In a blatantly racist blow to Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, who was tackled and handcuffed by immigration officers, Donald Trump Jr. posted a meme to his public X account that read: “I don’t really care, José.”
The discriminatory post referred to earlier comments from Vice President JD Vance, who on Thursday called the senator “José,” a stereotypical moniker used by conservatives to describe people of Mexican descent. Trump Jr.’s Saturday post included an AI-generated photo of Vance smoking a pipe and wearing a sombrero hat.
“Keep crying, libs,” wrote Trump Jr. as a caption, along with three laughing emojis.
The meme was in response to a video of Padilla expressing frustration over Vance’s jest. In an MSNBC interview, Padilla slammed the vice president for using the “petty” nickname.
“He knows my name,” Padilla said. “He knows my name. But sadly, it’s an indicator of how petty and unserious this administration is. I mean, he’s the vice president of the United States. You’d think he’d take the situation in Los Angeles more seriously.”
Vance called Padilla “José” at a recent press conference in L.A., which he visited for the Republican National Committee’s Summer Retreat.
“[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,” Vance said at the time. “That’s all it is. It’s pure political theater. These guys show up, they want to be captured on camera doing something.”
Padilla went viral last week after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers tackled and arrested him when he tried to ask Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem about L.A.’s citywide ICE protests. When he approached to ask the question, clearly identifying himself as a senator, he was grabbed, thrown out, and pushed to the ground in a hallway outside of the conference room.
A spokesperson for the DHS said that Padilla had engaged in “disrespectful political theater” and was “lunging” toward Noem, although the video shows otherwise.
Trump biographer Michael Wolff said on The Daily Beast podcast last week that Trump is justifying Padilla’s arrest because he “looked like an illegal” and nobody had heard of him before.
Padilla has expressed disgust at the administration’s response, and on Saturday called Vance out for his lack of response in California.
“You’d think maybe he’d take a moment to talk to some of the families who have been impacted, have been terrorized,” he said.
“We’ve got a lot of important work to do,” he continued. “But this is how the vice president chooses to act, and that says a lot.”
