Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) brushed off criticism of the human trafficking story she shared during her response to President Joe Biden‘s State of the Union address.
In her State of the Union rebuttal, Britt relayed the time she met a sex trafficking victim during her segment discussing Biden’s border policies. However, reports circulated that the story she was conveying did not take place during Biden’s term shortly after, prompting accusations that Britt’s use of the story was misleading. When asked about the accusations in a Fox News interview, the Alabama Republican said her intention was to convey what the consequences of Biden’s immigration policy could be.
“I very specifically said — this is what President Biden did during his first 100 days,” Britt responded. “Minutes after coming into office, he stopped all deportations, he halted construction of the border wall, and he said, ‘I am going to give amnesty to millions.’ Those types of things act as a magnet to have more and more people here.”
When pressed as to whether the incident occurred under the Biden administration, Britt elaborated on her intention in relaying the story.
“Well, I very, very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12,” she said. “So I didn’t say a teenager. I didn’t say a young woman, a grown woman, a woman when she was trafficked when she was 12. And so, listening to her story, she is a victim’s rights advocate who is telling, ‘This is what drug cartels are doing. This is how they’re profiting off of women.’ And it is disgusting. And so I’m hopeful that it brings some light to it, and we can actually do something about human trafficking. And that’s what the media actually decides to cover.”
A Britt spokesman further clarified what she was intending in a statement made yesterday.
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“The Biden Administration’s policies — the policies in this country that the President falsely claims are humane — have empowered the cartels and acted as a magnet to a historic level of migrants making the dangerous journey to our border,” Britt spokesman Sean Ross said in a statement. “Along that journey, children, women, and men are being subjected to gut-wrenching, heartbreaking horrors in our own backyard.”
Britt drew a polarized response from her State of the Union response, with some pundits such as Megyn Kelly deriding it as melodramatic, while others said it was properly compassionate.
