Congresswoman Young Kim and ICE deportation chief Greg Bovino
Photo from a recent Young Kim mailer.
Smooth Young Kim has hung on as the only Republican representing rapidly bluing Orange County in Congress, by presenting a moderate, caring image. But you should realize, if you’re a voter in the Fighting 40th, that this is both untrue and impossible. In this Trump Age there are no moderate reasonable Congressional Republicans (you can count ’em on one hand and those ones are on their way out the door.)
And accordingly, Young Kim has put up no resistance, none at all, to ANY excess of Donald Trump. This during a year of staggering corruption and unchecked executive overreach, perversion of the justice department, a burgeoning police state, shredding of safety nets, murdering people overseas, senseless and chaotic tariffs choking the economy, and mass deportations of law-abiding immigrants. So in practice, Young Kim is no better than Trump, she is his enabler.
She will occasionally express “concern,” Susan Collins-style. We remember in 2018 when, confronted about Trump’s family separation policies, she purred, “I hate to see crying children, but I don’t know enough about the situation to comment.” (A statement memorialized in my 2018 Beatles rewrite “Gil on the Hill,” which I may post below, but I digress.)
Prop 50 has made things more complicated for her, as now she’s running against Corona’s corrupt GOP dinosaur Ken Calvert. So now Young Kim has to simultaneously retain her dignified moderate image for the benefit of normal people, while she and Ken both try to convince the district’s MAGA’s that THEY are the true Trump loyalist. Which brings us to that picture:
This is Greg Bovino, the commander of the lawless, indiscriminate ICE blitzkriegs in LA, Chicago and now New Orleans. When masked agents beat the hell out of little Narciso in Santa Ana, when dozens of ’em rushed out of a Penske truck to kidnap day laborers at an LA Home Depot, when they show up at court and grab innocent people from their immigration hearings, when they stormed a peaceful family’s home in Huntington Park, they were under the command of Bovino, helping him get his arbitrary, gigantic, quota of brown people.
Bovino’s year has been a fiesta of brutal bad behavior, getting filmed teargassing protesters in Chicago, lying about that to a federal judge, getting ordered to wear a bodycam and then disobeying and lying about that. Right now he’s heading to New Orleans, and salivating over hitting his quota of 5000 there – the idea of going after “the worst of the worst” criminals is long forgotten.
This is the buffoonish bully with a badge that Young Kim chose to feature on her mailer earlier this month.
And she looks like she is thanking him there, doesn’t she? She looks like she’s thanking him for helping rid her district of excess immigrants, and for “taking the gloves off” to do it. If you’re one of those haters who sees videos of families torn apart and crying, of masked thugs bashing in people’s car windows because the driver is brown, and exults “This is what I voted for,” then Young Kim’s your girl – an immigrant herself but no friend to immigrants.
But I don’t think that’s most of you in the Fighting 40th. Me, I’m for Lisa Ramirez. But whoever you’re for, if Young Kim makes it through the primary and then tries to pivot back to looking moderate, don’t let anyone forget this picture of her shaking Greg Bovino’s hand, and how in December 2025 she wanted everyone to see it.
Oh yeah.
verse 2:
Craven Young Kim, befuddled by Trump,
thought she could have it both ways by avoiding the stump.
Said “I hate to see crying children,
but I don’t know what’s going on,
and I really have no position,”
So now Gil’s on the hill…
Leave a Reply