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In the Trump administration’s latest public statements following President Donald Trump’s Sunday move to deploy 200 members of the Oregon National Guard to Portland to straighten out a city he describes as out of control, the White House vowed that the “Radical Left’s reign of terror in Portland ends now.”
The White House put out the statement Tuesday, the same day Trump spoke to U.S military leaders gathered at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico. He turned his attention to Portland there as well.
“How about Portland? Where it looks like a war zone. And I get a call from their liberal governor, ‘Sir, please don’t come in, we don’t need you,’” Trump said. “I said, unless they’re playing false tapes, this looks like WWII. Your place is burning down. I mean, you must be kidding…I said, this place is a nightmare.”
Trump was describing his brief phone call with Gov. Tina Kotek on Saturday, in which Kotek tried to convince him troops weren’t needed in Portland, and that his perception of the city was based on faulty information. In a later court filing, state officials alleged the Fox News segment Trump watched mixed B-roll from Portland’s riots in 2020 with the ongoing protests at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
Speaking about cities he said were run by “radical left Democrats”—including Portland—Trump told top military brass in his Tuesday speech that his administration was “going to straighten them out one by one…that’s a war, too. That’s a war from within.”
Kotek’s brief call with Trump on Saturday didn’t change his mind about deploying federal troops to Portland, nor did the pleas of Mayor Keith Wilson and a myriad of other elected officials that said the president’s characterization of Portland plainly did not reflect the reality on the ground.
On Sunday morning, Trump took command of a portion of the Oregon National Guard, ordering 200 of them dispatch to Portland to protect federal buildings, including the ICE facility along Southwest Macadam that’s been the site of consistent, but for the most part relatively tame protests this summer. (The Oregonian recently reported that in a recent court deposition, a Portland police officer said that federal ICE agents were the ones provoking skirmishes with protestors—not the other way around.)
Shortly after receiving notice that Trump had assumed control of the Oregon National Guard, Kotek wrote to Trump: “I believe this is unlawful and unwarranted. You broke your promise to speak with me before taking further action against Portland. I will be in touch later.”
Since then, the state has tried to block the deployment through the courts. The state argues that Title 10 of the United States Code only allows for the federalization of the guard in circumstances of invasion, rebellion, or when federal laws cannot otherwise be executed—and in its lawsuit the state says that “none of those circumstances exist in Oregon.”
In its suit, the state noted that Trump’s perception of Oregon seemed to be informed by a Fox News broadcast, which misleadingly intercut footage of the recent ICE facility protests with older footage from the 2020 George Floyd protests.
“When the president and I spoke yesterday,” Kotek said in the Sunday news briefing, “I told him in very plain language that there is no insurrection or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland or any other city in our state. Despite this—and with all evidence to the contrary—he has chosen to disregard Oregonians’ safety and ability to govern ourselves. This is not necessary. And I believe it’s unlawful. And it will make Oregonians less safe."
No luck. The White House in its Tuesday statement doubled down on its narrative that Portland is a hellscape.
“The Radical Left’s reign of terror in Portland ends now, with President Donald J. Trump mobilizing federal resources to stop Antifa-led hellfire in its tracks,“ the statement reads. ”While Democrat politicians deny reality, it’s obvious what’s happening in Portland isn’t protest; it’s premeditated anarchy that has scarred the city for years—leaving officers battered, citizens terrorized, and property defaced."
