Joe.My.God. LGBT News
MSNBC’S JACOB SOBOROFF: “Secretary Noem said that you, quote, ‘lunged’ towards her at this press conference. The Department of Homeland Security said the Secret Service believed that you were an attacker. And the Department of Homeland Security called this political theater. What’s your response and what’s your version of what happened?”
SEN. ALEX PADILLA: “Well, first of all, that’s ridiculous. It’s a lie, but par for the course for this administration, right? So here’s the stage. Look, I was in the federal building here in Los Angeles for a scheduled briefing, just as when my colleagues and I had to go all the way to Guantanamo Bay to begin to get information about that facility being used as a detention facility. They’ve been non-responsive to requests for information. And so I had scheduled. They approved a briefing with representatives of the Northern Command in that federal building.
“We were there prior to the 10:30 original appointment date when we caught wind that secretary of Homeland Security was going to be down the hall at a press conference. And our briefing was now delayed because of that press conference. So since the secretary has been non-responsive, I figured, let me go over and listen to what she has to say. Maybe we can glean some information here.
“We’re, the whole time, being escorted in this federal building by somebody from the National Guard, somebody from the FBI. I’ve gone through screening. This is a federal building. And so tell them, let’s go listen to the press conference. They escort me over to that room. And I’m sitting in the back of the room, behind the cameras, behind the reporters, listening, listening.
“And at one point, it was just too much to take. Not the first, but the second attack on the political leadership of California and this notion that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem have to come in and rescue the people of Los Angeles from Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass? It was too much. And so I spoke up. I introduced myself and said I had a question.
“The folks that were escorting me in the building walked me over. I didn’t even open the door. The door was opened for me. And I spent a few minutes in the back of the room just listening in until the rhetoric, the political rhetoric got to be too much to take. So I spoke up.”