President Trump is not taking the dismissiveness of one West Coast city’s progressive mayor with a grain of salt. No, The Donald is peppering his way through Twitter, tweeting disgust and putting the blame for the violence and death in Portland squarely on the shoulders of Ted Wheeler. Next to Bill de Blasio, Wheeler may be the most unpopular mayor in America. After nearly 100 days of occupation by Black Lives Matter and Antifa radicals, the torching of federal buildings, beatings of innocent citizens, and now the death of a counter-protester, all eyes are on Portland to cave into allowing the National Guard to set things right.
Portland Needs An Intervention
Relations have been testy between Trump and Wheeler for some time: Wheeler shunning any help from Trump in light of ongoing civil unrest. On Friday, after being blamed by the president and countless speakers during the Republican National Convention for the unchecked rioting, looting, and terrorizing, Wheeler penned a letter telling Trump to go pound sand:
“On behalf of the City of Portland: No thanks. We don’t need your politics of division and demagoguery … Tens of thousands of Portlanders have peacefully protested and marched for the noble cause of fixing our broken criminal justice system.”
And he ended the missive with, “stay away, please.” At least he said “please.” But Wheeler’s holier-than-thou attitude of being able to control the monster he himself made and fed soon turned out to be wrong – dead wrong. Andy Ngo reported via tweet that not only did Wheeler “reject offer of aid, but a mob of DSA, antifa & BLM radicals gathered at his condo. They’ve locked themselves together in the lobby & demand his resignation & the defunding of police.”
For those wondering, DSA stands for Democratic Socialists of America, who may or may not enjoy gainful employment. On top of the embarrassment of becoming increasingly unpopular with, well, everyone of every ideology, the very next day, Wheeler found himself dealing with one counter-protester dead in the street from a gunshot wound – which may have been entirely preventable.
As you can well imagine, Trump went ballistic:
“Wheeler is incompetent, much like Sleepy Joe Biden. This is not what our great Country wants. They want Safety & Security, and do NOT want to Defund our Police!”
Wheeler retreated to let others on the Twitter platform battle it out by keyboard. Trump did not back down, picking up and retweeting incendiary, often crude, comments such as “Ted Wheeler is the useless f—ing idiot and comic relief that gets everyone killed in every disaster movie.” Trump asked the commenter to watch her language but agreed.
Enough
The violent escalation in the occupation of Portland is an example of a lawless society perpetuated by a pandering and pathetically desperate group of people denied absolute power. Chaos, arson, damages in the multiple millions of dollars to businesses, and loss of life, are a direct result of not checking the lawless behavior at the first incident. Americans watched as Minneapolis burned. Americans are watching as Portland allows a fringe group of radicals to go rogue and murder innocent people.
Trump is not the only frustrated citizen, and fighting for control on Twitter is not the way to stop the violence in Portland.
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Read more from Sarah Cowgill.
