Trump calls off National Guard operation in San Francisco after speaking with mayor and tech CEOs – News

President Donald Trump today announced that he no longer plans to deploy federal troops to San Francisco after having spoken to the mayor and two major tech figures.

“The Federal Government was preparing to ‘surge’ San Francisco, California, on Saturday, but friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The “friends” were Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Jensen Huang and Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff.

Benioff, once heralded as a beacon of progressivism among the Silicon Valley elite, has been at the center of a storm lately regarding his support for Trump’s contention that it would take the National Guard to clean up the “mess” that he believed San Francisco had become.

After Trump sent troops to several U.S. cities, Benioff expressed that it would take a hardline approach to make San Francisco safe again, endorsing Trump’s plan of action. “We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” he’d said. Soon after, he and venture capitalist Ron Conway shared some stern words, with Conway ultimately resigning from the board of the Salesforce Foundation.

However, it now seems that after Trump had talks with Benioff and Huang, he changed his mind. “The people of San Francisco have come together on fighting Crime, especially since we began to take charge of that very nasty subject,” Trump wrote. “Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday.”

Mayor Lurie confirmed the volte-face, explaining in a statement that he’d told Trump that troops were not necessary, and that San Francisco “is on the rise.”

“We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF and U.S. Attorney to get drugs and drug dealers off our streets, but having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” Lurie explained. “We appreciate that the president understands that we are the global hub for technology, and when San Francisco is strong, our country is strong.”

Other tech CEOs had made their opinions known about the possible federal troop invasion of the city, with startup incubator Y Combinator’s Garry Tan writing on X, “SF is on the way to resurgence and there is a lot more to be done, but Mayor Lurie and DA Jenkins are doing the work. Let them cook.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom had similarly been critical of Trump’s approach to crime fighting by militarizing “another American city,” what he referred to as Trump’s “vanity and deranged fantasies.” Today, he said he was relieved that Trump had “finally, for once, listened to reason.”

The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters today that Trump would listen to both sides of the political aisle to “do the right thing and clean up America’s cities.” She added, “He is genuinely interested in this effort to make our streets safer, to make our cities safe and clean again. And he heard from the mayor last night, who told him that he is going to earnestly try to make his city better on his own.”

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