WASHINGTON ― Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) called President Joe Biden president “diminished” and claimed that he is “not in command” of the country in the official rebuttal to his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
The 42-year-old freshman Republican senator spoke live from her home kitchen in Alabama after Biden delivered his annual address in front of a joint session of Congress in the nation’s capital.
“Right now, our commander in chief is not in command,” Britt said in the 20-minute speech, which sounded forced at times. “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 actually the cornerstones of a great nation.”
She called Biden “out of touch,” adding that she wished he “understood what real families are facing around kitchen tables just like this one.”
Britt, a former Senate aide who was elected in 2022 after GOP Sen. Richard Shelby retired, was tapped by Republican leaders to portray a youthful contrast with the 82-year-old Biden — something her party believes will help oust him from office. Polls have found that most voters have concerns about Biden’s age, including many who helped make him president in 2020.
Biden’s speech on Thursday was hardly ‘dithering.’ The president stumbled over words and coughed occasionally, but he was energetic and feisty, engaging directly with hecklers and calling out Republican lawmakers in the room. And he exhorted the importance of supporting democracy at home and abroad, protecting reproductive rights, expanding health care access, cutting student debt and raising taxes on the wealthy, to name just a few priorities Democrats hope will lead them to victory in November.
He also addressed questions about his age head-on.
“In my career, I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old,” Biden said. “Whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures. Our North Star: The very idea of America, that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it, either. And I won’t walk away from it now.”
He added that the “issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are — it’s how old our ideas are. Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas.”
Britt, meanwhile, sought to reassure voters that Republicans support in-vitro fertility treatments, following a court ruling in Alabama that granted frozen embryos the same rights as children. Alabama’s governor hastily signed a new law on Wednesday to give legal immunity to IVF clinics, but that hasn’t halted questions about the GOP’s contradictory stances on when life begins.
“We strongly support continued nationwide access to in-vitro fertilization. We want to help loving moms and dads to bring precious life into this world,” Britt said Thursday.
Dozens of House Democrats ― many of them women ― wore white suits during Biden’s address in Congress as a way to visually protest and highlight the GOP’s attacks on reproductive rights, including IVF.
Biden also gave a shoutout to one of his guests, Kate Cox, a mother of two who sued the state of Texas last year for the right to terminate her pregnancy.
“What her family has gone through should never have happened as well. But it is happening to so many others. There are state laws banning the right to choose, criminalizing doctors and forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states as well to get the care they need.
“Many of you in this chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom,” Biden added. “My God, what freedoms will you take away next?”
