Gavin Newsom has called out FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s claims that his agency lowered San Francisco’s crime rate, amid their spat over President Donald Trump’s plan to deploy troops in the city.
The California governor tweeted a San Francisco Chronicle headline on Monday that said the city’s homicide numbers are “on track to be the lowest since the 1950s.” Bongino retorted that it was due to the FBI’s “early efforts” in conjunction with local police “to CRUSH violent crime.”
FACT CHECK: Donald Trump wasn’t even in office when crime started hitting historic lows.Podcaster Dan has no idea what’s going on. https://t.co/ankMWj0hg4 pic.twitter.com/vmYQlgcLN5
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 20, 2025
Newsom shut down Bongino’s attempt to pat himself on the back—following the agency’s violent crime crackdown—tweeting back two headlines showing the dip in homicides came before Trump’s second term even began.
“FACT CHECK: Donald Trump wasn’t even in office when crime started hitting historic lows,” Newsom wrote, sharing a Dec. 2024 NBC headline. “Podcaster Dan has no idea what’s going on.”
The Deputy Director of the FBI is taking credit for something that happened BEFORE Trump was ever in office … Time to go back to podcasting, Dan. https://t.co/oxd5fbuaIz pic.twitter.com/HvudriPcx8
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) October 20, 2025
Newsom’s press office shared an ABC headline from the same month that said homicide rates hit a “60-year low.”
They also took a jab at the former host of “The Dan Bongino Show,” writing, “Time to go back to podcasting, Dan.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said the three-month initiative, “Operation Summer Heat,” led to over 8,000 arrests. It’s unclear how many were in San Francisco.
Operation Summer Heat was simple: let good cops be cops.In just 3 months:⁰🔹 8,629 arrests⁰🔹 2,281 guns seized⁰🔹 44,559 kg of cocaine and 421 kg of fentanyl off the streets (enough to kill 50M Americans)This is how you crush violent crime. pic.twitter.com/v9RTqNhblo
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) October 3, 2025
Trump further escalated the crackdown after confirming a National Guard deployment in a Sunday interview with Fox News, saying, “They want us in San Francisco.”
Newsom, who was the city’s mayor for seven years, said “nobody wants you here” and accused the president of trying to “ruin one of America’s greatest cities.”
Patel’s second-in-charge took issue with Newsom’s comments in a Monday appearance on Fox & Friends.
“I was going to say something different but I’ve got to control my Queens mouth on the air with Gavin Newsom,” he said. “But when he says this comment, nobody wants you here? Really? That’s kind of a BS remark! The people do want us there!”
A Reuters survey from August found that just 38 percent of Americans supported Trump’s federal troop deployments in U.S. cities.
Bongino railed against Newsom further after he was asked how his agency would respond if the California governor resisted the deployment.
“We don’t answer to the governor of California,” Bongino said. “We answer to the president, the American people, the attorney general and deputy attorney general. That’s the chain of command.”
The Daily Beast reached out to the FBI for comment.
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