New Media Matters data finds that in the roughly two weeks leading up to a White House roundtable discussion of antifa, Fox News interviewed and repeatedly ran b-roll footage of Portland anti-ICE protests captured by several of the right-wing influencers who attended the roundtable. This data underscores right-wing media’s ongoing campaign to cast the protests as violent while the Trump administration simultaneously takes actions against antifa and other protesters.
On October 8, the White House hosted a roundtable discussion focused on supposed threats posed by antifa, complete with testimony from a dozen right-wing media figures and online commentators who shared tales about the violence supposedly emerging from the left. Central to many of their talking points were the ongoing anti-ICE protests in Portland, Oregon, where the Trump administration has attempted to deploy 200 National Guard troops. The roundtable followed President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order designating antifa a “domestic terrorist organization” on September 22.
Right-wing media have repeatedly characterized the anti-ICE protests in Portland as violent. Several right-wing media figures and influencers have even gone to Portland, including some accompanying Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, as part of what Oregon Public Broadcasting described as the “deepening alliance between the administration and an online world willing to misrepresent facts if it means furthering political goals.”
