Senator Alex Padilla Responds to Trump Attack on California
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Moments ago, Donald Trump was having a meltdown on the White House lawn. He was calling for California Governor Gavin Newsom to be arrested. He was asked a question about, said Gavin Newsom. This is what the question from Fox. Gavin Newsom is daring Tom Homan to come and arrest him. Should he do it? That's actually not what Gavin Newsom was doing at all. It was actually Trump's border czar making threats against

California Governor Gavin Newsom and others. I'll play that clip in just a moment. But before Donald Trump said that, he then posted this about Los Angeles and California. He wrote, we made a great decision in sending in the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California. If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely

completely obliterated the very incompetent governor Gavin Newskam and mayor. And he puts that in quotes. Karen Bass should be saying, thank you, President Trump. You are so wonderful. We would be nothing without you, sir. Instead, they choose to lie to the people of California and America. But I don't want to read the rest because it's so utterly despicable. Donald Trump's been targeting hardworking communities with ICE raids here. He's been going into courtrooms with ICE raids, into factories, into Home Depots, into

schools, terrorizing communities here and escalating things. The LAPD just two days ago said the protests were peaceful. Then Donald Trump federalized the National Guard unlawfully and sent them against the people here in California and in Los Angeles. Here's what Donald Trump said on the White House lawn moments ago, saying that, yes, he thinks that Gavin Newsom should be arrested. Here, play this clip.

Kevin Newsom is daring Tom Holman to come and arrest him. Should he do it? I would do it if I was Tom. I think it's great. Kevin likes to put this to me, but I think it would be a great thing.

He said, hear what he said? He said, I think it would be great because Gavin likes the publicity so utterly despicable. And then last night, Donald Trump posted, arrest the people in masks now looking really bad in L.A., bring in the troops. I want to bring in California Senator Alex Padilla. I want to get your take on all of that. First, just your immediate response to what I showed you. Then let's talk more broadly about what's going on.

Yeah, sadly, it's not shocking. You know, we have in Donald Trump is a president who is had the biggest ego of any president I ever can think of, combined with the cruelty and big vindictiveness that is Donald Trump. And it's playing out in Los Angeles right now, my home. So this is actually very personal for me. This is a crisis.

of Donald Trump's own making. When you have the Department of Homeland Security using increasingly cruel and aggressive tactics for immigration enforcement, of course, in a community as diverse as Los Angeles, you're gonna have people speaking up in defense of our fundamental rights.

and due process. The due process rights that the Trump administration consistently has been ignoring. And so at every turn, Donald Trump will seek an excuse, make up an excuse, if necessary, to further escalate the situation. So that's what's transpired in Los Angeles. I want to thank all the folks that have been out there peacefully protesting. The vast majority of folks are peacefully and righteously protesting. And as the folks that are involved with the vandalism, that's

That's not helpful. It has no place in this protest or anywhere else. But it's hurting us by taking the attention away from standing up for immigrants' rights and due process and having the president and some of the press focus strictly on some of the violence and vandalism that's going on.

My wife is first generation American. Her family's from Guadalajara. They became citizens a few decades ago. Her mom did. They live in Huntington Park and her nieces and nephews are at their graduation. As we're recording this interview,

And there's ice trucks right around there where the graduation is taking place at Huntington High School, at the middle school right there. You know, and I can, you know, just hear from them how terrified they are about, you know, what's going on. You're seeing people arrested in the in the streets.

And it seems that ICE is specifically targeting not the criminals, like they said they were focused on, but they're going into the hardworking Latino communities here, people who were living their American dreams, almost seeming knowing that that's how you provoke the people. Because when you rip people apart from their families, people get pissed. What do you say to people who are scared right now?

Yeah, it's a hang in there. Know your rights. Right. Because regardless of your immigration status, you do you do have due process rights. If you are approached by an ICE officer or federal agent, you are not forced to.

respond to their questions. You have the right to access all those basic things. But sadly, we know that Donald Trump has been working for this moment for years and years and years, right? The cruelty of his speech started when he came down that escalator at Trump Tower to launch his campaign for president the very first time.

So as you point out, we're a far cry from him only targeting violent, dangerous criminals. That's what he talked about at the campaign trail. And I don't think, frankly, there's any disagreement with that if that was the priority and the mission. But when we hear story after story of an otherwise law abiding, innocent working man, working woman providing for their family, being caught up with detention and deportation operations,

without access to counsel, without due process, that is absolutely wrong. When you hear stories of a four-year-old girl in the Central Valley who's dependent on life-saving treatment to keep her alive, being noticed that she's going to be deported, thankfully they rescinded that, but only because of the public pressure that was mounted against the administration in that particular case. You know, for a federal agent to show up in houses of worship

In schools, you're talking about the highest graduation in HP. Yes, we call Huntington Park HP. Or even in elementary schools recently in Los Angeles, misrepresenting that they had parental approval to talk to kids. What is Donald Trump doing? And so, of course, it's enraging. We have to continue to speak up, not just publicly.

organizing in the communities in Los Angeles and around the state and around the country, but know that we're going to fight and keep pushing here in Congress, demanding information and calling them on every overreach, every out of policy or every unconstitutional tactic that they continue to try to deploy.

No, and here's a prime example of what Trump's ICE is doing. I think this needs to get more attention. So David Huerta, U.S. citizen, president of the SEIU, very important union here in California and across the country. He was the president of California's SEIU. He was there peacefully explaining to people what their rights were. And I want to just show our audience what happened to him here. Play this clip.

And so based on what everybody saw there, the DOJ then doubled down. They charged him with conspiracy to impede an officer.

There's a criminal complaint. His arraignment is today. And so we're seeing the weaponization of the Department of Justice as well and in trying to make example of a union leader like David Huerta. What's your response to that situation?

First of all, my heart goes out to David and his family. I've known David for many, many years. He's not just a local leader. He's a local hero for his advocacy for working people as president of his SIU local and his leadership at the state level. But look, I can't help but take this personally.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, proud son of immigrants from Mexico. So let's for a moment go back to California in the year 1994 when Governor Pete Wilson was struggling in his reelection campaign. So what does he do? He starts trying to blame all of California's woes at the time on immigrants and the immigrant community.

He championed a ballot measure known as Proposition 187, sort of a precursor to all this anti-immigrant rhetoric that we're hearing coming out of the White House today. It was, to me, personally offensive and insulting so much that I left an engineering career behind to get involved in politics, to commit to public service. And thankfully, California is much different politically today than it was back then. But the attacks keep coming.

coming. And if anything, we should look at that California narrative of people like my parents who had been here for years and years and years without any urgency of becoming a citizen, finally doing so, and so many others like them doing the same. You had my generation, we were a little bit younger at the time, but committing ourselves to organizing and advocating

That's why California is the California of today. That should be a model for other communities across the country to follow. Let's get through these difficult, challenging times, but build on them and build that better future. Consider this.

California is not just the most populous state in the nation. We are the most diverse state in the nation, home to more immigrants than any state in the nation, mostly documented, yes, some undocumented, but California is also the largest economy of any other state in the nation by far, the fourth largest economy in the world, not despite its immigrant population.

but thanks to the contribution of the immigrant community as workforce, as consumers, as entrepreneurs. So not only is the administration attacking the immigrant community in the way that they're doing cruel and inhumane, in some ways unlawful and unconstitutional, but they're doing it against our own interests. Focus on the violent criminals.

but leave the hardworking people that our economy and our nation depends on. They deserve better. It'd be a whole different thing entirely if Trump said, we'll focus a little bit on enforcement and then here's the plan to modernize our immigration system. That's where our focus and our conversation ought to be. I can tell you that's where we want to be as a Senate.

And as a Congress, but as long as Donald Trump is around, you know, you're seeing their overreach and their cruelty at every turn. And the last thing, because I think this is also important, timing is everything.

His tariff war is failing tremendously. There's certainly no peace between Ukraine and Russia right now. And so when all else fails for Donald Trump, what does he do? His fallback is always demonize immigrants, attack immigrants because he thinks that's what plays well with his political base.

At the same time, we know that there's this horrendous budget bill working its way through Congress. It passed the House of Representatives with a one vote majority. Now Senate Republicans are trying to get this done in the next several weeks. Gut health care, the social safety net, underwrite tax breaks for billionaires. Donald Trump doesn't want us talking about this. So what does he do? He manufactures this crisis in Los Angeles to try to change the narrative and try to shift people's attention away. Let's not let him get away with it.

Senator Alex Padilla, thank you for joining us. We appreciate your advocacy and all the work you do here in California. Thank you. Thank you.

Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 5 million subscribers. And after this video, we will do another video on the lawsuit, of course, that was just filed by the state of California against the Trump regime for the unlawful invocation of the statute improperly federalizing the national guard. We'll be back with that one shortly.

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