The GOP used a fabricated protest image to cheer Donald Trump’s plan to send National Guard troops into Portland—then shrugged it off as a meme.
On Sunday, the Oregon Republican Party put out a statement on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
“President Trump deploys 300 California National Guard troops to Portland,” it claimed, pairing it with a fiery street scene featuring riot cops and red flares.
However, there were two problems with the post. Firstly, hours after the post went up, a federal judge blocked the deployment.
And, as reported by The Guardian, the picture wasn’t taken in Portland—or even the U.S.
Rather, it was a composite of two stock shots. One was a 2008 photo of South American riot police, with the big giveaway that officers were holding shields with “Policia,” the Spanish word for police, on them.
The other was a 2017 protest scene by a Brazilian photographer from a free image library, featuring a crowd of demonstrators lighting up the night sky with red flares.
When called out by the Guardian, the party replied on X: “We’re not reporters, just bad memers.” The post has been removed.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, the Oregon GOP said, “The graphic was created by one of our volunteers…using stock photos which—unbeknownst to us—included foreign imagery. The post was promptly removed once the misperception was identified.”
The post came ahead of U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut—appointed by Trump in 2019—issuing orders that blocked the president from federalizing Oregon’s National Guard and from using California Guard units in Portland.
The Trump administration has framed Portland as a “war zone” in a string of press releases, but local reporting shows protests outside ICE’s Portland field office have been small and largely uneventful compared to the dystopian imagery.
Immergut first halted federalization on Saturday night before extending the restriction, while California officials announced their own court win preventing any out-of-state deployment of California troops.
