The Sunday column is a big deal, at least for columnists. In the old days when newspapers ruled the journalistic world, you were writing that day for the biggest audience of the week, which conveyed a certain prestige to the author (or so these authors assumed).
But there was a drawback then that remains in place today. Nearly all Sunday columns are written on Friday or even before.
So, as I write this Sunday column on Friday, I can’t write about Trump’s embarrassing happy-birthday-to-himself-and-to-the-U.S.-Army parade, with tanks rolling down the streets of Washington, D.C.
It would look, I’m pretty certain, as if we had suddenly become an insecure nation that somehow found the need to prove to the world that we are, as Trump might say, STRONG. Or would it all have been a spectacle meant to show that Trump, on his 79th birthday, has the STRONG backing of the many thousand troops marching before him?
Does anyone really need convincing that the United States, to this point anyway, is the strongest country — militarily and economically — in the world? Of course not.
Does anyone really need convincing that the parade was a planned act of presidential narcissism with a capital NARCISSISM? Think about it. Now think about it some more.
I also can’t write about the many Americans — maybe running into the millions — who were expected to take to the streets, also on Saturday, in what was being billed as a nationwide “No Kings” rally, alternately called the “No Kings, No Surrender” rally.
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SUBSCRIBEWould the protests grow violent? Hard to know. You had to assume, just by the numbers, that some troublemakers would clash violently with the police or the National Guard or the Marines or whoever was doing the policing demonstrations in your town.
Or maybe some of the policers would overreact, which also seemed likely. Trump has already said protesters who showed up would be people “that hate our country … and they will be met with very heavy force.”
But something already did happen, something horrific, on Thursday that I can write about. And it gives context, I would imagine, for whatever comes next.
You’ve probably seen the video — or at least heard about it — of California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla being forcibly removed and then taken to the ground and handcuffed by federal agents during a Kristi Noem news conference.
How you see the video depends, in part, on where the one you see actually begins, and it depends, in part, on your political leanings and it depends, also in part, whether you think a large brown man in this situation might be treated differently than a large white man.
This video shows Noem, the Homeland Security chief, explaining why the California National Guard had to be federalized over the governor’s objections, why the Marines had been sent in, and what might happen next.
Here’s the critical quote: “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
It should be noted that Noem is directly channeling Trump here. Socialists aren’t running the show in a city that hardly needs liberating. The “burdensome” leadership of the governor and mayor — neither one socialists — came to office via democratic election. And when Noem insisted the troops weren’t going anywhere, it led some of us to ask: Just what is the end game here?
Padilla had come into the room from another meeting in the same building. When he heard Noem spewing absurdist charges, he moved forward from the back of the room and said he wanted to ask a question. After all, he and other California leaders were being verbally abused. He might have wanted to ask what the end game was, too.
And that’s where this video comes in.
Various Republican officials have said that Padilla either “lunged” at Noem or “charged” Noem.
Does it look, in either video, that Padilla is charging or lunging? A Los Angeles Times columnist described Padilla this way: “On Capitol Hill, Padilla is known for being kind and nerdy. He never seems to raise his voice. He sometimes cries during floor speeches.”
He is also the child of working Mexican immigrants who made his way to MIT — where we know Trump’s uncle once taught, meaning, as Trump suggests, he must also be smart — before eventually being appointed to the Senate to replace Kamala Harris when she became vice president.
And yet, presumably after reviewing some video, House Speaker Mike Johnson — who doesn’t share the same congressional chamber with Padilla — said he ought to be “censured” at minimum. We can wonder what the maximum would be. But we do know that Johnston used the “charging” word.
Democrats and the occasional Republican were outraged by what they saw, which showed Padilla being removed from the room even as he’s saying, “I’m Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary. Because the fact of the matter is …”
John Hickenlooper, for one Democratic senator, called the manhandling “disgraceful” and demanded accountability. Chuck Schumer and others called it “un-American.” Washington’s Patty Murray said she “had tears in her eyes” as she spoke on the Senate floor about “this horrendous incident.” Hawaii’s Brian Schatz said it was “the stuff of dictatorships.” Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, said we were looking “more and more like a fascist state.” She then asked whether any Republican senator would speak up for democracy.
At least one did. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, often a Trump critic, said of the clip she saw: “It’s horrible. It is shocking at every level. It’s not the America I know.”
Obviously, Democrats see this event as a serious political problem for Trump. I’d guess Republicans do, too.
You can argue that Padilla should have identified himself when he first started to interrupt Noem’s attack on California officials with a question. Maybe he assumed that Noem would know who he was, as one of the two U.S. senators from the state whose leaders she had been attacking.
But maybe not. Noem is the cabinet secretary, after all, who wrongly described habeas corpus to a House congressional committee. So we can’t be sure.
She did later say, though, she knew who Padilla was. After the incident — in which Padilla actually did identify himself when the agents started pushing him back — they had a brief meeting, where, Noem said, they exchanged phone numbers and would continue to talk.
But if Noem did, in fact, recognize Padilla, why wouldn’t she have stopped the federal agents from manhandling him, explaining to them that he’s a U.S. senator and that she’d be glad to take his questions once she finished her opening remarks?
Or should we assume that in the Trump administration using force before learning facts is a guiding principle? I mean how different is this reaction from the incident that led to New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver’s arrest and then indictment?
And thing is, the Padilla takedown was just one wild event on yet another wild and woolly day in the still-brief life of the Trump restoration. As you may have seen, one federal district judge ruled Thursday that Trump’s use of the National Guard in California was unconstitutional. Later, a Ninth Circuit appeals court stayed the ruling until it could fully take up the matter on Tuesday.
Also on Thursday, Trump promised “changes are coming” to his mass-deportation agenda, saying he believed it was a mistake to deport farmers and leisure-industry workers.
Here’s his quote on social media: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace, In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
A day later, the Washington Post and others quoted administration officials, like border czar Tom Homan, that nothing had changed so far and that, as far as they knew, nothing was in the works.
Trump is getting heat because ICE is running low on violent criminals to deport and is now sweeping up day workers at Home Depot parking lots and elsewhere. And he’s getting flak about the masked ICE agents who grab people charged with no crime off the streets. The ICE agents look very much like kidnappers, probably because they are, in effect, kidnappers.
Who do they come after next?
Here’s how Padilla put it: If this is the response when a senator asks a question, “you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers to cooks to day laborers …”
Sadly, on a Friday before the wild weekend, that’s the one thing I could all too easily imagine. We’ve seen it with our own eyes.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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