Vice President JD Vance referred
to Sen. Alex Padilla as “José Padilla” during a Friday
visit to Los Angeles where he criticized California’s Democratic leaders and
defended the Trump administration’s controversial use of the state’s
National Guard in the city.
“I was hoping José Padilla would be here
to ask a question, but unfortunately, guess he decided not to show up because
there wasn’t the theater, and that’s all it is,” Vance told reporters, speaking
from an FBI mobile command center that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is
currently using in Los Angeles.
Vance dismissed Padilla’s appearance last week at a press conference held by Homeland Security
Secretary Kristi Noem as “pure political theater.” Padilla was forcefully
removed, ordered to the ground by law enforcement and placed in handcuffs after
attempting to ask Noem a question.
Padilla, California’s first Latino elected to
the US Senate, had interrupted Noem as she was giving remarks in the Los
Angeles FBI headquarters on the Trump administration’s response to protests in
that city against Noem’s department and its immigration-enforcement efforts.
When asked about the
vice president calling the Democratic senator by the wrong first name, Vance’s
spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk brushed it off. “He must have mixed up two people
who have broken the law,” Van Kirk told CNN without specifying the other
person.
In 2007, former Chicago gang member Jose Padilla was found guilty of
supporting Islamic terrorism overseas. It’s not clear who Vance intended to
reference.
Padilla’s spokesperson said that Vance, who served in the Senate
with Padilla, “knows better.”
“As a former colleague of Senator Padilla, the Vice President
knows better. He should be more focused on demilitarizing our city than taking
cheap shots. Another unserious comment from an unserious administration,”
spokesperson Tess Oswald said in a statement.
The vice president’s comments sparked immediate condemnation
from some of the same California Democrats Vance lashed out at in his Friday
remarks.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom also called Vance out on
X, saying his misnaming of Padilla was “not an accident.”
Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Karen Bass responded to Vance at a
press conference later Friday. “Mr. Vice President, how dare you disrespect our
Senator,” Bass said, adding, “I guess he just looked like anybody to you. Well,
he’s not just anybody to us.”
On Friday, Vance also reacted to a federal appeals
court allowing President Donald Trump to maintain control over thousands
of California National Guardsmen.
“That determination was legitimate, and the president’s going to
do it again if he has to, but hopefully it won’t be necessary,” Vance said.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday granted a
request from Trump to lift, for now, a lower-court ruling that had required the
president to relinquish control of roughly 4,000 guardsmen from the Golden
State that he had federalized to beef up security in Los Angeles amid unrest over
immigration enforcement.
“And I think what the Ninth Circuit said very clearly is when
the president makes a determination, you’ve got to send in certain federal
officials to protect people,” Vance said, while lashing out at California’s
Democratic leadership for their handling of the unrest.
The vice president also defended the administration’s
immigration policy, saying Trump wants to prioritize deportations of violent
offenders or “really bad guys,” but that no one who’s undocumented should feel
immune from enforcement.
When asked whether the administration’s deportation tactics had
gone too far, Vance argued that he didn’t think “we’ve been too aggressive.”
“Anytime we make a mistake we correct that very quickly,” Vance
said.
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