The Big Lie of Portland II - Trump's Threat, Fox's Images and the Truth on the Street

In our article "The Big Lie of Portland - How Fox News Feeds Trump and Turns a City into an Enemy Image" at https://kaizen-blog.org/en/die-grosse-luege-von-portland-wie-fox-news-trump-fuettert-und-eine-stadt-zum-feindbild-macht/ we had uncovered how Donald Trump was either fed false images – or put them into play himself – in order to justify his latest move: sending the military to Portland. Already in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, we showed under “The Fist, the Photo and the Lie – How Trump Replaced the Law with a Misleading Image” that https://kaizen-blog.org/en/die-faust-das-foto-und-die-luege-wie-trump-das-recht-mit-einem-irrefuehrenden-bild-ersetzt/ to expose how Trump builds entire legal justifications on manipulated photos. The trigger in Portland was a real but singular scene: on September 1, 2025, activists set up a symbolic guillotine in front of the ICE building, prompting federal agents to immediately respond with tear gas. Fox News turned it into a headline, splicing in archive footage from 2020 and 2021 and transforming an isolated protest evening into a supposed civil war scenario. A textbook example of manipulation: context destroyed, history rewritten, fear stoked. Trump adopted the narrative – perhaps out of naivety, perhaps out of calculation – and announced at the time that he would deploy the National Guard.

In fact, Portland is as quiet as it has been in years. In front of the gray ICE building on the outskirts of the city, there are barely two dozen demonstrators on this evening. Some wear helmets, gas masks, black clothing. They stand at the blue line painted across the driveway and watch the officers on the roof. "GOVERNMENT PROPERTY - DO NOT BLOCK" is written in white letters on the asphalt. Those who linger too long in the driveway must expect pepper balls to rain down. By midnight the place is empty, no one was injured. And yet Portland is again a matter of symbolic politics. Trump speaks of a city where "all hell is breaking loose" and uses it as evidence for his thesis of a supposedly collapsing America. Already in the summer he had sent the National Guard to Los Angeles and brought the federal police in Washington, D.C. under his control. Now he threatens Portland - precisely at a time when crime is declining. According to the current report of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the number of murders in Portland between January and June has fallen by more than half, a decrease of 51 percent.

Those who regularly sit in front of the ICE building to observe deportations can only shake their heads at Trump's rhetoric. "Two blocks away you can sit by the river, drink a soda and watch the birds," says Casey Leger, 61. During the day he distributes flyers with information about the hotline for those affected by ICE raids. At night, Deidra Watts and other activists come. For her, ICE is a "cold, cruel machine" that must be opposed. "In such a situation there have to be people who show that this will not be accepted," she says. Mayor Keith Wilson makes it clear: "Like other mayors across the country, I have not asked for - and do not need - federal intervention." The city has the situation under control, there is occasional violence, but it is being prosecuted and punished. Since June at least 26 people have been charged with federal offenses, including assaulting federal officers. The conflict, however, continues to smolder. Residents complain about the noise, about tear gas entering their apartments, about sirens that tear their eardrums. One woman even tried in court to force the city to enforce the noise ordinance - unsuccessfully. A charter school moved out of the neighboring building to ensure the children's safety. For the café owner next door the loss is noticeable. "Many parents and children were regular customers," says Chris Johnson. "It is sad that they had to leave - and that the country acts as if there is a civil war here every night." Portland is neither a war zone nor an idyllic island of peace. It is a city wrestling with its moral compass and resisting the image that Trump and Fox paint of it. Those who live here know that the struggle is not only for the streets of the city but also for the truth itself.

To be continued .....