Senator Alex Padilla called out Vice President JD Vance for — he claims — intentionally getting his first name wrong when he was giving comments about Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles.
During a visit to LA on Friday to inspect President Donald Trump’s domestic troop deployment, Vance called Padilla “José.”
“Well, I was hoping José Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t the theater, and that’s all it is,” Vance said.
He was referring to Padilla being dragged out of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s June 12 press conference, pulled to the ground and handcuffed.
The senator said in a comment on X that the vice president knows his name, and called the remark a “petty slight.”
“The Vice President knows my name. But that’s not the point,” Padilla wrote. “He should be focused on removing the thousands of unnecessary troops from the streets of Los Angeles, not petty slights.”
He also shared a clip of a MSNBC news program he appeared on in which he said Vance should be spending his time learning more about the effects of the ICE raids and speaking with families who are being “terrorized” by the federal agents.
In the clip, Padilla challenges Vance to talk to the Marines and National Guard members who he says do not want to be stationed in LA, to the city officials and the LA sheriff whose jobs, he says, have been made more difficult by the presence of the military in the city, or to fire victims who have still not received federal aid.
“We’ve got a lot of important work to do, but this is how the vice president chooses to act,” he said. “Sadly, it’s just an indicator of how petty and unserious this administration is … you’d think he’d take the situation in Los Angeles more seriously.”
Padilla and Vance served together in the 100-member U.S. Senate between January 2021 and January 2025. As vice-president, Vance is now president of the Senate.
Padilla wasn’t the only one unimpressed by Vance’s comments in LA. The city’s mayor, Karen Bass, called his commentary “an attempt to provoke division and conflict” and that he spent his time “spewing lies and utter nonsense.”
“We were able to handle the violence and the vandalism that occurred,” Bass said. “Our streets have been peaceful, and even when there was vandalism at its height, you are talking about a couple hundred people who were not necessarily associated with any of the peaceful protests.”
She also accused Vance of disrespecting the senator by calling him the wrong name.
“How dare you disrespect our senator?” she said during a press conference. “The last time I checked, the vice president of the United States is the president of the U.S. Senate. You serve with him today, and how dare you disrespect him and call him José? But I guess he just looked like anybody to you. Well, he’s not just anybody to us. He is our senator.”
Governor Gavin Newsom also waded into the fight, implying that Vance was being intentionally dismissive and disrespectful to the senator.
“JD Vance served with Alex Padilla in the United States Senate,” the governor wrote on X. “Calling him ‘José Padilla’ is not an accident.”
