California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Sunday fired back at President Donald Trump for once again threatening to send the National Guard into San Francisco.
“We’re gonna go to San Francisco,” Trump said during a Fox News interview. “The difference [from Chicago] is, I think they want us in San Francisco.”
Newsom wasn’t having it.
“Fact check: Nobody wants you here,” Newsom wrote on X. “You will ruin one of America’s greatest cities.”
In an awkward moment during the same interview, Trump accidentally praised Newsom.
He said San Francisco was “truly one of the great cities of the world” but “went wrong” 15 years ago.
Newsom served as mayor of San Francisco starting in 2004, leaving office in early 2011 ― or almost exactly 15 years ago.
Gavin Newsom speaks with Donald Trump in January.
MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images
When Trump threatened to send troops to San Francisco earlier this month, at least one local business leader welcomed the idea … at first.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, once a Hillary Clinton donor, said the city doesn’t have enough police officers and he supported Trump’s plan.
“I fully support the president,” he told The New York Times. “I think he’s doing a great job.”
The comments caused venture capitalist Ron Conway to quit the board of the Salesforce Foundation, the company’s charitable organization, saying, “I now barely recognize the person I have so long admired.”
Benioff later apologized, saying his comments were made “out of an abundance of caution.”
“Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” he wrote on X.
He also said his company would give the city $1 million to use as signing bonuses to hire new police officers.
Members of the Texas National Guard assemble in Elwood, Illinois, at the Army Reserve Training Center in the southwest suburb of Chicago, on Oct. 7.
Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune via Getty Images
Trump has sent the National Guard into multiple cities ostensibly due to high crime rates, calling Chicago, for example, a “hellhole” of crime. He’s also threatened to send troops into additional cities, including San Francisco.
However, critics say he’s targeting cities with Democratic leaders in Democratic states, while ignoring high-crime cities and states with Republican leaders.
Some of the cities he has threatened actually have declining crime rates. Newsom shared one report that finds San Francisco’s homicide rate is on track for its lowest level since the 1950s.
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Trump likewise sent troops into Washington, D.C., claiming the city’s crime numbers continue to “get worse” and the situation is “totally out of control.”
However, the city’s crime rate has actually been falling.