Saturday, June 14, 2025

The Democrats’ Responses to Padilla Kerfuffle Are Kinda Funny – HotAir

June 13, 2025
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L’Affaire Padilla was clearly a stunt, intended to create outrage that the Trump administration knew no limits in its authority and was perfectly willing to use force against its political opponents. 





As I wrote earlier, it is part of their strategy to define responses to the chaos, riots, and provocations as proof that Trump is a vicious authoritarian. 

I think that strategy will work with some useful idiots, but that it will likely turn out to be a bust with the larger public. 

As the coordinated faux outrage was expressed by Democrats in the House, Senate, and occasionally in the media, the responses have a canned quality that is actually more than a little amusing. Bitching, moaning, marching, along with lots of complaints that Trump is using ICE as his personal Gestapo. 

Sen. Padilla thrown to the ground, manhandled, brutally taken down, handcuffed

It’s disgusting

Reeks of totalitarianism

Un-American

Not what democracies do

Sen. Padilla was in that building to ask questions of what’s going on in California, doing his duty to his constituents

We need answers now

Sheldon Whitehouse’s comparison of Padilla to civil rights icons is particularly amusing. The guy belongs to a “Whites Only” club. 





Obviously Padilla is only doing a job that white Americans don’t want to do…

You can find a slew of similar messages from Congressmen, as well as staged videos of marches to Senator Thune’s office demanding answers. Arresting your political opponents is unprecedented! (Padilla was not arrested, actually, but he was handcuffed.) Democrats would never send the FBI after…Trump. 

But a funny thing happened. Most people weren’t buying it. When media folks asked security analysts what they thought, the response was pretty universal: that Noem’s security team was the right thing to do. Padilla was an unidentified screaming man lunging at the Secretary of Homeland Security, assaulting officers as clearly shown in the videos, and the situation had “all the hallmarks,” to use a Democrat phrase, of a potentially violent situation. 





Republicans played this well, too. Rather than acting all appalled, they basically made fun of Padilla and didn’t concede an inch on the appropriateness of the security response. Padilla went in there to provoke a response, and he certainly got one. 

Stephen A. Smith–who is looking more and more like a potential candidate for President, has been lighting up Democrats. 

The last line of defense is Pravda Media sob stories–most of which are appearing in print, not visual media. It is newspapers that are writing stories, making Padilla look like a victim because they can do so, avoiding pesky visuals showing Padilla was in the wrong. 





Padilla had a rough childhood! Padilla is Brown! This is outrageous!

You have to love the Los Angeles Times’ take: this is a prelude to an American holocaust.

So far, the joke seems to be on Democrats. They wanted an explosive story, but what they got was a squib. And they pulled the stunt on the same day that Israel conducted strikes on Iran, meaning that events overtook their goal to dominate the news cycle. 

Liberals will be appropriately outraged, of course, but only if they already believe the “Trump is acting like a King” propaganda. It doesn’t look like L’Affaire Padilla will break through into the larger public’s consciousness. 





What was supposed to be a symbol of the deep Constitutional crisis America faces looks more like a Jussie Smollett move to elevate an anonymous Senator. That’s pretty funny. 

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. 







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