Longtime Republican strategist Sarah Longwell urged sitting senators in her party to defend Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who was handcuffed and forcibly removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference in Los Angeles on Thursday.
“Republican senators should be very careful on this right now,” Longwell told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace. “If they do not come out and defend Sen. Padilla’s right to ask questions of this administration, of his colleagues, they are setting an extraordinarily dangerous precedent for how senators are going to be treated in this country.”
Padilla said he attended the press conference with peaceful intentions. When he began to ask a question, he was almost immediately pushed out of the room by security and forced to the ground.
The senator told reporters after the incident, “I will say this: If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.”
Noem claimed Padilla did not identify himself, despite a now-viral video in which he can clearly be heard at the start of the incident telling security, “Sir! Sir! Hands off. Hands off. I am Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary.”
The White House slammed the senator’s actions, saying, “Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theater-kid stunt.”
On MSNBC, Longwell remarked that “nobody has done more cosplaying” than Noem, mentioning photo ops in which she has dressed up as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
Longwell added that she “finds it odd” that Noem would not recognize Padilla, because he is the top Democrat on “one of the immigration committees.” Padilla is ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration.
“Her reasoning for the treatment of Sen. Alex Padilla is that he was disrespectful,” Longwell said. “Being disrespectful is not a reason to handcuff somebody on the ground. It’s just not.”
Longwell characterized the incident as a free speech issue, saying a “sitting senator should be able to ask a question of the head of the Department of Homeland Security.” She went on to attack President Donald Trump, who threatened to use “very heavy force” against anyone protesting his military parade.
“This is not singular. This is not one-off,” Longwell said. “This is about how this entire administration is approaching people who dissent, and so nobody better come here and try to tell me this is a free speech president or a free speech administration.”
She warned Republican senators that if they do not defend Padilla, they are setting themselves up for how they and their colleagues are going to be treated moving forward.
“They should protect their own institution,” she added. “They should have an interest in their office being protected from this kind of behavior, because they’re all going to want to ask questions at some point, accountability questions of their leadership, and that is right and it’s American.”