Sen. Mitt Romney swooped in to defend fellow Republican Sen. Katie Britt from a withering backlash to her State of the Union rebuttal speech, as liberals fear her national appeal. He said that.
Britt (R-Ala.) faced ridicule on Saturday Night Live after criticizing President Biden’s border policies, using her vocal inflections and bringing up an anecdote about sex trafficking that occurred in Mexico 20 years ago. He was criticized online for his decision to do so.
To Romney, none of that matters.
“In a good way, it was over-the-top and out of character – Biden’s, of course. Katie Britt too,” the former 2021 Republican presidential candidate wrote on X.
“The media’s overreaction to her, not him, shows who liberals are most afraid of as a running mate.”
Britt is a first-term senator and has been talked about as a possible candidate to be former President Donald Trump’s running mate.
Mr. Romney plans to retire at the end of his Senate term, but has emphasized that he will not support Mr. Trump in the November 5 election.
Throughout his time in the Senate, he has emerged as one of Trump’s chief opponents among Republicans. However, he has also been harshly critical of President Biden.
Immediately after Biden’s State of the Union address, Romney praises Although he made his points on foreign policy, he argued that the incumbent has pursued the “same old liberal strategy” of excessive spending and taxation.
As the backlash deepened, Romney remained largely silent on Britt’s speech until Sunday.
SNL tapped Scarlett Johansson to parody the Alabama senator this week.
“And I’m going to perform my original monologue, ‘This country is hell,'” Johansson deadpanned, trying to imitate Britt’s tone.
“Republicans wanted me to appeal to female voters. Women love the kitchen.”
Britt also faced backlash for her story about a woman who was sex trafficked by a cartel, later identified as Carla Jacinto Romero, a victim in Mexico from 2004 to 2008.
“President Biden didn’t just cause this border crisis. He invited it with 94 enforcement actions in his first 100 days. When I took office, I took a different approach.” Britt retorted in his State of the Union address.
“I traveled to the Del Rio area of Texas. There I spoke with a woman who told me her story.”
Other critics, including Democrats and the Washington Post’s fact-checking division, accused Britt of failing to reveal that the tragic event occurred long before Biden became president.
Britt defended her rebuttal.
“I specifically said that I spoke to a woman who told me about the time she was trafficked when she was 12 years old,” Britt claimed on “Fox News Sunday.”
“So I didn’t say a teenager. I didn’t say a young woman. An adult woman, a woman who was trafficked at age 12.”
