Alabama Sen. Katie Britt’s response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday has been slammed in an opinion column in her home state.
The Republican Party’s official response to the Democratic president’s address has prompted much discussion after Britt, a first-term senator and the youngest woman in the Senate, delivered a tonally jarring speech from her kitchen table.
During her response to Biden, Britt—the youngest Republican ever elected to the Senate—attacked the president on his economic and border policies, as well as poked fun at his age.
Britt at times appeared to be on the verge of tears, while other times she whispered emphatically while painting a picture of Americans struggling under Biden’s presidency.
In an opinion column posted on AL.com, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist John Archibald said Britt had been seen as a rising star in the Republican Party and a possible running mate for Donald Trump, but would now be remembered as simply “a joke.”
Britt was supposed to “show this whole country that young, educated GOP women were still a thing,” Archibald wrote in his column.
“They said she could demonstrate that Republicans could still be civil and dignified and respected, that they didn’t have to be performative clowns in MAGA hats, like [Georgia Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
The country was “looking for proof of normalcy” as she began to “audition for the role of her lifetime,” he wrote. “And it got the The Three Faces of Eve,” referring to the 1957 movie about a woman suffering from a multiple personality disorder.
Newsweek has contacted Britt’s office for comment via email.
If the real audition to be Trump’s running mate was to happen, Archibald said all Britt had to do was “read her script on a teleprompter, catch the bouquet, take her bow and take her place as a politician to be both respected and reckoned with.”
By the third paragraph of her speech, it was clear, he wrote, that she “was no longer auditioning for the role of vice president, or for the role of respected politician, or the role of likable mom or genuine human.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
“She was Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest shrieking ‘No wire hangers!’ She was Nicolas Cage in anything. She was William Shatner in ‘The Wrath of Katie.’ She was over-the-top and anything and everything but reasonable.
“She wasn’t trying out for VP. She was trying out for the cold open of Saturday Night Live. As the punchline and the punching bag.”
Saturday Night Live featured Scarlett Johansson making a surprise appearance to parody Britt’s response in the episode’s cold open.
Britt was supposed to “be the smart one, the reasonable one, the regular one,” Archibald concluded.
“She was supposed to be the one who would make Alabamians proud—or less embarrassed than they too often are.
“Unfortunately, she will be remembered another way. As a joke.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.