When President Donald Trump told reporters on September 5 that he was considering sending the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, he said it was because he had seen it on TV.
He said the city was being destroyed by paid agitators. “What they did to that place, it’s like living in hell,” he said. The comment became an internet meme, with some Portland residents juxtaposing it with a quiet image of the city.
Trump did not say which channel he was watching. He said at one point he saw something “today” and at another point “last night.”
The night before, on September 4, FOX News aired a two-and-a-half minute segment spotlighting protests outside the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland. A similar video was aired on the morning of President Trump’s remarks. The president went on to announce on September 27 at Truth Social that he would deploy the military, saying, “If necessary, I will authorize the full force.”
He later said he told Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, “Unless you’re running fake tapes, this was like World War II. Your house is burning down.”
ProPublica investigated months of Fox News coverage and examined more than 700 video clips posted on social media by protesters, counterprotesters and others in the three months leading up to the Sept. 4 broadcast.
The investigation found that news networks repeatedly provided misleading portrayals of what was happening in Portland.
As reported by The Guardian and The Oregonian/Oregon Live, Fox News on September 4 used footage from the 2020 protests after the police killing of George Floyd and said it was from 2025. We found two apparent incidents from that night and one that appears to match scenes filmed at key locations of the 2020 protests. Fox also incorrectly displayed the dates of two other actions shown on screen, and one broadcast implied that protests from elsewhere were happening in Portland.
Fox News coverage of Portland the week of President Trump’s remarks included terms such as “violent demonstrators,” “riot of protesters,” “anti-ICE Portland mob,” and “war-like protests.” One organizer said demonstrators were attacking federal employees.
This depiction of protesters routinely inciting violence and riots was also misleading.
As ProPublica reported last week, most of the clashes between demonstrators and police that occurred before the Fox News show did not result in criminal charges or arrests, with demonstrators accused of violence. Additionally, nearly all charges and arrests for assault, arson, and property damage were limited to the period leading up to the night of July 4, according to news releases from federal and local authorities.
Videos since then have captured numerous images of federal agents forcibly entering protesters, without corresponding criminal charges accusing them of violence.
A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment on its staff’s tactics.
White House press secretary Abigail Jackson said of the actions on the ground in Portland: “This was not a peaceful, controlled protest, as many on the left have claimed, but extreme violence. President Trump is taking lawful steps to protect federal law enforcement officers, address local complaints, and address the out-of-control violence that Democratic leaders have failed to stop.”
Here’s how misleading Fox News’ coverage of the Portland incident was.
Fox News said it was 2025, but it wasn’t.
The 2020 protests in response to the police killing of Floyd, along with a federal law enforcement response authorized by President Trump, drew large and sometimes violent crowds to Portland.
Protests outside ICE facilities are typically much smaller. Still, Fox spliced together footage from 2020 with this year’s coverage and claimed it was from 2025.
“On this night in late June, police used tear gas,” said a Fox News correspondent whose segment aired the night President Trump was watching television.
The 2020 footage was broadcast on Fox News’ segment on September 4th. Video by Joanna Shan/ProPublica
The attached image does not appear to be from the ICE building, but from the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, more than a mile away. A nearly identical scene was shown on a Fox News video five years ago. The footage aired on September 4 was filmed from a slightly different angle and blurred the area where graffiti was seen on the building in Fox’s July 2020 broadcast.
Immediately after showing the courthouse scene, the segment cuts to another footage as the correspondent says, “Federal police used tear gas and flash bangs.”
At that moment, the screen showed a U.S. Navy veteran who had been pepper-sprayed and repeatedly hit with a baton. But that didn’t happen in September 2025. The video was posted on social media on July 18, 2020.
A Fox News segment on September 4 aired a clip originally posted to X on July 16, 2020. Video by Joanna Shan/ProPublica
A Fox News segment about ICE protests soon shows the American flag burning.
The image was posted on social media on July 16, 2020.
Location: The base of the statue in downtown Portland, more than a mile from the ICE building where protests will take place in 2025.
Fox News added an editor’s note to its Sept. 4 video corner webpage at least two weeks later. “This video includes footage from protests in Portland in 2020 and 2025.”
“It’s still going on.”
After incorrectly labeling events in 2020 as 2025, Fox’s broadcast on the night of September 4 explicitly drew a connection between the two time periods.
“The chaos of protests that began with the social justice riots of 2020 has severely damaged Portland’s reputation,” the correspondent said.
Fox’s Sept. 4 broadcast clearly drew connections between 2025 and the 2020 protests following the police killing of George Floyd. Fox News. Screenshot by ProPublica.
Dramatic footage of the moment, showing a fire in the street, aired on Fox on August 19, 2020, a day after a crowd broke windows and set fire to property at the Multnomah County government headquarters, where Portland is located.
Fox’s September 4th broadcast used footage from Fox News that aired on August 19, 2020. Screenshot by ProPublica.
It’s unclear which broadcast prompted President Trump to think about Portland. The White House did not respond to questions about what President Trump watched. But the president said on September 5 that what he saw in Portland on TV was “unbelievable.”
“I didn’t know it was still going on,” he said. “This has been going on for years.”
Reality: Social justice protests in Portland in 2020 led to hundreds of arrests and lasted several months, but became sporadic by early 2021. Protests in the years since have occasionally caused property damage, but nothing in Portland has matched the scale of the events that followed Floyd’s death.
Portland Police Chief Bob Day said in a Sept. 29 press conference that the city has been inaccurately portrayed through the lens of the 2020 and 2021 protests.
“What’s actually going on and the response we’re seeing from both Portland residents and the Portland Police Bureau doesn’t match the national narrative, and that’s frustrating,” Day said.
riot that didn’t happen
In a September 2 segment featuring the previous day’s video, anchor Bill Hemmer said it showed “the violence is escalating.” Anchor Trace Gallagher teased another news segment from Sept. 2 by showing the video again, saying, “There’s a riot going on outside an ICE facility in Portland.”
In a Sept. 2 segment featuring Katie Davis-Court’s Sept. 1 video, anchor Bill Hemmer described the Sept. 1 protests as “riots raging.” Video shows moments of violence that occurred after federal police preempted protesters. fox news
In the September 4th segment, Julie Parrish, an attorney for a neighbor of the ICE facility, criticized Portland police, saying, “Well, they’re going to let a violent mob do this for 80 nights in a row.”
The physical actions of the protesters shown in the video were not violent. Instead, the camera shows federal agents advancing towards them. According to the video, one of the protesters was seen blowing bubbles just before the officer threw ammunition into the crowd. Portland police did not declare a riot, a legal designation that allows police to use a high degree of force. (According to a police spokesperson, they only declared a riot once, on June 14.)
The Sept. 1 protest had “little energy,” according to an internal Portland police summary, but federal agents dispersed the crowd to retrieve a prop guillotine that had been brought in. Pro-Trump commentator Katie Daviscourt, who filmed the video, said protesters were having a dance party at X, and their main problems were “staying in restricted areas, burning flags, and having deadly weapons (guillotines).”
ProPublica found a similar pattern in the three months leading up to Fox’s Sept. 4 broadcast. For most of the day and night, there were no criminal charges of violence by demonstrators to account for the clashes.
After dozens of arrests and indictments were announced between June and July 4, federal prosecutors had charged only three people with crimes at the ICE building in the nearly two months leading up to the Sept. 4 Fox broadcast.
ProPublica’s investigation found numerous instances in which police used force during the same two-month period. More than 20 days of footage has been recorded of federal agents grabbing, shoving, pepper spraying, tackling, shooting and using other munitions against protesters.
No local arrests or federal criminal charges were announced that day or night, and only a few dates coincided with incidents of assault on demonstrators that federal authorities later claimed in a lawsuit to send in troops.
Asked if Fox News accurately represented her footage, Davis-Court said, “I support four months of accurate reporting.”
Parrish told ProPublica that he collected evidence of “continued and sustained activity” outside the facility that “considers a riot, an unlawful assembly, or disorderly conduct” based on law and police instructions. She refused to share this evidence, saying it was a privileged part of her client’s file.
Her lawsuit on behalf of neighbors who live near an ICE facility asking police to enforce Portland’s noise ordinance has been dismissed.
neighbor reappears
A Sept. 5 episode of “Fox & Friends” showed an apartment neighbor confronting protesters over noise, yelling at the protesters, “Turn the bleep down, it’s midnight! … We the people need sleep!”
Fox Broadcasting announced that it happened on Tuesday, when it was supposed to happen on September 2nd. “This has been going on for months now, but a lot of this has been since Labor Day,” co-host Ainsley Earhart said as the video on the screen interjected footage of neighbors between other footage of Labor Day protests.
“This is a chaotic city,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said.
Fox News. Screenshot by ProPublica.
The next day, the neighbor’s footage was posted again on FOX News. This time, the network said the footage was from Wednesday, September 3rd.
Fox News. Screenshot by ProPublica.
In fact, the collision was captured on video several months ago. Davis Cote published the video on X on June 29th.
Katie Davis Court. Screenshot by ProPublica.
ProPublica’s investigation found no videos of violent confrontations posted on social media and federal authorities said no arrests had been made on the two nights in September that Fox claimed involved confrontations between neighbors.
For example, on September 3 at 11:22 p.m., a Portland Police Department email states, “There were approximately 20 people still wandering around, but only four were on the sidewalk in front of the building.”
False reports continue even after President Trump’s security order
On September 28, the day President Trump’s order went into effect, Fox News broadcast footage of Kotek saying that Portland didn’t need the Guard, then quickly cut to footage of hectic clashes between protesters and police.
“I wish I could show her that footage,” the anchor said. She added sarcastically as her co-anchor laughed. “Look, it’s just a peaceful protest.”
A small box on the screen indicated the footage was not from Oregon.
It was from Illinois.
