Last week, the Washington Post ran an article with this headline: “Trump ordered federal forces to quell Portland protests. But the chaos ended as soon as they left.” This was a dishonest attempt to blame the rioting in Portland, including attacks aimed at federal buildings, on President Trump, rather than the Antifa/BLM rioters.
The Post’s Adam Taylor surely knew that the presence of federal forces was a response to, not the cause of, the chaos Portland was experiencing. After all, the chaos long predated federal intervention. It began on May 20. Trump did not send in federal forces until two months later.
But the Post, out of sympathy for the Antifa/BLM mob, and hatred for Trump, wanted to obscure this reality.
What’s the situation in Portland now that federal forces are no longer present? The Oregonian reports that yesterday, the city’s police department declared the existence of riots for the second consecutive night. Tear gas had to be used to disperse the rioters.
There is a difference between the latest riots and those that caused federal forces to enter the city. According to the Oregonian, “confrontations between police and protesters have shifted from downtown — the historic heart of the demonstrations — to police buildings across the city, where a faction of protesters now gather [sic] every night.” Apparently, the rioters don’t want to provoke President Trump into sending the feds back in, so they content themselves with attacking police buildings.
The Oregonian tries to put as good a face on the rioting as possible:
Most people chanted as a few people started taking down plywood from the building, exposing glass windows and a door. Some people pushed dumpsters to form barricades in the street. . . .
Near the entrance of the building, someone used a metal tool to repeatedly hit the glass window. Police said demonstrators cracked glass doors at the precinct. Someone soon started a fire in a trash can next to the entrance.
(Emphasis added)
Police detained at least four someones. More arrests occurred after police officers were hit by items including rocks and commercial-grade fireworks hurled, presumably, by someone.
The night before (Tuesday night), again according to the Oregonian, “some people broke into the [police union] building and caused damage inside.” (Emphasis added) Police also responded to two reports of shots fired in the area.
Zachary Evans at NRO presents a less sanitized account of the rioting in Portland. He quotes Portland’s African-American police chief as follows:
We have people who are intentionally planning to go out and attack precincts, trap people inside, [and] set fires to these buildings. We have nightly violence where officers get mortars thrown at them, rocks, commercial grade fireworks, and these senseless attempts to injure officers and destroy police facilities [are] reprehensible and [they] need to stop.
Evans also points to a local NBC affiliate’s report that rioters attempted to start a fire at Portland’s East Precinct.
Clearly, the Washington Post’s attempt to link rioting in Portland to the Trump administration’s efforts to protect federal property was fake news. Just like so much else that appears in this relentlessly leftist organ these days.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.