Katie Britt offers explanation for sex trafficking story … kind of

Details of a graphic story Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) told during her response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union on Thursday left viewers puzzled, as it emerged that the lurid tale of sex trafficking and rape she used to highlight Biden’s immigration policies occurred in Mexico during President George W. Bush’s administration.

But Britt didn’t back away from the anecdote on Sunday — and declined to clearly state that the incident in question had not occurred during the Biden administration, when pressed by Fox News’ Shannon Bream during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Did you mean to give the impression that this horrible story happened on President Biden's watch?” Bream asked.

“No … I very specifically said, this is what President Biden did during his first 100 days. 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,” Britt replied.

When asked to clarify that the incident was not something that occurred during the Biden administration, Britt said: “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, a grown woman, a woman when she was trafficked when she was 12.”

The blowback over Britt's anecdote told at her kitchen table drew a lot of attention away from the intended purpose of the speech, to counter President Joe Biden's remarks earlier in the evening and subjected the previously little-known Alabama senator to strong criticism.

Former Associated Press reporter Jonathan M. Katz first drew attention to the cloudy details of the story in a roughly seven-minute TikTok video, indicating the woman in question was Karla Jacinto Romero, who met with Britt and two other senators in January 2023. Romero testified before Congress back in 2015 about her experiences a decade earlier with sex trafficking in Mexico.

The moment quickly spread across social media channels, and actress Scarlett Johansson stepped in to parody the speech — including Britt's confounding story — during Saturday Night Live’s cold open. And Britt's story earned four “Pinocchios” from the Washington Post’s Fact Checker columnist Glenn Kessler (the highest number for claims Kessler dubs inaccurate).