The Oregon Republican Party is facing backlash after it shared a social media post about a planned military deployment in Portland using a fabricated image composed of photographs from South America.
The party's official accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and X claimed, "President Trump on Sunday deployed 300 California National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon after a judge ruled that the Oregon National Guard could not be deployed to keep federal facilities and personnel in Portland safe."
The accompanying image appeared designed to support Trump's claim that Portland's protests were out of control, showing a line of riot police and a crowd with flares creating red smoke. However, the image was a digital composite of two unrelated photographs from different South American countries, The Guardian reported Tuesday.
The police officers in the image originated from a 2008 Getty Images photograph of "South American riot police," with a clear indication of its non-U.S. origin: an officer's shield marked "Policia" in Spanish or Portuguese. The specific location appears to be Ecuador, based on additional context in similar archival images, according to The Guardian.
The fiery protest scene was a separate stock photograph taken by a Brazilian photographer in 2017, sourced from the free image site Pexels.
When a journalist pointed out the image's inauthenticity, the Oregon Republican Party responded on social media with a cavalier admission: "We're not reporters, just bad memers."
Ultimately, a federal judge blocked Trump's attempt to deploy California's National Guard to Portland.
