President Trump tweets Oregon leaders should bring National Guard to Portland

PORTLAND, Ore. — The Rose City remains on President Donald Trump's mind. On Monday morning he tweeted, "Portland, which is out of control, should finally, after almost 3 months, bring in the National Guard. The Mayor and Governor are putting people’s lives at risk. They will be held responsible. The Guard is ready to act immediately. The Courthouse is secured by Homeland!"

Portland police declared both weekend gatherings at the Portland Police Association building riots. Oregon State Police are assisting Portland police.

While they haven't called for the National Guard, the president could call them in if there was a real danger to people's lives.

"The president can make the argument that look, rioting is out of control in Portland, people aren’t safe and the troops need to be called in to restore safety," said Tung Yin, a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. "If you can make the predicate argument that in fact those things are true, that the rioting is severe and it’s unsafe, then the critical point is and it’s beyond the capacity of Portland Police Bureau and Multnomah County Sheriff's Office to deal with the problem. Then yes, the president probably can be entitled to say Portland people are citizens and it’s my job to protect American citizens."

Another way the president could bring the troops in to Portland is if they were coming here to train.

"The president can always say there is no better training than a real-life situation," said Yin, who added that this is unlikely, especially given the way demonstrators reacted to federal officers.

"We saw what happened when federal officers started taking more aggressive positions; it started to inflame matters," said Yin. "So the combination of all that suggested that it would be really bad to bring in troops."

When the protests first began, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler asked Gov. Kate Brown to activate the National Guard since the governor is usually the first to call for the troops. On Monday, Wheeler had no comment to the president's tweet.