USA TODAY US Edition

We would be lucky if Katie Britt were Trump’s running mate

- Rex Huppke Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly called Twitter, @RexHuppke and on Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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.

Britt’s State of the Union rebuttal was comedic performanc­e art

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.

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 the fact that the woman was never trafficked to the United States.

Britt’s sex traffickin­g story was callously dishonest

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-withbeing-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?

Let us remember the glory days of Sarah Palin

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.

Britt’s actual competence isn’t what the GOP is interested in

As a young mother who supported overturnin­g Roe v. Wade and is comfortabl­e lying and fearmonger­ing from a kitchen, Britt represents what some Republican men incorrectl­y think suburban women look like.

Let’s put it this way: Republican­s actually believe Americans want more Trump. So why wouldn’t they believe Americans also want more Palin or, in this case, Sarah-Palin-lite?

A Trump/Britt ticket is just what we all need, LOL

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.

 ?? POOL PHOTO ?? Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., gives the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday.
POOL PHOTO Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., gives the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday.
 ?? ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States