What did Donald Trump do today?

He forgot to tell the actual authorities about his plans to invade Portland.

Trump set off a firestorm of criticism this morning with yet another post to his private microblogging website promising to invade an American city with U.S. military forces. This time it was the supposedly "war ravaged" Portland, Oregon, with the added explicit threat of the using the "full force" of the military against Americans protesting the ICE facility there.

But as is often the case, Trump doesn't appear to have told anyone else in his own administration his plans before tweeting them out. Pentagon officials were caught completely by surprise, and the Oregon National Guard hadn't heard anything about it, either. Neither had Oregon's governor, Tina Kotek.

As with virtually every city Trump has targeted for a military occupation, crime in Portland is low and dropping, and the supposed "threat"—people protesting an ICE detention facility—is laughable. For example, just today, there were about a dozen protestors standing outside the facility holding signs, including one man in a chicken costume. But there have been violent reactions from federal agents, responding to no greater "threat" than taunting or graffiti with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The "threat" to the ICE detention facility across the street. Photo taken Saturday, Sept. 27.

Trump has been trying to paint all opposition, including legal protest and free assembly, to his administration and policies as the work of a grand "antifa" conspiracy. He's even going so far as to proclaim "antifa" a terrorist organization, though that designation has no real legal meaning. (He appears to have forgotten that he'd already made the same proclamation in 2020, also to no effect.) While it's true that most Americans are indeed anti-fascist, there really is no such thing as "antifa" as an organization. 

It's entirely possible that nothing will come of Trump's social media saber-rattling. He backed down almost immediately from his promise to bring "WAR" to Chicago when it became clear that state and city officials would challenge him legally and politically, and Portland, though much smaller, is likely to react the same way. 

Many Portlanders posted scenes of the city and the few calm protestors and the ICE facility today, some of them juxtaposing normal daily life with audio of Trump describing it as a hellish war zone.
 

Why does this matter?

• A competent president who wasn't just trolling for attention would probably have told someone about an invasion before he tweeted about it.
  
  
• It's not a crime to not like Donald Trump or his policies, no matter how much he wishes it were. 

• Usually presidents are anti-fascist too.