California Senator Alex Padilla has hit back at JD Vance after the vice president called him “José” at a press conference.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials tackled and arrested Padilla earlier this month at a press conference held by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to address the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. DHS has falsely claimed that Padilla failed to identify himself as a senator and accused him of engaging in political theater.
“[I was hoping] José Padilla would be here to ask a question, but, unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t the theatre,” the vice president said Thursday during a press conference in L.A., which he visited for the Republican National Committee’s Summer Retreat. “That’s all it is. It’s pure political theatre. These guys show up, they want to be captured on camera doing something.”
Padilla addressed the name flop on MSNBC on Saturday.
“He knows my name,” Padilla said. “Sadly, it’s just an indicator of how petty and unserious this administration is. He’s the vice president of the United States. You’d think he’d take the situation in Los Angeles more seriously.”
Some of Padilla’s supporters were less reserved in their response to the vice president’s comments.
“Shocked that [Vance] acting like a smug little p--ck would backfire on him,” former Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor posted on X.
“Vance is a racist piece of trash,” progressive influencer Harry Sisson added. “What a disgusting thing to say.”
Footage of Padilla’s arrest on June 12 shows him being forcefully removed from the room in which the press conference was held, all while loudly identifying himself as a senator, before being knocked to the floor and handcuffed by ICE agents in the hall outside.
In an interview with Fox News, Noem claimed that Padilla had not, in fact, told the agents who he was before his arrest. A spokesperson for her department later added Padilla had engaged in “disrespectful political theatre” by “lunging” toward the secretary—which, again, the video does not show.
Further responding to Vance’s comments in Los Angeles, Padilla told MSNBC Saturday that “you’d think maybe he’d take a moment to talk to some of the families who have been impacted, have been terrorized to feel what’s really going on on the ground.”
“You saw him shaking hands with Marines, but did he listen to the Marines?” Padilla added, referring to 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines that President Donald Trump sent to quell the protests. “Because we have, you know, report after report of the Marines, so many of the Marines themselves don’t want to be there. That’s not why they enlisted.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Vance for comment.
