Donald Trump told reporters on Friday that he might send national guard troops into Portland, Oregon. He was misled about the scale of protests outside an immigration detention facility there by a TV report that incorrectly presented a video from a 2020 protest as having taken place in the city this summer.
Trump said, “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.” He then incorrectly claimed to have seen video evidence of “the destruction of the city”.
A handful of protesters have demonstrated outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in a remote area of Portland this year. 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.
A reporter asked Trump, “Are you going into Portland?”
Trump replied, “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.” He then explained how he had been misled into the entirely false belief that the large-scale protests from 2020 had continued.
Trump said, “We’ll be able to stop that very easily, but that was not on my list, Portland. When I watched television last night, this has been going on.”
Portland mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement on Friday, “I have not asked for – and do not need – federal intervention. 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.”
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 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.
Trump called the protesters, “paid terrorists,” once again spreading a baseless conspiracy theory. He claimed they are “paid agitators” and that when troops are sent to Portland, the protesters “will not even stand to fight” and they “will be gone.” He described Portland as living in hell, which bears no resemblance to the actual city.
Oregon attorney general, Dan Rayfield, threatened to take action if Trump sent troops to Oregon. Rayfield said that California showed how effective their approach can be to stop federal overreach. Oregon is a safe place, and they 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, they’ll hold him accountable.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/05/trump-portland-video-protests
