00:09US President Trump has said he's directing the National Guard to the city calling it war ravage.
00:15But that's not what people in Portland are saying.
00:17It's just been declared the headquarters of domestic terrorism in the United States.
00:23Constant battles are going on behind me.
00:25It's just an absolute total war zone.
00:27But is Portland a war ravaged place?
00:31I don't think so.
00:33Nate Hellman shot this TikTok video of downtown Portland recently.
00:36I needed to see with my own eyes.
00:38I went to Pioneer Courthouse Square, went down there at that time and checked that out.
00:42And it was just very quiet, very calm.
00:44So where's this conflict Trump's talking about?
00:47Well, for several months there have been a small and persistent group of demonstrators
00:52camped out around the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office, or ICE facility.
00:57It's about two miles from downtown Portland.
01:00Now, while there has been some arrests made since June, these incidents have been contained
01:05in this area.
01:06And according to court documents, protests have been small in size.
01:10This is about as extreme as those demonstrations have got.
01:13The largest protest of just over 100 people was at the beginning of September.
01:20But on Tuesday, Trump made the claim again that Portland looks like a war zone, followed by
01:26explaining he had seen it on television.
01:28Well, unless they're playing false tapes, this looks like World War II.
01:33Well, we don't know exactly what Trump saw.
01:35Fox News did edit this 2025 protest footage with footage from the Black Lives Matter protests
01:40in 2020.
01:41Those were largely peaceful protests, but certain demonstrations involved vandalism, arson and
01:46property damage.
01:47Trump then said on Wednesday that he had called in the National Guard troops to respond to the
01:52protests outside the immigration office.
01:54But Russell Gibson, a national commander, said that while 200 troops have been called up,
01:59it would need another four to seven days before being deployed next week.
02:04Now, both the state and the city government have filed a lawsuit against Trump calling the
02:09president's move unlawful and baseless.
02:11The lawsuit mentioned Portland's police bureau has more than enough offices to respond to the
02:16small, ongoing ICE facility protests.
02:18So with all this evidence of relative peace in Portland, why is Trump targeting it?
02:23They target Portland in order to kind of hinder liberal progressive politics on a state
02:31level and on a national level.
02:33Alexander Ross is a professor at Portland State University.
02:36He's observed many previous protests and says it's the city's politics that have made
02:41it a target.
02:42And Ross says that call goes back to Portland's history.
02:45Portland was very much branded during the early 2010s as a sort of liberal utopia.
02:52A progressive place with coffee and beer.
02:56It was like an ambassador of the new progressivism under Obama.
03:01You had a sort of growth of protest movements here, then counter protests by the right against
03:10the character of the city, or at least its branding.
03:12Ross says that made the city a hotspot for right wing protests during Trump's first term in office.
03:18The thing that they were really attacking was the city of Portland, which is why thousands and
03:24thousands of people would show up to counter protest them.
03:27They weren't all like, you know, black clad anarchists.
03:30They were just normal people who wanted to be left alone.
03:34Then everyone remembers 2020 when a convergence of protests lasting almost 200 days came to a head in the city.
03:42Trump sentenced 700 officers as a response, which led to further escalation.
03:47There was the COVID-19 pandemic, there was terrible wildfires here, and there were major protests downtown.
03:58And so those three things sort of collided to make the city very, very tense.
04:04Ever since, things calmed down here significantly.
04:08And despite things calming down, the Trump administration still lists some of those previous protests as reasons for sending in the National Guard.
04:16And most recently, the Trump administration says it's rebranding its Department of Defense, calling it Department of War, with a focus on domestic threats.
04:25We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military.
04:32Ross says military involvement in other cities like Washington and Los Angeles this year, along with the target on Portland, could be signs of a deliberate strategy.
04:41He's sending in military forces in a way that could be escalated over time.
04:47Trump's record of just persistent escalation.
04:51I think that's kind of what we're looking at for 2026.
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