Biden rebutter Sen. Britt blasted for recycling 20-year-old sex traffic story to attack border policy

[ificandream]

Source: CNBC

By Rebecca Picciotto
PUBLISHED SAT, MAR 9 2024 12:13 PM EST

Republican Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama is under fire for using what appears to be a sex trafficking victim’s experience from the early 2000s to condemn President Joe Biden’s current border policy. In her Thursday rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union, Britt referenced a visit to the Del Rio sector of the Texas border where she had a seemingly private conversation with someone who had survived sex trafficking by groups in the U.S.

“That’s where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me,” Britt said in the video. “She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12.” The woman in question was later found out to be Karla Jacinto Romero, an activist who has publicly testified about her experience with sex trafficking, which took place from 2004 to 2008 in Guadalajara and other Mexican cities.

Britt seemingly attempted to present the anecdote as a damning example of Biden’s border management. “We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a third-world country,” she added. “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace. This crisis is despicable.” But Jacinto Romero did not experience sex trafficking in the U.S. as a result of Biden’s border policy — because he was not president from 2004 to 2008 and because she was sex trafficked in Mexico. Britt’s implication that Jacinto Romero divulged her experiences privately is not borne out by publicly available information.

(snip)

Jacinto Romero is an advocate for sex-trafficking victims and has repeatedly shared her story in testimony to U.S. Congress, the Mexican House of Representatives and the Vatican, according to a short 2015 profile in a U.S. House of Representatives document. Journalist Jonathan Katz first pieced together Britt’s presentation of Jacinto Romero’s experience in a TikTok video on Friday.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/09/katie-britt-unrelated-sex-trafficking-story-state-of-the-union-rebuttal.html

[BOSSHOG]

1. Always tell the truth and you'll never have to remember anything

Trump supporters spend half their lives lying and the other half not giving a fuck about it. Pathetic way to go through life. I think they are jealous of the ease in which non conservatives find joy and happiness in life, so they lie, and smear and hate.

[NanaCat]

18. What they really hate

Is that we can find joy in life, without losing sight of the suffering of people unlike ourselves.

Our compassion, which embraces the good and bad of life, is incomprehensible to them, and all of them hate what they can never understand. They have neither the brains nor heart for it.

[BOSSHOG]

19. Yes Indeed My Friend

And I can’t comprehend their negative outlook you describe.

[NanaCat]

22. They can't connect how our joy for life

Makes us unable to endure someone not having that same joy.

We believe everyone deserves to live a happy and meaningful life. They think happiness is a limited resource, and only they should have any of it.

[llmart]

35. And yet they're all such miserable beings.

They wallow in hatred and negativity. The only good thing about that is it could very well shorten their lives.

Me? I choose to keep a positive attitude and surround myself with like minded people. I want none of their negativity in my life. I choose my companions wisely.

[FailureToCommunicate]

41. Yes. Most of them seem to lack the "empathy" part of the brain. Welcome to DU

...by the way!

[smb]

50. Republicans Remind Me Of This Scene

Station Doctor: He was altered, probably transcranial magnetic hyperstimulation. Part of his temporal lobe has been effectively erased.
Holden: Which part?
Station Doctor: The part that governs empathy.
Amos: You can do that with a magnet?
Station Doctor: It's not that simple, but it's not complicated either. It's non-invasive.
Holden: So someone waves a magnet at the right side on my head and suddenly I can watch a hundred thousand people die in agony and not give a shit?
--The Expanse

[Comfortably_Numb]

2. Sounded like the narrator of a Hallmark channel Easter special, but is lying the whole time. Quelle surprise?

[prodigitalson]

13. she is totally Hallmark Holiday special

[Deuxcents]

3. Glad to see this is getting out. Senator Britts needs to be called out

[rsdsharp]

7. Senator. She's the junior United States Senator from Alabama.

[Deuxcents]

8. Thank you..fixed it.

[patphil]

43. Just elected in 2022; first political office she has held; got Trump's endorsement

Beat Mo Brooks in a primary most likely because of the Trump endorsement, then got 66% of the vote in the November election.
Just goes to show you how an entire state can be lead around by the orange menace.
She certainly looks like she's out of her league as a Senator.
But then the other Senator from Alabama is Tommy Tuberville, so I guess it's normal for Alabama.

[brush]

11. Yes, and all the other people on this side of the border...

who arranged this whole phony set-up to meet the sex trafficing advocate. And that must include the other two Senators, the people who made the contacts, the ones who set her up to do the republican response to the SOTU address, the ones who wrote the script, the one who okayed the script...a whole lot of republicans are in a lot of trouble.

[Wednesdays]

16. Wake me when ANYTHING is done to ANYONE over this!

[jrthin]

32. Unfortunately, you'll be asleep for a very long.

[IronLionZion]

4. Qonservatives have an unhealthy obsession with sex trafficking

and being as dishonest about it as they can.

[FloridaBlues]

5. I hope this lie gets out more. How dare she exploit this young woman

For political lies.

[Ocelot II]

9. It made today's Washington Post, whose fact-checker gave it 4 Pinocchios.

...But Biden has nothing to do with Romero’s story. As she testified nine years ago, her mother threw her out of her house at age 12 and she “fell prey to a professional pimp.” She says she then spent the next four years in brothels before a regular client helped her escape when she was 16 years old. There is no indication in her story that drug cartels were involved, though Britt said that in the State of the Union response and has made a similar claim on at least one other occasion. Romero was never trafficked to the United States; instead, she says many men who paid to have sex with her were “foreigners visiting my city looking to have sexual interactions with minors like me.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/09/fact-check-katie-britt-sex-trafficking/

No paywall: https://wapo.st/4cbzyg4

[Deuxcents]

12. Thanks for this info..

[NanaCat]

20. Ms Jacinto may not have known of cartel involvement

She was too low on the food chain to know about the people her pimps associated with 'business-wise'. I highly doubt that a cartel weren't involved. This is Mexico, after all. Even in 2004, it would have been rare indeed for cartels not to have some kind of involvement in any and every typical organized crime activity, like, oh, sex trafficking.

In fact, the probability of that approaching or hitting 1:1 is all but assured.

[Ocelot II]

21. Be that as it may, the point is that Britt's story was false.

The woman was trafficked some 20 years ago during the Bush administration, and it happened in Mexico.

[NanaCat]

23. And, most importantly, the people who trafficked her

Weren't migrants. They were people who had every reason to stay put in Mexico. Tough to run a prostitution ring from a distance, after all.

[IronLionZion]

28. In that case the "foreigners" were Americans crossing the border to rape minors in Mexico

[tulipsandroses]

6. Well that didn't go the way they expected

Not only was it cringeworthy, and quite off putting to many women who saw this as this how republicans see women. They belong in the kitchen. Add to that Britt is now being exposed as being disingenuous and dishonest. I’m just gonna call her a damn liar. That outreach to moms is a FAIL.

[prodigitalson]

14. histrionics and emotional instability in a kitchen

[IronLionZion]

30. Unfortunately that stuff works on some stupid MAGA moms

like during COVID, they claimed face masks were used to hide duct taped mouths of American children being kidnapped and trafficked.

[tulipsandroses]

45. Yes, the MAGA Morons are dug in. I am guessing they were trying to appeal to republican women who voted against trump

in 2020. Since then, they have continued to bleed support from women, in particular college educated women. I am guessing this was to appeal to those women to come back home. The MAGA base is locked in.

To win, they need the republicans that voted for Biden to return to Trump.
Or for voter suppression to work.

[rickford66]

44. Ya know, I doubt that was even her kitchen.

Wasn't she in DC for the PSOTU like just about every other Senator etc ?

[angrychair]

10. This is a symptom of a larger issue

That Republicans will not hesitate to politize another person's tragedy. Sen Britt didn't think twice about stealing the real life experience of Ms. Romero and using it for political gain. She took a real life horror story and manipulated the facts of that story to attack her political opponent.
Same with that lady that got killed on Jan 6th.
Same with the parents of those soldiers that died leaving Afghanistan.
Same with the people that died in that embassy attack in Benghazi.
And on and on.
It shows the complete lack of character and morals the Republicans have that they use these victims of such horrible events for short term political gain.

[LuvLoogie]

33. This is such a great summary of their M.O.

I'm so done with these shit souls. And tired of the media letting them slide.

[tulipsandroses]

46. Agreed. I read somewhere that Laken Riley's family declined their invitation

Asked for privacy. That did not stop MTG from acting like a clown and using their tragedy for political gain.

[Chi67]

15. As I watched that

I thought to myself- wait minute, wouldn't this be a reason to support immigration? Cartels have nothing to do with border policy. Now this comes to light as well? Wow, the GQP just can't be honest, ever.

[NanaCat]

24. What they're doing

Is equating how easily cartels move across the border with genuine migration.

They employ a typical prestidigitation of substituting migrants for cartels so that they don't have to admit that they have failed to address drug addiction in the US in a meaningful way.

[thucythucy]

26. Not to mention,

the survivor in the story says many of the men abusing her were "foreigners," meaning they weren't Mexicans.

Wanna bet a good number came from the USA?

We're not sending Mexico our best. We're sending our criminals, our rapists....

[NanaCat]

17. Way to bollocks the headline, CNBC

The problem with the story isn't the age of it, really, but how this cynical opportunist implied that Karla Jacinto's ordeal involved crossing the border into the US as a means of trying to pin the crime on migrants coming from Mexico, and then implying that Biden had anything to do with that.

What happened to Ms Jacinto, was horrible, no one disputes that, but none of it happened in the US. Every second of it, beginning to end, took place in Mexico. Nowhere else. It was a cartel action, and migrants had nothing to do with it.

When the event happened is important, yes, in indicating how long cartels have been acting this way, but that's not the worst of her lies. Her self-serving and racist manipulation of Ms Jacinto's ordeal to paint all immigrants as rapists and pimps to smear Biden is the most damning bit about her allegation, and thus what the headline needed to address.

[Think. Again.]

29. Extremely well said.

[SunSeeker]

37. It was not even a drug cartel. Karla Jacinto Romero said a professional pimp trafficked her.

Karla Jacinto Romero said one of her johns helped her escape the pimp when she was 16.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

25. Good to see CNBC credited Jonathan Katz right off the bat.

[Think. Again.]

27. The very, very sad part of this is...

...although Ms. Jacinto Romero's experience is in the past, there ARE current incidents of horrific sex-trafficking crimes happening everyday.

The rightwingers and Ms. Jacinto Romero could very well have used that rebuttal time to make a compassionate plea for us ALL to WORK TOGETHER to address and prevent sex crimes WHEREVER they occur, instead of wasting that time on a cheap, dishonest, and inneffective attempt at falsly smearing President Biden.

[SunSeeker]

38. Yes, it happens in every country, perpetrated by all kinds of people, including priests. nt

[ShazzieB]

40. It would be wonderful if they used the time that way!

But smearing Pres. Biden was their desire and their goal, so of course they set this up as an attempt to do just that.

Also, to do what you describe, they would have to actually care about sex trafficking victims, and we know they only care about themselves, don't we?

[azureblue]

31. Just once

I would like to see a Repub make a speech without lying..
When Hell freezes over.....

[niyad]

34. I see that a few phone calls are in order.

[Renew Deal]

36. The math didn't work when she told the story

She was 12 and now a woman. It didn't add up. It doesn't diminish the Jacinto Romero's story, but it was clearly misrepresented by Britt.

[riversedge]

39. " from 2004 to 2008 and because she was sex trafficked in Mexico."--NOT the USA per Sen Britt.............

Whow what an idiot Britt is!! I am so glad her LIES were exposed.



Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/09/katie-britt-unrelated-sex-trafficking-story-state-of-the-union-rebuttal.html

...................................

Britt seemingly attempted to present the anecdote as a damning example of Biden’s border management.

“We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a third-world country,” she added. “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace. This crisis is despicable.”

But Jacinto Romero did not experience sex trafficking in the U.S. as a result of Biden’s border policy — because he was not president from 2004 to 2008 and because she was sex trafficked in Mexico.

Katz slammed Britt for the implication that Jacinto Romero divulged her experiences privately.

“Britt tells it like she’s sitting by the banks of the Rio Grande, like holding her hand, like getting her to tell the story that she won’t tell anyone else,” he said...........................

[Martin68]

42. The Washington Post Fact Check disclosed that the woman in question testified before Congress in 2015 about

being sex-trafficked in a Mexican brothel during the George W. Bush administration. Neither the border nor cartels had anything to do with it. Typical lies from a party that has nothing else to attack the president with.

[orthoclad]

47. She's goebbeling

Drug cartels are members of the global oligarchy/plutocracy. Hugely rich people stick together (with a few "family" disagreements).

Drug cartels were heavily boosted by the CIA in order to fund right-wing paramilitaries in Latin America. This created the crack epidemic. The journalist who exposed this was driven to suicide. The resulting drug profits are driven by the US market, like the wealthy scions hoovering up coke.

I wonder how many of Britt's colleagues and political buddies were the monied "foreigners" going to Mexico for underaged sex? The Reich wing certainly seems to be obsessed with the issue.

Goebbels said to accuse your enemies of what you're planning.

[Botany]

48. But she was wearing a cross so she couldn't have been lying

Piece of crap.

[Lucinda]

49. ❤️ ✿❧🌿❧✿ ❤️

[Sucha NastyWoman]

51. Blessed be the fruitloop!

Saw this on Facebook

[Aussie105]

52. Some people are like that . . .

They hear a story that has a deep impact on them, then over the years in their mind the story morphs into something that happened recently, involved themselves, and becomes a work of fiction, to be trotted out at every opportunity they feel is appropriate.

It's common in much older folk though.

The sex trafficking story is a sad one - just not relevant to the reasons why she trotted it out.