According to his long-time biographer, Donald Trump is defending the violent detention of U.S. Senator Alex Padilla by saying it was warranted since Padilla “looks like an illegal.”
The bestselling author of several insider books about Trump, Michael Wolff, disclosed the president’s comments this week when appearing on The Daily Beast Podcast. Wolff described Trump’s private response to video showing federal officials handcuffing Padilla, claiming that Trump repeatedly wrote the senator off as unidentified and used Padilla’s appearance as justification for the punishment.
“Trump has been on the phone telling people, ‘Nobody’s ever heard of this guy,’ after seeing these pictures,” Wolff claimed. As if that were a justification. He continues by saying, “And he looks like an illegal.”
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Padilla had tried to pose a question during Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news appearance in Los Angeles on Thursday, when the incident occurred. In response to rallies against recent ICE raids, Noem was disparaging California leaders. Security forcibly withdrew Padilla as he pressed her about “exaggerating and embellishing.”
The situation outside the conference room rapidly became heated. Federal authorities, including personnel of the FBI and Secret Service, threw Padilla to the ground and shackled him behind his back despite his repeated claims to be a U.S. senator.
According to Wolff, Trump used a well-known justification based on stereotypes, racism, and celebrity to justify the attack.
In actuality, Padilla is a very new senator from California; no one is aware of him. It is therefore only reasonable that the ICE officers would attack him. Naturally, he appears to be “an illegal,” Wolff recalled.
“This is just his instinctive reaction: No one has ever heard of him,” he continued. Since the ICE agents are unaware of this man, we can absolve them of responsibility.
Padilla, the senior senator from California, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022 and became the first Latino president of the Los Angeles City Council. In addition, he is the son of Mexican immigrants, a fact that has drawn attention since Trump’s comments.
Trump appeared “a little unsettled by the Padilla thing,” according to Wolff, but he is currently attempting to hide it. The reaction has been quick. Even Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins publicly denounced Padilla’s treatment, while Democratic lawmakers were expected to be outraged.
Wolff claimed that he was “somehow rationalising this which might brand him as a complete racist once again.” “But he probably doesn’t give a damn about that.”
In response to the accusations, the Trump team attacked Wolff instead of addressing the claims’ core points. In a scathing statement, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said:
“Michael Wolff has been exposed as a fraud and is a lying shitbag.” Because of his severe and crippling case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, which has rotted his peanut-sized brain, he frequently makes up things that come from his sick and twisted mind.
Trump’s remarks are reminiscent of his campaign-opening language from 2016, when he publicly asserted that Mexico was smuggling criminals across the border:
They have medications with them. Crime is being brought by them. They commit rape. And I presume that some of them are decent people.
Now, over ten years later, Trump seems to be using the same tropes to defend tackling and handcuffing a sitting U.S. senator for asking a question.
