CNN
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Vice President JD Vance referred to Sen. Alex Padilla as “José Padilla” during a Friday visit to Los Angeles where he criticized California’s Democratic leaders and defended the Trump administration’s controversial use of the state’s National Guard in the city.
“I was hoping José Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t the theater, and that’s all it is,” Vance told reporters, speaking from an FBI mobile command center that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is currently using in Los Angeles.
Vance dismissed Padilla’s appearance last week at a press conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as “pure political theater.” Padilla was forcefully removed, ordered to the ground by law enforcement and placed in handcuffs after attempting to ask Noem a question.
Padilla, California’s first Latino elected to the US Senate, had interrupted Noem as she was giving remarks in the Los Angeles FBI headquarters on the Trump administration’s response to protests in that city against Noem’s department and its immigration-enforcement efforts.
When asked about the vice president calling the Democratic senator by the wrong first name, Vance’s spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk brushed it off. “He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law,” Van Kirk told CNN without specifying the other person.
In 2007, former Chicago gang member Jose Padilla was found guilty of supporting Islamic terrorism overseas. It’s not clear who Vance intended to reference.
Padilla’s spokesperson said that Vance, who served in the Senate with Padilla, “knows better.”
“As a former colleague of Senator Padilla, the Vice President knows better. He should be more focused on demilitarizing our city than taking cheap shots. Another unserious comment from an unserious administration,” spokesperson Tess Oswald said in a statement.
The vice president’s comments sparked immediate condemnation from some of the same California Democrats Vance lashed out at in his Friday remarks.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom also called Vance out on X, saying his misnaming of Padilla was “not an accident.”
Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Karen Bass responded to Vance at a press conference later Friday. “Mr. Vice President, how dare you disrespect our Senator,” Bass said, adding, “I guess he just looked like anybody to you. Well, he’s not just anybody to us.”
On Friday, Vance also reacted to a federal appeals court allowing President Donald Trump to maintain control over thousands of California National Guardsmen.
“That determination was legitimate, and the president’s going to do it again if he has to, but hopefully it won’t be necessary,” Vance said.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday granted a request from Trump to lift, for now, a lower-court ruling that had required the president to relinquish control of roughly 4,000 guardsmen from the Golden State that he had federalized to beef up security in Los Angeles amid unrest over immigration enforcement.
“And I think what the Ninth Circuit said very clearly is when the president makes a determination, you’ve got to send in certain federal officials to protect people,” Vance said, while lashing out at California’s Democratic leadership for their handling of the unrest.
The vice president also defended the administration’s immigration policy, saying Trump wants to prioritize deportations of violent offenders or “really bad guys,” but that no one who’s undocumented should feel immune from enforcement.
When asked whether the administration’s deportation tactics had gone too far, Vance argued that he didn’t think “we’ve been too aggressive.”
“Anytime we make a mistake we correct that very quickly,” Vance said.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
