For months, when Donald Trump talked about deploying troops to the streets of American cities, he focused on massive urban areas with large populations. The president’s rhetoric on the subject tended to focus on places such as Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee and New York.
But in early September, he also raised the prospect of deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon, for the most Trumpian of reasons: He’d apparently seen something on television the night before.
In the weeks that followed, the president began an aggressive public relations campaign, desperately trying to persuade Americans that he was correct about Portland having descended into a lawless, Mad Max–style hellscape. Oregon’s largest city, Trump told reporters earlier this week, is currently “burning to the ground.”
A few days later, at the White House’s weird “antifa roundtable,” the president kept going, claiming that Portland is in “worse” shape than the “bombed-out cities” shown in dystopian movies. He added, “I don’t know what could be worse than Portland. You don’t even have stores anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows.”
Putting aside the fact that Portland still has plenty of open stores (Voodoo Doughnut remains alive and well), even Trump administration officials are making assessments of local conditions that are completely at odds with Trump’s absurd claims. The New York Times reported:
On Sept. 27, President Trump described Portland, Ore., as a ‘War ravaged’ city that was ‘under siege from attack by Antifa’ mobs protesting ICE raids. But here is how federal officers described the scene outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in southwest Portland on Sept. 25: ‘low energy.’ The next day the same: ‘low energy.’ “We ultimately have a perception-versus-reality problem,” Caroline Turco, a lawyer for the city, argued in court on Friday. “The president’s perception is that it’s ‘World War II out there.’ The reality is this is a beautiful city and with a sophisticated police force that can handle the situation.” The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC, was based on internal reports prepared by Federal Protective Service, a Trump administration agency tasked with protecting federal buildings. If any federal officials are going to be aware of violence at or near the ICE facility in Portland, it’s the Federal Protective Service. And yet, according to the Times’ report, the FPS reports, prepared daily for law enforcement partners, “offered no indication of a dangerous escalation of tensions, or unusual levels of protest activity that would prompt the level of alarm expressed by Mr. Trump.” The body of evidence suggesting the president has manufactured a crisis is growing.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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