A Democratic U.S. Senator is coming after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over "deceptive" posts on social media.
The department came under fire Thursday following an incident in which Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was forcibly removed from a news conference. In the wake of the news conference, DHS issued a statement falsely claiming that Padilla didn't identify himself.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) was asked about the dust-up on MSNBC, where he went on the offensive.
"I'll just say that's an outrageous manipulation of the scene. I mean, Alex Padilla is a U.S. Senator," said Merkley. "He was the secretary of state. He has been all over the media talking about the challenges of the president proceeding to send 2,100 National Guard members over the objection of the mayor, over the objection of the governor sending 700 Marines, further elevating, pouring fuel on the fire."
"We saw President Trump do this in my home state in Portland, back in his first term," the senator recalled. "We're seeing on a much larger scale now. We saw him in his first term, send out police unmarked car. And they were throwing citizens of Oregon into unmarked vans. It was authoritarian then. We did everything we could to protest. Now we're seeing this on an amplified level. And what I heard on that video, what I saw him say, 'I am a U.S. senator.' Well, absolutely. If Kristi Noem doesn't know who the senator of California is, then I must say she's either enormously uninformed or she's enormously deceptive."
See the clip below or at the link here.