President Trump privately raged against Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama after she publicly condemned a video briefly posted to his Truth Social account, reportedly telling aides the senator was "dead to me," according to CNN sources. The president spent last weekend venting to allies about Republican lawmakers who rushed to criticize the post, questioning their loyalty and vowing consequences.
The video, an AI-generated clip posted on February 6, depicted various Democratic figures as cartoon animals. A roughly two-second snippet showed former President Joe Biden and the Obamas with their faces superimposed on cartoon ape bodies. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) were also portrayed as animals in the clip.
A senior White House official told CNN a staffer "erroneously made the post" and that it had been taken down. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the clip as depicting Trump as "the King of the Jungle" and Democrats as characters from The Lion King, calling the reaction "fake outrage." In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, Leavitt described the uproar as "fake news."
Trump himself told reporters aboard Air Force One that he had only seen the first portion of the video, not the final frames.
"We took it down as soon as we found out about it."
When asked directly whether he condemned the video, the president said, "Of course I do."
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina was among the first Republicans to break ranks publicly. He wrote on X that he was "praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House" and urged that it be removed. CNN reported that Scott attempted to reach Trump privately before posting, but went public anyway.
A senior administration official was not pleased. They told CNN regarding Scott: "We work together all the time. He didn't need to comment publicly."
That frustration captures the core of Trump's grievance. The video was already down. The White House had already explained it. A staffer had already taken the blame. And still, Republicans lined up to score points by publicly distancing themselves from a post that had already vanished.
Britt's specific public statement condemning the video has not been quoted or described in detail by any outlet. But whatever she said was enough. Breitbart reported that one source claimed Trump used expletives in reference to Britt and declared she was "dead to me." Independent journalist Laura Loomer reportedly provided Trump with printouts of statements from Republicans who had condemned the post, and wrote on X that she was compiling a list of those who had "attacked" him with "false accusations of racism."
Britt's office called CNN's reporting "classic fake news," pointing to her "100% voting record with President Trump" and describing her as "one of his strongest allies in the Senate." Her team claimed she recently had a "tremendous conversation" with the president about her work to:
The White House itself described Britt as "an incredible ally" for whom the president has "great respect." Whether those statements came before or after the reported "dead to me" comment remains unclear.
The tension between the two accounts is notable. Either CNN's sources are fabricating private remarks from the president, or the public cleanup is doing exactly what public cleanups do.
Trump and Britt have traveled a winding road before. During the 2022 Alabama Senate runoff, Trump withdrew his support from Rep. Mo Brooks and threw his weight behind Britt, issuing his "Complete and Total Endorsement" and calling her a "fearless America First warrior" and "an Incredible Fighter for the people of Alabama."
Yet Britt was the final Republican in Alabama's congressional delegation to endorse Trump for president, waiting until December 2023. That kind of timing tends to get noticed.
Then came the March 2024 State of the Union rebuttal. Britt delivered a nearly 18-minute response from her kitchen, focusing on border security, rising costs, crime, and support for in vitro fertilization. She made no mention of Trump. The performance drew fire from all directions.
A lawyer working in the Trump orbit called it "cringe." One national Republican consultant told Rolling Stone: "I'll give Biden this — he at least gave a better speech than Katie Britt." A Trump adviser reportedly asked, "What the hell am I watching right now?" The late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk wrote that Britt may be "a sweet mom and person," but "this speech is not what we need." One Republican, cited by the Daily Beast, called it "one of our biggest disasters ever."
The left piled on with glee. Scarlett Johansson portrayed Britt in a Saturday Night Live cold open. The sketch's sharpest line: every detail of the trafficking story she told was real, "except the year, where it took place, and who was president when it happened." Jimmy Kimmel referenced Britt at the 2024 Academy Awards while discussing Emma Stone's role in Poor Things, saying Stone played a woman with the brain of a child "like the woman who gave the State of the Union rebuttal."
The trafficking anecdote became a particular liability. Former Associated Press reporter Jonathan M. Katz argued the events Britt referenced occurred in Mexico between 2004 and 2008, well before Biden was president or vice president. Britt's spokesman insisted the story was "100% correct," and Britt later clarified she did not intend to suggest the incident was Biden's fault.
Trump, for his part, congratulated Britt after the rebuttal, particularly praising her comments on migrant crime. The public posture and the private assessment did not always align, even then.
This episode is not really about a two-second video clip. It is about a recurring dynamic in Republican politics: elected officials who benefit enormously from Trump's endorsement and political infrastructure, then distance themselves the moment the media manufactures a crisis around him.
The video was posted by a staffer. It was taken down quickly. The White House explained it. The president said he condemned it. That sequence of events would satisfy any reasonable standard of accountability. But for some Republicans, the real audience was not the president or his voters. It was the press gallery.
There is a difference between principled disagreement and performative distancing. Principled disagreement happens in private first, especially when you have the president's phone number. Performative distancing happens on X, where the cameras are.
Britt has more recently drawn attention for her response to a media firestorm over an ICE enforcement action in Minnesota involving a five-year-old boy. According to a recent New York Times profile, Britt saw a photo of the boy while waiting in her car outside her son's orthodontist appointment in Montgomery, Alabama, and texted her team to look into it. She then called Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem seeking clarification.
Vice President JD Vance pushed back directly on the media's framing of the incident, explaining that agents were attempting to apprehend the boy's illegal alien father, who fled on foot, leaving officers with the child.
"What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death?"
Department of Homeland Security officials stated agents followed standard protocol, allowing parents to choose whether children remain with them or be placed with a designated adult. Britt told the Times that "children should never be used as pawns," a statement that cuts in more than one direction when the media is the one doing the pawning.
Katie Britt holds a 100% Trump voting record. She champions ICE. She pushes the SAVE America Act. On paper, she is a reliable soldier. But loyalty in Trump's orbit has never been measured solely by votes. It is measured by instinct, by whether your first impulse in a storm is to grab a sandbag or a microphone.
Britt has a habit of finding herself on the wrong side of that instinct at the worst possible moments. The belated endorsement. The rebuttal that turned into a punchline. Now a public condemnation of a post that was already gone before anyone outside Washington had heard of it.
The White House says she is an incredible ally. CNN says the president says she is dead to him. One of those things may be diplomatic courtesy. The other may be how the man actually feels. In the Trump world, the distance between the two is where political careers go to find out what they're made of.
