About That Shooting Yesterday in Portland

I still don’t trust anybody’s reporting from Portland but my own

I was not on the scene yesterday afternoon in Portland when a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a husband and wife said to have “weaponized” their car during a targeted stop. According to a tweet by Homeland Security, the passenger in the car was “a Venezuelan illegal alien affiliated with the transnational Tren de Aragua prostitution ring” and the driver is “believed to be a member of the vicious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.” The government has not yet provided evidence of either allegation and I do not expect them to. And I do not expect them to because I have reported from Portland for years and have seen how hungry the Trump administration is to make an example of Portland, seeding disunion in a sort of 2020 do-over where this time, he wins.

It is absolutely the case that some citizens of Portland - where I lived for 15 years - cut the legs out from under their own city in 2020. Tens of millions of dollars in property damage, including to a federal courthouse, hand-to-hand combat with law enforcement (and sometimes fellow citizens) left downtown Portland all but a wasteland it has yet to dig out from under. The 150+ nights of rampaging was a story badly covered by liberal media, which, fueled by Trump animus, chose to see the protesters as heroic, no matter whether they were breaking windows or settings fires or, in a case that sorely stretched the hero-theory, committing murder in cold blood.

I called balls and strikes at the time and continued to do so this past October, when I covered the protests in front of Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement building. Trump has the memory of an elephant, and is not exactly known for his forgiving nature. In July 2020, he’d sent federal forces to protect the federal courthouse, forces that left two months later with the mayhem still in full flare. That this was a pyrrhic apparently did not matter to the Trump administration 2.0 this past October, when it assumed there were enough smoking embers in Portland to again send the place up in flames.

Again, I saw the story botched, this time at the hands of the Trump administration, which, with the help of a few useful sycophants, tried to inflame tensions in order show itself crushing the forces that, in the popular imagination and in some ways in fact, had chased it out of town in 2020.

While there had been some skirmishing earlier in the year in front of the ICE facility, in October, there were a few dozen people protesting, a nightly event so drab that one reporter - and I am not saying it was me - nearly started playing Wordle on her phone.

Instead, I watched as a protester set a small American flag on fire. This happens at every protest and was so boring I didn’t even film it. What doesn’t happen is a self-styled reporter running up and grabbing the flag in order to stamp it out. What doesn’t happen is, when said reporter is detained by police for grabbing someone else’s property, he within hours receives a personal phone call from Attorney General Pam Bondi, apologizing for his troubles and pledging to investigate the entire Portland police department. What doesn’t happen is that the following week, the same reporter, Nick Sortor, is invited to a press conference at the White House, where Trump will tell him, on camera, “At least that horrible night made you famous.”

So forgive me if I am not quite ready to swallow the administration’s claim that the border patrol agent “feared for his life and safety,” nor that the injured couple are members of a violent Venezuelan gang. And while the “transnational prostitution ring” is a novel embellishment, it might shed more light on the administration’s determination to double-down on its message that Portland is a hotbed of terrorism than it does the activities of the woman, who was shot in the chest.

It must be nice to have unlimited taxpayer funds and mouthpieces to promote one’s version of events. I might claim to not like limburger, but what if 19 lawyers said I did?

“I’ve seen her eat cheese…”

“She’s been to Germany.”

“And what’s up with ‘Rommelmann’ anyway?”

After watching the liberal media beclown itself on Portland 2020, and those on the right, with added promise of celebrity from the administration, doing so in 2026, I trust no one’s reporting on Portland but my own. It may turn out to be the case that the couple who were shot are guilty of everything the administration says they are, but how will we know?

And for the record: I hate blue cheese.