“Portland is burning to the ground,” President Trump warns, and he has helpfully explained that it is a “war-ravaged” hellscape where even the mayor and governor are “petrified for their lives.” Trump purports to be trying to rescue us Oregonians by dispatching National Guard troops to use “full force if necessary” against the “enemy from within.” We asked an intrepid photographer, Rian Dundon, to brave the flames and firefights to capture the mood in this war zone. Here are scenes he captured in what Trump called a “burning hell hole”:
So what explains the gulf between Trump’s rhetoric and the reality? Why did a Trump-appointed U.S. District Court judge, Karin Immergut, pause the deployment of troops to Portland and conclude, “The president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts”?
Oregon officials have argued, in that court case and publicly, that Trump appeared to have been misled by Fox News. “Portland is unbelievable, what’s going on,” Trump told reporters on Sept. 5, recounting scenes of chaos and destruction. “That was not on my list, Portland, but when I watched television last night, this has been going on.” On the previous evening, Fox News had aired a segment portraying Portland as out of control and included video from actual riots in 2020 in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing.
There have been some clashes this summer, especially in June, but nothing like the rioting of 2020 — and more recently the situation has mostly been calm: In late September, protests were small and “uneventful,” “energy was low” and people were “sitting in lawn chairs,” law enforcement reports said.
Let’s acknowledge that Portland has significant challenges. It’s not burning to the ground, but homelessness, addiction and crime are serious problems, and office vacancy rates are high and rising. The homicide rate in Portland last year was more than twice that of New York or Boston, but less than half that of Atlanta or Indianapolis (and homicides in Portland so far this year are down 41 percent).
If Trump wanted to help Portland deal with its challenges, there are many ways he could do so with the $10 million that was the estimated cost of his deployment of the Oregon National Guard. He could help with treatment for substance use, with emergency housing, with education.
But the worry here in Portland is that troops won’t address any of the city’s actual challenges and will instead provoke unrest. Immediately after his announcement, larger numbers of protesters began turning out. And a Portland police official noted in July that federal officers have been “instigating and causing” some of the disturbances.
In 2020, Trump outmaneuvered Portlanders. As the George Floyd protests were waning, he sent in federal law enforcement officers, provoking leftist protesters who responded with riots that did nothing for racial justice but damaged the local economy and bolstered the national Republican narrative of standing up for law and order. In retrospect, the city was so caught up in outrage at Trump that it didn’t focus enough on self-care.
Oregonians don’t want to fall into that trap again, and it’s frustrating to hear a beautiful and placid city like Portland — for all its problems — falsely described as a war zone, presumably to distract voters from Jeffrey Epstein and economic weakness. One meme calls Portland the “Epstein Distraction City.”
If you’re not going to help us, Mr. President, just leave us alone.
Rian Dundon is a photographer in Portland, Ore.
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Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.” @NickKristof
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