It is perhaps the most absurd scene of the evening: police officers standing in front of an ICE building under cover of night, the whole day without migrants to pick up, no big brawls, not even a paper jam in the fax machine. And what do you do in such a situation? Exactly: you grab the next available target - in this case of all people one of your own fans.
Nick Sortor, loyal Trump man and celebrated journalist in MAGA circles, ends up in the police grip as if he had just sabotaged the entire power grid of Portland. His "crime"? Apparently: breathing, standing and live streaming. The official charge is "Disorderly Conduct," in English: public loitering in an area where the police are in a bad mood. The piquant detail: only a few days earlier the Portland police had refused to arrest an activist who allegedly hit conservative reporter Katie Daviscourt in the face with a flagpole. Evidence was missing, MAGA raged.
The "wild protests" that Sortor was reporting on in reality consisted of about twenty supporters who held up signs with slogans such as "Thank you for your dedication and hard work!" and "We appreciate it!" A few opponents shouted, there was a brief scuffle between pro-ICE and anti-ICE people - apparently triggered by an anti-ICE demonstrator who started the confrontation and promptly got punched in the face. Finished was the MAGA narrative of the raging uprising.
That it was Sortor at the center of it all is doubly delicious: he is not an unknown, but an outright MAGA hardliner and notorious conspiracy theorist. Whether he suspected dark forces at work in the Maui wildfires or whether he went on endlessly on X about supposedly "hidden" election fraud evidence - he always delivered exactly the fodder that Trump's base wanted to hear. And now it is precisely he who sits in ICE custody. Donald must be fuming in his armchair at home.
This is what security management in idle mode looks like: if reality does not deliver arrests, you invent them. ICE officers and police are so bored that they are now pulling their own MAGA people out of circulation. Maybe so that Antifa can at least say once: "Look, not only we are being arrested." And while the #FreeNickSortor choir swelled online and patriotic influencers were supposed to call Trump personally, Sortor sat somewhere in a cell and wondered if this was not the greatest irony of his life: arrested because he wanted to show how others are arrested.
The MAGA scribbler only had to sit for a few hours, then he was back at it again. In his usual tone he declared: "Portland is a f***ing third world hellhole. If I defend myself, I will be the one who gets arrested - not the assailant. Antifa is in full control out here. President Trump MUST step in." ich derjenige sein, der verhaftet wird – nicht der Angreifer. Antifa hat hier völlig die Kontrolle. Präsident Trump MUSS eingreifen.“
That this scenario then actually came true is the kind of irony you could not make up. Sortor had himself prophesied that he would be arrested while others got away unpunished - and that is exactly what became reality.x
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Wenn das Ganze um ICE nicht so traurig wäre ….
Trotzdem ist das definitiv der Lacher des Tages.
Da er ja ein Verschwörungstheoretiker ist, wird er bestimmt bald erzählen, dass hinter der Maske, ein Antifa Undercover steckt und er nur deswegen verhaftet wurde 🤣