I’m going to have to insist Donald Trump pick Alabama Sen. Katie Britt – giver of the most bizarrely hilarious State of the Union response in recorded history – as his running mate.
She’s reportedly on his list, and since I don’t ask for much in this world, it seems a perfectly reasonable request that Trump choose a vice presidential candidate who has the potential to be Sarah Palin 2.0.
C’mon, Trump. Do it. Everyone’s saying you won’t do it. I dare you.
If you’ve been absent from this earth lately, Britt was the Republican Party’s choice to respond to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech last week. Despite being a lawyer, the first female head of the Alabama Business Council and the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate, the GOP decided to have Britt, 42, speak from her kitchen, a not-particularly subtle choice for a party itching to go back in time.
She then delivered a speech that can best be described as “overwrought theater kid whose life didn't work out the way she hoped, auditioning for the part of frightened mom.”
Vacillating between forced smiles and near-teary terror, Britt did the thing Trump is best at: Trying to scare insecure white people with nonsense.
Biden old and frail? Nope.President delivers fiery State of the Union his campaign needed
Britt spoke, in weirdly breathy tones, about the horrors she claims Biden has brought upon our apparently once-perfect nation, and even unspooled a tale of a woman who was a victim of sex trafficking, neglecting to add some important details.
Like the fact that the woman was kept in captivity when George W. Bush was the U.S. president. And that fact that the woman was never trafficked to the United States.
The victim, later identified as Karla Jacinto, criticized the senator in a Sunday interview. CNN national correspondent Rafael Romo said she told him in Spanish, “Someone using my story and distorting it for political purposes is not fair at all.”
So Britt has the comfortable-with-being-dishonest part down pat, and that has to be a prerequisite for any Trump running mate, given the next time the former president tells the truth will be the first.
Once the American public recovered from its collective cringe over the Alabama senator’s prime-time performance, comedians and late-night hosts swiftly took to lampooning her speech, which was all but impossible. Even the great Scarlett Johansson, playing Britt on last week’s Saturday Night Live, couldn’t fully capture the un-nuanced absurdity of the senator’s response. Britt, in one short speech, transcended satire and entered a realm of ridiculousness few ever reach.
She put herself up there in Palin territory. You remember Sarah Palin, right?
The Alaska governor whom Sen. John McCain picked as his presidential running mate in 2008. The one who said Obamacare would lead to “death panels” and talked about then-President Barack Obama’s “hopey changey stuff” and fabulously bonkered-up the story of Paul Revere, saying he “warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells and making sure as he was riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.”
Britt is a failed vice-presidential bid and a reality show or two away from being Palin, and as a person who has to write about Trump’s campaign this year, I think she’s THE PERFECT PICK.
As a young mother who supported overturning Roe v. Wade and is comfortable lying and fearmongering from a kitchen, Britt represents what Republican men incorrectly think suburban women look like.
Trump is unhinged:Want to know how weird Donald Trump is? Just read this transcript.
Let's put it this way: Republicans actually believe Americans want more Donald Trump. So why wouldn’t they believe Americans also want more Sarah Palin or, in this case, Sarah-Palin-lite?
It’s a match made in heaven. Britt appears fully comfortable not upstaging Trump by being a more serious or presidential figure. She would dutifully parrot his nonsense and effortlessly dissemble on his behalf, all while keeping late-night-show writing teams and liberal satirists like myself challenged trying to find a way to accurately lampoon that which is already lampooning itself.
Do it, Donald Trump. Make Sen. Katie Britt your running mate.
Trump/Palin 2.0 is just the laugh America needs right now.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
Katie Britt as Trump's VP? We should all be so lucky.
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12.03.2024
I’m going to have to insist Donald Trump pick Alabama Sen. Katie Britt – giver of the most bizarrely hilarious State of the Union response in recorded history – as his running mate.
She’s reportedly on his list, and since I don’t ask for much in this world, it seems a perfectly reasonable request that Trump choose a vice presidential candidate who has the potential to be Sarah Palin 2.0.
C’mon, Trump. Do it. Everyone’s saying you won’t do it. I dare you.
If you’ve been absent from this earth lately, Britt was the Republican Party’s choice to respond to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech last week. Despite being a lawyer, the first female head of the Alabama Business Council and the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate, the GOP decided to have Britt, 42, speak from her kitchen, a not-particularly subtle choice for a party itching to go back in time.
She then delivered a speech that can best be described as “overwrought theater kid whose life didn't work out the way she hoped, auditioning for the part of frightened mom.”
Vacillating between forced smiles and........
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