Donald Trump told reporters on Friday that he might send national guard troops into Portland, Oregon, apparently because he was misled about the scale of small protests outside an immigration detention facility there by a TV report that incorrectly presented video recorded during a protest in 2020 as having taken place in the city this summer.
“I will say this, I watched today, I didn’t know that was continuing to go on, but Portland is unbelievable, what’s going on,” Trump said. He then claimed, incorrectly, that he had seen video evidence of “the destruction of the city”.
In fact, a handful of protesters have demonstrated outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in a remote area of Portland along the south waterfront this year, but the scale of the protests, which attract dozens at most, is nothing like the 2020 protests following the police killing of George Floyd that regularly drew thousands to tens of thousands of demonstrators to a central part of the city for more than two months.
“Are you going into Portland?” a reporter asked Trump.
“Well, I’m going to look at it now because I didn’t know that was still going on. This has been going on for years,” the president replied. He then explained how he had been misled into the entirely false belief that the large-scale protests from 2020 had continued.
“We’ll be able to stop that very easily, but that was not on my list, Portland, but when I watched television last night, this has been going on,” Trump said.
“Like other mayors across the country, I have not asked for – and do not need – federal intervention,” Portland mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement on Friday. “We are proud that Portland police have successfully protected freedom of expression while addressing occasional violence and property destruction that takes place during protests at the ICE facility in Portland. We anticipate that the site, and the half-block surrounding it, will continue to be a focus of protests. Portland will continue to rise to the moment as a proud sanctuary city, taking legal action to stand up for our community and our rights.”
The president did not cite the specific news report that he was basing his impression on, but Fox News broadcast a report on Thursday that mixed images of a recent protest in Portland, attended by dozens of protesters, with a viral video clip from 2020 of one protester, Christopher David, being pepper-sprayed in the face by a federal agent that was wrongly described as having been shot in June of this year.
The report focused mainly on one protest outside the facility on Tuesday, attended by dozens of protesters who brought a guillotine as a prop before being doused with chemical agents by federal officers.
“These are paid terrorists,” the president said, once again spreading a baseless conspiracy theory his administration amplified about anti-fascist protesters in 2020.
“These are paid agitators, these are professional. I watched that last night, I’m very good at this stuff. These are paid agitators, they get paid money by radical left groups,” the president claimed.
He went on to suggest that well-printed signs displayed by some protesters proved his theory, saying: “These are paid agitators and they’re very dangerous for our country and when we go there, if we go to Portland, we’re going to wipe ’em out. They’re going to be gone. They won’t even stand to fight. They will not stay there. They’ve ruined that city.”
“It’s like living in hell,” the president said, describing an imaginary version of Portland that bears no resemblance to the actual city, in which fences around the federal courthouse that was the scene of mass protests in 2020 have been removed and the central police headquarters no longer has boarded-up windows.
The Oregon attorney general, Dan Rayfield, threatened to take action if Trump sent troops to Oregon.
“Although some threats from the Trump administration may be new or surprising, this one is not: we’ve been preparing to respond since Trump returned to office,” Rayfield said. “California showed how effective our approach can be to stop federal overreach. Oregon is a safe place, and we intend to keep it that way. The president may have a lot of power, but he has to stay in his lane – and if he doesn’t, we’ll hold him accountable.”
