That anyone would even think of sending the 82nd Airborne to Portland should send chills of terror down the spines of all democracy loving Americans, By Hal M. Brown

The foreground above is from Spartan Military Prints and the background is from a tourist website showing a typical Portland street screen with a colorfully painted building like many others in the downtown area. That I would even take the time to put this together is nothing short of horrifying.

Not having any idea what to write I just read this:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Trump officials entertained sending the U.S. Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division to respond to protests in what the president has referred to as “war-ravaged“ Portland, Oregon, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported Friday night.

Deputy Homeland Security Adviser Anthony Salisbury — in exchanges over the third-party messaging app Signal that were reportedly viewable from a “crowded, public space” in Minnesota — texted with officials such as Hegseth’s adviser Patrick Weaver, who wrote that the defense secretary wanted Trump to explicitly tell him to send troops into Portland.

“Between you and I, I think Pete just wants the top cover from the boss if anything goes sideways with the troops there,” Weaver wrote.

Weaver described the 82nd Airborne — an infantry division that has parachuted into combat zones ranging from World War I and II to wars in the Middle East — as the “top tier” rapid reaction force abroad.

“So it will cause a lot of headlines,” he wrote. “Probably why he wants potus to tell him to do it.”

Below is the illustration the Daily Beast (subscription) used for their article:

Note that they are calling this “Signalgate 2.0” because this will be the second time this app was used for messages meant to be confidential. This is hardly the main story here, and I say this not just because I live in Portland and yesterday walking back from dinner we heard a helicopter above and looked up and saw it was military. I said I wonder if it is headed downtown and then realized it was going away from the city. Perhaps it had already been there. That we would even think this way is horrendous, but on Oct. 1st there was this article:

If the 82nd Airborne comes to Portland we may be seeing these:

Not only are these airborne death bringing machines meant for actual warfare, but when they fly overhead making a loud roar impossible to ignore, they can intimidating as hell if you fear them.

Most of us have heard them around here. Sometimes they belong to our National Guard on exercises, though more often they are the decidely friendly looking Coast Guard Blackhawks which we know are meant to be live savers and not life takers. We see them all the time when we go to the Vancouver Waterfront Park where they often fly over the Columbia River.

Will Trump authorize using the 82nd Airborne in Portland? Consider this article:

Addendum:

Here are a few of the comments to the HUFFPOST article:

This is what’s happening in Portland now: Federal agents pepper-sprayed protesters outside Portland ICE facility. If soldiers from the National Guard or even the 82nd Airborne come I can only hope they show the restraint and professionalism that these Trump Gestapo don’t care about.

Update: I don’t know if I can claim credit for RawStory covering this, but they hadn’t when I wrote the Substack so I sent them a suggestion that they should. Later on they did (here).

This is my go-to website for breaking political news.