Vice-president visits Los Angeles and condemns Democratic leaders over protests against Trump’s Ice raids
JD Vance, the US vice-president, accused California governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass of encouraging violent immigration protests as he used an in Los Angeles to rebut criticism from state and local officials that the Trump administration fueled the unrest by sending in federal officers.
The centerpiece of Vance’s Friday visit was a 14-minute news conference, during which he delivered remarks and took questions from correspondents selected by the White House. Local reporters were barred from attending, according to Elex Michaelson, the host of Fox LA’s local evening news report.
“It’s disappointing” Michaelson wrote on X, that the vice-president “did not allow local reporters inside his Los Angeles press event. At this inflection point in L.A. history, they only took questions from national reporters.”
When a correspondent for the far-right Daily Wire, who was selected by the White House to be the official pool reporter traveling with Vance, asked about a series of Democrats who have been placed in handcuffs recently by federal officers, Vance attempted to joke about California senator Alex Padilla who was forcibly detained by the FBI in the same location last week. Vance, however, called him “Jose Padilla”, using the name of an American citizen who was accused of planning to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb on behalf of al-Qaida in 2002.
