Donald Trump is trying to justify federal agents handcuffing California Senator Alex Padilla by suggesting that he “looked like an illegal,” his leading biographer has revealed.
“Trump saw these pictures and then has been on the phone saying to people, ‘Nobody’s ever heard of this guy,’” Michael Wolff, the bestselling author, said this week on The Daily Beast Podcast. “As though that’s an excuse. And then he’s gone on to say, ‘and he looks like an illegal.’”
Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, was thrown to the ground Thursday after going to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference in Los Angeles and trying to ask her a question.
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Noem was bashing California lawmakers after mass protests in Los Angeles erupted against ICE raids when the attack started.
Padilla decided to interrupt the conference to demand why she was “exaggerating and embellishing.” He was in the middle of asking his question when Noem’s security shoved him out of the room. He could be heard repeatedly identifying himself as a United States senator.
Once in the hallway, the agents—who included Secret Service and FBI—pushed him to the ground and handcuffed his hands behind his back.
Wolff said that Trump excused the assault by dismissing Padilla as an immigrant nobody.
“If you are famous, that would obviously put you in a different category and ICE agents would not have tackled you,” said Wolff, explaining Trump’s rationale.
“Padilla is actually a relatively new senator from California, nobody knows about this person. Therefore, perfectly understandable that the ICE agents would tackle him. And of course he looks like ‘an illegal.’
“This is just his visceral response: Nobody’s ever heard of him,” Wolff added. “We can take the blame off the ICE agents because they haven’t heard about this guy.”
Wolff said that Trump was “a little unsettled by the Padilla thing” and is attempting to sweep it under the rug. Democratic lawmakers had seized on it as an unconstitutional outrage and even two Republican senators—Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins, both on-off Trump critics—had spoken out against it.
“He’s rationalizing this in some way which might brand him as a complete racist once more,” Wolff added. “Although I’m sure he doesn’t particularly care about that.”
In response White House Communications Director Steven Cheung recycled a previous attack on Wolff and said, “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Padilla was the first Latino president of the L.A. City Council. He was elected to the Senate in 2022 and is now the senior senator from the state.
Trump has indulged in anti-immigrant stereotypes long before this year’s mass immigration crackdown. When announcing his presidential bid in 2015, he said that Mexico was sending criminals and “rapists” across the border.
“They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us,” he said at the time. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.“
He also raised eyebrows during his final 2016 presidential debate saying that he wanted to get the “bad hombres” out of the United States.
A key pillar of Trump’s second presidency has been immigration. He has upended immigration policy through executive orders and an aggressive campaign of raids, detentions, and deportations.
Noem’s excuse for her agents tackling Padilla was that the senator lunged at her despite them being far apart and several videos showing no evidence to back up her claim.
The manhandling of Padilla has incited a wave of backlash from 2028 presidential hopefuls like Governor Gavin Newsom, who called the assault “outrageous, dictatorial, and shameful.”
“Trump and his shock troops are out of control,” he said. “This must end now.”
