Katie Britt

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About

Katie Britt is a Republican United States Senator representing Alabama. She delivered the Republican Party's official response to Joe Biden's 2024 State of the Union address, seated in what appeared to be a kitchen. Online, commentators and meme-makers were entertained by her speech and its overall atmosphere, which some found unusual and uncanny.

Career

Britt was born in 1982 and started her career as a press secretary to Alabama Senator Richard Shelby. After working for Shelby in several capacities, she worked for the Alabama Business Council and as a lawyer in the Birmingham area. In 2022, Britt ran for the US Senate, taking over Shelby's old seat. She was sworn in in January of 2024 as a Senator.^[2]

She is married to former NFL and University of Alabama football player Wesley Britt.^[3]

State of the Union Rebuttal

On the evening of March 8th, 2024, Britt delivered the traditional response of the opposition party to the President's State of the Union (seen below).^[1] She was seated at what she said was her own kitchen table, and delivered the speech wearing a gold cross necklace.

Response to Britt's speech was largely negative. A Republican strategist told The Daily Beast, "everyone's f***ing losing it," after Britt's speech, saying "it's one of our biggest disasters ever."^[4]

Online, some posters found her crisp and precise enunciation of each word rather off-putting, comparing Britt to a high schooler in a play. For example, centrist Republican political commentator Tom Nichols opined that the speech was "weird," but that "the base will love it," earning over 13,000 likes in 12 hours on March 7th (seen below).^[5]

Other commentators focused on the choice of placing Britt inside of a kitchen for the speech. On March 7th, as @shannonrwatts, Gun violence advocate Shannon Watts posted a tweet on X,^[6] formerly Twitter, earning over 19,000 likes in 12 hours for calling this choice political (seen below).

On TikTok, content creators also took a chance to comment on the speech. TikTok^[7] user @caroclaireburkeee, a frequent commentator on tradwife culture, compared Britt to so-called "tradwife influencers" like Nara Smith in a March 8th TikTok post which received over 3,000 views and 300 likes in two hours (seen below left). Others made fun of Britt's delivery and intonation, like @kimoromo74 (seen below right) who posted a video using a crying-face filter on the Senator, earning over 2,100 likes and 67,000 views in twelve hours on March 8th.^[8]

Online Presence

Katie Britt has a campaign X^[9] account that started in June of 2021 and had 41,000 followers as of March 2024. She also maintains an official Senate account with 40,000 followers. Her Instagram account has over 16,000 followers as of March 2024.^[10]