Bulwark Takes - Sen. Padilla Shoots Back at Critics, Calls on Dems to Fight.

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Adrian catches up with Senator Padilla after he was manhandled and cuffed by Homeland Security security officials as he tried to ask Sec. Kristi Noem at at press conference in LA on Thursday. 

Running a business is hard work. Building your website shouldn't be. With Wix, you can express your ideas, give direction, then leave the heavy lifting to AI, from site creation to branded content and images. Have fun with the details. Customize what you want the way you want, and manage your whole business

from a centralized dashboard with expert AI tools. Build, scale, and enjoy the incredible results. You can do it all yourself on Wigs. Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here, and it's a total game changer. Old fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot,

but the Copperhead's Pocket pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust-proof anti-burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus, your super light and ultra durable Pocket Hose Copperhead is backed with a 10-year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what, an exciting exclusive offer just for you. For a limited time, you can get a free pocket pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size copperhead hose.

Just text WATER to 64,000. That's WATER to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W-A-T-E-R to 64,000. By texting 64,000 you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from pocket hose message and data rates may apply no purchase required terms apply available at pockethost.com slash terms. Welcome everyone. Adrian Keraski with the bulwark. Thank you so

much for joining us. We're going to dive right in because we have California Senator Alex by the by now many of us have seen the disgusting video yesterday. He's manhandled by agents. He's escorted out of the room, shoved to the ground, handcuffed, and just because he wanted to ask DHS Secretary Noem some questions. So I wanted to start with Senator, how are you doing? I saw that you said your family was worried, your kids were worried because they saw the video. Can you tell us how you're doing? You know, we're doing all right. We're a pretty resilient bunch. Sadly, it's a reflection of the times that we're living in that

not just as adults, we should be able to have a policy and political debate and discussions, but with technology being what it is, it doesn't take very long to show up in your kids' feeds as they're playing with their friends. So I I wanna make sure that they're okay, and frankly, it's not just about my kids. There's a whole lot of people, young people, and not so young people who were shocked by the visuals yesterday and are processing what happened. One of my big takeaways was,

I think I'm a pretty tough guy, not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally. But just to think, if this is how the Trump administration is willing to treat a United States Senator for the audacity of asking a question, then you have to wonder what else would they do or what else are they doing to people who don't have titles next to their names? When immigration enforcement actions are happening with no cameras around, it's just more evidence of the extreme,

extreme and aggressive actions of this administration and we deserve better. I just wanted to ask you, I saw that you became upset because no one was talking about the California leaders, Governor Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass in Los Angeles. What precipitated the incident yesterday? Yeah, so I want to be clear about a couple things because it's not going to shock you, but there's already lies and misinformation coming from the other side.

Right? They said I lunged at the secretary. I did not lunge at the secretary. I barged into the room. That's not true. I had been there for five, almost ten minutes maybe, that I didn't identify myself. You saw the video. I'm shouting. I'm Senator Alex Padilla and I have a question. The shirt that I'm wearing had the Senate seal on the chest. This all took place in the federal building in Los Angeles. I was in the federal building for a scheduled briefing with representatives of Northern Command to get more information,

not just what plans they might be willing to share for National Guard troops, potentially Marines in Los Angeles, already a crisis manufactured by Donald Trump that they kept escalating and escalating against the wishes of the governor and local leaders. When waiting for this briefing, I catch wind that,

well, the secretary just walked by, oh, there's a press conference, literally a couple of doors down. And now my briefing is delayed because some of the folks that were supposed to be in my briefing are in that press conference. I mentioned it's a federal building, right?

So upon arrival, even I as a center go through security screening, as does my staff. There is a national guards member, there's an FBI agent assigned to escort me. I can't move freely about the building, I have to be escorted. So they're sitting in the conference room with me waiting. When I asked them, like, well, if we're waiting, is it possible to go to the press conference and listen in? Maybe, just maybe. Well, here's some information that can be

helpful for what I'm trying to do as my job as a senator. They escort me over. They open the door for me. Right? I step in. I don't want to be disruptive. So I'm standing behind the reporters. I'm standing behind the cameras, just standing to the side. And I'm hearing the rhetoric being spewed over and over again. And we get to this point. Not the first time she says this, but the second time she references the need for the Trump administration to liberate Los Angeles from the governor and from the mayor and blah,

blah, blah. And so I took that as a moment to like, okay, I got a fact check here. I got to call them on their rhetoric and I'm going to pose questions to try to shed light on what's happening. I could barely begin my question when there were multiple agents on me. And again, you've seen the video, very forcibly removed from the room after I had identified myself repeatedly, said I just want to ask a question of the secretary.

But before I know it, they had me on the ground and then it came out the handcuffs. What do you say to, it just became such a big national thing yesterday, this like gigantic conversation. Even people like Stephen A. Smith are chiming in and they're saying that you should not have interrupted, you should have waited for your time to speak.

What do you say to people that say things like that? Yeah, look, I've been asking these questions since January, right? This is an administration, this is the Department of Homeland Security, even the secretary herself, they've been in committee hearings, they've gotten questions

from us in that forum, and they're very evasive. They refuse to share, they refuse to commit. And so another mechanism for members of Congress, particularly the Senate, to get information in our role of oversight and accountability is to formalize requests for information through letters. Surprise, surprise, they're just not responding. I mean, minimal superficial response if you're lucky. And so here I was in a federal building in Los Angeles a couple of doors down from the secretary herself. I thought maybe this is an opportunity to ask a question directly. I'm doing my job and this is how they react. And again, I can't emphasize enough that, you know, one of my big takeaways is not about me.

If they want to do this to me, what else are they doing? What else are they capable of doing? What else are they doing to so many otherwise hardworking, nonviolent migrants out and about in Los Angeles and around the country? And quickly, what happened, even Corey Lewandowski, the long time Trump hand, even he was defending you and telling them to let you go? That, I gotta tell you, was one of the most surreal things that's ever happened in my life.

So, you know, not only down on my knees and I'm laying flat and they get the handcuffs on me and back on my feet, they're walking me down a hall. If you were in that situation, probably would be running through your head as well as running through mine. Where is this going? Because they're not telling me anything. I asked them repeatedly, why are you detaining me? No answer. Now I'm thinking, where are we going? I doubt this is as simple as they're just escorting me to the exit and to leave the building. Are we going to another office?

Are we digging the same in a cell somewhere? I have no idea what's happening. And a minute later, running down the hall is, of all people, Corey Lewandowski. And you know his history. He's part of DHS right now. He was part of the first Trump administration. He was campaign manager for the first Trump campaign. He's the one trying to rein in the agents,

telling them to stop, to release me, to remove the handcuffs, offering me a cup of coffee. Surreal, but that's how I got. Incredible. Two more quick ones for you, Senator. I've been struck, and I think it's such an important part of what's happening in LA, that this is not some small red city

in a red state in the South where unfortunately immigrants do not have allies and they drive to work and they drive home. This is a place where there are half a million people who have mixed status families. This is paramount where the Home Depot is 82% Latino. Can you just talk about how when they are attacking day laborers and garment workers,

that they are attacking the friends, family and neighbors of the people that you represent. And that's why you're speaking up here. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, and there's a couple layers to this. First of all, we've been through this before, right? The very reason I left an engineering degree behind and committed myself to public service to, you know, to work in politics and government for the better is because of Proposition 187 in 1994. A lot of the anti-immigrant rhetoric we're hearing nationally now was actually the political climate

in California back then. And how did Californians respond? How did not just the Latino community and immigrant communities, but by and large, the public of California respond. You had waves of people like my parents who had been here for decades with no sense of urgency on becoming citizens, finally taking those steps towards naturalization, not just to protect themselves, but so that they can register to vote and participate in our democracy.

And you had a whole generation, my generation, I was a little younger at the time, saying, hey, enough is enough, we need to engage. And you see California today, not just a policy leader on healthcare and investing in education and infrastructure and climate change and reproductive rights, et cetera, but also in how we treat our immigrant community, because we've grown to be the fourth largest economy in the world, right?

It's not a coincidence. The most populous state in the nation, the most diverse state in the nation, home to more immigrants than any state in the nation, is also the biggest economy of any state in the nation. It's not despite our immigrant community, it's because of our immigrant community and its contributions as workers,

as consumers and as entrepreneurs. And so that's just, I mean, one big message that other states should pay attention to and our countries should pay attention to. We should be embracing this, not attacking it. But because the immigrant population is so big, we're so blended. We're so cohesive that there's no such thing as like, oh, it's just the undocumented immigrant over there.

No, it's probably a member of your family, not either immediate family, extended family, somebody in your neighborhood, somebody at work, et cetera. And so a lot of people in Southern California take it very personal and you see it in the protest, the size and scale of these demonstrations and the passion of these demonstrations because we know how cruel it is and how against our interest and our values this all is. So as the demonstrations will continue, I keep telling people, please continue to peacefully protest. These are our First Amendment rights, which we need to defend our other fundamental rights.

Senator, last one for you. My colleague, Lauren, and I wrote about Democratic Party at a crossroads on this issue. You have people like the Congressional Black Caucus Chair, Yvette Clark saying, these are impeachable offenses, what the president is doing. You have other members of your party, senators saying, this is another Trumpian distraction.

I wanted to ask you, which one is it? And do you want to see your party continue to fight the way that you did yesterday? Yeah, no, we have to continue to fight. We have to continue to organize. Again, Trump would love nothing more than for us to stay silent, for us to cower, and let him continue to abuse our power.

That is not in our DNA. We need to continue to speak up, to stand up, and not treat this as normal because this is not normal. Senator, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Everybody, thank you for watching. Like and subscribe. We will continue following these issues with this escalation of the ICE operations

around the country. Thank you so much. The Jeep brand has always stood for American freedom. And now we're standing with you with employee pricing plus. Hurry into your Jeep brand dealer for details today and join the family. Jeep, there's only one. Offer valid on select 2024 and 2025 Jeep brand vehicles

for non-FCA employees and retirees. $200 admin fee applies. Not all buyers will qualify. Restrictions apply. Does not apply to leases. Ends June 2nd, 2025. Jeep is a registered trademark of FCA US LLC.