JD Vance, the US vice-president, accused California governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass of encouraging violent immigration protests as he used an in Los Angeles to rebut criticism from state and local officials that the Trump administration fueled the unrest by sending in federal officers.
The centerpiece of Vance’s Friday visit was a 14-minute news conference, during which he delivered remarks and took questions from correspondents selected by the White House. Local reporters were barred from attending, according to Elex Michaelson, the host of Fox LA’s local evening news report.
“It’s disappointing” Michaelson wrote on X, that the vice-president “did not allow local reporters inside his Los Angeles press event. At this inflection point in L.A. history, they only took questions from national reporters.”
When a correspondent for the far-right Daily Wire, who was selected by the White House to be the official pool reporter traveling with Vance, asked about a series of Democrats who have been placed in handcuffs recently by federal officers, Vance attempted to joke about California senator Alex Padilla who was forcibly detained by the FBI in the same location last week. Vance, however, called him “Jose Padilla”, using the name of an American citizen who was accused of planning to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb on behalf of al-Qaida in 2002.
“I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question,” Vance said. “I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t a theater. And that’s all it is.”
Katie Porter, a former Democratic member of congress who is running for governor of California, called Vance’s remark: “Despicable-something you’d expect from an internet troll.”
A spokesperson for Padilla, Tess Oswald, noted in a social media post that Padilla and Vance were formerly colleagues in the Senate and said that Vance should know better.
“He should be more focused on demilitarizing our city than taking cheap shots,” Oswald said.
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Responding to the outrage, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokesperson for Vance, said of the vice-president: “He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.”
Vance’s visit to Los Angeles to tour a multi-agency federal joint operations center and a mobile command center came as demonstrations calmed down in the city and a curfew was lifted this week. That followed over a week of clashes between protesters and police and outbreaks of vandalism and looting that followed immigration raids across southern California.
Trump’s dispatching of his top emissary to Los Angeles at a time of turmoil surrounding the Israel-Iran war and the US’s future role in it signals the political importance Trump places on his hard-line immigration policies. Vance echoed the president’s harsh rhetoric toward California Democrats as he sought to blame them for the protests in the city.
“Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, by treating the city as a sanctuary city, have basically said that this is open season on federal law enforcement,” Vance said after he toured federal immigration enforcement offices.
“What happened here was a tragedy,” he added. “You had people who were doing the simple job of enforcing the law and they had rioters egged on by the governor and the mayor, making it harder for them to do their job. That is disgraceful. And it is why the president has responded so forcefully.”
Newsom’s spokesperson Izzy Gardon said in a statement: “The vice-president’s claim is categorically false. The governor has consistently condemned violence and has made his stance clear.”
The friction in Los Angeles began on 6 June, when federal agents conducted a series of immigration sweeps in the region that have continued since. Amid the protests and over the objections of state and local officials, Trump ordered the deployment of roughly 4,000 national guard troops and 700 marines to the second-largest US city, home to 3.8 million people.
Trump has said that without the military’s involvement, Los Angeles “would be a crime scene like we haven’t seen in years”.
A review of Vance’s movements on Friday suggests that he had very little time to evaluate the situation in the city. His flight from Washington touched down at Los Angeles International airport at 1:35 pm local time. Vance’s motorcade arrived at the federal building in Westwood that is being guarded by active-duty marines at 2pm. He started his news conference at 3:11pm.
It is not clear exactly how much of the intervening 71 minutes Vance spent meeting marines, federal agents and local police officers, but he devoted at least part of that time doing an interview with the Fox News national correspondent Bill Melugin.
At 3:30 pm, Vance departed the federal building for a Republican National Committee event. By 6:05pm, he was back on Air Force Two at LAX and ready for departure just four and a half hours after he had arrived.
