By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that San Francisco could be the next target of his administration’s crackdown on crime after he sent more federal agents and National Guard members to Washington and Memphis.
During remarks at the White House alongside FBI Director Kash Patel, Trump said that San Francisco is “a mess” and that officials had told him to send National Guard troops to the city.
“I’m going to be strongly recommending at the request of government officials … that you start looking at San Francisco,” Trump said, adding that the administration has “great support in San Francisco, so I would like to recommend that for inclusion, maybe in your next group.”
The president added, “I think we can make San Francisco, as one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and now it’s a mess.”
Earlier this month, billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in an interview that he believes Trump should send the National Guard to San Francisco, where Benioff is from.
“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff told The New York Times, saying that he supports Trump.
After the interview was published, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared it on X and wrote, “SF downtown is a drug zombie apocalypse.”
This week, Benioff sought to clarify his remarks to the paper, saying there has been progress in reducing crime in San Francisco.
“We’re grateful for the progress Mayor [Daniel] Lurie and all our partners have made, and we look forward to continuing to work together to make our city safe for everyone who lives, works and visits here. See you at Dreamforce this week,” he wrote on X, referring to an artificial intelligence event hosted by Salesforce in San Francisco this week.
Meanwhile, Musk, who moved his X headquarters from San Francisco to Texas in 2024, said that the federal government needs to intervene in the city.
“It’s the only solution at this point,” he wrote on X this week. “Nothing else has or will work.”
So far, the Trump administration has sent troops to Los Angeles; Washington; Portland, Oregon; and Memphis, Tennessee, to deal with what he said are longstanding issues with crime. In Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles, the Guard members were also sent to defend federal property and officials during immigration operations.
Deployments of federal agents and National Guard troops have faced opposition and lawsuits in those cities. After Trump’s comment, leaders in San Francisco voiced opposition to the proposal.
A news release issued by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office this week said that San Francisco has seen a decline in crime and that more officers will be sent to Dreamforce.
In a post on X, Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents the city of San Francisco, said that Trump’s statement about government officials requesting the troops was a “lie” and said that the federal government should “stay … out of San Francisco.”
It comes as Trump and Vice President JD Vance this month said he could invoke the Insurrection Act to legally justify sending troops into Portland.
“So far, it hasn’t been necessary, but we have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Oct. 6. “If I had to enact it, I’d do that. If people were being killed, and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I’d do that. I mean, I want to make sure people aren’t killed.”