Seattle Times gets massively ratio’d for ‘fact check’ of Trump’s debate claim that rioters took over a ‘big portion of Seattle’ during 2020 CHAZ occupation

Trump was asked by debate moderator David Muir about the events of January 6, 2021, where a Trump supporter was killed by Capitol Police. Muir asked "Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?"

Trump addressed his actions on that day, saying "Peacefully and patriotically, I said during my speech. Not later on. Peacefully and patriotically. And nobody on the other side was killed. Ashli Babbitt was shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever shot her. It's a disgrace." He then brought up immigration and the role of his opponent, Kamala Harris, as the border czar with the Biden-Harris administration. Harris was tasked with the work of securing the border and addressing "root causes of migration" in March 2021.

Muir pressed for Trump to take more responsibility for J6, at which point Trump brought up the protests of 2020, saying “When are the people that burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted? Or in Seattle, they went into Seattle, they took over a big percentage of the city of Seattle. When are those people going to be prosecuted?”

Seattle Times staff writer Vonnai Phair appeared to take issue with Trump’s description of the size of the deadly autonomous zone as a “big portion of the city,” noting that the illegal occupation “initially occupied six city blocks surrounding the Seattle Police Department East Precinct and Cal Anderson Park.”

Phair omitted that the occupation followed consecutive nights of rioting that then-Mayor Jenny Durkan responded to by ordering Seattle Police to abandon the department’s East Precinct. The outlet also omitted that the Seattle Department of Transportation spent over $1 million installing barricades for the armed occupiers. Minneapolis also abandonded a police precinct during the riots in that city and officers feared for their lives.

Attempting to downplay the situation further, Phair claimed, “The zone eventually shrunk to be even smaller.” Phair then cited only 3 cases of people being charged with violent crimes in the zone and neglected to mention that the hundreds of people who participated in and organized the deadly occupation, including the zone’s “warlord” Raz Simone” have yet to be arrested or charged.

The city has paid out millions of dollars in settlements for lawsuits stemming from the violence and wrongful deaths in the zone. Phair noted that Trump had referenced the zone in his debate earlier this year with President Joe Biden, stating Trump “falsely” claimed “the protest zone dismantled after he threatened to send in the National Guard.”

This was not the first time Trump had made the statement. In an interview with The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI in 2021, Trump said "We were all set to go and they knew we were all set to go, meaning the bad guys, they knew it & left the next morning."

When the area was first occupied by activists and police were banned from the area, Trump tweeted: “Radical Left Governor @JayInslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before. Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stopped IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST!”

Durkan responded “It is unconstitutional and illegal to send the military into Seattle. There is no imminent threat of an invasion of Seattle,” even though 6 blocks of Seattle were taken over by domestic terrorists. Durkan went as far as to call the violent occupation the "summer of love."

Following the occupation, violent crime spiked. Due to Durkan and Governor Jay Inslee’s failure to act, Trump sent federal agents to Seattle. However, Durkan and Inslee demanded they leave and slammed Trump for sending them.

After another two people were shot, this time teenagers, Durkan and Inslee still did not act, even though the National Guard was staged at nearby Lumen Field. Instead of dealing with the rioters, guardsmen were tasked with giving out sandwiches to the homeless.

Following the shooting, activists marched to and vandalized Durkan's home and the order to break up the zone was finally given. However, it is unclear if the order was given because of the violence, the vandalism of Durkan’s home, or Trump’s threat because city officials were busted for having deleted their texts and other communications from the time, and the city was ordered to pay none other than the Seattle Times, that had filed a public disclosure request for the records and were told none existed.

By the time the zone was swept by Seattle police in July 2020, the majority of the activists were gone, after Durkan made deals to allocate city funding to various social justice nonprofits.

Phair also called the illegal occupation the “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” in the article. However, that name was not one of the common terms for the area, which began as the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” and then was renamed by occupiers as the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest.” The term “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” was rarely used to describe the area and only towards the end of the occupation by radical activists and their allies in far-left media while trying to falsely describe the violent area as a “block party” or “street fair.”

The Seattle Times was slammed for the “fact check.” By Wednesday, the outlet’s post on X garnered thousands of comments, the overwhelming majority negative, and hundreds of shares. Additionally, multiple X Community Notes are pending on the post.

On Thursday morning the outlet's post on X was slapped with a Community Note that read, "The Seattle Times themselves have reported on the very real incident in June of 2020 where violent protestors forcefully took control of a portion of Seattle’s Capitol Hill area that was dubbed CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) or CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest)." The note cited The Times' own reporting on the autonomous zone from 2020.

In response to the article, Donald Trump Jr. posted on X, “The media really is just disgraceful. This is way worse than CNN’s fiery but mostly peaceful protests. They’re flat-out rewriting history. This literally happened in the middle of Seattle.”