Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff came under fire this weekend after he said he would welcome President Donald Trump deploying the National Guard to San Francisco, according to an interview the New York Times conducted with Benioff while he was flying on his private plane.
The billionaire’s comments published Friday come as Salesforce’s major technology conference, Dreamforce, starts this week. The conference is expected to draw an estimated 45,000 to the Moscone Center this week.
The three-day tech gathering, which runs through Thursday, will fill the area around Yerba Buena Gardens with vendors, concerts, celebrity-studded panels and a heavy police presence.
Benioff told the New York Times that the company was funding hundreds of off-duty law enforcement officers to patrol the area surrounding the convention. He noted that the city, in his view, doesn’t have enough of a police presence to manage crime during large events, and further suggested that Trump should send in federal help.
In a sharp departure from his past liberal stances, Benioff told the outlet he “fully” supports the president and thinks the National Guard should be deployed to San Francisco. “We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” he said.
Benioff added he wanted to see a return to heavier law enforcement downtown. “You’ll see. When you walk through San Francisco next week, there will be cops on every corner,” he said. “That’s how it used to be.”
City officials were quick to condemn the comments, with Mayor Daniel Lurie pushing back in an Oct. 12 interview with KTVU-TV.
“We are doing everything we can to drive crime down, and it’s working. It’s down 30% this year,” the mayor told the outlet. “The good vibes in San Francisco are coming back. … San Franciscans know that San Francisco is on the rise.”
SF District Attorney Brooke Jenkins sat down with KGO-TV on Oct. 10 to comment. “To invite chaos into our city, no, Mr. Benioff needs to know that’s not the solution,” Jenkins said. “And I want the president to know we don’t want his version of law and order.”
Benioff later expanded on his comments on X, clarifying that he was referring to his experiences funding safety measures for large events.
“When I was recently asked about federal resources, my point was this: each year, to make Dreamforce as safe as possible for 50,000 attendees, we add 200 additional law-enforcement professionals – coordinated across city, state, and other partners. It’s proof that collaboration works and a reminder that the city needs more resources to keep San Franciscans safe year-round,” Benioff wrote.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Benioff’s controversial statements drew agreement from another tech billionaire, Elon Musk, who publicly backed the idea of Trump deploying the National Guard to SF, a move that would be illegal without California’s consent. Musk responded to an X post of Benioff’s interview, echoing these calls for the deployment. “SF downtown is a drug zombie apocalypse,” he wrote.
The interview marks a striking reversal for Benioff, who for years positioned himself as one of San Francisco’s most vocal business philanthropists and a self-styled progressive voice in tech.
In 2019 at the World Economic Forum, he blamed the tech industry for making San Francisco “a train wreck” of inequality. But in recent years, he has taken a softer tone, praising the city’s efforts to improve its downtown and pledging to keep the Dreamforce convention in the city through 2027.
“We have a great city, the city’s never looked better, and I couldn’t be happier,” Benioff said last year when announcing the conference’s extension. Following Dreamforce 2023, he boasted that the annual event had cleaned up San Francisco.
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This article originally published at Amid backlash, Benioff tries to clarify support of National Guard in SF.
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