MSNBC’s Jen Psaki on Sunday demonstrated Sen. Katie Britt’s (R-Ala.) evolution to full MAGA with a video the senator filmed only 12 months ago.
Britt’s theatrical delivery of the official GOP rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last week — including her misleading story about a sex trafficking victim — went viral for all the wrong reasons.
Psaki contrasted Britt’s dramatic commentary with a video the senator posted on YouTube following Biden’s address in 2023.
Watch that video here:
“You might not agree with everything, but it’s not scary,” Psaki said of “2023 Britt.” Britt’s 2024 performance however, was right “out of Trump’s playbook,” Psaki added.
Some GOP lawmakers like far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene “ran as full-throated MAGA fanatics without even the pretense of waiting to govern, they didn’t evolve,” she noted.
But for others like Britt, who was initially seen as a more sensible conservative, there’s “been a bit of an evolution.” Psaki named Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) as another. Nehls went from seeking to work with Biden on criminal justice reform to wearing Donald Trump’s mug shot on a T-shirt last week.
“And that tells us something important,” said Psaki. “Because even when you’re elected as more of a mainstream conservative […] there is no incentive to stay that way because the MAGA movement is no longer the fringe. It is the Republican Party and in order to stay in office and rise through the ranks, you have no choice but to go full MAGA.”
Watch Psaki’s analysis here:
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