President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he received an endorsement from the sheriff overseeing Portland, but he has not.
Trump was bragging about the support he’s garnered among various groups before saying, “Portland, the sheriff just came out today and he said, ‘I support President Trump.'”
Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese oversees Portland, as the city is inside the county.
Reese wrote on Twitter: “As the Multnomah County Sheriff I have never supported Donald Trump and will never support him.”
“Donald Trump has made my job a hell of a lot harder since he started talking about Portland, but I never thought he’d try to turn my wife against me!” he added.
Trump may have been thinking of Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth, who endorsed him this week.
Both Reese and Beth have, along with other law enforcement officials, responded to unrest in recent months.
Reese has criticized the Trump administration before.
In 2017, as he tried to win reelection, he said that a federal push to have local law enforcement work on immigration enforcement was “controversial & dangerous.”
Earlier this year, Reese said he rejected a request to meet with acting Homeland Security Director Chad Wolf, who visited Portland to meet with federal officers that were working to quell riots in the city.
“I was under the impression this was going to be a thoughtful, honest, and open discussion, but following statements made by Sec. Wolf, it became clear law enforcement in the City of Portland was becoming highly politicized, and for that reason, I declined to meet,” Reese said at the time.
Actions by federal officers “caused a significant setback in our local efforts to end the nightly violence around the Justice Center and in Portland,” Reese said, alleging they “failed to display good decision-making and sound tactical judgment.”
Department of Homeland Security officers and agents surged to Portland in early July after local law enforcement failed to protect the U.S. courthouse there. They clashed with rioters throughout the month, before Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, sent state troops to help respond to the ongoing unrest. The officers were confined to responding to gatherings at or near the courthouse.
Riots are still taking place in Portland.
Trump during the debate said that, if asked for assistance, the federal government would quell the unrest in Oregon’s largest city “in half an hour.”
“But they won’t do it, because they’re run by radical left Democrats,” he added.
Brown and other state and city leaders have repeatedly refused offers of assistance from the Trump administration.
Asked if he had called on Democrat leaders to move to stop the violence, Biden said he doesn’t hold public office.
“They can in fact take care of it if he just stay out of the way,” Biden added.
From The Epoch Times
