The mayor of Portland and the governor of Oregon are (so far) doing a pretty good job of pushing back against Donald Trump's attempted invasion of the city by soldiers. The state has sued Trump in court and has already won two injunctions preventing the deployment of troops. The first barred Trump from using the Oregon National Guard in the city, and the second was necessary because Trump decided to attempt an end-around play by deploying the California National Guard instead. The judge -- a Trump appointee, by the way -- was not amused, and her second injunction barred Trump from using any National Guard troops from any state in Portland. The judge's rulings were pretty scathing, pointing out that Trump's insistence that there is some sort of insurrection happening in Portland is completely divorced from the reality on the ground.

Trump is reportedly not happy with these rulings, and is now contemplating using the Insurrection Act to deploy troops instead. But it doesn't change the facts that the judge pointed out -- that there simply is no insurrection at all. There are some very small-scale protests in front of a federal building (with an ICE facility), but these are happening in a specific area -- there is no wide-spread protest at all.

Trump seems to have been watching Fox News video loops which show violent protests from five years ago, since Fox never gets tired of running them. Trump (and a whole lot of other Fox viewers, assumably) see these clips and think that this is the situation on the ground in Portland right now. Which simply isn't true.

It is admittedly anecdotal, but here is an excerpt from a comment to a story in the New York Times today which gives one person's viewpoint of the actual reality on the ground, for contrast:

Every Sunday pajama clad protestors with donuts gather in from of the ICE facility, just before going to church, to protest Republican funded crimes against american citizens.

You should see this lunacy, America. DHS and ICE agents, claiming to be police, come out of the ICE facility, for no reason just to parade around, blocking traffic. They are armed. There are a tiny handful of protestors on the side walk. Agents Jay walk across the street in a parade fashion, march around to our amusement and then after about 15-20 minutes of this clownish behavior that accomplished absolutely nothing, they March back inside.

On one occasion a protestor was on the sidewalk before they came out of the building holding a sign. Understand agents are not performing any official duties. They are just marching around, crossing the street illegally. The first few guys walk past the protestor. Why, because he has a right to be there, he is not violent, and its a public street. At the end of the parade an agent doesn't go past but hits the protestor hard with his shield, really hard. Knocks him down and then turns to hit him again. Another agent stops him. Why?

The comment appearing immediately after this one points out the difference between perception and what is presented by the news media as reality:

ALL the news companies are wasting a huge opertunity because every day that trump claims that a city is burning with criminal activity and protests, the nightly news casters should be out in the streets showing the real conditions out there - the streets in city centers that are, in reality, calm. Because these are some of the biggest lies trump has ever told.

Which is true, to a large extent -- the news media show tight-focus shots of the protesters and federal agents, and never pan outwards to show how incredibly small the crowd actually is. I did see one photograph in the Times today which was a lot better at showing some context, and it was even accompanied by a paragraph which admitted this reality:

Local police have arrived at the ICE building in Portland, Ore., and are securing a one-block perimeter around the facility. Fewer than a dozen demonstrators and a larger group of reporters are gathered outside.

Got that? There are more journalists there than protesters. That is what is really happening in Portland.

Donald Trump, of course, doesn't see things this way. He has described Portland as "war-ravaged" and seems convinced that massive arson and chaos has reigned over the city for the past five years (which is just laughably wrong). And he seems to be psyching himself up for a different kind of way to get around the judge's orders as well:

"Portland is on fire. Portland’s been on fire for years. And not so much saving it -- we have to save something else, because I think that‘s all insurrection, really criminal insurrection," [Donald] Trump said at one point in the Oval Office on Monday. He told Newsmax later in the day that the situation in Portland was "pure insurrection."

He is pretty obviously trying to create the predicate that using the Insurrection Act is somehow justified in Portland.

So I have a suggestion for the mayor and the governor, who are already attempting to counterprogram the way the news media is presenting things by holding press conferences on the (entirely peaceable) banks of the Willamette River, and by escorting news crews around the city to show all the other peaceful scenes of city life there.

But they need to do a better job at visually portraying the reality. They should produce their own newsreel, and offer it up to any media outlet that wants to use it. This video should make two things crystal-clear: the incredibly tiny footprint of the protests, and the calm and peacefulness in the other 99-plus-percent of the city.

Perhaps a drone shot should start this, showing the very small protest crowd from above -- which also took pains to identify that most of the people you see are actually journalists. The drone should then pull upward dramatically, showing how the protests are happening in a couple of blocks around the federal building -- and nowhere else. This should morph into a pullback shot of a detailed map of the city, with the few protest blocks marked out. When it finishes pulling back, it should show the entire city's limits, with one tiny, tiny dot of where the protests are happening. Maybe label the rest of the map something like "peaceful and calm," or "no protests here!" to drive the point home?

This should be followed with a bunch of clips of normal everyday life going on in Portland. Shots of people walking around, doing their business, drinking coffee, playing in playgrounds, etc. "This is the reality of life right now in Portland," the voiceover should point out. "There simply is no 'insurrection' at all."

So far, the news media has been remiss in not showing this reality -- as they almost always are. Violence makes for great news shots, but peacefulness and calm, not so much. But these days, there are more ways to get this message out to the public than just on the nightly news, of course. So the video of peaceful Portland should be posted on every social media app known, and any politicians horrified at Trump's over-the-top (and frankly dangerous language) should reference it continuously, when talking to the media.

Eventually, this might even force the media to head outside that incredibly tiny couple of blocks and show their viewers the truth of the reality on the ground.

It's certainly worth a try. And with Trump talking about "war-ravaged Portland" being "on fire for years," showing the falseness of his perception might even restrain his impulse to invade the city. Which is definitely a worthwhile goal to try to achieve.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant