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Maybe President Donald Trump remembers watching "The Day Called X" when he was a kid and that Portland was able to handle the risk.
This week saw the release of several excerpts from the forthcoming book by journalist Bob Woodward, "Fear: Trump in the White House". Trump reportedly ordered the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Trump's lawyer, John Dowd, by placing the president in a "training session" for an interview with Special Adviser Robert Mueller.
But there is another scene in the book that should be of particular interest to the Portlanders. National Security Advisor, HR McMaster, tells the President that the United States High Altitude Zone Defense System (THAAD) is located in South Korea because, in case of war on the Korean peninsula, thousands of US soldiers would be immediately vulnerable to a North Korean nuclear attack.
Trump Response: Has South Korea paid for the missile defense system?
"It's actually a really good deal for us," McMaster told the president, according to Newsweek magazine, which got a copy of Woodward's book. "They gave us land in a 99-year lease for free, but we pay for the system, the installation and the operations."
Woodward writes:
Trump has become wild. "I want to see where it's going," he said. Finally, some maps appeared to indicate the location. Some lands included an old golf course.
Trump, the New York real estate mogul, was not impressed by the real estate.
"It's a piece of land," Trump said in the book. "It's a terrible deal." Who negotiated this deal? What a genius? Take it out. I do not want land. "
Woodward writes that the president has said the multi-billion dollar missile defense system should be deployed in the United States.
"F-k it, take it out and put it in Portland!" he told McMaster.
In Portland?
Well, the city of Rose was perhaps ready to play such an important role in the nuclear weapons game in the 1950s, when it was the benchmark for civil defense. case of a nuclear strike and a well-trained mob ready to duck, cover or flee the city.
On September 27, 1955, local officials launched Operation Green Light, an ambitious civil defense exercise that cleared the streets of downtown Portland. Some 100,000 people left the "test area" in less than an hour.
This has brought "The Day Called X", a CBS 1957 public service movie starring Portland Mayor Terry Schrunk, and told by actor Glenn Ford. The 27-minute program caused a sensation across the country.
But perhaps Trump has never seen "The Day Called X" and has simply taken Portland out of the air to argue his point of view. In any case, despite the president's alleged insistence that THAAD be transferred to Rose City, the system remained in South Korea. Earlier this year, Trump replaced McMaster with John Bolton.
– Douglas Perry
