Donald Trump once again shared misinformation about Portland, Oregon, on social media on Wednesday, when he announced that the national guard troops he called up in response to a small protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) office in the otherwise tranquil city are “now in place” and have begun restoring “LAW AND ORDER”.
However, Portland’s NBC News affiliate KGW reported 90 minutes after Trump’s social media post that no members of the guard were yet in place around the Ice field office where dozens of protesters have demonstrated against immigration sweeps since June.
The Oregon national guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a spokesperson, Lt Col Stephen Bomar, told Oregon Public Broadcasting this week that it would take until at least Thursday for the 200 troops to be vetted and trained before they can be deployed.
The deployment is expected to be made up of troops who have been either trained as military police or certified by the state’s police standards agency.
Related: Portland residents scoff at Trump threat to send military: ‘This is not a war zone’
Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said in a statement on Wednesday: “Donald Trump’s unlawful federalization of members of the Oregon National Guard could cost taxpayers up to $10m, according to the Oregon Military Department (OMD).”
The calculation includes salaries, supplies, food, lodging and other costs associated with the deployment of 200 guard members to Portland for 60 days.
“Our country and our state should be focused on solving real problems,” Kotek said. “Wasting an estimated $10m dollars on made up problems is an insult to Americans who are struggling with the cost of living, access to affordable health care, safety in their neighborhoods and more. Not only is this an abuse of power, it is a dereliction of the president’s duty to solve real problems.”
Over the weekend, Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the deployment, arguing that Trump’s characterization of the peaceful city as “war ravaged” is “pure fiction”. Rayfield also argued the president exceeded his authority by taking federal control of the guard away from the state’s governor. A hearing on the state’s request for a temporary restraining order has been scheduled for Friday.
In remarks to senior military officers in Virginia on Tuesday, Trump reiterated his false claim that Portland “looks like a war zone”, and recounted a phone call with the state’s governor over the weekend. In the call, Trump said, he told Kotek what he had seen on television conflicted with her firsthand account that the city was peaceful and police could handle a small protest confined to a single city block.
“‘Well, unless they’re playing false tapes, this look[s] like World War 2,’” the president said he told the governor. “‘Your place is burning down.’”
It is unclear what, exactly, Trump has been watching on television to give him the false impression that Portland, currently a peaceful, vibrant city, resembles a war zone, but the president’s favorite channel, Fox News, did broadcast a report three weeks ago in which incorrectly dated video of protests in Portland in 2020 was used to illustrate the current anti-Ice protest.
This week, Fox has relied heavily in its coverage of Portland on dispatches from reporters for far-right, partisan outlets, including Turning Point USA’s Frontlines, that routinely exaggerate the scale of unrest at leftwing protests.
On social media, Portlanders have continued to mock Trump’s false claims about the city, by posting images of themselves enjoying life in the city contrasted with audio of the president saying, earlier this month, that it is “like living in hell”.
Far from reassessing his impression of what conditions in Portland are actually like, based on feedback from elected officials and city residents, on Wednesday, Trump suggested on his social media platform Truth Social that Oregon’s governor “must be living in a ‘Dream World’”.
