Tech billionaire Marc Benioff’s new show of support for Donald Trump and call for National Guard troops to patrol San Francisco’s streets has shaken local Democrats who long regarded the Salesforce CEO as a close ally.
Benioff, speaking to The New York Times in an interview published Friday, said he was “all for” deploying Guard troops with the goal of fighting crime in the city. In the same interview, Benioff said Trump is “doing a great job” as president.
“I fully support the president,” Benioff told the Times.
Benioff’s support for Trump and Guard deployment cuts against his years of lavish giving and full-throated support for Democratic causes, even as other tech titans shifted toward Trump.
“This is a slap in the face to San Francisco,” Matt Dorsey, who represents parts of downtown on the city’s Board of Supervisors, said in an X post.
It also puts Benioff at direct odds with the state’s Democratic leaders like his close friend Gov. Gavin Newsom — one of whose children is a godchild to Benioff. Newsom has sued the Trump administration over its deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles and demanded Republican governors condemn the president’s moves to federalize state Guard troops.
Democratic leaders in California and beyond widely view Trump’s domestic military interventions as an unlawful preemption of local control, even as the president claims intervention is needed to curb crime.
Trump has floated San Francisco as one of the handful of Democratic-led cities he’s eyeing for troop deployments.
“I can’t be silent any longer. @KristiNoem and @realDonaldTrump have turned so-called public safety and immigration enforcement into a form of government sponsored violence against U.S. citizens, families, and ethnic groups,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins — a moderate Democrat appointed in 2022 on promises to reduce crime — wrote in an X post Friday slamming Benioff’s suggestion.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents the City by the Bay and rarely hesitates to bash the president, praised Salesforce as “a great San Francisco company that does so much good for our city” in an X post before criticizing Benioff’s comments.
“Inviting Trump to send the National Guard here is not one of those good things. Quite the opposite,” Wiener wrote. “We neither need nor want an illegal military occupation in San Francisco.”
The office of San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie — a moderate Democrat who has been reticent to name or criticize Trump — was more muted, even as Benioff appeared to double down on X by demanding local leaders further fund law enforcement and touting additional police presence for Salesforce’s flagship annual “Dreamforce” conference, slated to begin Tuesday in the city’s downtown.
In a statement to POLITICO, Lurie spokesperson Charles Lutvak called public safety Lurie’s “number one priority” and touted recent statistics showing crime reductions in the city without mentioning Benioff.
Spokespeople for Salesforce did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Spokespeople for Newsom and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, two Democratic behemoths with deep roots in San Francisco, declined to comment on Benioff’s remarks.
Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, has been a leading voice among blue-state politicians resisting Trump’s troop deployments. Earlier this month, he and California Attorney General Rob Bonta joined a lawsuit seeking to stop Trump from relocating National Guard troops stationed in Los Angeles up to Portland, Oregon.
California also sued the Trump administration in June, pursuing an order blocking the president from federalizing state National Guard forces to address immigration-related protests in Los Angeles. A federal judge initially blocked Trump’s deployment, but a Ninth Circuit Appeals Court panel later paused the injunction and left Trump in control of the troops.
White House officials, meanwhile, responded positively to Benioff’s comments.
David Sacks, a White House adviser dubbed Trump’s “crypto czar,” simply wrote “Checkmate” in an X post Friday evening.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told POLITICO in an email that “no one can deny the outstanding results from President Trump!”
Jackson declined to say whether Trump planned to deploy Guard troops in San Francisco.
Dustin Gardiner and Chase DiFeliciantonio contributed reporting.
