Despite Collapsing Utility, Trump Set to Deploy Troops to Portland
- john raymond
- Sep 27, 2025
- 2 min read
President Trump’s decision to send troops to Portland, Oregon, is neither surprising nor strategically novel. What is remarkable is how late this move comes in his cycle of collapsing tactics.
For years, Portland has stood as one of the most symbolically charged battlegrounds in American political life. The city’s 2020 confrontations with federal forces made it a permanent fixture in Trump’s rhetoric. To his supporters, Portland is the archetype of leftist disorder; to his critics, it is the case study in authoritarian overreach.
Given that resonance, it is less a question of why Portland now than why not sooner.
Collapse as Process, Not Event
When I argued yesterday that Trump’s tactic was collapsing, I did not mean that he would cease trying it. Quite the opposite. Collapse, in this sense, is not an end-state but an erosion of effectiveness. The Rube Goldberg device still gets cranked; it just no longer produces the intended results.
Each run-through—whether in Washington, DC, or Los Angeles—has failed to generate the political advantage Trump seeks. Instead of restoring his grip, these spectacles reveal his shrinking arsenal.
Portland is simply the latest iteration of a method whose power to shock has withered.
Trump’s Intended Pathway
The top-line play remains the same:
Create crisis by deploying troops.
Escalate confrontation until it dominates the news cycle.
Allow the situation to “blow over” under his supposed authority.
Reap political advantage by casting himself as the indispensable defender of order.
Yet the sequence has not worked. In both LA and DC, the images of militarized force backfired, reinforcing his reputation as destabilizer-in-chief rather than guardian of safety. There is no evidence Portland will be different.
Portland as Inevitable Target
That it took this long for Trump to return to Portland suggests hesitation rather than strength. If Portland was always the clearest symbolic stage, why delay? The answer is simple: risk.
Portland’s civic resistance is strong, its political leadership openly defiant, and its public deeply experienced in confronting federal heavy-handedness. The longer Trump waited, the more obvious his desperation became. Resorting to Portland now signals not control, but the exhaustion of other options.
The Correct Strategic Response
For opponents of this maneuver, the lesson is clear. The goal is to deny Trump the blowover he seeks. That means:
Use every legal instrument available—injunctions, lawsuits, constitutional challenges—to restrict or halt the deployment.
Maintain nonviolence in the streets so that Trump cannot frame dissent as riot or insurrection. His entire stratagem depends on stoking disorder and then claiming credit for suppressing it. Peaceful defiance strips his playbook of its only leverage.
A Poor Decision
Trump’s decision to send troops to Portland does not demonstrate strength; it underscores collapse. The utility of these deployments is fading, yet Trump clings to them because little else remains.
Portland is not proof of a renewed tactic but confirmation that the repertoire is narrowing to hollow repetition.
The path forward for those who oppose this occupation is to deny Trump the spectacle he craves—through law, through restraint, and through a unified refusal to be manipulated into his theater of chaos.
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