JD Vance intentionally misnames former colleague his administration had tackled and handcuffed for asking a question
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Speaking of white supremacists with law degrees:
Sen. Alex Padilla snapped back at Vice President JD Vance Saturday, calling the vice president “petty and unserious” after Vance referred to the senator as “Jose” during a press conference in Los Angeles the previous evening.
The squabble between Padilla and Vance is the latest clash between Trump administration officials and California Democrats as hostilities brew over President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration in the city, which has seen numerous ICE sweeps and significant counterprotests in recent weeks.
“He knows my name,” Padilla told MSNBC Saturday morning. “Look, 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.”
Vance visited Los Angeles on Friday amid the heightened tensions, meeting with federal law enforcement and Marines his administration called in to quiet anti-ICE protests in the city, a move that prompted backlash from Democrats.
During a speech in which the vice president defended the administration’s decision to call in National Guard troops — which a federal appeals court upheld this week — Vance also bashed his former Senate colleague, who was handcuffed and removed from a press briefing with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week after attempting to question the secretary.
“I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t the theater,” Vance said, deriding Padilla’s handcuffing at Noem’s briefing the prior week as “pure political theater.”
Vance’s press secretary, Taylor Van Kirk, said that the vice president misspoke and “must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.”
Padilla, the senator, was not charged after the incident at Noem’s press conference. It isn’t clear who Van Kirk could be referring to, but a Jose Padilla was convicted over 15 years ago of conspiracy to commit murder and fund terrorism.
Well, there’s another terrorist named Jose Pailla, but it couldn’t have been the one Vance was referring to because he would have meant it as a compliment:
Here's the sentencing memo for the Jose Padilla that @jdvance chose to join forces with by serving with Trump. https://t.co/EBWQWUuFjr— emptywheel (check) (@emptywheel) June 20, 2025
There are entire books to be written about how this smarmy, intensely dislikeable demagogue briefly became the hero of elite media editors because of his connections to Yale and a far-right plutocrat.