How Right-Wing Influencers Are Shaping the Guard Fight in Portland

In the fight over deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Ore., Democratic leaders in the city and state have pleaded with President Trump and the courts to trust law enforcement records, both local and federal, that describe the demonstrations as small and comparatively calm.

But in the bifurcated media world of 2025, one side’s comparative calm is the other’s “hellscape” — as the White House described Portland on Wednesday — and the narrative that the Trump administration has wanted has been supplied by a coterie of right-wing influencers elevated by Mr. Trump himself.

On Thursday, the repercussions of those dueling versions of reality became clear as judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit questioned a district court’s finding that the protests in Portland were likely too minor to justify the National Guard deployment. The appeals court judges instead cited federal reports of demonstrators spitting on federal officers and shining flashlights in their eyes, behavior that has been captured, amplified and sometimes even prompted by pro-Trump personalities eager to counter local police.

To some extent, the right’s assertions of chaos in Oregon have been self-fulfilling. The administration’s close ties to a small but well-followed group of influencers and conspiracy theorists has amplified their voices, and they in turn have encouraged administration efforts to crack down on demonstrators. The portrayals of a city on fire have angered protesters.

And sometimes, left-wing activists have risen to the bait, leading to scuffles and injuries conservative streamers then promote on the internet. One right-wing commentator, Katie Daviscourt, said she received a black eye when a demonstrator hit her with a flag pole.

“Certainly over the last 10 days, the energy level has gone up, the amount of conflicting points of view have increased greatly,” Chief Bob Day of the Portland Police Bureau said at a news media briefing Tuesday. “And this has created an environment that’s equally, if not more, challenging for us.”

Pro-Trump provocateurs have gotten more open about their efforts as the stakes in the battle over how to police protests grow. Ms. Noem has threatened to quadruple the number of federal law enforcement agents in Portland if she is not satisfied with the city’s crowd-control efforts. Troops from the Oregon and California National Guards are awaiting deployment. Another group of guardsmen from Texas could be summoned at the president’s request.

Meantime, influencers are seeking to raise the tension. Matt Tardio, a right-wing streamer who was broadcasting to an online audience of 10,000 or so from the ICE building in Portland on Wednesday night, conceded that other streamers were trying to stir up trouble so they could capture it on video.

“They were handing out flags and trying to get antifa folks to burn them, and then claimed that they were going to do physical harm to them if they burned the American flag,” he said. All the while, a videographer was capturing the action.

Mr. Tardio, 41, said he was not sure which side the people involved were supporting.

“In the beginning it looked like people on the right are the ones instigating, but in the following evenings it looked like people on the left,” he said. “People are absorbing information on social media quicker than reality.” Nobody can keep up, he added.

“It’s a lot more of the, ‘I’m going to get in your face and say something controversial to try to get a response out of you,’” he said.

There are, to be sure, streamers and podcasters on the left who are commenting on the standoff, but conservative provocateurs hold more influence because of their connections to the administration. Ms. Noem did not have any news briefings or public appearances during her trip to Portland this week. Instead, she brought her own media entourage, which chronicled her every move through the prism of their support.

“BREAKING,” Bo Loudon, a 19-year-old influencer and friend of Mr. Trump’s youngest son, Barron, wrote on social media. Ms. Noem “just stared down violently Antifa rioters on the roof of a Portland ICE facility,” he wrote.

The video attached showed Ms. Noem on the roof of the building looking down at a small clutch of protesters far away, one of them in a chicken suit.

The man in the chicken suit, Jack Dickinson, 26, who had been coming to the ICE building to protest federal immigration policies for months, said he was struck by the disconnect. Mr. Dickinson said he watched one of the pro-Trump influencers, Nick Sortor, film outside the ICE building, then heard the narration.

“He was talking about this looking like a third-world country,” Mr. Dickinson said as he surveyed a riverfront neighborhood of apartment buildings, coffee shops and an Italian restaurant popular for holiday meals and graduation parties. “It’s just clearly not.”

The influencers with Ms. Noem included major conservative celebrities such as Mr. Johnson, whose YouTube posts regularly draw hundreds of thousands of views, and younger conservative journalists such as David Medina, who lives in Oregon, and Mr. Sortor, who has been producing a steady stream of content this week based on his Oct. 2 arrest at the ICE demonstrations.

Mr. Sortor was initially charged with second-degree disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor in Oregon, after he took a burning American flag from a left-wing demonstrator and a fight ensued. The response from Washington, D.C., was intense and immediate. Attorney General Pam Bondi demanded an investigation into the Portland Police Bureau, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Mr. Sortor had been “ambushed by antifa.”

For his efforts, Mr. Sortor found himself at the White House on Wednesday, as the president praised the actions of right-wing activists and pledged to dismantle antifa, a loose-knit group of anarchists whose presence in Portland has long angered Mr. Trump.

Mr. Sortor had been “assaulted in Portland by a flag-burning mob,” the president declared.

Mr. Sortor responded, “The Portland politicians literally are willing to sacrifice their own citizens just to appease these antifa terrorists.”

Nathan Vasquez, the district attorney of Multnomah County, which includes parts of Portland, dropped the charges against Mr. Sortor but planned to take two left-wing demonstrators he scuffled with to trial. Mr. Vasquez said police did have probable cause to arrest Mr. Sortor.

The influencer was engaged in “what I think most people would consider antagonistic behavior,” Mr. Vasquez said. “The hard part is that obnoxious behavior doesn’t amount to you getting to punch him in the face.”

After Ms. Noem’s visit to Portland, Mr. Johnson appeared live on Newsmax from inside the cordoned-off ICE building. He described the building as being in downtown Portland and said that the windows were blacked out and covered with tarps because “Democrats keep shooting sniper rounds into ICE facilities.”

Police have not reported any incidents of sniper fire, and the ICE building sits about two miles from downtown Portland.

Along with a video of Ms. Noem praying before a fast-food meal with federal workers, Mr. Johnson posted on social media his own photo of her on the roof of the ICE building.

“She stood at the edge and stared down Antifa and a dude in a chicken suit,” Mr. Johnson wrote. “Straight savage.”