Tech billionaire Marc Benioff has called on President Trump to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco in a new interview in which the Silicon Valley power player revealed he “fully supports” the president’s agenda.
Benioff, who owns Time Magazine and is the CEO of megacorp Salesforce, opened up to The New York Times in an interview Friday, in which he called for the federal law enforcement presence ahead of his annual Dreamforce conference in the city by the Bay.
“We don’t have enough cops, so if [the National Guard] can be cops, I’m all for it,” the San Francisco native told The Times while flying in his private plane.
He revealed that he has to pay for hundreds of off-duty law enforcement officers to patrol the convention area during the Dreamforce conference – further stating that the liberal bastion needed to “re-fund” the police, The Times reported.
The San Francisco Police Department has merely about 1,500 police officers, which Benioff suggested should be nearly doubled.
“You’ll see. When you walk through San Francisco next week, there will be cops on every corner,” he told the outlet. “That’s how it used to be.”
Over the course of a near hour conversation, according to The Times, the tech CEO repeatedly praised President Trump.
“I fully support the president,” he said. “I think he’s doing a great job.”
Trump and Benioff have become closer allies of late, with 2024’s “Time Person of the Year” inviting the Time Magazine owner to the state dinner hosted by King Charles at Windsor Castle last month.
The two Americans sat across from each other with Benioff recounting how he repeatedly expressed to Trump “how grateful I am for everything he’s doing,” he told The Times.
Benioff, who has donated more than $1 billion to Bay Area charities, colleges, and causes over the last quarter century, boasted, “I don’t think anyone has hired more people or given more money or supported San Francisco more than I have.”
Despite that reality, many local politicians reviled his comments and pushed back against Benioff’s call for the National Guard to make their way to San Francisco Bay.
San Francisco supervisor Myrna Melgar told The Times that Benioff’s National Guard request “threw me for a loop.”
“But with Marc Benioff, it’s particularly disappointing. It’s definitely out of step and out of touch with what most San Franciscans would want,” Melgar told the outlet.
District Attorney for San Francisco Brooke Jenkins took more aggressive umbrage with the comments in a fiery series of messages blasted out on social media.
“I can’t be silent any longer,” Jenkins wrote on X Friday. “@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.”
“Let me be clear. If you come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents, use excessive force or cross any other boundaries that the law proscribes. I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day,” Jenkins concluded in the thread.
President Trump previously ordered the National Guard to Los Angeles, Calif., Memphis, Tenn., and most recently Chicago, Ill. to protect ICE officers during the implementation of “Operation Midway Blitz.”
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