President Donald Trump held a roundtable on Wednesday, which featured prominent administration officials and independent journalists, billed as a “Roundtable on antifa.”
Much of the commentary at the event, which lasted more than 90 minutes, focused on Portland and other cities where Trump has attempted to or succeeded in bringing in federal troops to quell protests.
Antifa, short for “anti-fascists,” is used to broadly describe militant, far-left-leaning groups. Outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in South Portland, where protests have been happening since June, a large share of protesters at night are dressed in black bloc to conceal their identity, wearing dark clothing and masks. But that’s not enough to establish that someone is antifa, since that’s not a fixed identity.
Here are seven claims made during the roundtable event, and a fact check of those claims.
Claim: Trump claimed without evidence that there are fires all over Portland, going on to compare the city to a movie with “bombed-out cities” and “bombed-out people.” He also said that Portlanders, “the real people that live there,” want a federal presence in the city.
“The amazing thing is, you look at Portland and you see fires all over the place, you see fights and just violence — it’s just so crazy,” he said.
Trump added: “It’s like the movies you see for the kids, I guess not only the kids, adults also, where you have these bombed-out cities and these bombed-out people — it’s like, worse than that. I don’t think they could make a movie as bad. And then the governor will get up and say, ‘I don’t know why they’re coming here. It’s such a wonderful place.’ And the amazing thing is, the people want us to be there. The real people that live there. Many of them have left. But the real people want us to be there.”
Fact check: The Portland Fire Department responded to four calls about fires near the ICE building since June 6, according to fire department data. One of the calls — on Sept. 14 — came from someone who called 911 based on what they saw in a TikTok video. There was “no evidence of a fire and no response” according to fire department notes on the call.
From June 6 to Sept. 30, the department has seen a 15% increase in reported fires over the same time last year, a fire department spokesperson told The Oregonian/OregonLive. He said most of the increase came from bark dust and dumpster fires, and building fire responses were down 33% over that same time period.
“The narrative that fires are happening all over the place is not what I’m seeing in the data evaluation,” the fire department spokesperson said.
There have been no bombs dropped in Portland or exploded in Portland in recent memory. The last recorded bomb to explode near Portland was 2008 when a father-son duo were found guilty of placing a bomb outside a bank in nearby Woodburn, according to The Oregonian’s archives. Officers responding to the scene thought the bomb was fake and it exploded as they attempted to dismantle it, killing two men.
The most recent known occurrence of a Portland explosion came Sept. 23 at a food cart pod in Southeast Portland. Investigators suspect it was an accidental propane tank explosion. No one was injured, and firefighters quickly extinguished the fire.
Claim: In addition to slamming protesters, Trump accused Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek of breaking the law.
“In Portland, Oregon, antifa thugs repeatedly attacked our officers and seized federal property in an attempt to violently stop the execution of federal law. Everything we’re doing is lawful and what they’re doing is not lawful. And the governor and mayor, as an example, you can say of Portland and certainly of Chicago, it’s not lawful what they’re doing. They have to be very careful.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Wilson and Kotek of covering up terrorism happening in Portland, saying they either “ignore what’s going on or they are helping antifa cover it up.”
“I was in Portland yesterday and had the chance to visit with the governor of Oregon and also the mayor there in town, and they are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets,” Noem said.
Fact check: Protesters erected multiple barricades in June and used a stop sign to shatter the glass of the front door of the ICE building. About 75 arrests have been made in connection with the protests over the past four months. More than a dozen people have been accused of assaulting a federal officer, including a man accused of spitting at an officer earlier this month. Among more than 40 Portland Police Bureau arrests, charges have ranged from disorderly conduct and harassment to criminal mischief, arson, assault and robbery.
Most of the arrests came either in June, when there were 45 total, or after Trump announced Sept. 27 that he would deploy troops. There have been 22 arrests since then.
Recent protests have been markedly less active and violent since they peaked in June, with protesters regularly stepping aside and following instructions when federal agents tell them to clear a path for cars entering or exiting the facility. A Portland police official said in court testimony in July that federal officers were “instigating” some of the clashes with protesters and police have described instances when federal agents’ use of force inflamed tensions or served no clear purpose.
Kotek fired back at Trump on Thursday, telling Fox 12: “The Trump Administration has no interest in the facts, no interest in public safety and we cannot take them at their word.”
Wilson said Tuesday that the calm Noem witnessed during her visit showed that “Portland continues to manage public safety professionally and responsibly, irrespective of the claims of out-of-state social media influencers.”
Claim: Trump said Washington, D.C., was “almost as bad” as Portland, until federal troops were deployed to the capital city in August. He claimed that “most of the retailers have left” Portland.
“I don’t know what could be worse than Portland, you don’t even have stores anymore,” Trump said. “They don’t even put glass up, they put plywood on their windows. But most of the retailers have left. But Washington, D.C., was so bad, and I’d say it took 12 days to really make it pretty good, and a month to make it great.”
Fact check: Plywood was common on Portland retail storefronts in 2020 and 2021, both downtown and in many other parts of the city. That began to ease in 2022 and plywood has come down almost everywhere in the city now. One prime example of plywood was the Apple Store downtown, which was looted on the first night of riots that took place in the early morning hours of May 30, 2020. Plywood remained on the storefront until February 2021. Apple donated a mural painted on the plywood, then put up metal barricades. Those came down in March 2023, when Apple put up a new glass exterior made of panels that are cheaper to repair than the floor-to-ceiling glass and which remains today.
Portland has lost many chain stores over the past few years, due variously to poor performance, rampant shoplifting and (perhaps) Oregon’s corporate activity tax, which levies a tax on sales at large businesses — especially retailers. Closures include two Walmarts in 2023, three Targets in 2023, the Pearl District REI in 2023, the Northeast Portland Nike store in 2023, the Gateway Fred Meyer in 2025 and the Gateway Kohl’s in 2025. In addition, many retail pharmacies have closed in Portland, but that’s the case everywhere.
And, while major retailers have certainly moved out of downtown, small businesses continue to move in.
There are still many places to shop in Portland. Some stores have closed due to crime — though it’s shoplifting, not violent crime, that prompted the closures. And it’s difficult to differentiate between which closures were the result of shoplifting and which are the result of poor performance based on the location or the corporate parent.
Claim: Katie Daviscourt writes for the conservative Post Millennial website, where former Portlander Andy Ngo is editor-at-large, and has said she was hit in the face by a protester in Portland. Daviscourt called the Portland protests “nothing short of a sustained attack on the United States, which is being supported by Democratic elected officials.”
“The Portland Police Bureau has completely abandoned several blocks outside the ICE facility, giving away their jurisdiction to a terrorist group who has spent the past four months harassing, assaulting and intimidating anyone they perceive to be against their cause,” she said.
Fact check: The Portland Police Bureau had a nightly presence at the ICE facility in June. Police pulled back resources over the summer. Officers have typically stood back from the gathered protesters, who have numbered between a dozen and about 150 people since Trump made the announcement about sending National Guard troops to the city. There have been about 75 arrests associated with the protests over the last four months.
Claim: Brandi Kruse, a right-wing podcaster, on the idea that antifa is a concept and not a real group that calls itself “Antifa.”: “Some of them literally do,” Kruse said. “They call themselves ‘Rose City Antifa.’”
Fact check: In 2020, Trump’s FBI director, Chris Wray, told lawmakers that antifa is an ideology, not an organization.
It is also true that Rose City Antifa is the name of a group formed in 2007, according to its website, “in order to shut down a neo-Nazi skinhead festival called Hammerfest.”
The group did not respond to a request for comment about whether it has been involved with the recent protests or even if the group is still active. On its website, Rose City Antifa said it participates in “direct action,” “education” and “solidarity.”
The last blog post on the site was from March 2025.
In July, Noem accused Rose City Antifa, among other groups, of trying to dox ICE officers.
Claim: Conservative influencer Nick Sortor, on the buildings across the street from the facility: “You talk to the neighbors that live in the apartments next door to the ICE facility. They are veterans with PTSD that live there and they hear all night long screaming, fireworks being lit off by these rioters, children crying because they can’t sleep at night and they are scared of all the noise outside and they can’t leave.”
Fact check: Even when there haven’t been arrests, the protests have been disruptive to neighbors, with yelling, loud music and bullhorns. One resident filed a lawsuit asking that the city be compelled to enforce noise ordinances around the area, but a judge ruled in August that Portland police are not required to do so.
Lashawnda Shavers, a resident of a nearby building, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she can see where demonstrators are from her sixth-floor apartment.
“Our neighborhood is beautiful, and overall I feel safe here,” Shavers said. “What I don’t feel safe about is the tear gas federal employees have used during demonstrations.”
Another resident, Dustin Ragsdale, told The Oregonian/OregonLive, “It’s been very jarring and terrifying, because the federal state is bringing violence against my neighborhood.”
Ragsdale keeps coming to the protest, he said. “It’s kind of hard to sleep with this going on anyway, so I might as well be present.”
Not every neighbor is supportive of the protesters. BBC News interviewed Cindy Colgrove, who lives in the building. According to that report, Colgrove told the media company that it’s “been ‘115 days of hell’ since protests against Trump intensified outside the ICE facility in June.”
“I only come out during the day,” Colgrove said in the story, which was quoted by the White House in a press release.
“You see all the black-covered antifa people aren’t here. They come with the night. In the daytime it’s all these little old senior people that think they’re changing the world before they pass from this earth.”
Still, most people living nearby interviewed by the BBC did not agree with Colgrove. One, Mai Tai Boyd, a US Air Force veteran, said he thinks Trump’s plan to send troops is unconstitutional.
“I keep up with the politics,” he told BBC News. “So I feel a little different.”
Claim: According to Trump, while Kotek was walking around Portland on television saying Portland didn’t need federal troops, there were “explosions in the background.”
Fact check: Kotek has posted videos to social media that show scenes from Portland. She also has held news conferences in Portland in recent weeks to say that the city does not need or want federal troops. No explosions happened in any of these videos.
— Veronica Nocera, Mike Rogoway, Zaeem Shaikh and Fedor Zarkhin of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report.