Trump was planning to send troops to San Francisco. Now he's not. Here's why

[dalton99a]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/25/san-francisco-trump-troops

Trump was planning to send troops to San Francisco. Now he’s not. Here’s why
The US president’s reversal was as capricious as his original plan. What if local billionaires had urged him to stick with it?
Joe Eskenazi
Sat 25 Oct 2025 07.00 EDT

The mayor of San Francisco said on Thursday that Donald Trump had simply called him – no go-betweens or consigliere required – and told him there would no longer be a deployment of federal agents or troops to the city.

The president simply dialed Daniel Lurie up and talked at him. And, just like that, a daylong crisis and flood-the-zone news cycle across the Bay Area regarding the imminent deployment of border protection agents to the region was quelled. Or not: Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, said the president didn’t call her. Lurie and other local leaders are taking the president’s words to mean that the rest of the Bay Area will be spared – but there was no overt pledge regarding that.

It’s great for the people of San Francisco that the president has capriciously decided to unsend the troops he capriciously decided to send. But the real story here is, per the president’s summation on social media of his discussion with Lurie, that the commander-in-chief is overtly stating that he is basing a domestic military deployment upon what local “friends of mine” (the billionaire CEOs Jensen Huang of Nvidia and the local boy Marc Benioff of Salesforce) lobbied him to do. Trump also noted that Lurie asked him “very nicely” not to establish a military beachhead in San Francisco.

All for the good. But what if Huang and Benioff had been in the mood for a military parade and called for sending in the troops? What if Lurie had been less polite?

If things had gone even slightly differently, it stands to reason that federal immigration agents and/or armed troops could be rolling through the city by now.

There are only so many turns of phrase you can employ: this is just a profoundly fucked-up way to lead a country. It’s like dealing with King George or a warlord out of the dark Ages.

This city’s billionaires are very good at some things, and those things have made them a lot of money. But being good at those things doesn’t make your average billionaire an expert on military intervention, the local drug trade or, for that matter, immigration policy or crime in the city.

Speaking of capricious, Benioff was for sending in the guard before he was against it.

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