President directs the defense secretary to use 'full force' to protect Portland; Portland's mayor says the right number of troops is zero.

Hon. Saturday afternoon. The President posts to Truth Social that he is directing the Defense Secretary to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland. He capitalizes War. He capitalizes Troops. He says the troops are needed because ICE facilities in the city are under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists. He says he is authorizing Full Force, if necessary.

Look. Three problems. Three.

Number one. Portland is not war-ravaged. Portland is a normal American city with a complicated downtown and a lot of bridges and a robust coffee scene. Portland has, over the past few years, had its share of protests, including ones around an ICE facility. Those protests have been intermittent, mostly small, mostly legal. The homicide rate in Portland is at a multi-year low. The downtown vacancy rate is improving. The city, in the bureaucratic sense, is fine.

Number two. Antifa is not, by any technical definition, an organization. Antifa is a category of worldview. It does not have a board, a treasurer, a phone tree, an EIN. It is not a thing you can attack from the way you attack from, say, the Marine Corps. The President’s statement requires us to believe that the worldview has a siege machine. The worldview, hon, does not have a siege machine.

Number three. The full force line. The President of the United States, on a Saturday afternoon, on his personal social network, used the words full force in connection with deploying federal troops into an American city. He did not specify what full force meant. He did not specify the rules of engagement. He did not specify the authority under which the troops would operate. He did not run any of this past the Governor of Oregon, who, under federal law, is the official with primary authority over the Oregon National Guard.

The mayor of Portland, the actual mayor, a man named Keith Wilson, was on the wires by sundown. His statement was a single sentence: the number of necessary troops is zero, in Portland and any other American city. The Governor’s office issued a similar statement.

By Sunday the Defense Secretary had memo’d a deployment of 200 National Guard members. Over both of those officials’ objections. By the next week a federal judge had granted a temporary restraining order blocking the deployment. The judge wrote, plainly, that the federal record did not support the President’s characterization.

You ever notice how the full force always seems to need to be announced on Saturday before anyone has been notified.

Funny how that works.