Are you being lied to? Is Portland ‘war-ravaged’?

Are you being lied to? Is Portland ‘war-ravaged’?

by Rivera Sun

698 words

No one likes to be deceived. Or misled. To the best of our abilities, we try to use make good decisions based on the information we receive. 

What if that information is wrong? 

President Trump watched Fox News coverage of riotous protests in Portland, Oregon, and thought: I’ll do something about that. I’ll help out that city, send in the National Guard, and restore law-and-order.

But the footage was old. It was from five years ago. 

Today, Portland’s downtown is an idyllic scene of farmers’ markets and coffee shops. The residents of the Rose City were so perplexed by the president’s comments about “war-ravaged Portland” that they flooded social media with satirical posts of #WarRavagedPortland showing children blowing soap bubbles, people chatting on the streets, and thousands of people running in a marathon.

Why didn’t someone in the White House update the president’s information? 

The United States has one of the most sophisticated intelligence systems in the world. Someone should have stepped into the Oval Office and said, “Respectfully, Mr. President, that footage is not current. There is no need to send the National Guard to Portland. In fact, it violates our Constitution to do so.”

At one point, Trump himself questioned what was going on, asking, “Am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?” The answer to that question is yes. 

Did someone willfully deceive the President of the United States? 

Fox News should have corrected the misperception. Their undated B-roll footage from 5 years ago caused a lot of confusion. The president was not alone in getting the facts wrong. Many conservative viewers were convinced that Portland is burning … just like they were convinced that pictures of burning police cars were from Los Angeles in 2025, not from years ago. Those police car images were used to inflame the false narrative that Los Angeles was in an unusually high state of turmoil. In went the National Guard (and the Marines) – based on an inaccurate perception. 

This is either a pattern of inept mistakes – which is unacceptable in the leaders of this nation – or it’s a pattern of intentional deception which is dangerous and wrong. 

In 2020, a street installation was created of the 30,000 false and misleading statements that Donald Trump made in his first presidency. Color-coded and fact-checked, they covered an entire city block. How much longer would it be now? 

No one likes being lied to. And the stakes are getting higher. Deploying armed troops on domestic soil is not an action to be taken lightly. In Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, and Portland, mayors, governors, and judges have repeatedly said that there is no reason or justification for sending in the National Guard. 

These cities are not experiencing the level of crisis that requires such intervention. 

Our cities may have challenges, but the problems are neither new nor the emergencies the Trump administration claims them to be. Issues of crime, law and order, public safety, beautification, sanitation have long been dealt with by municipal departments and police. 

The United States is not a military police state. We do not deploy soldiers on domestic soil. We do not mobilize the National Guard against the will of governors and mayors, and certainly not on false pretenses and untruths. 

It is important to uphold our prized American values of being a democratic, open society – not a military state. For nearly 250 years, we have balanced the rights of the people and the power of the government through the safeguards of our Constitution. To abandon this for armed, militarized policing reveals a lack of faith in the founding principles of this nation.  

Everyone from citizen to president has a role to play in correcting this situation. Check your information. Demand accuracy from media outlets. Insist that officials uphold the Constitution. Ask governors to recall the National Guard from our great cities. Make sure our President is making his decisions based on fact and that he is receiving accurate and up-to-date intelligence briefings.

Losing our freedom through ignorance or deception is something none of us want: not the National Guard, not the average citizen, and not the president … let’s hope. 

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Rivera Sun, syndicated by PeaceVoice, has written numerous books, including The Dandelion Insurrection and the award-winning Ari Ara Series. She is the editor of Nonviolence News, Program Coordinator for Campaign Nonviolence, and a nationwide trainer in strategy for nonviolent campaigns.

Published: LA Progressive