Senator Mitt Romney of Utah weighed in Joe Biden's State of the Union Address this week with a tacit endorsement that may influence who Donald Trump picks as his vice-presidential nominee.

Posting on the X platform on Sunday, Romney suggested that the reaction to Alabama Senator Katie Britt's response to the State of the Union was an indication that liberals fear her above any other potential candidate.

"In a good way, the delivery was over-the-top, out of character—Biden’s, of course," he wrote. "Katie Britt’s too. The media overreaction to hers not his tells us who liberals most fear as VP nominee."

In a good way, the delivery was over-the-top, out of character—Biden’s, of course. Katie Britt’s too. The media overreaction to hers not his tells us who liberals most fear as VP nominee.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 10, 2024

Quite what Romney was aiming for when writing this post remains unclear, particularly given his unpopularity among vast swathes of the Republican base. For many within the conservative grassroots, a show of support from Mitt Romney is something to be actively avoided.

Making his apparent endorsement even more bizarre is the fact that Romney has made clear that he will not support Donald Trump's presidential campaign under any circumstances and has even flirted with the possibility of joining a No Labels ticket.

In an interview with CNN last week, Romney said he would "absolutely not" vote for Trump over Biden:

One is their position and policies and on foreign policy I’m not aligned with Donald Trump, at least as I understand his policy. On domestic policy, yeah, I align with many of his domestic policies. But there’s another dimension besides policy — and that’s character.

Having a president who is so defaulted of character would have an enormous impact on the character of America. And for me, that’s the primary consideration.

Britt, meanwhile, was widely mocked for her overly dramatic rebuttal to Joe Biden's address. Among the criticisms leveled against her was her reference to a human and sex trafficking survivor who was the victim of such crimes before Joe Biden even became vice-president. 

She explained:

When I first took office, I did something different. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped.

The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on end. We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it. President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable. And it’s almost entirely preventable.

It is understood that Britt was referring to Karla Jacinto Romero, a woman who experienced human trafficking in Mexico between 2004 and 2008. A spokesman for Britt insisted that “the story Senator Britt told was 100% correct” but did not answer whether she was referring to Jacinto.