Republicans Caught Using Fake Image to Lie for Trump About Portland
The Oregon Republican Party used images of riots in South America.
President Donald Trump called Portland a war zone last week, and now state Republicans are trying to deliver one—by sharing fake photos of a fake riot.
The official social media accounts of the Oregon Republican Party shared an image Sunday showing a crowd of protesters looking at a plume of red smoke from a flare, with a line of riot gear-clad police officers standing in the midst of the cloud, The Guardian reported Tuesday.
“President Trump on Sunday deployed 300 California National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon after a judge ruled that the Oregon National Guard could not be deployed to keep federal facilities and personnel in Portland safe,” the accounts captioned the photograph on X, Facebook, and Instagram.
But the images posted by Republicans didn’t show Portland at all, according to The Guardian.
The image of shield-carrying police officers was from Getty Images, showing “South American riot police” in 2008. Their shields clearly read “Policia,” which is Spanish or Portuguese. Other images taken by the same photographer around the same time indicate that these police were in Ecuador.
Similarly, the protesters aren’t from a wartorn Portland, either. That photograph can be found on the free image website Pexels and shows “anonymous people standing on street among smoke during protests at night” in August 2017.
When a Guardian reporter pointed this out on X, the Oregon GOP account replied: “We’re not reporters, just bad memers”—a shocking abdication of accountability for spreading blatant disinformation. The original posts, and the account’s reply have since been removed.
If the situation in Portland were really so dire, why would Republicans have to manufacture images of a city “under siege from attack by Antifa,” as the president claims? It seems that if the city were as “war-ravaged” as Trump says, then Republicans could just go outside and snap a photo.
Public officials have pushed back on the president’s wild characterization of Portland as a hotbed of violent clashes. Actual reporting of the protests outside of Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Facility details generally small daily protests, with a larger demonstration occurring over the weekend, that law enforcement fired at using tear gas and rubber bullets.
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