Washington DC - Republican Senator Katie Britt on Sunday defended her much-mocked response to Joe Biden's State of the Union address as critics and the internet piled on with cutting riffs.

The 42-year-old junior senator from Alabama was little-known when Republicans selected her for the traditional role of offering the party's response to the president's annual message before Congress.

But the setting she chose – her family kitchen – as well as her awkward delivery and a misleading effort to link Biden to a sex-trafficking incident that happened long before he took office, have drawn furious pushback.

A sharply satirical SNL take, with superstar Scarlett Johansson as Britt, added fuel to the fire.

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The real Britt, in the remarks from her kitchen, sharply denounced Biden's border policies as "a disgrace," telling the brutal account of a Mexican woman who, at 12, was sex-trafficked and repeatedly raped.

But when fact-checkers dug into the story, it quickly emerged that the sex-trafficking occurred in Mexico, involved no effort to cross the border, and took place while George W. Bush was president.

Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Britt insisted she had made it clear she was talking about something that happened years before.

She claimed without evidence that "human trafficking has gone up under President Biden," adding: "It's disgusting to try to silence... the story of what it is like to be sex-trafficked."

Donald Trump, Biden's virtually certain opponent in November elections, praised Britt's performance. But even conservative commentators chastised her choice of setting.

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"Senator Katie Britt is a very impressive person," commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin wrote on X, adding, "I do not understand the decision to put her in a *KITCHEN* for one of the most important speeches she's ever given."

Britt's response on Fox: "Republicans care about kitchen-table issues. We are talking about the issues that women care about."