>Sen. Katie Britt gives Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union

The senator from Alabama fiercely criticized Biden’s border policy and inflation.

It wasn’t until the morning after Alabama Sen. Katie Britt delivered the official Republican response to President Joe Biden last week that she realized the backlash she had stirred up, she said in a new interview.

And then, the day after the headlines and reactions (including memes and mockery) started stacking up — fueled, Britt contends, by liberal bias in the media — Scarlett Johansson played the senator on “Saturday Night Live.”

Johansson riffed on what many viewers noted was Britt’s penchant for changing her voice as she spoke and her theatrical style while seated at her kitchen table.

But as Britt said in an episode of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast, “Verdict,” released on Wednesday, the derision hasn’t fazed her.

In fact, she said, she actually enjoyed Johansson’s impression and some of the memes, including one comparing her to Kate Middleton.

“One of my favorite things was there was a meme that said, ‘Why is Alabama Kate Middleton so mad?'” Britt told Cruz. “And I thought, this is the highest compliment, can we print this out and frame it and put it on my desk?”

Of Johansson playing her, Britt said she had expected to be satirized on “SNL” but hadn’t known quite what to expect.

She was “pretty pumped” they chose the actress, she said.

“I’ll be honest with you, a bingo card of 2024 for Katie Britt, I did not have this on it and so certainly did not have Scarlett Johansson playing me,” she said, “and I was trying, we were talking to the kids about all of it and they were like, ‘Oh my gosh mom.’ … And I said, you know, ‘Look it could be worse.’ I mean Scarlett Johansson — here you have Black Widow, they bring in someone from Avengers to play me in the cold open, I’m here for it.”

“It was [a] pretty fun moment,” Britt continued, later noting that Johansson also invoking her husband, a former professional football player, in the cold open was “one of his favorite things.”

Throughout the podcast, Cruz praised Britt, echoing how some other Republicans have rallied to her in the wake of her giving the party’s response to Biden.

Both she and Cruz also repeatedly slammed Biden’s fiery State of the Union as a “really angry” stump speech from an “old, cranky” president.

Sen. Katie Britt walks to a luncheon with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol Building, on Feb. 27, 2…Show more
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

But Britt’s comments generated plenty of their own fallout, both for their unusually dramatic tone — her voice ranging from emotional to stern, sometimes dropping down to a whisper — and for her misleading description of the experience of a woman who was the victim of human trafficking.

While criticizing Biden’s immigration policies, Britt cited the sexual abuse endured by Karla Jacinto Romero in such a way that it appeared as though Romero’s story was more recent and in the U.S.

But according to multiple news reports, Romero was abused more than 15 years ago, in Mexico, when George W. Bush was president.

Romero told The New York Times that she learned about Britt’s remarks via social media and found it “very strange.”

“I am involved in the fight to stop trafficking and I don’t think it should be political,” she told the paper.

Speaking with CNN, she said, “I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo — and that to me is not fair.”

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Britt said she didn’t bring up Romero to intentionally blame Biden for what happened to her but rather to point to it as an example of the trafficking that is still going on.

On Cruz’s podcast on Wednesday, Britt insisted the news media was motivated by political bias rather than covering the ongoing trafficking fueled by a “border crisis” she blamed on Biden.

“The liberal media isn’t interested in the truth,” Britt claimed.

Her State of the Union response also drew a response of its own because of the setting, in the kitchen, but Britt said that attacks on that as sexist were distorting her party’s focus on everyday issues.

“You’ve got Joe Biden who actually mentions kitchen table, his dad’s kitchen table and the quote ‘trickle-down effect’ of economics, in his speech — and then I’m sitting at the kitchen table that he references and let’s not forget that Elizabeth Warren actually launched her presidential campaign from her kitchen,” Britt said.

Britt’s fellow Alabama Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville, for his part reportedly said she was chosen to give the response “as a housewife.”

Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama delivers the Republican response following President Biden’s State of the U…Show more

Britt acknowledged a learning curve to giving the official State of the Union response.

“To deliver a speech, honestly, directly into a camera, I’ve never done that and obviously if you were to do it again, you’d do it, you would know and have kind of sort of that — the ability to learn from doing that,” she said, adding, “A lot of people thought it was taped, it’s like no, it’s live — like you literally walk into the other room when he finishes, they give you a 15-minute countdown, and then it’s live.”

But the days of scrutiny after Britt spoke seemed odd to her, she said on the podcast.

“It felt like the slowest couple of days in politics forever, I thought, can nothing else happen? … I mean, my crime was putting too much passion, too much heart and soul behind the issues that I genuinely care about, and they slaughtered me across the airwaves,” she said.

“And then finally Kate Middleton saved me again with her Photoshop, so, I mean, I owe her twice this weekend,” Britt said.

But all of that was less important than speaking up for conservative priorities, she said.

“In my remarks, I wanted to leave people with hope, Ted, because I believe that — I believe in the people of this nation and I believe in what we’re built on and wanted to encourage everyone to get in to the arena, because that’s what we need them to do, ’cause we are literally fighting for the heart and soul of our nation. We are fighting for the future for our children and we need everybody stepping up,” she said.

“So I said ‘get in the arena’ — well I found out real quick that I am in the arena, and when you’re in the arena, you get arrows,” she continued. “But it’s worth it. If you’re fighting for what families need, you’re being a voice for the voiceless, then I’ll take those arrows, Ted, all day long because that is what we’re going to have to do in order to get this country back on track.”