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August 29, 2020

Portland mayor piously turns down Trump's offer of police aid, finds his apartment's lobby overrun by protesters

By Monica Showalter

Is there any fool like a Democrat fool?

Portland's mayor, Ted Wheeler, has already made his city a punch line internationally, vacuously mouthing the platitudes of Black Lives Matter and watching mobs riot and burn his city for 92 days straight, with no effort to contain it.  Democrats bristle at Republican efforts to pin rioting on poor Democrat rule, but they are cut off at the pass when Portland is brought up.  Nobody can argue about the incompetence there.  Even the people in Minneapolis console themselves with the thought that as bad as their city is, at least it's not Portland.

President Trump brought up his city by name in his widely watched Republican convention speech, because it's such a kill shot.

Make no mistake, if you give power to Joe Biden, the radical left will defund police departments all across America. They will pass federal legislation to reduce law enforcement nationwide. They will make every city look like Democrat-run Portland, Oregon.

Yet, to paraphrase Chelsea Clinton, he persists.

On night 92 of the sacking of his city, Wheeler loudly turned down an offer of federal aid to stop the rioting and put out a loud "stay away" press release, fully expecting some lefty clapping. 

One problem: The rioters he was standing up for read that as a signal to invade his apartment lobby:

And they did.  As Matt Vespa notes over at Townhall:

Wheeler literally told the president to "stay away." And now, leftists have reportedly stormed the apartment complex where he lives, and they will not leave until he abolishes the police department by 2022 and resigns from office. It wasn't a massive horde, but now that these folks know where he lives — expect more of these shenanigans. 

Kenosha didn't do that — all it took was a few nights of rioting, and they were all in for some federal help because there was some understanding about how bad it was going to get for their city.  It takes decades for cities to recover from rioting, sadly enough.

Kenosha wasn't the only place, either.  Back when Chicago's mayor got the protesters-at-the-doorstep moment, she suddenly snapped to her senses and accepted federal aid for the purpose of cracking down on the violence-minded invaders, apparently recognizing that this being Chicago, it could well have been the doing of political opponents.  Everyone's a conservative about things he knows best, and in this case, the point was literally driven home.

Not so Portland.  Wheeler continues thus far with the naive view that if he can just protest hard enough, just show he hates Trump hard enough, the protesters will come to love him. 

Trump's thrown out a warning to Wheeler in recent hours about what's next:

Yet Wheeler hasn't a clue.  He expects that the unrest "will ultimately burn itself out," yet he remains a babe in the woods about what these "fiery but peaceful" rioters' aims are — to create chaos and make Portland unliveable.  And yes, they'd like him out and put one of their warlords in.  That's reality, and the longer he takes to recognize this, the worse it's going to get.  He's convinced that the voters will support him no matter what, Because Trump, and he's convinced that the protesters are less a threat than Trump's offer to help restore order through troops.

Now they're after him, and he still thinks he's mayor of Portland, rather than the protesters' kick-around toy.  One way or another, he's likely to find himself finished.  If the protesters don't get him, the voters might.

Image credit: Twitter screen shot.

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