While others are rightly blasting the New York Times and the rest of the White House Press Corps who shrink in fear of a Trump tweet, the Portland Oregonian called out the Trump Administration succinctly and correctly over the past 24 hours.
First they sent reporters to the ICE facility in South Portland and had them report what they saw. There was a lone protestor wearing a mask at 6 a.m. A group of people tabling and handing out information about constitutional rights at 8 a.m. A guy in a chicken suit at 10 a.m., a lady holding a sign that said "Veterans against militarization," in the rain at noon, a California tourist holding a sign saying "DJT Out of Portland at 2 p.m."
And then around 3 the "MAGA granny" and former January 6th rioter showed up because she wanted to see the battlefield. What she had to say takes the cake.
Nearby, Pamela Hemphill sat smoking a cigarette in a blue lawn chair. The 72-year-old, once known as “MAGA Granny,” said she wanted to see what the “war-ravaged” city President Trump described actually looked like.
“They aren’t violent,” Hemphill said of the protesters she’s interacted with. “They’re some of the sweetest people.”
The Oregonian inserted the following into their headline, "Is this what 'lawless mayhem" looks like?"
Earlier today this assorted eccentric group of protestors that represents the wonderful City of Portland, Oregon so well decided to march from a park to the ICE Office. They were met by federal officers who threw tear gas into the crowd. The Oregonian noted it was the federal officers that threw tear gas into the crowd and then in the second paragraph of the article noted that they saw no reason protestors should've been arrested writing this.
Federal agents used chemical crowd control measures and arrested at least six people as the protesters reached the facility located in a residential neighborhood just two blocks away from the Willamette River. It wasn’t immediately clear who those arrested were or why they were taken.
Truth is the antidote to the phony cosplay fascism of "strong man" Trump. Journalists just have to be courageous enough to tell it. This weekend, the Portland Oregonian was. One of the results, a federal judge with jurisdiction over Portland (who presumably reads the paper) issued an injunction stopping the deployment of federal troops to Oregon. The judge was appointed by Donald Trump. She cited the 10th amendment in her ruling.
