Republicans baffled by Katie Britt’s State of the Union response: ‘One of our biggest disasters’

Katie Britt’s Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address drew reactions ranging from the baffled to the satirical to the appalled, even among fellow rightwingers.

“What the hell am I watching right now?” an unnamed Trump adviser told Rolling Stone.

“It’s one of our biggest disasters ever,” another unnamed Republican strategist told the Daily Beast.

Delivering the official State of the Union response can be a thankless task, as the former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and the Florida senator Marco Rubio, deliverers of previously panned speeches, would ruefully attest.

Nonetheless, the 42-year-old Alabama senator is a rising Republican star, widely respected on Capitol Hill and her selection to respond to Biden was a golden opportunity to introduce herself to the wider American electorate.

In his address Biden used his bully pulpit effectively, attacking Republicans in a fiery speech and inviting a strong response. But Britt’s speech, delivered with overt theatricality, oscillating in tone between the wholesome and the wholly horrific, did not land well even in her own party.

Charlie Kirk, founder of the far-right Turning Point USA youth group, said: “I’m sure Katie Britt is a sweet mom and person, but this speech is not what we need. Joe Biden just declared war on the American right and Katie Britt is talking like she’s hosting a cooking show, whispering about how Democrats ‘dont get it’.”

That pointed to widespread confusion over the setting for such a figure to give such an important speech: a kitchen.

As a Gallup poll showed 57% of American voters think the US would be better off if more women were in elected office, Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump aide turned never-Trumper, said: “Senator Katie Britt is a