Padilla and the dying media also keep saying he identified himself as a senator — don’t you know who he is? — so there was no reason to deem him a threat. This is also nonsense. You don’t identify yourself while in the middle of shoving your way toward a high-ranking government official, or anyone else for that matter.

And it’s absurd to assume that any of the security personnel would have recognized Padilla. He’s hardly a rock star, and it’s not their job to know what every member of Congress who decides to pop off in public looks like. True, he shouted that he’s a senator. So what? The public parks of L.A. are crawling with people who think they’re royalty.

The dying media want to portray Padilla like a victim of abuse because it feeds into their manufactured narrative that the Trump administration is hurting innocent people, even U.S. senators, in the process of enforcing immigration law. (As an update to the stupid incident, The New York Times ran the headline “Padilla’s scuffle stirs painful memories of a childhood spent proving his worth.”) It’s another lie.