The Republican rebuttal to Biden’s speech: ‘The American dream has become a nightmare for so many families’

President Joe Biden ended his State of the Union address by alluding to his age. “The issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old our ideas are,” said the 81-year-old Democratic leader, after a night in which he pitted his own project against the man who will be his rival in the November presidential elections, Donald Trump, even though he did not mention him by name. “Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back,” said the president. Yet age was the first point of attack in the Republicans’ rebuttal, which it entrusted to its youngest senator, 42-year-old Katie Britts, who called Biden “a permanent politician who has actually been in office for longer than I’ve even been alive” before drawing a picture of a president far removed from the American reality.

Britts, a senator for Alabama, delivered her speech from her own kitchen, dressed in a green blouse and with a small crucifix hanging from her neck. “This is where our family has tough conversations and where we make hard decisions. It’s where we share the good, the bad, and the ugly of our days. It’s where we laugh together. It’s where we hold each other’s hands and pray for God’s guidance,” she said. Moments later, Britts assured in an affected tone that “the country we know and love seems to be slipping away.” At another time she stated that “right now, the American Dream has turned into a nightmare for so many families.”

Her address, delivered in a tone that occasionally verged on tears, was described as overly dramatic on social media, where there has been a flurry of responses.

Britt asked her viewers to consider what is happening on the border with Mexico. “President Biden inherited the most secure border of all time. But minutes after taking office, he suspended all deportations, halted construction of the border wall, and announced a plan to give amnesty to millions. We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days.”

In his address, Biden reminded Republicans that they were the ones who ended the possibility of Congress passing a bipartisan border bill. The agreement, worked on since November by senators from both parties and by Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema, had the support of the Border Patrol Union and the Chamber of Commerce. ”I’m told my predecessor called Republicans in Congress and demanded they block the bill. He feels it would be a political win for me and a political loser for him.”

Some sources indicate that Britt herself was part of the negotiation of the border law. This would have allocated more resources to hire 1,500 new agents, a hundred immigration judges and another 4,300 officials in charge of processing asylum requests to reduce waiting times. “She was part of the group of senators who was involved in the bipartisan negotiations to create a border bill and she helped create the bill, and then voted against it when Trump called on Republicans to pull the plug on the bill that they themselves had negotiated,” explained MSNBC journalist Rachel Maddow.

The border occupied a significant portion of Britt’s response, and she also spent a few minutes blaming Democrats for the increase in crime for defunding the police, for the increase in the price of gasoline and mortgage rates, and for allowing the Chinese government to spy on Americans through TikTok. She also mentioned the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but did not spend a single minute on Ukraine or Israel, two geopolitical conflicts to which Biden did dedicate several minutes.

Britt’s name is one of many on a long list of Trump’s potential vice-presidential candidates. Party leaders selected her because she is the only senator with school-age children, which allowed her to make numerous mentions of family values in her response to Biden’s speech.

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