Late. Katie Britt defended the anecdote she used to condemn President Joe Biden’s border policy — even though it happened 20 years ago.
The Alabama senator said she didn’t mean to imply that the child-trafficking incident happened under the current president’s watch, but wanted to compare the policies that lead to horrible things like this.
Britt, 42, delivered the Republican rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday night from her kitchen table in Birmingham, Alabama, where she became emotional as she tore into the president for his lax immigration and border policies.
But her emotional story of a 12-year-old human trafficking victim, used to illustrate the border crisis under Joe Biden, sparked outrage after reports emerged that the ordeal actually took place in Mexico when George W Bush was president in 2004.
Late. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) defended using a 20-year-old story as an anecdote for President Joe Biden’s border crisis — claiming she never gave a timeline and her wording was that she spoke to a “woman” about ” when she was 12′ and a victim of human trafficking
It turned out that the survivor she featured is Karla Jacinto Romero (pictured), now a high-profile campaigner who was abused in Mexico in 2004 — years before Biden took office.
Speaking to Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream, Britt confirmed the story was old and said she never said it was current.
Asked to clarify whether the story happened during the Biden administration, Britt replied: ‘Well, I said very clearly that 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 did. don’t say a young woman. A grown woman – a woman – when she was trafficked when she was 12.’
But her response comes after the junior Alabama senator was already lambasted for using the two-decade-old anecdote.
‘I don’t know what FI saw,’ said former Fox host Megyn Kelly, ‘she embarrassed herself, she embarrassed Republicans and she embarrassed women.’
Another critic of Britt, writer Nick Knudsen, said she has been exposed as a ‘lying sack’.
The GOP rising star chose to focus on the border crisis aspect of her rebuttal around ‘a woman who shared her story with me’ after they spoke in Del Rio, Texas.
“She had been sex-trafficked by the cartels when she was 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped,” Britt told viewers.
“The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoebox in a room and they sent men through that door, over and over, for hours and hours,” she recalled. ‘We would not be okay with this happening in a third world country. This is America and it’s time we start acting like it.’
Former AP journalist Jonathan Katz was among the first to realize that Britt was talking about the case of Karla Jacinto Romero, who was caught by a pimp after her mother kicked her out of the family home in Mexico City in 2004.
Karla Jacinto Romero was just 12 years old when she was kicked out of her home in Mexico City and forced into four years of child prostitution
Late. Britt centered the story of a 12-year-old child trafficking victim to illustrate the border crisis under Joe Biden when she delivered the GOP’s State of the Union address from her kitchen table in Birmingham, Alabama
But Britt said she wanted to tell the story to ‘bring some light’ to the issue of human trafficking and drug cartels ‘taking advantage of women’.
She hopes that “the media actually decide to cover” that aspect of the crisis and not focus on the timeline of events.
Britt’s impassioned 18-minute speech enraged liberals and was ridiculed by Scarlett Johansen, who parodied it on SNL, where she was mocked as the ‘craziest b**ch in the Target parking lot’.
Karla Jacinto Romero was forced into prostitution for four years before escaping and becoming a powerful and high-profile advocate for child sex victims, testifying before Congress in 2015 and meeting the Pope.
“Britt tells it as if she was sitting on the banks of the Rio Grande and holding her hand and making her tell the story she doesn’t want to tell anyone else,” Katz noted.
Former AP journalist Jonathan M Katz was among the first to unearth the truth in the story
Britt appeared on the verge of tears at times as she tore into the policies President Biden emphatically defended and made an emotional appeal. The picture: Britt with her husband and two children at the family kitchen table
At 42, Britt is the youngest female GOP senator ever and is seen as a rising star in the party
Romero testified before Congress as far back as 2015 and has become one of Mexico’s best-known advocates against child trafficking
“This senator has gone around telling the story over and over as if she was describing actions that took place on or even near the US border during Joe Biden’s presidency.
‘It goes beyond misleading.’
‘It just seems like she got on national TV and lied about something really awful and really important for her own personal and her party’s political gain.’
Britt traveled to the Del Rio Sector border in Texas in January 2023 with other Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, according to a press release issued at the time from Hyde-Smith’s office.
“The senators held a roundtable discussion with former Mexican Congresswoman Rosa María de la Garza, Fox News contributor Sara Carter and Karla Jacinto Romero, a survivor of human trafficking,” the press release said.
‘The senators learned about cartel activity in Mexico and the work being done to rescue victims of human trafficking.’
Britt, 42, has made immigration one of his top issues in his first years in the Senate, and Republicans have seized on a wave of immigrants entering the country during Biden’s tenure to attack the president.
Donald Trump had endorsed Britt in her 2022 primary after flipping on former Rep. Mo Brooks, whom he initially endorsed.
Britt is married to former NFL player Wesley Britt and they have two children, and Speaker Mike Johnson noted that Britt is “the only current Republican mother of school-age children serving in the Senate.”
The youngest Republican woman elected to the Senate received praise from some for her performance, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz
“Congratulations to my friend and colleague @SenKatieBritt for showing Texans and Americans what Republicans really stand for – a strong economy, secure border and good jobs for every American,” he wrote.
‘She was absolutely top notch and delivered a dynamite response,’ wrote South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
But former GOP congressman Joe Walsh called her remarks ‘despicable.’
“She sat in front of the American people and she lied to us about a very serious problem,” he told CNN.
Alabama GOP Sen. Katie Britt’s State of the Union response was spoofed by Scarlett Johansson (pictured) on SNL, parodying the politician’s dramatic tone
‘It’s very clear to me,’ Katz concluded, that Britt ‘was trying to make a connection in people’s minds between Joe Biden, the border, Mexicans or people of Latin descent and sexual violence.
‘That’s what she’s going for, and she’s doing it on the basis of what you can only say is an outright lie.’
Katz’s quick rebuttal garnered more than 150,000 likes after he posted it on TikTok.
‘Holy moly. This is worth every minute,’ said author Nick Knudsen.
“Jonathan Katz exposes Katie Britt as a lying sack.”