Following his recent stunt disrupting a Homeland Security press conference, California's leftist Sen. Alex Padilla would like a sixteenth minute of fame.
So now he's all over the news, having been "brought to his knees" for "asking a question" at a press conference and worse still, getting called "Jose" by Vice President Vance, almost literally bawling for the cameras about it, with the fawning media allowing him to make it as fake as possible.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
Sen. Alex Padilla blasted the Trump administration Saturday, calling it “petty and unserious” after Vice President JD Vance referred to him as “Jose” during a news conference in Los Angeles the previous day.
“He knows my name,” Padilla said in an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday morning.
Vance visited Los Angeles on Friday for less than five hours after several weeks of federal immigration raids in the city and surrounding areas, sparking protests and backlash from state and local officials.
Padilla was thrown into the heated nationwide immigration debate when he was dragged to the ground by federal law enforcement officers and briefly detained when he attempted to ask U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question during a news conference earlier this month.
Here's how bad it was:
???? Alex Padilla is nearly in TEARS on TV this morning after JD Vance called him “Jose”
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 21, 2025
What a freaking loser ????
Democrats find new ways to become increasingly pathetic every day. pic.twitter.com/qDDvDZRfM8
Vance was trolling Padilla, because both of them knew that "Jose" is what he's known by in the Senate by those who don't think much of him. Padilla was boob enough to take the bait when Vance threw it out like a snapped towel, and that brings us to where we are.
Up until now, Padilla had been weeping and whimpering for the press about getting himself handcuffed after he showed up in Los Angeles for a press conference by Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, definitely not as a member of the press and not wearing his Senate pin which could have identified him to security. He wore a heavy black windbreaker jacket all buttoned up in the 80-degree weather with dirty jeans and heavy street kicks. Not waiting to be called on, as the press knows it must do, he began bellowing about the illegal immigrants he champions and physically charged the podium, which forced alert security men to restrain him and escort him from the premises.
The original video of his thuggy behavior can be viewed here.
It follows from a maudlin interview he did with the Washington Post, reflecting (if that is the word for it) about his uninvited trip to the press conference screaming and bellowing before charging the podium where a slight little woman was speaking:
Last week, a Democratic senator walked into a news conference with questions. He left in handcuffs.
“Is this really happening?” Alex Padilla thought to himself.
This week, he’s thinking about what happened.
“Never did I imagine hands on me, and let alone being put on the ground,” Padilla, California’s first Latino senator, said in an interview at an office inside the Capitol this week.
They take his word for it that this was what he thought to himself. Anyone who has seen the tape might think differently.
He claimed he was in Los Angeles for a briefing with top defense officials, which is weird all by itself and just "happened" to hear about the press conference as if his main interest, which is illegals, which fill his district, and by some reports, include his own parents, weren't his primary concern.
No questions as to why he was dressed the way he was. No questions about why he wasn't wearing his Senate pin, which would have identified him to officials. No curiosity about why he didn't wait his turn as everyone in the press knows they have to do. No questions about his subsequent meeting with Noem, who kindly gave it to him after he was thrown out. No curiosity about anything, just a hideous obesiance to Padilla's sad trombone story.
Worse than the story, the Post photographed him against a sad blue background, his hands folded instead fisted up as they were in the presser, wearing a suit, which he certainly didn't do on supposedly official business in Los Angeles, and his pin on this time.
As they used to say in the valley Alex now represents before the locals fled the state: Gag me with a spoon.
The Post's willingness to carry Padilla's water is disturbing, actually.
Padilla is a member of the San Fernando political machine, a political goon, a bagman, a made man in what is known as the Latino political mafia.
He knew what he was doing when charged the podium. And there is no doubt that his battered political machine put him up to it as their stooge, physically threatening Kristi Noem as gangs do. A few days before Padilla's jaunt to Los Angeles, his political machine-mate, Tony Cardenas, now retired from office, but possibly acting on orders from the machine's godfather, James Acevedo, turned up in Washington on unknown business and spoke to the Post about something else. The Post was incurious about that, too.
Now like a political bully with his nose bloodied, he is whimpering to the press, trying to milk it for political gain except that everyone saw the tape. Yet the press is buying it and promoting his spin, hook line and sinker.
It's getting to be too much -- it's downright disgusting.
Interesting how Jose Padilla gets “brought to his knees” for disrupting a press briefing.
— Brian Eastwood (@BrianEastwood_X) June 21, 2025
And somehow i have to hear about it for weeks.
PRESIDENT TRUMP TOOK A BULLET AND THE MEDIA STOPPED TALKING ABOUT IT AFTER THE 3RD DAY!
ENOUGH!
Hasn't this clown had enough attention? It's time to get the hook.
Image: Screen shot from shareable MSNBC video posted on X.