President Trump’s decision to federalize 200 Oregon National Guard troops to protect immigration enforcement officers and federal facilities in Portland is the kind of decisive action Americans expected when law and order matters. After years of cities being allowed to fracture under the weight of permissive local leadership, a president finally moved to secure federal property and personnel. This deployment was confirmed by reporting that the troops were being federalized and placed on a 60-day mission to protect sites targeted by violent fringe elements.
Predictably, Oregon’s Democratic leaders responded with lawsuits and theater, filing in federal court to try to block what they portray as an unconstitutional overreach. Their argument boils down to politics over public safety: refuse to acknowledge a problem, then sue when someone else takes responsibility for solving it. The legal challenge from the state and city won’t change the fact that federal officials have a duty to protect federal assets when local authorities either can’t or won’t.
Enter Jon Stewart — once a voice for common-sense humor who now seems content to rebrand himself as the court jester of the coastal elite, angrily labeling every tough-on-chaos move as “dictatorship.” Stewart’s rhetoric has long leaned on dramatic comparisons to authoritarianism, and he has doubled down in recent commentary portraying routine measures to secure facilities as ominous power grabs. For people who care about order and the rule of law, this kind of performative outrage is less persuasive than it is predictable.
Dave Rubin, in a Direct Message clip, called out Stewart for that very posture and shared footage that highlights Stewart’s reflexive framing of Trump as a tyrant rather than a commander-in-chief fulfilling his responsibilities. Rubin’s audience isn’t surprised: the same media elites who cheered on 2020 street chaos now clutch their pearls at the thought of troops protecting courthouses and immigration offices. Conservatives see this as a culture clash — one side wants security and accountable institutions, the other wants narrative control and perpetual victimhood performance.
Meanwhile, real Portlanders on the ground are baffled by the whole fuss, pointing out that life in many parts of the city is calm and normal, a direct rebuke to the selective footage pushed by activists and sympathetic networks. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real threats; it means the media’s obsession with a sensational script often drowns out sober judgment. If elected officials want to protect citizens and federal workers, they should stop playing political games and start doing their jobs.
This is a moment for patriots who believe in the rule of law to stand firm and demand honest debate instead of theatrical moralizing. The courts will sort the constitutional questions, but meanwhile voters should judge who actually seeks to preserve order and who profits politically from chaos. Don’t be fooled by celebrity virtue signaling — Americans who work, pay taxes, and keep their neighborhoods safe deserve leaders who act, not pundits who pontificate.
