Vice President JD Vance referred to Sen. Alex Padilla, California’s first Latino senator, as “Jose Padilla,” a week after the Democrat was forcibly taken to the ground by officers and handcuffed at a Los Angeles news conference.
“I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question,” Vance said, in an apparent reference to the altercation at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s event. “I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t a theater. And that’s all it is.”
“They want to be able to go back to their far-left groups and to say, ‘Look, me, I stood up against border enforcement. I stood up against Donald Trump,’” Vance added.
In a post on X, Padilla responded that “the Vice President knows my name. But that’s not the point. He should be focused on removing the thousands of unnecessary troops from the streets of Los Angeles, not petty slights.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had harsher words, suggesting Vance’s comments had racist intent.
“I guess he just looked like anybody to you, but he’s not just anybody to us. He is our senator,” Bass said during a Friday press conference.
Mr. Vice President, how dare you disrespect Senator Alex Padilla like that? You serve with him in the Senate right now. You know him. pic.twitter.com/lKLKFvnxPD
— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) June 21, 2025In a statement on X, Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to Vance’s reference to “Jose Padilla,” saying the comment was no accident.
Jose Padilla also is the name of a convicted al-Qaida terrorism plotter during President George W. Bush’s administration, who was sentenced to two decades in prison. Padilla was arrested in 2002 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport during the tense months after the 9/11 attacks and accused of the “dirty bomb” mission.
Responding to the outrage, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said of the vice president “must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.”
Vance on Friday accused Bass and Newsom encouraging violent immigration protests as he used his appearance in Los Angeles to rebut criticism from state and local officials that the Trump administration fueled the unrest by sending in federal officers.
Vance’s visit to Los Angeles to tour a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a mobile command center came as demonstrations calmed down in the city and a curfew was lifted this week. That followed over a week of sometimes-violent clashes between protesters and police and outbreaks of vandalism and looting that followed immigration raids across Southern California.
“Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, by treating the city as a sanctuary city, have basically said that this is open season on federal law enforcement,” Vance said after he toured federal immigration enforcement offices.
Speaking at City Hall, Bass said Vance was “spewing lies and utter nonsense.” She said hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted by the federal government on a “stunt.”
“How dare you say that city officials encourage violence? We kept the peace,” Bass said.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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