Republicans baffled by Katie Britt's State of the Union response: 'One of our biggest disasters' | State of the Union address | The Guardian
Category: News & Politics
Via: kavika • 10 months ago • 37 commentsBy: MartinPengelly (the Guardian)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The 42-year-old Alabama senator is a rising Republican star but her kitchen table speech did not land well even in her own party
- Joe Biden delivers feisty State of the Union address with vision for his second term
Katie Britt's Republican response to Joe Biden's State of the Union address drew reactions ranging from the baffled to the satirical to the appalled, even among fellow rightwingers.
"What the hell am I watching right now?" an unnamed Trump adviser told Rolling Stone.
"It's one of our biggest disasters ever," another unnamed Republican strategist told the Daily Beast.
Delivering the official State of the Union response can be a thankless task, as the former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and the Florida senator Marco Rubio, deliverers of previously panned speeches, would ruefully attest.
Nonetheless, the 42-year-old Alabama senator is a rising Republican star, widely respected on Capitol Hill and her selection to respond to Biden was a golden opportunity to introduce herself to the wider American electorate.
In his address Biden used his bully pulpit effectively, attacking Republicans in a fiery speech and inviting a strong response. But Britt's speech, delivered with overt theatricality, oscillating in tone between the wholesome and the wholly horrific, did not land well even in her own party.
Charlie Kirk, founder of the far-right Turning Point USA youth group, said: "I'm sure Katie Britt is a sweet mom and person, but this speech is not what we need. Joe Biden just declared war on the American right and Katie Britt is talking like she's hosting a cooking show, whispering about how Democrats 'dont get it'."
That pointed to widespread confusion over the setting for such a figure to give such an important speech: a kitchen.
As a Gallup poll showed 57% of American voters think the US would be better off if more women were in elected office, Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump aide turned never-Trumper, said: "Senator Katie Britt is a very impressive person … I do not understand the decision to put her in a KITCHEN for one of the most important speeches she's ever given."
Speaking to CNN, Griffin added: "The staging of this was bizarre to me. Women can be both wives and mothers and also stateswomen, so to put her in a kitchen, not at a podium or in the Senate chamber where she was elected after running a hard-fought race, I think fell very flat and was completely confusing to some women watching it."
Allie Beth Stuckey, host of the Relatable podcast, which "analyses culture, news and politics from a biblical perspective", said: "Ok, GOP. Never again. I know y'all were going for the relatable mom speaking in her kitchen from her heart, but it didn't work. Just a straight, strong speech will do in the future. Thanks."
Kirk asked followers if they liked the speech. Blue-ticked conservative verdicts included "Man, it was so disappointing", "No, very babysitter-reading-a-bedtime story-like", "way too dramatic", and "the up and down emotion was bizarre".
Among satirical responses, Tom Nichols, an anti-Trump conservative columnist, spoke for many when he said: "There is no way that this Katie Britt address does not end up as part of the Saturday Night Live cold open."
Elsewhere, the gonzo filmmaker Tom Arnold said: "Katie Britt is so bad she couldn't be in one of my movies."
Julia Ioffe, Washington correspondent for Puck News, said: "Imagine you're sleeping over at a friend's house and you get up in the middle of the night to pee and you hear a weird sound so you follow it to the kitchen, where your friend's mom is drunk, crying, and rambling about the national debt. Those are the vibes from Katie Britt right now."
From the other side of the political spectrum, however, the gun control advocate Shannon Watts highlighted a darker side to Britt's performance, as expressed in a particularly lurid passage.
With wavering voice, the senator described meeting a migrant woman who she said described being "sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12" and who, Britt said, spoke of being repeatedly raped "on a mattress in a shoebox of a room".
Watts said: "Senator Katie Britt says sexual assault is the worst thing that can happen to a woman while encouraging Americans to vote for a convicted sexual predator."
Last month, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was ordered to pay $83.3m in a civil defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge said was "substantially true". Accused of sexual assault or misconduct by more than 20 other women, Trump also faces trial this month on 34 charges arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star who claimed an affair.
Britt endorsed Trump last December.
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I did not see it but Red, my wife did and her comment was, ''WTH are the Republicans thinking showing her in the kitchen?''
As someone else said, they just forgot to show her barefoot and pregnant - I'm seeing, of course, some hilarious spoofs of this ridiculous performance.
I'm sure there will be an endless supply of spoofs of this ''performance'' for quite some time.
Scarlett Johannsen did a pretty good job - as predicted - it was the cold open on SNL and excellent
she nailed it ...
I'm a wife
A mother
And the craziest bitch in the Target parking lot
lol
katie britt is continuing to take a beating in the national media, as well as within the GOP. it is hilarious. looks like the GOP's newest rising star prematurely detonated. what is up with alabama? the senate being the only equal voice alabama has in the legislative branch and they send 2 religious morons. wtf.
She's getting hammered on Face Book
maybe she thought her 2 kids needed a test of faith and family...
... hopefully they attend a public school. fun times.
I did not see it but Red, my wife did and her comment was, ''WTH are the Republicans thinking showing her in the kitchen?''
I saw it. I though her performance was rather bizarre-- she alternated between looking angry and flipping back and forth between that and smiling.
But her smile was really bizarre-- a very strange half smile.
Britt's response was pathetic and mostly untrue.
According to Britt the US is falling apart, I guess that is what happens when you live in Alabama.
yuck. now I understand more about why the romans fed thumpers to predators in the coliseum...
I wonder how much her husband drinks daily...
I've never given it a thought.
God awful from start to finish, all that needs to be said about it.
I still can't watch all the way thru all at one time. for some reason it makes me feel guilty about all the innocent little church mice that wanted to save me when I was in high school, and I pounced on them...
"pounced"? Is that what the young people called it back then?
an honest answer would set me back 5 years here. it was the early 70's, I was a teenager with a car and at times lacked sufficient blood flow to fully operate my brain's conscience.
There is no other way to put it.
They should have hired a better acting coach for her. Whoever she had sucked.
a number of thoughts about her performance occurred to me -
I couldn't understand why they didn't have her wearing an apron.
crap, now I want to see the AI version done with ellie mae clampett...
IDK, I got 2 minutes in and said, "OK, not going to finish this one."
It was like a paid presentation in terms of the way she acted.
Which is pretty much what it was
and I think they want their money back
Same. I skipped ahead a bit to see if it got any better. It didn't.
If anything it got worse.
I preferred Scar Jo.
And she lied her ass off about that trafficking rape having anything to do with Biden, while wearing an obviously meant-to-be-seen cross round her neck. How Christian of her...
If you lie for Jesus, that makes it ok, right?
Apparently, she has urged Trump to support IVF, now that Alabama has endangered it to declare embryos people. Katie, sweetie, it was your team that tanked IVF in Alabama, and Trump brags about putting in place the SCOTUS that allowed it to happen. Has it occurred to you that maybe you're backing the wrong side here?
Bless her heart.
like a gang sign for the hypocrites she was playing to. there was probably a half day debate between her handlers about whether or not buttoning the top 2 xtian conservative buttons on her blouse too...
SNL spoof of Katie Britt
I wonder if she was barefoot, and if that turkey pot pie in the oven was going to be ready before the man of the house got home.
I like to go barefoot and love pot pies, but I usually make them.