Longtime Republican strategist Sarah Longwell urged sitting senators in her party to defend Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who was handcuffed and forcibly removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference in Los Angeles on Thursday.
“Republican senators should be very careful on this right now,” Longwell told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace. “If they do not come out and defend Sen. Padilla’s right to ask questions of this administration, of his colleagues, they are setting an extraordinarily dangerous precedent for how senators are going to be treated in this country.”
Padilla said he attended the press conference with peaceful intentions. When he began to ask a question, he was almost immediately pushed out of the room by security and forced to the ground.
The senator told reporters after the incident, “I will say this: If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.”
Noem claimed Padilla did not identify himself, despite a now-viral video in which he can clearly be heard at the start of the incident telling security, “Sir! Sir! Hands off. Hands off. I am Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary.”
