Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who uses hostages in a prison as a backdrop for photo-ops, when she isn’t cosplaying as a Wild West sheriff, is dismissing her staff manhandling a sitting U.S. senator on live TV as the senator being the one guilty of “political theater.”
“I would have loved to have sat down and had a conversation with him. Coming into a press conference like this is political theater. It’s wrong, and it does a disservice to this country and the people who live here,” said Noem, who was in the middle of an opening statement at a press conference that she called on Thursday to address the ongoing federal response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., tried to ask her a question.
After identifying himself, four members of Noem’s security staff – as Puppy-Killer Barbie was in the background saying that the troops called to protect a federal detention center from a few hundred protestors “are not going away,” and that the troops “are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists” – pushed Padilla to the back of the room, then forced him to the ground and handcuffed him.
Noem, of course, rushed to Fox News to defend the shocking actions of her goons.
“This man burst into a room, started advancing towards the podium, interrupting an opening statement, elevating his voice, shouting questions,” Noem said. “People tried to stop him from interrupting the press conference. He refused and continued to lunge towards the podium. And that is when he was removed from the room. So, the way that he acted was completely inappropriate. It wasn’t becoming of a U.S. senator or a public official.”
For the other side of the story, well, I mean, here’s the video:
California Sen. Alex Padilla was just forcibly removed from a DHS press conference and handcuffed.
“I am Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary.”
Video from @Elex_Michaelson on X via Padilla’s staff.
— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) June 12, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Noem’s top deputy, Trisha McLaughlin, doubled down with a tweet claiming Padilla had “interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself” – which you can see from the video is a lie – and then went full-out Orwellian, with the claim that the Secret Service “thought he was an attacker.”
Again, you can see in the video, the staff addressed Padilla, as he was being led out of the room, as “Senator,” which would be an odd thing for somebody to call an “attacker.”
Don’t overlook the part of this where Noem was going on about how the troops that Donald Trump deployed to LA to quash the protests against the ICE raids “are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists.”
If not for the goons roughing up a senator to get our attention to this presser, that Freudian slip might have gone unnoticed, but now that you know what the Trumpers are planning – apparently, an occupation of Los Angeles, to “liberate” it from “the socialists” – you can’t unknow it.
Reaction
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine: “What happened to Alex Padilla is an attempt to intimidate anyone with a dissenting view of this Administration and stop them from exercising their First Amendment rights. We will not be silenced.”
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner: “What kind of world do we live in where a sitting Senator can’t ask a question of a public official without being dragged away and handcuffed? This footage is outrageous — it’s something I’d expect out of an authoritarian nation, not the United States of America.”
Seventh District Congressman Eugene Vindman: “This cannot stand. We live in a free country where every citizen has the right to freedom of speech and assembly. Senator Padilla was exercising those rights on behalf of his constituents.
“The use of force against him reeks of the oppression in the Soviet Union my family came to this country to escape. It’s un-American and disgusting. We need accountability.
“We will not bow to tyrants.”
Eighth District Congressman Don Beyer: “This is another disgraceful episode in a long train of abuses from a thuggish administration that has repeatedly incited and encouraged violence. What happened to Senator Padilla today is horrifying. This incident must be investigated, and everyone involved held accountable.
“Kristi Noem went to Los Angeles to help this Administration inflame and escalate a problem they are causing. Now she has the audacity to condone violence against a United States Senator for daring to ask her a question in his state. Rather than apologizing and trying to resolve a problem she helped create, Noem is lying about what happened and making it worse.
“This is unacceptable behavior from a Cabinet official, and it should be clear to everyone that Kristi Noem does not have the credibility or integrity to continue serving.”
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Chris Graham
