occurred during Donald Trump’s term, but to blame Biden for something that happened under George W. Bush’s term is even tougher to defend.
In damage-control mode, Britt appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and insisted that her carefully worded remarks did not mislead the public. Asked whether she intended to give the impression that the sex-trafficking in question happened during Biden’s tenure, the GOP lawmaker responded, “No.”
It was a difficult answer to take seriously. The full transcript of the senator’s comments is readily available, and it clearly shows Britt, who recently opposed bipartisan border reforms, punctuating the story about Romero by condemning “President Biden’s border crisis.”
Whether one approves or disapproves of the Democratic administration’s policies, they had literally nothing to do with what happened to Romero. The sooner Britt acknowledges that she was wrong to imply otherwise, the better.