There’s been talk of Hawai‘i Sen. Brian Schatz working his way up the Congressional food chain, aiming to become “the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate hierarchy, behind only Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,” as Civil Beat put it last month.
If so, Schatz is certainly auditioning for the role, based on this clip of him going off about what happened when California Sen. Alex Padilla interrupted a press conference held by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. This was posted to X by @SenateDems and reposted by Schatz’s own account:
“This is the stuff of dictatorships!” Schatz emotes. “It is actually happening! A United States Senator was manhandled, shoved to ground and cuffed. He identified himself, ‘I’m Sen. Alex Padilla.’ That should be enough! That should be enough! … There is no context that justifies this action. … This is the stuff of dictatorships and the thing that is making me most terrified is I see zero Republicans in this chamber.”
And so on.
He’s scared! He’s angry! Dictatorship is upon!
Except he’s exaggerating, wildly, in service of an even bigger lie.
Here’s the press conference in full:
Padilla’s interruption is right around the 6-minute mark. You can see that it comes across as a brief and awkward interruption. You can hear security saying “Hands up! Hands up!” because they obviously have no idea who this guy is, bursting into the room, charging up the side aisle, yelling.
It turns out there is plenty of context. Including the context that, after Padilla pulled this stunt, he and other Democrats immediately started fundraising off of it.
All of life is high school, I like to say, and I often think of career politicians as overgrown student government nerds, but maybe I’ve been thinking of the wrong clique.
It’s the Drama Club.
First, Sen. Padilla puts on a show designed to provoke exactly the response you or I would get if we charged into a press conference like that. From what we’ve learned since, Padilla was dressed in plainclothes, wasn’t wearing a security pin and behaved like a interloper, all deliberate decisions to maximize a bad outcome.
Far from rotting in a gulag somewhere for challenging the Great Dictator, Padilla was promptly uncuffed, and was never arrested — contrary to Schatz’s claim that he was — once his identity was confirmed.
Then Schatz puts on his show, maintaining the fiction that Trump’s jackbooted thugs deliberately threw down a Senator for speaking out. The emotional incontinence on full display in that clip is an essential part of the performance. It’s a form of gaslighting, intended to convey the message, “What I’m asserting must be true or I would not be this upset.”
And all this furious drama in defense of what? The larger context is Los Angeles, where the drama began when ICE was enforcing immigration law recently. While Schatz is putting on a high-class show in the hallowed halls of Congress, he is standing on just one of many stages, alongside the entire scruffy cast of Summer Riots 2025. And it is a production, stage-managed and organized.
A production defending what, exactly? Not law-abiding citizens. Certainly not America's lawful immigrants who followed the rules, waited in line, paid the fees, filled out the forms, spent money on lawyers to be sure they were doing everything right. Certainly not the law itself.
Quite the opposite. Schatz now stands alongside California Democrats flat-out defending illegality, demanding that the feds pull out of LA, and blaming their organized chaos on the attempt to bring order to the situation before it gets worse.
Well, readers, whether you love what he's doing or hate it, chances are, most of you had no idea this is what he’s been doing up there as one of Hawai‘i's senators. So, now you know.
A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.
A. Kam Napier can be reached at kam@alohastatedaily.com.
