A pedestrian wearing a protective mask crosses California Street in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. Governor Newsom said Monday he expected to extend the strict regional stay-at-home orders for the hard-hit regions of the state where Covid-19 hospitalizations are still rising, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said he’s calling off the deployment of federal troops to San Francisco after speaking to billionaires Marc Benioff and Jensen Huang, as well as the city’s mayor, Daniel Lurie.
“Friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge,” Trump said on social media, specifically naming Benioff and Huang. “Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday.”
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The decision marks a stark deescalation between Trump and the liberal California city. In an event last week, the president had said he would “strongly recommend” that federal authorities “start looking at San Francisco,” following similar deployments in Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles, which sparked intense backlash from local communities.
More than 100 officers from US Customs and Border Protection were expected to begin arriving Thursday at the Coast Guard Base Alameda, just across San Francisco Bay from the city. It was unclear if Trump, who previously singled out Oakland as a possible target for a federal crackdown, would target other parts of the Bay Area.
Trump’s plans had drawn rebukes from Governor Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders. The backlash also ensnared Benioff, the billionaire chief executive officer of Salesforce Inc., who stirred controversy earlier this month after telling the New York Times that he believed National Guard troops should be deployed to San Francisco.
Those comments were broadly criticized by the city’s politicians and other tech leaders, who were shocked that Benioff, long a civic booster, would support federal forces there. The billionaire later apologized for the statement and said he didn’t believe the National Guard was needed.
A representative from Salesforce declined to comment.
Lurie, the mayor, said in a statement he received a phone call from Trump late Wednesday night and the president “told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco.”
“I told him the same thing I told our residents: San Francisco is on the rise,” Lurie said. “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.”
La historia continúa
San Francisco became a national symbol of urban dysfunction in the aftermath of the pandemic, hurt by rising crime, empty offices and a dire homelessness crisis. But the city has revived over the past year as the center of the artificial intelligence boom, while Lurie has taken a business-friendly approach toward local leaders.
Crime rates have been falling rapidly in recent months. The city has had a substantial decline in homicides and is on track to see its lowest rate in generations. Property crimes, like car break-ins, have also dropped dramatically.
Much of the city’s recovery has been driven by the AI boom, which has in Huang, co-founder of Nvidia, one of its biggest champions. The company is based in nearby Santa Clara and Huang owns real estate in San Francisco. Nvidia declined to comment.
Tech Relationships
Trump has forged a close alliance to Silicon Valley during his second term, extending beyond Benioff and Huang. Last month, the president hosted a group of tech leaders in the White House for dinner, including Meta Platforms Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook and OpenAI Inc.’s Sam Altman, where the executives touted their plans to spend billions in the US.
The industry represents not only a key element in guaranteeing the US dominance in cutting-edge sectors, like AI, but also a deep pool of money ahead of next year’s midterm elections to determine control of Congress. California is home to four of the top 10 richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with Zuckerberg, Huang and Alphabet Inc. co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin together worth more than $840 billion.
At a press conference on Thursday, Lurie said he didn’t ask any of the tech leaders to call Trump.“I didn’t ask for anybody to call. He called me,” he said.
Lurie, a Democrat, has generally stayed away from direct confrontation from Trump since assuming office in January. He has largely avoided calling out him out by name and emphasized his openness to cooperating with federal law enforcement on drug trafficking. That’s in contrast to Newsom, an outspoken critic of the president.
“Trump has finally, for once, listened to reason – and heard what we have been saying from the beginning,” said Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Newsom. “The Bay Area is a shining example of what makes California so special, and any attempt to erode our progress would damage the work we’ve done.”
In San Francisco, the news was applauded by Democrats leaders who said Lurie’s strategy of avoiding a direct confrontation with Trump is now paying dividends.
“We’re in an era of plutocratic dominance trending towards kleptocratic dominance,” said Rafael Mandelman, president of San Francisco’s board of supervisors. “You have to use whatever tools you have.”
Others said they are worried that Benioff and Huang’s intervention signaled a new era of billionaire influence over the city’s residents.
“The president’s listening to billionaires as opposed to the people who live here and are our elected leaders,” said Gabriel Medina, executive director of Bay Area immigration nonprofit La Raza Community Resource Center. “It really shines a light on how much power our capitalist oligarchs have and how this country really runs.”
–With assistance from Ian King and Brody Ford.
(Updates with Newsom comments, additional details starting 13th paragraph)
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