Republican Alabama Sen. Katie Britt has attempted to respond to allegations that her rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s third State of the Union address contained misleading details — and has launched a fundraiser in the wake of the widely criticized speech.
Britt, 42, who delivered her speech from her kitchen on Thursday after Biden’s address, made questionable claims, including saying Biden stopped all deportations and halted construction of the border wall.
Reports show Biden briefly stopped the wall’s construction but later had his administration commission additional construction work on the wall. Biden attempted to pause some immigrants’ deportations within his first 100 days in office, but not all of them.
Britt has since launched a fundraiser, according to Raw Story, in which she said, “Following my speech, the left-wing media didn’t waste a second flooding the airwaves with despicable, disgusting messages about me. They attacked my character. They attacked my faith. They attacked my identity as a mother and a wife.”
Britt’s pitch continues, according to Raw Story, “My heart is broken. Not just for myself, but for my children, your children and the ENTIRE next generation of Americans. Why? Because I didn’t prepare a 20-minute speech and stand up to Biden in front of millions of Americans for ME. I did it for them, for YOU and your children, Friend!”
Roger Sollenberger, a senior political reporter for the Daily Beast, shared a screenshot of a fundraising email from Britt via X. The email states, according to the screenshot, “I just gave the official Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union and the left is FREAKING OUT over my message,” along with a button asking readers to “rush a small donation” to “help Republicans win.”
One of the misleading claims made in her rebuttal speech was about a woman she met who told her about her history as a human trafficking survivor.
The issue, according to outlets who fact-checked Britt’s speech, was that the senator implied the woman’s human trafficking experience happened while Biden was president.
“When I first took office, I did something different,” Britt said in her speech last week, according to a transcript from The Associated Press. “I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped.”
Britt’s speech, which was poked fun at during a recent episode of “Saturday Night Live,” continues, “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it. President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable. And it’s almost entirely preventable.”
A journalist for political news site Talking Points Memo pointed out via TikTok that the portrayal of the woman Britt was talking about wasn’t exactly accurate.
Jonathan M. Katz found evidence – including from Britt’s previous testimony before Congress, Newsweek reported – that the woman Britt was likely talking about, Karla Jacinto Romero, was trafficked in Mexico sometime between 2004 and 2008 prior to Biden’s presidency.
George W. Bush was president during that time, while President Biden was a senator.
“These events didn’t happen in the United States,” Katz said, according to Newsweek. “These crimes didn’t take place in the United States. Or even near the border. They took place in Mexico.”
Jacinto Romero told CNN on Sunday that she, in fact, was trafficked before Biden took office, according to the news outlet.
Romero also told CNN that when she met Britt, it wasn’t a one-on-one meeting like the senator implied on Thursday, but it was during an event with other anti-human-trafficking activists and government officials at the southern border, the outlet reported.
The survivor also clarified to CNN that rather than having been trafficked by Mexican drug cartels, as Britt said in the speech, it was a pimp that began her terrifying experience of being forced into prostitution, according to the outlet.
During a recent appearance on Fox News, Britt was asked about the misleading story and whether or not she meant to imply that it happened during Biden’s presidency.
Britt responded to Fox anchor Shannon Bream, saying, before slightly stumbling, “Well – I very, very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12., So I didn’t say a teenager, I didn’t say a young woman, a grown woman, a woman, [who] was trafficked when she was 12.”
She continued, “And so listening to her story, she was a victims rights advocate who – who was telling, ‘this is what drug cartels are doing, this is how they’re profiting off of women,’ and it is disgusting,” according to the Fox News report.
