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Dick Morris to Newsmax: Padilla Removal a Political Stunt

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Saturday, 14 June 2025 06:57 PM EDT

Sen. Alex Padilla, the California Democrat who was forcibly removed from a press conference being held by Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem this week after trying to ask her questions, was attempting to pull off a political stunt, Dick Morris, an adviser for President Donald Trump, told Newsmax on Saturday.

"It's really a show for their own constituency," Morris said on Newsmax's "The Count." "I've said that I think that Democrats always react to electoral defeats by moving to the left and becoming more and more outrageous and more and more strident in their demands."

And now, after former President Joe Biden's loss to Trump, "the Democratic constituency demands that they be confrontational, that they move to the left. And very often, it gets them in trouble with voters that don't see that way," Morris said.

Trump, meanwhile, "is doing a very popular thing" by "stopping mobs and controlling Los Angeles and rounding up criminal illegal aliens and throwing them out of the country," he added.

"The Democrats, including Sen. Padilla and [Gov.] Gavin Newsom, insistently oppose it and think that they're gaining among their own constituency," said Morris. "In fact, they're burning their bridges with the rest of the public."

Former federal prosecutor Doug Burns, also on the program, said that Democrats are overreacting over what was a "clear political stunt."

"I'll guarantee you that 99% of the time, day to day, walking around, traveling around, he, of course, identifies himself as a senator," said Burns. "And No. 2, I'm told by Secret Service and other law enforcement experts that at these events, dignitaries often have special pins on their lapel. I mean, so this was just a clear political stunt, as Dick said to his, you know, limited constituency."

Padilla was forcibly removed from the news conference after introducing himself and saying he had questions for Noem.

Morris also discussed the murders of Minnesota Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were shot and killed in their Brooklyn Park home in what police are calling a politically motivated attack. DFL Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot and injured in their home in Champlin, Minnesota.

While there have been reports that the alleged shooter was a political appointee of Gov. Tim Walz, Morris said he had not heard that.

"The point is that it's violence," he said. "It's unacceptable and heated rhetoric on both sides that causes this kind of thing, and I think that's the lesson we have to take away from that."

Burns agreed that "the rhetoric is way too heated all around."

"Everybody, you know, just jumps in front of the microphone," Burns said. "Hopefully, people start taking some of this rhetoric down a notch because violence is very, very much in play right now in the toxic environment that we are in."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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