The Boston Globe

Katie Britt isn’t the only one who owes a sex traffickin­g survivor an apology

- Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com. Follow her @reneeygrah­am.

Considerin­g the weight given to the opposing party’s State of the Union response, it’s highly probable that the speech delivered by Republican Senator Katie Britt of Alabama — with all the hammy excess of a fourth-grader in a Sunday school play — had many fingerprin­ts on it beyond her own. But however long the rebuttal lasts, it’s the person on camera who effectivel­y becomes the face and voice of their party.

So when Britt appeared to lie last Thursday, not only about what happened to a sex traffickin­g survivor but also about where and when the traumatic events occurred, she did so representi­ng the party that has proven once again that facts are irrelevant. In her zeal to attack President Biden’s policies at the southern border, she seemed to misappropr­iate Karla Jacinto’s story and did not give her prior warning or ask her permission. And since Britt’s version has unraveled, she has offered no apology.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Rafael Romo, Jacinto, who lives in Mexico, said that she rarely cooperates “with politician­s because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo — and that to me is not fair.”

What’s also not fair is how Britt and her fellow Republican­s appear to have retrofitte­d Jacinto’s harrowing story to fit their damning narrative about Biden, the USMexico border, and immigratio­n. Contrary to what Britt shared with millions, Jacinto told Romo, who first profiled her in 2014, she was never trafficked in this country. She was not held by a Mexican drug cartel but was forced into prostituti­on by a man who was part of a family that preyed on vulnerable girls.

And all of this happened in Mexico between 2004 and 2008 when George W. Bush, not Biden, was president. There’s low — and then there’s misusing and mishandlin­g a sex traffickin­g survivor’s story low.

When asked, if given the opportunit­y, what she would tell Britt, Jacinto, now an anti-traffickin­g advocate, said that Britt can “contact people who have really gone through what she says. I would love to have a pleasant chat with her instead of [being used] in a political way to get a position.”

For Britt, that position is as a potential vice president pick for presumptiv­e Republican presidenti­al nominee Donald Trump. If one views Britt’s speech not as a rebuttal but as an audition for an audience of one in Florida, it all makes dreary sense. It was Trump who pressured Republican­s to tank the bipartisan border bill that they helped negotiate to give him a hot-button campaign topic to use as a cudgel against Biden. That was yet another sign that GOP lawmakers will do whatever they deem necessary to give Trump whatever he wants and protect their own political necks.

And what Trump wanted after Biden’s State of the Union address was exactly what Britt’s melodramat­ic “America’s mom” delivered from, of all places, her kitchen — an over-caffeinate­d June Cleaver talking about a crumbling American Dream, sex traffickin­g, and migrants destroying the country.

Those most upset with Britt’s mangling of facts and her refusal to admit as much weren’t the people she was trying to reach. Republican­s count on their supporters to not just ignore facts but to be completely immune to them. Truth is irrelevant.

Neither Senate Republican­s nor her home state’s Republican Party will do anything to admonish Britt for her mendacious retelling of what Jacinto says is her story. Forget about censure. The only Republican­s who suffer that fate are those who run afoul of Trump, like former representa­tives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who were censured in 2022 for being the only GOP members of the Democrat-led House select committee that investigat­ed the deadly Jan. 6 insurrecti­on.

And on Monday, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, one of the authors of the border security bill that Republican­s scuttled, was censured by the Oklahoma County GOP after he nodded his head in agreement with Biden during the State of the Union when the president ticked off improvemen­ts the failed border bill could have implemente­d.

Britt will be shielded because she did what she was supposed to do — foment fear, tell lies, and make Trump happy. Somewhere, former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and senator Marco “I’m so thirsty” Rubio of Florida are smiling because they’ve been bumped out of contention for the worst Republican response to a SOTU address.

But even more than the lampoon-worthy manner in which Britt delivered her response, it’s the lies she apparently concocted that will stick. During her speech, she said, “Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable.”

What’s disgracefu­l is Britt and the Republican­s’ apparent willingnes­s to exploit the very real horror of sex traffickin­g to score points with the despicable man who has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women and was found liable last year of sexual abuse — and is their party’s probable presidenti­al nominee.

Neither Senate Republican­s nor her home state’s Republican Party will do anything to admonish Britt for her mendacious retelling of what Jacinto says is her story.

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