'This should be impeachable': Trump buried over 'war-ravaged Portland' claim

President Donald Trump faced a wave of scrutiny Saturday after dubbing Portland, Oregon as “war-ravaged,” a characterization he cited to justify ordering a new military deployment to the city.

"Oh, okay, I get it now. YOU took a lot of Tylenol, didn’t you?” wrote X user “Nickie B,” a self-described critic of Trump and the MAGA movement, mocking Trump’s recent announcement linking, with disputed evidence, autism to Tylenol. “Now I get why we should stay away from it. Thanks for your attention to this matter!”

Trump has already deployed the military to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., and has threatened on numerous occasions to do the same to Chicago, Illinois, and doing so in an ominous manner alongside an artificial intelligence-made image depicting the U.S. military invading the Illinois capital.

Trump’s announcement came in the wake of threats from Portland city officials threatening to evict federal immigration officials from a facility over alleged permit violations, which itself was followed by a sudden, unexplained “influx of federal agents” in the city.

Now that Trump has actually pulled the trigger and announced a military deployment to Portland, while also declaring the city to be “war-ravaged,” critics quickly pounced on the president’s rhetoric.

“Portland saw 17 homicides in the first half of 2025, a decline of 51%,” wrote Jay Bookman, journalist and author, in a post on X to his more than 20,000 followers.

“Yet Trump and the ‘secretary of war’ are sending the U.S. military into the city, authorizing American troops to use ‘Full Force’ against American civilians. What are we doing here, people?”

Some even argued that Trump’s characterization of Portland as “war-ravaged” was an impeachable offense, including Mehdi Hasan, journalist and former MSNBC host.

“If ever there was a time not to normalize Trump’s authoritarian fever dreams, this is it,” Hasan wrote to his more than 1.8 followers on X.

“This should be impeachable. ‘War ravaged’ Portland? He’s insane – and insanely power hungry. The script is set – call an imaginary group a terror group and then send in the troops.”

The city of Portland has violent crime rates higher than the national average, though the figures have declined dramatically in recent years.

Homicides generally declined in Portland from 2000 to 2019 before spiking during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the spike in homicides, rates began to fall again starting in 2023, then further dropping by 8% between 2023 and 2024, and further still during the first half of 2025, where homicides dropped by 51% when compared to the same time period the previous year.