Counter-speech to Joe Biden
Katie Britt and her embarrassing appearance in the kitchen – who is the US Senator?
Delivered the counter-speech to Joe Biden: Republican Senator Katie Britt, here giving a speech at the US Capitol in Washington DC in December 2023
© Bonnie Cash / Imago Images
In her counter-speech to Joe Biden, Republican Katie Britt accused the president of political failure using unfair means. She was sitting in a strangely empty kitchen. Who is this woman?
Until a few days ago, she was simply the youngest Republican member ever elected to the upper house. Colleagues observed a hopeful who is eloquent and able to find her way around the Senate more quickly than almost anyone before her. As of last Thursday, Katie Britt is now the woman who gave a speech at the kitchen table at her home in Montgomery. It was supposed to be the answer to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, in which she indirectly accused him of serious political failures. Her words were theatrical and her performance was over-the-top. He was ripped apart and celebrated on social media and parodied on Scarlett Johansson’s comedy series “Saturday Night Live.” The question remains: Who is this woman who sat in front of a polished sink as a supposed political promise and stirred up fears?
She is the first woman elected to the Senate from the deeply conservative state of Alabama. One that sees bearing arms as a God-given right and advocates for stricter border policies. She has the support of Trump, who once called her a “fearless America First fighter” and saw her as a “great contrast” to an “angry and obviously very disturbed president,” as he wrote on his homepage after her counter-speech. The 42-year-old has been doing politics in Washington for more than a year, having easily passed her main rival Mo Brooks. Her political career began in the office of her predecessor Richard Shelby, for whom she worked as a press secretary before studying law.
Every family’s future starts at the kitchen table, says Katie Britt
Katie Britt was born in Enterprise, Alabama, the oldest of four daughters. In the biographies that have appeared about her in the past three months, she appears as a woman who rose from humble beginnings – her family’s hardware store. She studied political science at the University of Alabama and met her husband Wesley Britt: tall, broad-shouldered, captain of the football team. The former NFL player and Katie Britt have been married since 2008. They have a daughter and a son who still go to school. She sees the Republicans as a party of “hard-working parents and families,” and so the politician portrays herself on Instagram as an American woman and mother who gets together with her family at the kitchen table, “where our future starts,” writes Katie Britt .
Not only does the kitchen look like an exhibit, Britt’s life also seems polished and prepared, complete with a deeper realization: In 2011, she and her family were hit by a tornado in Tuscaloosa and were uninjured. After that, Katie Britt said she realized that every day was a gift. At that time, she was still working as a lawyer before returning to Shelby’s office more than a decade after her first internship there, first helping to organize his re-election and finally being promoted to his chief of staff. That was in 2016. Two years later, she first came to attention in Alabama when she was elected to head the Economic Council and championed the “Keep Alabama Open” campaign during the pandemic. To this day, she remains a senator for Alabama and promises her voters to keep taxes low, boost domestic production and curb illegal immigration: Above all, she wants to sell security.
Observers say her political views are more moderate than Trump’s
Like Donald Trump, Katie Britt is in favor of building a wall on the border with Mexico. But she doesn’t seem to be on Trump’s side on all issues. In an interview with the US daily “Politico” last year, it was quietly suggested that she was in favor of more dialogue and less attack: You don’t have to agree 100 percent in opinion in order to show respect to your counterpart. Observers say her political views are more moderate than those of her powerful supporter. This is another reason why their progress remains a balancing act. For the time being, she remains the righteous, Christian mother from Alabama, a woman seemingly in the middle of life, who conjures up the end of civilization at the kitchen table.