Padilla: Republicans can't deny 'No Kings' protest numbers

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that Republicans cannot deny the numbers of the recent “No Kings” protests.

“One of the best things that has happened over the last several days is that millions of people who came out across the country on Saturday, by and large, very, very peaceful, but you can’t deny the numbers,” Padilla said on MSNBC’s “The Weeknight”

“My colleagues on the other side of the aisle cannot deny the numbers,” he added.

The No Kings organization’s “national day of action” against the Trump administration turned out an estimated five million protesters in over 2,000 cities and towns across the U.S. The marches took place as a parade celebrating the Army took place in the nation’s capital on President Trump’s birthday. 

On Thursday, Trump was asked to respond to the “No Kings” demonstrations, to which he replied that he doesn’t “feel like a king; I have to go through hell to get stuff approved.”

Padilla’s comments follow his forcible removal and handcuffing at a news conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week, which flared tempers among Democrats.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sunday called Padilla’s handcuffing “atrocious” on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“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,” Schiff said Sunday.

The White House has argued that Padilla was looking for the confrontation and did not adequately indicate he was a U.S. senator, though the Californian identified himself as he was being detained.