Britt goes after ‘dithering, diminished’ Biden in State of the Union rebuttal

Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) argued Thursday that President Biden is a “dithering and diminished” leader who is taking the U.S. down a worrisome path.

Delivering the GOP response to Biden’s State of the Union from her own kitchen table, the first-term senator laid into the president for the border, crime, the economy and his work on the international stage.

“President Biden just doesn’t get it. He’s out of touch. Under his administration, families are worse off, our communities are less safe and our country is less secure,” she said from her home in Montgomery, Ala. “I just wish he understood what real families are facing around kitchen tables just like this one.”

Britt, the youngest woman in the Senate, also took direct aim at Biden’s age, which has become a sore spot for Democrats, and said he was not physically or mentally up to leading the country for four more years.

“Right now, our commander in chief is not in command,” Britt said. “The free world deserves better than a dithering and diminished leader. America deserves leaders who recognize that secure borders, stable prices, safe streets, and a strong defense are the cornerstones of a great nation.”

“There is no doubt we’re at a crossroads, and it doesn’t have to be this way. We all feel it. But here’s the good news: ‘We the People’ are still in the driver’s seat,” Britt said. “We get to decide whether our future will grow brighter, or whether we’ll settle for an America in decline. Well, I know which choice our children deserve — and the choice the Republican Party is fighting for.”

The contrast between the 42-year-old Britt and 81-year-old Biden was one her Republican colleagues hoped would be apparent.

The speech marked the grand entrance on the national stage for Britt, who has largely kept out of the spotlight since winning her seat in 2022. The former chief of staff to former Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) was added to McConnell’s leadership team last year and has a seat on the Appropriations Committee, which her former boss once chaired.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said days earlier that he and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) recommended her to deliver the rebuttal because they believed she would be “particularly effective” in laying out the case against the president.

And she tried to lean into that role Thursday.

“Tonight, the American family needs to have a tough conversation, because the truth is, we’re all worried about the future of our nation. The country we know and love seems to be slipping away. It feels like the next generation will have fewer opportunities — and less freedom — than we did. I worry my own children may not even get a shot at living their American dreams.”

But her speech got mixed reviews.

The State of the Union response is widely considered a thankless task, and many lawmakers before Britt had stumbled.

While political-watchers acknowledged she was a rising star in the GOP, some questioned the setting and the delivery.

Former Trump White House aide and current CNN pundit Alyssa Farah Griffin called the staging in Britt’s kitchen “bizarre.”

“Women can be both wives and mothers and also stateswomen,” she said. “So to put her in a kitchen, not in front of a podium or in the Senate chamber where she was elected where she won a very hard-fought race, I felt fell very flat and was confusing to some women watching it.”

And Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) called it “the worst overacting since Ishtar.”

The White House also heaped criticism on her 17-minute long speech over her opposition to the bipartisan border deal that Republicans rejected last month and pointed to her home state’s role in the in vitro fertilization (IVF) debate.

“Last month, Senator Britt sided against President Biden, the Border Patrol Union, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by opposing the toughest bipartisan border deal in modern history – instead voting with fentanyl traffickers,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said.

“What’s more, because an extreme Supreme Court decision overturned Roe v. Wade and set American women back nearly 50 years — with Senator Britt’s support — women across Alabama were just cut off from IVF treatment and dreams of growing their families,” Bates added.