Portland’s far-left Mayor Ted Wheeler may be so completely content with ignoring Antifa and Black Lives Matters thugs to the point that he endures them trying to literally burn down his own building (yes, this actually happened), but the Trump administration is done playing games.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf has issued a warning to Wheeler that if he continues to refuse federal assistance to address ongoing civil unrest, “the federal government will have no choice but to protect our American citizens.”
“We are standing by to support Portland,” Wolf told Wheeler in an August 31st letter, Fox News reported Monday.
“At the same time, President Trump has made it abundantly clear that there will come a point when state and local officials fail to protect its citizens from violence, the federal government will have no choice but to protect our American citizens,” he continued.
As Newsmax explains, “For over three months, there have been nightly violent protests in Portland’s streets that have included three recent killings after protesters and pro-Trump groups clashed. Law enforcement officials have also made 255 arrests and declared 23 unlawful assemblies and riots.”
Wolf warned Wheeler that “you have stood by passively, arguing that the nightly violence ‘will ultimately burn itself out.’ The evidence demonstrates otherwise.”
On August 28, Wheeler wrote a letter to Trump once again rejecting POTUS’ offer of federal law enforcement to the city, as Portland apparently has no need for Trump’s “politics of division and demagoguery.”
“Portlanders are onto you,” Wheeler wrote. “We have already seen your reckless disregard for human life in your bumbling response to the COVID pandemic. And we know you’ve reached the conclusion that images of violence or vandalism are your only ticket to reelection.”
Let that sink in.
Trump could easily be petty and dismissive of the continued unrest in the city, but he is instead being an adult, and a leader, and offering federal aid to the overwhelmed law enforcement officers and to Wheeler. At some point however, people want to see action from the White House. The back and forth gets old.
Wheeler, meanwhile, is more interested in virtue signaling than actually protecting the citizens of his city.
Wolf, meanwhile, is asking Wheeler to grow up (in so many words), saying that the events in Portland are “evils you can stop — and must stop. Consider what happened recently in (Kenosha) Wisconsin—where the State of Wisconsin requested and received federal law enforcement assistance and the violence and looting there ended.”
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