Fascism arrives in Jack-booted high heels
“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 farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.”
With those words California Senator Alex Padilla verbalized what Americans appalled by the heavy-handed immigration sweeps ordered by the Trump regime already know.
Just ask Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University graduate student snatched off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts in March. Or Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a Milford, Massachusetts high school student seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last month on his way to volleyball practice, allegedly because they could not find his father.
Scenes replayed repeatedly across the country. With those arrested tossed into overcrowded detention centers, denied proper health care and often forced to sleep on concrete floors.
But the manhandling and cuffing of a United States Senator seeking answers at a press conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — and the regime’s blatant lies about what was captured on video — leaves little doubt the dreaded f-word has arrived in America.
Fascism.
Almost as appalling is how legacy media appears to have normalized the manhandling of a senator. An initial, hastily corrected New York Times headline declared Padilla “confronted” Noem. Or the Boston Globe relegating the incident to a picture on Page Two, running a commentary on the Boston Celtics’ new ownership searching for investors on Page One.
It is also likely to be just another one-day story after Trump twin Benjamin Netanyahu inflamed an already volatile region by bombing Iran.
Noem took to the Fox Propaganda Channel to insist her security agents were simply reacting to an unknown man who “lunged” at her during a briefing in a federal building where everyone is screened for weapons before entering.
Kudos to The Associated Press, already on Trump’s s—t list for having the courage not to rename the Gulf of Mexico, to offer a true accounting of the scene:
“Padilla interrupted the news conference after Noem delivered a particularly pointed line, saying federal authorities were not going away but planned to stay and increase operations to ‘liberate’ the city from its ‘socialist’ leadership.
“‘I’m Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,’ he shouted in a halting voice.”
Hardly seems like a confrontation. Or out of the ordinary for a press conference or media scrum where reporters routinely shout out questions. They did the same to Padilla as he headed to his car after he issued his statement.
More importantly, Noem claimed she did not know who Padilla was and that he didn’t identify himself. Instead of being professional — acknowledging his presence and saying she would answer his question after her statement — she carried on with her propaganda and did nothing to stop the confrontation that ended with FBI agents assisting in forcing him to the floor and putting zip ties around his hands.
All captured live and on video.
Naturally, most Republicans rallied to Noem’s defense, with FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino defending the assault because Padilla wasn’t wearing his Senate security pin and House Speaker Mike Johnson suggesting the Senate “censure” the assault victim.
Most GOP senators were either mute or blamed Padilla. Maine Senator Susan Collins offered her usual wishy-washy expression of a “very disturbing” video image. Only Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski had the courage to speak up:
"I've seen that one clip. It's horrible. It is shocking at every level. It's not the America I know."
The incident revealed in all the troubling detail why Republicans are afraid to speak up about the erosion of democracy in America. This is a regime that has already arrested a judge in Wisconsin, indicted a Democratic congresswoman in New Jersey and arrested the Newark mayor in immigration-related incidents.
And threatened to arrest Governor Gavin Newsom after overriding his authority by nationalizing 4,100 California National Guard troops and mobilizing 700 Marines to patrol what amounts to a 1-square mile area of a 500 square-mile city.
That’s more than the number of U.S. soldiers currently in Iraq and Syria. Combined.
If anyone is looking for some dark humor in all of this, it would come from Noem, the cosplaying cabinet secretary who likes to pose in front of caged prisoners and wear ICE battle rattle.
“I would have loved to have sat down and had a conversation with him, that coming into a press conference like this is political theater.”
The former South Dakota governor’s bid for the No. 2 spot on Trump’s ticket ended when she admitted in her memoir that she shot her dog because it had an “aggressive personality.”
It’s worth recalling that dogs are excellent judges of people’s character. RIP Cricket.