MONDAY: Senator Paul seemed to stretch the truth!

MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2025

Then along came Senator Schiff: We offer a brief update concerning Mike Lee's astonishing pair of tweets, one of which went like this:

Nightmare on Waltz Street

The weirdly humorous remark was appended to photographs of Vance Boelter. For obvious reasons, it has been widely assumed that the Utah senator had simply misspelled the last name of Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz.

Given the overall nature of Lee's tweets, is it somehow possible that he was referring to former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz? We can't imagine what the reasoning would have been, but we offer that apparently far-fetched possibility as a hedge against snap judgement.

With that, we turn to the dueling presentations of two senators on yesterday's Meet the Press. At the end of a longer interview, Senator Paul (R-Ky.) told Kristen Welker this:

WELKER (6/15/25): Senator, very quickly, let me get your reaction to Senator Alex Padilla, who interrupted a press conference that was being held by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He was handcuffed, wrestled to the ground. The House Speaker says he should be censured. Do you agree? Should he be censured for that?

SENATOR PAUL: You know, I don't like the images of him on the ground, of being handcuffed, but I also didn't like the images of moms at school board meetings being handcuffed. I didn't like the images of peaceful January 6th protesters, or people assembled there, being taken to the ground at airports and handcuffed. So that I don't like. 

But at the same time, the other side to it is: Can you rush a stage? Can you rush into a press conference? And I think they honestly didn't recognize him. He rushed the stage. There was sort of a physical tussle. I think it could have ended without, without the handcuffs. But also, I don't think there's a complete get out of jail free that, you know, there's no repercussions for rushing the stage, and there's no criticism for rushing the stage. So I think it's a complicated story, and I think we can do a better job. But I'm not about to say it's all on one side or the other.

WELKER: So you wouldn't be for censuring him? You're a no on censuring him, Senator?

SENATOR PAUL: No, no, no. I'm not for censuring him. I think that's crazy. I'm not for that at all.

Four times, Senator Paul said that Senator Padilla had "rushed the stage" at the Noem press event. He also said that Padilla had "rushed into" the press conference itself.

From the available videotapes, we see no sign that Padilla "rushed into the press conference." More to the point, we see no sign that Senator Padilla ever "rushed the stage."

Paul batted the idea of censure aside, describing the notion as "crazy." But before doing so, he kept reinforcing the talking point in which Padilla "rushed the stage."

After that, along came Senator Adam Schiff (D-Cal.). We were disappointed, but perhaps enlightened, when we saw him say this:

WELKER: I'll pick up with you on where I ended with Senator Rand Paul—the fact that your colleague, Senator Alex Padilla, was basically tussled to the ground, handcuffed after he had approached the podium of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He was forcibly removed. Secretary Noem called this "political theater." 

As I just said, Speaker Johnson called for him to be censured. What say you to that argument that this was nothing more than political theater?

SENATOR SCHIFF: Well, first of all, I think it's important for people to realize that he was escorted into that press conference. The door was open. He was escorted in by law enforcement. He identified himself. He tried to ask the secretary a question, a secretary who clearly doesn't want to answer questions about the lawless acts of the Department of Homeland Security that we are seeing in Los Angeles. So he had every right to do so. That's part of his oversight responsibilities. 

And to be treated that way, and to be responded to by saying, "Oh, we didn't know who you are," when it was literally written on his shirt or his jacket, when he was proclaiming who he is, I don't buy it. And for those of us that know Alex—and you would be hard pressed to find a more beloved senator on either side of the aisle, respected by members on both sides of the aisle, you know, for his intellect, for his demeanor—this is not some rabble-rouser. 

And to see him mistreated that way, and tackled to the ground and shackled that way, and in the midst of what we're seeing more broadly in Los Angeles, is just atrocious. 

As far as we know, Senator Padilla was, in fact, "escorted into the room." We'd refer to what follows that accurate statement by Senator Schiff as misinformation-adjacent.

It's true! Senator Padilla did "identify himself," but Schiff seems to have turned the chronology around. As far as we know, Senator Padilla identified himself only after he was grabbed by security agents, not before he started "trying to ask a question."

Schiff forget to mention the fact that Padilla was actually interrupting Noem's prepared remarks when he "tried to ask a question." Along the way, did the relevant people actually "know who he was?"

His status as a United States senator actually was "literally written on his shirt." But as best we can tell from the available videotapes, the black windbreaker jacket he was wearing obscured the writing on his shirt. We know of no reason to assume that the security agents in question actually knew who he was when he started to interrupt Noem. 

Did Senator Padilla "have every right" to interrupt Noem "as part of his oversight responsibilities" when he "tried to ask a question?"  Schiff's presentation to Welker struck us as perhaps less than obsessively honest. Unfortunately, that seems to be a constant part of the tribalized world we all currently live in.

Welker followed with this question. We don't think it was an especially good one:

WELKER: Very quickly, Senator, do you think he could have been more effective if he had, for example, asked for a meeting with Secretary Noem? Do you support the way he went about this?

SENATOR SCHIFF: Oh, I think he has asked for meetings, and he has asked for briefings. And of course we don't see any kind of responsiveness of the administration.

That struck us as an imitation of a useful question. What might Senator Schiff have said if Welker instead asked this?

WELKER REVISED: Very quickly, Senator, do you think he could have been more effective if he had simply waited for the Q-and-A session that day, instead of interrupting Noem in the middle of her prepared remarks? 

What would Senator Schiff have said to that? Because the question wasn't asked, no answer was ever delivered.

Facts get sifted in our world. Those facts get sifted by the players in each of our two warring tribes—in each of our warring nations.