Ex-Republican Nationwide Committee spokesperson Tim Miller on Monday mentioned President Donald Trump’s plan to ship federal troops to Portland, Oregon, is “a little bit more ominous” than related threats to different U.S. cities like New Orleans.
“I do wonder if they’re champing at the bit for a conflict here and maybe see Portland as an opportunity for that,” mentioned Miller on a current episode of the anti-Trump conservative website The Bulwark’s podcast.
Trump expanded his push to deploy federal troops to American cities over the weekend, asserting on his Fact Social platform that his administration would ship “all necessary” troops to guard what he known as “war ravaged” Portland and any U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement services “under siege” from “domestic terrorists.”
The ICE facility in Portland has been on the middle of protests in opposition to Trump’s immigration agenda.
Trump’s plan has since sparked a lawsuit from town of Portland in addition to the state of Oregon in an try to dam the president from sending lots of of Nationwide Guard troops to town.
Oregon Democrats have described Trump’s plan as an “authoritarian takeover” of town and an try and incite violence, with Sen. Jeff Merkley warning residents to not “take the bait.”
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg through Getty Photos
Miller — whereas talking with The Bulwark’s editor-at-large Invoice Kristol — argued that Portland was the location of a few of the “most intense skirmishes” between legislation enforcement and demonstrators in the course of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
He later pointed to Monday morning’s version of Politico Playbook describing the Portland plan as having the “makings of a ‘heads, I win; tails, you lose’ situation” for the administration.
“If the protests deescalate, if there’s nothing there, then Trump can say, ‘Oh, it’s another success. When we send the military in, that brings peace and quiet so we should send it to more places,’” he defined.
“If there’s an escalation of violence, then he also gets to say, ‘Oh, we need to send more troops to do this.’”
He continued, “And to me, I just thought that’s kind of an obvious point that that’s what they want, but just in a sensibly, sort of neutral reporting effort of the administration … [they’d] see it as a victory for there to be more civil unrest so they could used the military to crack down more. It’s pretty astonishing.”
