Even when confronted by Fox News on Sunday morning, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) couldn’t bring herself to admit that she misleadingly attempted to connect the story of a human-trafficking victim to President Joe Biden during her State of the Union rebuttal speech.
Fox News Sunday moderator Shannon Bream pressed Britt on the widespread criticism of her speech, much of which has revolved around the story Britt shared of a woman who’d been sex-trafficked and raped by the cartel since age 12—the clear implication being that this was due to Biden immigration policies. The senator appeared to be referencing the story of Karla Jacinto Romero, who testified before Congress in 2015 that she was trafficked and assaulted in Mexico, nowhere near the U.S. border, between the years 2004 and 2008, when George W. Bush was president. Romero shared her experience with Britt early last year.
“Nobody is questioning that the story happened and she is actually who she is and says she is and that does happen, the question is about the timing and implication of you telling this story,” Bream told the senator before asking: “Did you mean to give the impression this horrible story happened on President Biden’s watch?”
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Britt dodged the question, instead pivoting to recounting Biden’s first 100 days worth of immigration policies, indirectly suggesting human-trafficking has been “invited” by the president and has increased under his watch.
“The liberal media needs to pay attention to it because there are victims all the way coming to the border, there are victims at the border, then there are victims all throughout our country,” Britt said. “To me, it’s disgusting to try to silence the voice of telling the story of what it is like to be sex trafficked when we know that is one of the things the drug cartels are profiting most off of.”
An unconvinced Bream further pushed back on the senator: “To be clear, the story you relayed is not something that’s happened under the Biden administration, that particular person?”
Britt’s response, days after her spokesperson told news outlets the story she shared was “100% correct,” was to leave the woman unnamed and indirectly admit the story was decades-old while not addressing whether she meant to imply it was Biden’s fault.
“I very clearly said 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 didn’t say a young woman or a grown woman, a woman when she was trafficked when she was 12,” the senator insisted. “So listening to her story, she was a victims-right advocate who is saying this is what drug cartels are doing, this is how they’re profiting off of women, and it is disgusting. So I am hopeful that it brings some light to it and we can actually do something about human trafficking and that that’s what the media actually decides to cover.”
