Dave Ross: Dueling accusations swirl around The State of the Union. Who’s right?
Mar 11, 2024, 10:10 AM | Updated: 10:14 am
Senator Katie Britt, R-Ala. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
There was a little internet scuffle over the weekend about the response to the State of the Union address, the part where Senator Katie Britt found a way to blame Joe Biden for sex trafficking.
“I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas. That’s where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me,” Britt said. “She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12.”
Senator Britt then described the woman’s horrible ordeal and drew a direct line to Joe Biden’s decision to allow asylum seekers into the country.
“President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace,” Britt explained. “This crisis is despicable. And the truth is it is almost entirely preventable.”
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What she didn’t mention was that this woman’s horrible ordeal happened 20 years ago under George W. Bush’s watch.
The first fact-check of the speech was quick and brutal. It came from Saturday Night Live with Scarlett Johansson playing the senator speaking from her kitchen.
“I’m a mom. And like any mom, I’m going to do a pivot out of nowhere into a shockingly violent story about sex trafficking,” Johansson mimicked.
Rest assured every detail about it is real, except the year where it took place. And who was president when it happened.
But it’s really not a laughing matter, isn’t it, even on Fox? The real Katie Britt had to defend her remark to Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream.
“To me, it is disgusting to try to silence the voice of telling the story of what it is like to be sex trafficked,” Britt said. “When we know that that is one of the things that the drug cartels are profiting most often but to be clear, the story that you relayed is not something that’s happened under the Biden administration, that particular person,” Bream responded. “Well, I very, very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12,” Britt explained.
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So yeah, she left some stuff out. This is the problem when we start meandering down the chain of blame.
And this can be a slippery slope. By that standard, how many crimes would we have to blame on the guy who never finished the big, beautiful wall he promised to build at Mexico’s expense, leaving gaping holes all along the border?
I say we keep it simple. Crimes are the fault of the criminals guilty of committing them. And whether they were born here, migrated here, or were beamed here from across the galaxy. They should be arrested, convicted and locked up.
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